Heart Trouble

by Jae

  Well, that wasn’t all for Hope’s body, but ignoring these harmless physical reactions to women had never been a problem for her, so it shouldn’t be now either. She finished marking the racquet grip and then put the pen into her backpack. “Okay. Now that you know how to hold the racquet, let’s try hitting a forehand. Try to make contact with the ball somewhere between your knee and your hip and then swing through. Like this.” She demonstrated, hitting the ball against the wall and then catching it when it bounced back.

  Laleh repeated the movement perfectly. Either she was a quick learner, or traces of Hope’s squash skills were buried deep in her memory.

  Hope slid her right foot into the service box. “When you serve, the ball must hit the front wall between those two lines.” She pointed. “When your opponent returns the service, she can hit the wall anywhere between the out line at the top and the line at the bottom, called the—”

  “Tin,” Laleh finished for her. “Because it’s made of metal.”

  Hope let her hand with the ball drop back to her side and turned toward her. “Did you look up the rules at home before coming here, or…?”

  Laleh shook her head, making her ponytail whip back and forth. “No. I swear I didn’t. The rules…the terminology…it’s all here.” She tapped her head. “Just the actual physical movements don’t feel like second nature, like they probably do for you.”

  “Interesting,” Hope said. “But it actually makes sense. The pathways for muscle memory are formed by repeating a sequence of movements again and again, and you haven’t done that yet.”

  “Right.” Laleh got into position in the middle of the court. “So…” She nodded at the ball in Hope’s hand. “Let’s see if you can beat me.”

  Hope had never been able to resist a challenge. Easy, easy. She’s not even warmed up yet, and you don’t want her to land back in the ER, do you? Instead of aiming close to the side wall to force her opponent to run, she made a serve that Laleh could easily reach.

  They hit the ball back and forth, quickly getting into the game.

  Laleh couldn’t quite keep up with an experienced player like Hope, but neither did she play like a newbie who had never even held a racquet before. Her game reminded Hope of someone who used to play years ago and whose skills were rusty but slowly coming back.

  When their time on the squash court was up, they were both in need of a shower.

  Speaking of which… Hope had never been happier about the fact that her gym didn’t have a communal shower for the women. Normally, she didn’t mind communal showers. She had grown up playing all kinds of sports, and in the foster care system, she had always shared a bedroom. Privacy had been a rarity. But showering with Laleh…

  She didn’t want her to think she was ogling her. The situation was awkward enough as it was, so she was grateful for the curtain that closed off the front of each individual stall.

  Once they were showered and dressed, they walked outside to their cars.

  “You know,” Laleh said as she stopped in front of a used-looking red Toyota Corolla, “I was never much into sports, but this was actually fun. Do you think I enjoyed it because I did or because you are into it?”

  Hope played with the zipper of her racquet cover as she considered it for a while. “I have no idea. Now that I think about it… A few weeks ago, I had a strange craving for pomegranate even though I never even had it before. I’m guessing you like them?”

  “I love them. Oh, wait a minute. So that’s why I suddenly like olives?”

  “And why I no longer like them,” Hope muttered. “Apparently, there are more areas of the brain involved than I thought. I think food preferences are associated with the ventromedial prefrontal cortex.” She was about to explain which part of the brain that was but then remembered that Laleh already knew. “God, this thing,” she tapped the racquet grip gently against her temple, “is really complicated.”

  “Well, in the end, maybe it doesn’t matter. I enjoyed playing squash with you, period. That’s what counts, right?”

  “Yeah,” Hope murmured but wasn’t sure if she really shared that opinion. “At least we figured out the answer to our research question.”

  “We did?”

  Hope cocked her head. “You don’t think so? It appears that this strange access to each other’s brain works best for semantic memory—general knowledge like Persian vocabulary, medical facts, and the rules of squash. But for procedural and episodic memory, the connection seems to be less strong. The things you have a personal connection to, like your apartment, for example…they seem familiar, kind of like a déjà vu experience, but it’s more like a faint impression, not solid knowledge. The only exception seems to be food preferences.”

