Love On Call

by Radclyffe

  “Of course I will. Yes, a thousand times yes.”

  Chapter Eight

  “I hate to say this, but if I’m going to get that talk ready for tomorrow, I have to head home.” Mari would have been happy to sit at the rickety table with the empty paper plates and the intriguing dinner companion for another hour if she weren’t so damned tired. She hadn’t had such a good time in forever. Their conversation had turned from the unexpectedly personal to easier topics—work, mostly, along with books they’d read or wanted to and how they’d each ended up running to relax. While they’d talked, the pizza place had cleared out and the night outside the big plate-glass windows had drifted to full dark. Someone had propped the front door open with a chair and the street was quiet except for the occasional passing vehicle and rare echo of conversation floating from open windows.

  “Listen,” Glenn said. “Why don’t I take that talk tomorrow. It’s been a long first day, and it will be late by the time you get it together.”

  “No,” Mari said, reflexively refusing help, although at this point if she had a million dollars she would happily give it up to not have to go home and spend time preparing a talk. But she needed to pull her weight, for her own self-esteem and especially for the respect of people who depended on her to do her part. More than anything, she needed to feel whole again. “I appreciate it, really, but it’s okay. I can handle it.”

  Glenn shook her head, a small smile on her face. “I don’t doubt you can handle pretty much anything, but I don’t think switching off lecture slots really warrants much of a firefight. It just makes good sense. You’ll get some rest and be fresher tomorrow, and you’ll put in a better day’s work.”

  “Ha! Appealing to my sense of duty, are you?”

  “Could be.”

  “You’re pretty good at subtle maneuvering,” Mari complained with a smile.

  “Lots of practice. Well, what do you say?”

  Mari was tired. She hadn’t worked a full day since before she’d gotten sick. “Switching off talks—when’s the next one?”

  “You can take mine next week.” Glenn leaned forward. “It’s no big deal, Mari.”

  Mari liked the way Glenn said her name, or maybe she just liked the way her name sounded in Glenn’s lazy drawl, but she flushed with pleasure and hurried to cover her reaction. “All right, I see the logic. I’ll take you up on it. And thanks.”

  Glenn stood. “We’re a unit, remember. That means we pull together and we get the job done.”

  “It’s been a while,” Mari said as she and Glenn walked out, “since I’ve been part of something that mattered. This matters a lot to me.”

  “I can tell.” Glenn paused. “Listen, I was going to head out for a run. If you don’t mind waiting about three minutes, I’ll change into my running clothes and walk you home.”

  “Oh, you don’t need to—”

  “Hey,” Glenn said, “time to get something straight. I know I don’t need to, but I want to. You don’t owe me anything in return.”

  Mari was glad for the darkness, feeling the heat in her face. “It shows?”

  “That you don’t want to owe anything? Yeah, and there’s nothing wrong with that at all. But sometimes it’s about the other person.”

  “I’d like the company,” Mari said cautiously. Glenn drew her effortlessly into unfamiliar territory, every step new and unexpectedly exciting. Not a single thing had happened between them that was extraordinary, nothing that people didn’t do every single day—have a conversation with a colleague, share pizza after work, even keep each other company on the walk to the bus or subway. On the surface, the time she’d spent with Glenn was unremarkable, except every second with her was like delving farther and farther into uncharted depths, where every breath counted. She ought to be cautious, or at least a little on guard, but she was not. She hadn’t really risked anything, hadn’t revealed too much, though. And she didn’t want to say good night—not just yet.

  “Where’s your apartment?” Mari said.

  Glenn pointed a finger up and slightly to the right. “Right there.”

  Mari laughed, breaking through the still waters of her uncertainty and taking a deep breath of cool, clean air. Glenn’s apartment was next door to the pizza place, above what looked like an antique store, closed and shuttered now. “You weren’t kidding about the pizza place being close to home.”

  “So you coming up?”

  “Yes,” Mari said before she thought herself into a problem that didn’t exist. She was allowed to make friends, after all.

