Double Jeopardy

by Bobby Hutchinson

  He could do nothing about it, so he did what he always did when there was no solution. He put the problem firmly out of his mind and concentrated on the pleasure of the moment.

  “Tell me more about your job, Sera. How does a television sitcom get produced? Are you in on it from the beginning, or do you just look at a finished script and draw the sets?”

  “I wish.” She grimaced.

  He liked to hear her speak. She had a distinctive way of pronouncing her words that was pleasing and that likely stemmed from her Italian heritage.

  “Set design begins with the creator of the story line,” she continued, “and after that it becomes a team effort, with the director as boss. We’re really lucky because the director of Dinah is great to work with. Then—" she paused dramatically and ticked off her fingers as she spoke “—there’s a co- producer, an assistant director, a second assistant director, a dialogue coach, a script supervisor, a technical coordinator, an art director, the director of photography, the camera crews, the carpenters, the painters, the electricians.”

  “Whew.”

  “Right.” She nodded and shoved her thick hair behind her ear. “As I think I said before, I work with Maisie Jones. She’s an incredible art decorator who’s done lots of sets for television.”

  “Tell me more,” he urged, genuinely intrigued. “What’s the main concern for a set designer?”

  “What’s called the look of the show. We want to give the illusion that the viewer is seeing real life, so details are really important. And you always have to remember the cameras, the angles they’ll be shooting from, the lighting.”

  The animation in her face and voice when she talked about her job delighted him.

  “So it’s not just being able to come up with the right chair or sofa, then.” He knew it wasn’t. He wanted her to go on talking.

  “Nope, although that’s important.” She was suddenly shy. “You could come and visit the set sometime, if you wanted. I’d be glad to show you around.”

  “You would? I’d really like that, thank you.” He was touched by the offer, and sincerely interested. “I’ll arrange for a few hours off soon, as long as nobody would get upset. Is there much temperament to deal with among the actors?”

  “Not that I’ve seen, not on this set anyhow. There was more when I worked in theater. Television actors as a rule seem to focus more on the job and less on their egos.”

  “I know a few doctors whose egos get in the way of their work. From what you describe, surgery and sitcoms have a lot in common. Team effort, cooperation, dedication to a fine result.”

  The full moon was shining in the window. Ben hadn’t turned on any light except for the one in the kitchen, and the semidarkness and good conversation contributed to the sense of intimacy between Sera and him.

  She was enchanting in the moonlight. She had a subtle air of whimsy and unspoken promise about her created by the mass of wildly curling hair, the almost lyrical way she moved her unadorned hands to make a point, the generous spirit that came across so clearly in her conversation.

  He’d like to take her to bed. He’d love to take her to bed.

  The languid music curled around them, and Ben had the sense, rare in his experience, that this particular moment in time was as good as it got, bed or not.

  He was disappointed when she glanced at her watch and made a horrified sound in her throat. “My gosh, is that the time? I’ve gotta go. I have to be on the set at six-thirty tomorrow. And you probably have surgery or something. I’ve kept you up.” She got up and started looking around for her handbag.

  Grendel woke up and staggered to his feet.

  “Surgery, yeah. Keeping me up, no. I don’t go to bed early.” Ben ached to say. Can’t you stay? Will you stay? But of course he couldn’t ask that; he hardly knew her. He wanted her badly, though.

  “But don’t you have to do, well, sort of homework, for the operations?” she was asking. “Work them out ahead of time?”

  Her bag was just inside the kitchen, on the floor. He handed it to her, and Grendel gave a sad little whine.

  Ben knew exactly how he felt. “Depends what it is. Tomorrow will be the third operation on a gentleman who had cardiac surgery some time ago, a quadruple bypass. He got infection repeatedly around the incision, and by the time I saw him, it had spread to the sternum. We had to cut away skin, remove diseased bone, use the abdominus rectus muscle—”

  He stopped abruptly when she shuddered.

  “Damn. I tend to forget not everybody’s fascinated by the removal and repair of body parts.”