  Which, if she was honest, was a relief to Hope. She didn’t want her personal memories of events in her life to be an open book to anyone.

  Laleh slowly nodded. “I think you’re right. I knew what kind of scrubs surgeons wear at Griffith Memorial Hospital, but I had no idea your friend Jordan works in that department or how the two of you met.”

  A bit uneasy, Hope shifted her weight. She wanted to ask what Jordan had told Laleh about her but held herself back. It didn’t matter. “So, our hypothesis is confirmed. Mainly, it’s our semantic memory that’s affected.”

  “Well, actually…” Laleh’s dark eyes twinkled. “Correct me if I’m wrong, Doctor, but to confirm a hypothesis, isn’t it necessary to repeat the experiment and reproduce the results?”

  Hope had to smile. “True. So, what are you suggesting? You want to play squash again next week and see if you can beat me then?”

  “I wouldn’t mind, but no, that’s not what I meant. We should do it the other way around.”

  “Which is?”

  Laleh shrugged. “So far, we’ve only tested if I can access your many skills,” she said with a hint of good-natured teasing in her tone. “But we don’t know if you have access to any of mine. Don’t you want us to test that too?”

  “Why not?” Being thorough most often paid off when you were a physician, so it couldn’t be wrong now, could it? Right now, she couldn’t focus on anything but solving this damn mystery anyway. “So, which of your many skills will I try to reproduce?”

  “Cooking,” Laleh said with a decisive nod.

  Hope hid her face behind the two racquets. “Oh God. I hope you have good insurance.”

  Laleh chuckled. “It can’t be that bad.”

  “You have no idea.”

  “Well,” Laleh said, still grinning, “at least if you burn your hand or cut off a finger, I now have the skills to put you back together.”

  Laughter burst from Hope. Laleh could make people laugh, even in tense situations. That was one skill Hope wouldn’t mind having access to. “All right. But don’t say I didn’t warn you. I’m usually more the slap-a-sandwich-together-and-be-done-with-it type.”

  “We’ll see. How about next Wednesday, same time? I’ll prepare the battlefield…uh, the kitchen.”

  “All right. Want me to bring anything?”

  “A first-aid kit,” Laleh said, again making her laugh.

  When Hope got into her car and drove off, she was still smiling. Gosh, she couldn’t wrap her head around the strange things that were going on—one of them being that she was actually looking forward to next Wednesday.

  CHAPTER 9

  Hope stared at the rows of candy bars and chips in the vending machine. “You’d think a hospital vending machine would sell some healthy snacks,” she muttered.

  In the past, she hadn’t given it much thought, but lately, she’d become more picky when it came to her food. Was it an effect of that weird connection to Laleh?

  She wasn’t sure. But now she was so hungry that she didn’t care anymore. She hadn’t eaten a thing since her shift had started at seven last night, and that had been nearly twelve hours ago. Chocolate or something salty? She glanced back and forth between a Snickers and a bag of Doritos.

  Damn, she was
tired.

  Finally, she decided that the sugar rush might help keep her awake long enough for what she had planned. She fed coins into the machine, and a few seconds later, the chocolate bar thudded into the dispensing tray.

  With her snack in hand, she headed over to the staff lounge, poured herself some coffee from a pot warming on the counter, and settled at one of the small tables, where her laptop was already waiting.

  By the time she’d completed her charting and had updated the electronic records of today’s patients, the chocolate bar and the coffee were long gone, and her shift had officially ended. After a quick glance to the door, she opened another digital chart.

  It didn’t belong to any of this shift’s patients. These were Laleh Samadi’s medical records. Hope clicked through lab reports, the code record, progress notes, the cath lab procedure report, and the discharge order. Everything looked completely normal. Nothing in this medical chart explained what was going on with Laleh—and with her.

  With a grunt, Hope put her head in her hands and massaged her temples.

  “Um, Dr. Finlay?”

  Flinching, Hope looked up.

  Paula stood in the doorway of the staff lounge and gave her a quizzical look. “Are you okay?”