  “Watch your step on the bricks,” Glenn said, leading her down an unevenly paved alley between the two buildings that opened into a small gravel parking lot lit by lights above several of the rear doors of the first-floor businesses. A wooden staircase leading to an upper floor snaked upward along the middle of the building, and Mari climbed up behind Glenn to a wood deck. A small black wrought-iron table and two chairs sat in the corner of the otherwise empty space.

  Glenn opened the screen door and motioned to the little seating area. “You can come in or wait out here. I’ll just be a minute. Cooler outside.”

  Mari pulled out one of the chairs. “I’m good right here.”

  “Need anything?”

  Smiling, Mari shook her head. “Not a thing.”

  “Be right back.”

  Glenn disappeared and Mari leaned back with a sigh. She couldn’t see much beyond the confines of the dimly lit lot below, but she didn’t really need to. The air had finally cooled, and a breeze smelling of something green and alive tickled her hair. The sky was clear and starlit, an amazing phenomenon she wasn’t sure she’d ever get used to. From somewhere down the road or maybe across the fields, a lilting, melodious refrain she couldn’t place drifted out someone’s open window, the music triggering the memory of her mother ironing or folding laundry late into the night, humming along to the radio. God, she missed her. All of them.

  Glenn stepped out in shorts, T-shirt, and running shoes. “Ready?”

  Mari rose quickly and swallowed the sadness burning her throat. “Yes.”

  “You okay?”

  “Fine. Although I think I could sit out here for the rest of the night. It feels great to be outside.” Mari let herself stare, hoping the almost-dark covered her interest. The half-light softened Glenn’s sharply etched features, but the running clothes revealed a lot more of her body than had been apparent in her scrubs. Her limbs were lean and muscled, her trunk slender and sleek beneath the sleeveless tee she’d cut off at waist level, baring a strip of skin just above her shorts that Mari found suddenly very captivating.

  “I sleep out here sometimes, when it gets really stuffy in the middle of the summer,” Glenn said.

  Mari pulled her gaze from the pale, smooth skin and looked around. “On what?”

  “The floor?”

  “I got that part,” Mari said laughing, “but I mean…there’s no sofa or anything.”

  “Oh.” Glenn laughed. “I just bring out a sheet and a pillow and bed down.”

  “The idea is nice,” Mari admitted, “but the reality might be a little rustic for my taste.”

  “Hey, no stones, no sand, no fleas. As far as I’m concerned, that’s perfect.”

  And there it was, the reference point that seemed to mark everything in Glenn’s experience. Mari wondered what had happened to her over there and suspected she would never really know. Even secrets shared were often only half the story.

  “How long were you in?” Mari asked as she followed Glenn down the wooden stairs.

  “Eight years,” Glenn said.

  “And…over there?”

  “Fifteen months, the last time.” She stopped and slipped her palm under Mari’s elbow. “Watch your step right here—pothole.”

  “Thanks, I’m good.” Glenn’s hand fell away, but Mari knew exactly where she had been touched. “More than once?”

  “Three tours,” Glenn said, surprising herself when she answered. L
ike a lot of vets, she didn’t talk about her service except in the vaguest of terms. Many people were interested in what it was like, and she got that. Americans had lived with war for over a decade, had watched it begin in terror and unfold in horror on television in a way no war had ever been watched before. Countless knew people who had gone away whole and come back less than that, in spirit if not in body.

  Flann was the only one Glenn ever talked about it with, and then only because Flann knew what not to ask. Flann wanted to know technical details—how battlefront medics handled traumatic injuries, how they saved lives in greater numbers than in any previous war. She never asked how the pain and terror and fear of failure affected those who knelt in the dirt and blood and smoke and waged their own personal wars on death. Glenn never minded talking about the things Flann wanted to know. Medicine was medicine, and the battlefield had taught her more than a lifetime of civilian practice in a clean, bright operating room stocked with everything she might need and all the help she’d ever want ever could. She remembered the day Flann had said she envied her the experience, and Glenn got that too. No one else would really understand what it was like to be pushed to the edge of her skill and knowledge and ability only to discover it wasn’t enough, that she needed to do more. Risk more.