  “Oh, but I am, Ben. Who wouldn’t be? It’s just that...” Her face colored and she looked abashed. “Well, I guess I assumed you did mostly face-lifts or tummy tucks or nose jobs, that sort of thing. I mean, I know you’re Gemma’s doctor, but I just never thought much about what other surgery you do.”

  He laughed. “Plenty of elective stuff, of course, but I also have a lot of patients like Gemma who need reconstruction, either from accidents or disease. The variety appeals to me.” He winked at her. “If you really are interested, I’ll go into vivid detail for you next time. I could do slides.”

  “Maybe I’ll skip the slides.” She moved to the door, where she turned to look at him. “Thanks, Ben. I really had fun. And it was an honor to meet you, Grendel.” She bent to give the dog a farewell hug.

  “Damn dog gets all the perks.” He took a step toward her and then couldn’t resist reaching out and coaxing her into his arms. He touched her curly hair, brushing it back from her face. It had looked wiry, but instead it was silky to the touch. She was almost the same height as him; he had maybe an inch on her.

  He leaned toward her, hoping against hope that she wouldn’t draw away.

  She didn’t, so he kissed her, careful to keep it light, a getting-to-know-you sort of kiss, tasting, testing, gentle.

  She didn’t throw herself into his arms the way he half wished and didn’t expect, but she didn’t pull away, either. The kiss lasted longer than he’d dared hope for, and her full lips were sweet and voluptuous and, after a moment, eager. He felt like groaning with relief. He pulled her closer, slid his arms around her waist and fitted their bodies together, and the kiss deepened, intensified. His heartbeat followed suit.

  He felt himself grow rock hard, wanting her.

  She couldn’t help but feel it. She drew back, her eyes startled, her expression vulnerable. He caressed her swollen lips with the ball of his thumb.

  “I really do have to go now, Ben.” There was the slightest tremor in her voice.

  “Wait a moment. I’ll get my shoes and Grendel’s leash and we’ll walk you to your car.” He couldn’t remember where the hell he’d left his shoes, to say nothing of the leash. He couldn’t remember much of anything except how kissing her had felt.

  “Oh, you don’t have to come down with me. That’s not necessary.” She was flustered.

  “But it is. My mother taught me a gentleman always sees a lady to her pumpkin.” He located his shoes in the pile of sports gear. Now, where in hell had he abandoned the leash?

  “Grendel, leash.” And Grendel, smart dog that he was, unearthed it in a comer of the kitchen and came trotting over with it. “Humor us here, okay? We’re doing hero training.”

  Ben pulled on the trainers, tied the laces, snapped the dog’s leash in place and took her hand in his, threading his fingers through hers. Her skin was a little rough, and she had calluses on her palm. He lifted her hand to his mouth and kissed it, pleased when she shivered.

  In the elevator, he surprised himself by saying, “Is there someone special in your life, Sera?”

  “As in, do I have a lover?”

  He liked that about her, her directness. “Yeah.”

  She shook her head. “I don’t seem to be marvelous at the man-woman thing. I do Hello, Nice to know you, Goodbye.” She gave him a challenging look. “What about you?”

  “I’m alone.” He stared straight into her eyes. “On
ly for a couple months recently. But what I had with her is over. Truth is, I’m not much good at long-term, either.” He hesitated, wondering why he felt compelled to tell her again. “I was married once, a long time ago. I was a terrible husband.”

  She just nodded.

  He wanted to ask her if she’d take a chance on short-term with him, but he decided not to. They’d do the decorating thing and see where it led. He was aware of the way she drew a little closer to him when they reached the noisy street. A loud argument was taking place between three men who’d had way too much to drink. He liked feeling as though she wanted him to protect her. Grendel growled, and the men moved a few steps away.

  Her car was small, white, not new, messy, filled with sketchbooks and bits of carpet and other stuff he couldn’t identify. He held the door for her, and waited until she’d turned the corner at the light before he and the dog walked slowly back toward his building.