  “Yeah.” Hope straightened. “It’s just been a long shift.”

  “You can say that again. I’m about to sign out, but I need some caffeine or I’ll fall asleep at the wheel.” Paula crossed the room.

  Quickly, Hope closed Laleh’s record and logged out of the program. She didn’t want Paula to start wondering why she would look at the chart of a patient who’d been discharged five weeks ago.

  Paula took her paper cup of coffee and left.

  Hope closed the laptop, stretched her stiffened shoulder muscles, and got up. Time to go home. She needed to catch some sleep if she wanted to stay awake during her cooking lessons with Laleh tonight. But first, there was one other thing she needed to do.

  * * *

  Twenty minutes later, Hope left the hospital, the CD with the footage of Laleh’s resuscitation in hand. For once, she was happy about the cameras that started taping as soon as the lights in a trauma room were turned on so that the action of every physician and nurse involved could be reviewed later, if need be.

  Just as she reached her car, her cell phone rang. She fished it out of her pocket and looked at the display.

  Laleh. Hope clutched the CD case. She knew she had no reason to be overcome with guilt, but she felt as if she’d been caught with her hand in the cookie jar.

  For a moment, she debated whether she should let the call go to voice mail, but she was curious to find out what Laleh wanted. They had already set a time for tonight, so there was no reason for this call that she could think of. Quickly, she swiped her finger across the screen and accepted the call.

  “Hi, Hope,” Laleh said. “It’s me—Laleh.”

  Hope normally wasn’t the best at interpreting emotional undertones over the phone, but now she got the impression that Laleh didn’t sound as cheerful as she usually did. “Is something wrong?”

  “Yes. No.”

  A spark of adrenaline shot through Hope’s body, and her heart started beating a little faster. “What’s going on?”

  “I’m fine,” Laleh finally said.

  Hope loosened her grip on the CD.

  “But we’ll have to cancel tonight’s cooking experiment.”

  “No big deal,” Hope said. It wasn’t, right? She’d learned to keep herself entertained early on in life, so she’d never relied on her friends to keep her busy while she wasn’t at work. Besides, cooking wasn’t on her list of favorite things to do anyway.

  Why, then, did she feel a tinge of disappointment?

  Hope shrugged. It had to be Laleh’s habits rubbing off on her through their strange brain link. “If something more important came up, we can postpone. No problem.”

  “That’s not it. My kitchen is too small to really cook in if there’s two of us,” Laleh said. “I had planned to use the restaurant’s kitchen, because we’re closed on Wednesdays, but my aunt just called and told me that one of my cousins needs it for a surprise party for his fiancée.”

  So it was the kitchen that was the problem. Hope flashed back to Laleh’s tiny kitchenette. Laleh was right. No way would the two of them be able to cook together without constantly bumping into each other. She shoved back a mental image of her front rubbing against Laleh’s back as she leaned around her to grab some cooking utensil.

  Hope hesitated. While she had a fully equipped, nicely sized kitchen, she wasn’t much of a hostess. Oh, come on. It’s not like you’ll be hosting a party for two dozen people. Besides, Laleh will do most of the cooking.

  “How about mine?” she finally said.

  “Your what? Fiancée?” The warm, teasing undertone was back in Laleh’s voice.

  “Aren’t you funny? My kitchen. I could volunteer it for scientific purposes. That way, I don’t need to lug my first-aid kit across half of LA.”

  Laleh laughed. “That would be great. I’ll bring the ingredients and be at your place at six.”

  “Sounds good.” Hope’s stomach heartily agreed.

  When they ended the call, she unlocked her car and got in. Just as she was about to start the engine, her cell phone chirped, signaling that she’d received a text message.

  It was from Laleh.

  I forgot that I don’t know your address.

  Hope tapped out a quick reply. Oops. I forgot that too. Somehow, it didn’t seem as if Laleh was an almost complete stranger who had never been in her condo before.

  Want to tell me, or should I drive around your neighborhood, stopping at the first building that looks somehow familiar?