  “I’m sorry,” Mari said quietly. “I imagine it’s something private, something you might not want to talk about. Your story to tell.”

  Glenn realized she must have gone silent. “A familiar story.”

  “Not when it’s yours.”

  “I’m glad I was there,” Glenn said, for the first time really knowing it was true. “Someone needed to be.”

  “There must be hundreds, more, who are glad you were,” Mari said gently.

  “I didn’t do anything anyone else didn’t do.” Glenn shrugged. “Nothing remarkable, nothing worth reliving.”

  Reliving. Yes, that was exactly how Mari felt every time she imagined recounting the last year of her life—she feared she’d be right back there again, amidst the fear and the pain and the desperation. She quickly brushed the top of Glenn’s hand, the most comfort she could offer when Glenn so clearly didn’t want sympathy. “If, when, there’s something, anything, you want to talk about, I’d like to hear it. But if you never do, I understand.”

  “If I ever do, I have a feeling it would be you.”

  Glenn spoke so quietly she might have been talking to herself, but Mari heard the words, sensed them settle in the deepest part of her like a cherished gift. She took a second until the tightness in her throat abated. “Are you really going running?”

  “Sure, why?”

  “For one thing, it’s dark, and besides that, weren’t you up half the night operating with Flann?”

  “Yeah,” Glenn said, not quite following Mari’s questions.

  Mari laughed. “Well, aren’t you tired?”

  “Oh no, not really. I don’t need much sleep.”

  “Apparently.” Mari pointed to her house. “I’m in there. Second floor.”

  “I’ll see you tomorrow, then.”

  “Thanks for dinner. Be careful running.”

  “I will.” Glenn was pretty sure she didn’t have anything to be careful about, but Mari’s concern felt weirdly good. She waited on the sidewalk until Mari unlocked her door, turned, and waved.

  “Night!” Mari called.

  “Night,” Glenn whispered, and started to run.

  Chapter Nine

  Glenn never ran the same route twice. Habit was a dangerous thing. Habit could get you killed. She usually headed for the narrow roads on the outskirts of the village and then looped around the borders between town and farmland, avoiding the populated residential streets where kids and dogs congregated in the road and on sidewalks until dark. Tonight she threaded her way through the mostly empty alleys and service roads behind the businesses on Main Street and across the abandoned, overgrown railroad tracks that once transported corn and milk and flax from the surrounding farms toward the river, where barges carried the goods south and west. The train, like an interrupted lifeline on a scarred palm, no longer linked communities in the heart of the upland farms, although a freight train cut across the countryside close enough for Glenn to hear its lonely whistle crying in the night. At dawn and dusk, her favorite times to run, the roads were mostly empty, and only her footfalls kept her company.

  Within minutes, her body settled into its patterned rhythm, and her senses opened to the night. Air moist with a hint of rain and smelling of freshly turned earth, crushed blossoms, and tendrils of charcoal smoke streamed over her skin. Wisps of clouds raced overhead, daring her to keep pace on their wild dash across the face of the moon. A dog barked. A coyote answered with a distant howl. Her heart tattooed a beat that kept pace with the slap of rubber soles on asphalt. Usually this far into her run her mind had stilled, bereft of thought for the only time all day.

  Not so tonight. Tonight she thought of Mari Mateo. Oddly, she didn’t focus on the day they’d spent working together the way she usually considered her interactions with colleagues, although Mari had settled in seamlessly and was a welcome addition to the team. She remembered instead the easy way they’d talked about the hardest things, for both of them. She’d always been a pretty good listener, even when she’d rather shut out the shouts for medic or whispered pleas to make sure some loved one in another part of the world knew a soldier’s last thoughts had been of them. She’d never been a talker herself—never saw the point in dwelling on what couldn’t be changed—but Mari’s courage in exposing her personal struggles had inspired Glenn to open up a little, hell, a lot more than she ever did with anyone else.