  CHAPTER SIX

  “Hey Gemma, how’re ya doin’?”

  Visiting hours were almost over for the day. Gemma was sitting in the only comfortable chair in the room, a worn armchair. Being up made her woozy.

  She turned slowly toward Jack Kilgallin and listlessly waggled her fingers.

  Not being able to talk was awful. Not the worst part of all this by far, but bad enough. Her mother had just left, and Gemma was exhausted. Maria insisted on being cheerful no matter how bitchy Gemma got.

  She hated herself for being nasty to her mother, but the pain was making her crazy. She was counting the minutes until the nurse arrived with her medication. Her head ached; her neck was on fire from the tracheotomy tube. Dr. Ben had decided it should stay in until after the reconstruction; apparently her nose would have to be packed, and with her jaw wired breathing could be a problem. Having to live with the trach was just one more major irritation in a series that were becoming increasingly hard to tolerate.

  She longed for the drowsiness of the drug, for the numbness it brought. She wanted to be drugged, lost in lala land so she didn’t have to feel. She’d let the nurse administer the shot and then she’d close her eyes and welcome the oblivion of drugged sleep.

  Whatever they gave her was a little like smoking grass but way more powerful. She wished Jack wasn’t such a tight-ass; she’d ask him to bring her some grass instead of those flowers and magazines and CDs and stuff; she could probably inhale it through the lousy tube in her throat.

  But she knew better than to even ask. Jack didn’t do grass, or much of anything else except the odd beer. She’d found that out when she’d dated him.

  She’d invited him to take her to a party where things were happening, and he’d refused pointblank.

  “That crowd’ll get you into big trouble, Gemma.” He’d sounded like her father, for cripes sakes. Yet for one nanosecond, it had felt so good to have Jack taking care of her.

  He’d been right about her friends. They weren’t exactly loyal; she’d found that out in here. They’d come to visit her exactly once, right after the accident, and she’d had the awful feeling it was for the kick of seeing how bad she looked.

  But then, what could she expect? She wasn’t exactly the life of the party anymore. Would she ever be again? The constant fear surged inside her, making the blood pound in her ears.

  “It’s really hot out there, even this late in the evening,” Jack was saying. “I guess summer’s finally here.”

  He put the new magazines on the bedside table and set the jar clumsily stuffed with tulips and freesia on the windowsill. He always brought something.

  “How you feelin’, Gemma?” He reached for the pad of paper and pencil she used to communicate and handed them to her.

  Suicidal. Sick to death over this whole mess. Mad as hell that it happened to me. Bored and sore and fed up and scared shitless. But she didn’t write any of that down; she couldn’t reveal herself that openly to him. Instead, she just scrawled a careless Okay and tossed the pen aside. The poor bastard felt bad enough without her twisting the knife.

  She wished he’d just give it a rest, though. This coming by every spare minute, dashing up at his lunch break, stopping by again in the evening like this. It was plain as anything that Kilgallin was eaten up with guilt. He needed to get a life.

  Still, to give him credit, he’d apologized only once, the first day she was conscious enough to understand what was going on. He’d cried then, which had shocked her silly. Big, tough Jack Kilgallin in tears?

  Since then, he hadn’t had much to say. But he’d never really been the verbal type. She’d gone out with him only twice, and it seemed a long time ago now. He hadn’t had a lot to say then, either. The thing she remembered about dating Jack was the raw physical attraction between them. She hadn’t slept with him, no credit to her; he’d stopped before things had gone that far. She would have slept with him, though; they’d nearly devoured each other once they’d started kissing. The chemistry had been astounding. But he wasn’t a party man, and that had ended it for her.

  She still liked him, however, in spite of his outdated attitudes. So when he’d apologized about the accident, she’d scribbled a note telling him that what had happened was nobody’s fault, that she didn’t blame him, although for the first week or so that was a total lie.