  Just a week ago, Hope hadn’t thought that she’d ever be able to laugh about this unexplainable stuff going on, but now she had to chuckle.

  Too dangerous. Knowing some of my neighbors, they won’t let you leave if you show up bearing food.

  She added her address and put the phone away. For the second time within a week, she found herself smiling as she started the engine.

  * * *

  Once again, her mother hovered in the bathroom doorway, watching Laleh get ready. “So, who’s this friend you’re meeting? The one who’s more important than your own family.”

  Laleh glanced at her in the mirror above the sink. Were all mothers so good at this guilt trip thing, or was it a special talent of hers? “She’s not more important, Maman. If Emud had told me sooner that he was planning a party for Shirin, I would have come.”

  “But it’s a surprise party.”

  “For Shirin,” Laleh said, somehow managing not to roll her eyes. “He could have told me. Now I’ve got a previous commitment.”

  “With your friend the movie star who owns the limousine?” her mother asked.

  “She doesn’t own it, and no, I’m not meeting Jill.” Laleh put the hairbrush down and hesitated. Would her mother find it strange that she was cooking for the doctor who’d saved her life? “I’m meeting Dr. Finlay.”

  Her mother stopped pulling lint off the back of Laleh’s blouse and clutched her shoulders instead. “You’re dating a doctor?”

  If that ever happened, it would be as if Christmas, Nowruz, and a big tax refund were all falling on the same day for her parents. Well, provided it was a male doctor. Of course it would be. What else?

  “Jeez, Maman, you’ve got a one-track mind.” Laleh reached for her perfume bottle. “I’m not dating anyone.”

  “Then why are you putting on perfume?”

  “Can’t a woman want to smell nice, just for herself?”

  Her mother shrugged. “I suppose. So, who is this doctor you’re meeting?”

  “Hope Finlay—the doctor who saved my life.”

  “Oh. Right. I’ve never been good with names, but of course I remember her. She seemed nice. But why are you meeting her?” Her mother pulled her around and ran a worried gaze up and down Laleh’s body.
“This isn’t a checkup, is it?”

  “No. This has nothing to do with my heart trouble. Hope…I mean, Dr. Finlay…came to the restaurant a few weeks ago, and Ammeh Nasrin didn’t let her pay for dinner, so now she wants to return the favor and invited me to have dinner at her place.”

  It wasn’t a complete lie, but she still couldn’t look her mother in the eye, so she turned back around to dab a bit of perfume on her carotid arteries. Then she had to grin. Listen to you! On your carotid arteries? You really sound like a doctor, even in your own head.

  “It’s nice to see you smile again.” Her mother squeezed into the tiny bathroom with her and kissed Laleh’s cheek.

  In the last month, there hadn’t been much to smile about. First, Laleh had ended up in the ER with heart trouble, and then strange things had started happening.

  Her mother patted the cheek she’d just kissed. “Go and enjoy yourself. I’ll bring you back some fesenjan.”

  “Not necessary, Maman. That’s what we’ll be having tonight.”

  “Your doctor can cook Persian dishes?”

  That’s what we’re trying to find out. “I’m not sure, but she loves Persian food. I’m teaching her how to make fesenjan. That’s why I’m bringing the food.”

  Her mother pressed her hand to her chest with a proud smile, as if she had single-handedly invented each and every Persian dish. “Have her come to dinner at the house next weekend. Your baba and I want to say thank you too.”

  Oh no. Laleh wished she’d never mentioned Hope’s love of Persian food. Now her parents would try to outdo Ammeh Nasrin’s hospitality. Poor Hope wouldn’t know what hit her.

  “I’m sure she has to work. People get sick on the weekend too, you know?”

  “Invite her anyway,” her mother said. “Whenever is good for her. We’ll make it work.”

  Damn. No way out. “I’ll mention it.” She squeezed past her mother, picked up the box of food from the kitchen, and hurried to the door before her mother could say anything else.

  * * *

  Laleh climbed out of her car and looked around. The palm-lined street on which Hope lived looked familiar in that same inexplicable way that had made it easy for her to find the hospital cafeteria.