  As she covered the miles, she replayed more than their words, although they counted for a lot. Images cascaded through her mind, of Mari engrossed in examining a patient in a brightly lit cubicle, Mari sitting across from her in the hole-in-the-wall pizza place, Mari relaxing on Glenn’s pathetic excuse for a porch as if there was nowhere else in the world she’d rather be. Glimpses of gleaming hair, so black and bright, and the quick flash of warm dark eyes and an amused smile lit up her consciousness like a strobe suddenly illuminating a dark screen. She could have wiped the images from her awareness if she’d wanted, but she didn’t. Memories of Mari kept her company as her limbs stretched and her lungs expanded, reminding her of something she’d forgotten or maybe never really known, that the other side of solitude was loneliness. She was used to being alone, even in a crowded camp or bustling ER, and she’d never considered she was lonely. Maybe it took not being to know you were.

  Glenn let the unanswerable question flee with her straining breaths. She was doing fine, no matter how she described her life, and one shared dinner with a companionable woman wasn’t about to change that, nor did she want it to. She’d faced her ghosts and was making peace with them in the best way she could. That was enough for her.

  As she reached the farthest point from town and turned to circle back, traffic suddenly picked up. She slowed and stared at a light patch in the sky that shouldn’t be there. Laughing, she cut down a side street and ran toward the illumination coming from the fifty-acre fairgrounds on the east side of the village that was alive with music, the roar of mingled voices, and multicolored flashing lights. Now she knew where everyone was headed on a weeknight. The rodeo.

  She’d forgotten the rodeo was in town for the rest of the week. When the fairgrounds weren’t home to the annual summer county fair with its vendors, barns full of animals, show rings, and carnival midway, the space hosted other events: the boat show, huge antique fairs, classic car exhibits, and the always popular rodeo. Pretty soon a steady stream of pickups and cars passed her, and on a whim, she pulled the twenty dollar bill she kept folded in the small key pocket of her shorts and purchased a ticket for the grandstand show.

  She picked up a bottle of water from the guy selling soda, beer, and water from a cooler he lugged back and forth in front of the grandstand and went in search of a seat in the nearl
y full stands. She’d seen the barrel racing, cattle roping, bareback riding, and obstacle course races a few hundred times in her life, or so it felt, but she still watched the competitors put their mounts through their paces and clapped along with everyone else at the simple enjoyment.

  “Hey, Glenn!”

  Glenn scanned the bleachers and grinned when she saw Harper Rivers with her fiancée Presley and Glenn’s friend Carrie, who also happened to be Presley’s admin and longtime friend. Carrie had shed her stylish office attire in favor of her habitual scooped tee, shorts, and sandals. With her curly shoulder-length red hair pulled back in a careless ponytail she looked closer to eighteen than early twenties. Glenn waved and climbed between the spectators clogging the aisles. She worked her way down the already full row to where her three friends pressed together to make room for her.

  “Thanks for the seat.” Glenn dropped down next to Carrie. “Must be a sellout crowd. Good for the town coffers.”

  “Hey.” Carrie gave her a shoulder bump. “If I’d known you’d be free, I would’ve told you we were coming tonight.”

  “That’s okay. Hadn’t planned on it.” Glenn uncapped the water and drank down half. She and Carrie hadn’t known each other long, but they had developed a quick, easy friendship. They often ended up together at group gatherings, especially since their mutual friends were pairing off, but things had never gone any further than that, mostly because neither one of them had ever pushed for more. “I was at the hospital pretty late anyhow. First day of the new program.”

  “I heard you had some excitement.”

  “Hasn’t everyone?” Glenn smiled wryly. There were no secrets in a hospital, personal or professional. The only way to keep a secret was to keep silent. It occurred to her she’d already broken that rule with Mari, but somehow she wasn’t worried. Mari would respect her secrets.

  “A mass casualty alert,” Carrie said. “Pretty wild first day for all the newbies. How’d they do?”