  She did blame. She blamed her father for hiring her on the crew in the first place; she blamed the hospital for wanting a new unit built; she blamed herself for being in the wrong place at the wrong time; she blamed Jack for not paying more attention to what the hell he was doing. She blamed everybody.

  When she’d come out of the blackness enough to fully understand what a total mess her face was, she’d wanted to die. She’d wanted to curse, shout, scream, but of course none of those was an option; the sounds she made with her jaw wired and this tube in her throat were disgusting, subhuman.

  At least they matched the way she looked. The only time the blackness eased a little was when Dr. Halsey was around. He was the sole person who really understood how she felt, Gemma decided. Everybody else went on about how glad she should be that she’d survived the accident, how well she was coming along, how much better she looked; didn’t they have eyes in their heads? She was a monster, and she knew it.

  The first time Gemma got hold of a mirror she truly wished she’d died in the accident; she’d rather be dead than spend the rest of her life with that for a face. Nobody except Sera would talk about how she looked. Good old Sera was honest to a fault.

  “It’s pretty much a mess, Em,” she’d admitted when Gemma had pressed her for a comment. “But it won’t always be this way. Doc Halsey’s gonna fix it. It’s strictly temporary. You’ve gotta keep that thought in your head every minute. Six weeks from now I’ll bet you won’t even know you’d ever been in an accident.”

  Those assurances were scant comfort when they came from Sera; her sister wasn’t exactly a medical genius.

  But coming from Dr. Ben, they actually made Gemma feel a little better. She’d asked if she could call him Dr. Ben, and he’d laughed and said of course, she could call him whatever felt right. She liked and trusted him, and for some weird reason she didn’t even mind him looking at her; there was something about his matter-of-fact manner that convinced her he saw beyond the devastation of her face. He made her feel safe; he gave her hope; he wasn’t fazed one tiny bit by her mask of Frankenstein. He’d seen it all before, and he understood. More than that, he cared.

  “It’s tough to have to go through this, Gemma,” he told her. “But you have to think of your injuries as lasting only a few months out of a long lifetime. Just endure. You’re going to be pretty again. I guarantee it.”

  He’d grinned at her and given her a roguish wink, and for one instant she’d felt like her old self again, attractive, flirtatious, able to charm any man she wanted.

  “Because you and Sera are identical twins, I can do the repair ideally, so trust me on this, okay?”

  And then he’d explained in detail, with sketches, exactly how
he was planning to give her back her face. She couldn’t believe him at first when he said he and his colleagues could do the whole thing in one long operation. Or that there’d be no incision.

  "The surgery is done through the palate and the nose.” He’d shown her the original X rays and the CT scan, which indicated exactly where and how the bones were broken.

  “We’ve already repaired your jaw. That’s one big job already completed.” He showed her on the scan where the breaks had been, then pointed to her cheekbones, nose. Even she could see scattered bits of fractured bone.

  “I’ll just put all this back together like a puzzle. With computer imaging, I know exactly where the pieces should go, and as I’ve said, having your sister as a model helps immensely. It’ll take six weeks or more before the swelling and bruising go down, but right after the operation you’ll start to look like yourself. Just keep staring at your sister and telling yourself that’s the face you’ll have again, the intriguing face Sera and Gemma Cardano share.”

  She’d asked him if he’d sign a promissory note saying that she’d come out okay, and he’d laughed.

  She’d smiled, too. He was the only one who could make her feel like smiling these days.

  As much as she trusted him, now that the operation was only a day away, she was petrified. Any sane person would be at the thought of eight hours, maybe even more, under anesthetic, with no real guarantees except Ben’s word that she’d come out human in appearance, never mind the way she used to be. Just as Dr. Ben said, Sera was her lifeline; it wasn’t what her sister said or did these days that helped. It was simply that by looking at Sera, Gemma knew how she ought to look.

  She’d been in hospital only eight days, but it felt like an eternity. She’d had a lot of time to think, and she’d reluctantly admitted to herself that she hadn’t been blameless in what had happened to her; out late the night before, she was hung-over when she’d come to work that fateful morning.