by LaGreca, Gen
When he finished, she had regained her composure. “I’m sorry for the way I acted. Thank you for cleaning up my mess.”
“Nicole, you don’t have to prove anything to me or to yourself.”
She nodded. “I needed your help, even though I wouldn’t say so. I always need it.”
“Let’s go out. I feel like . . .”—celebrating, he wanted to say, but didn’t—“relaxing.”
His suggestion took her aback. They had never gone anywhere together, except to the nearby park. “No! I couldn’t,” she said apprehensively.
“What’s the matter?”
“I’d rather not go anywhere.”
“Tell me what’s bothering you.”
“I feel too . . . clumsy to go out,” said the graceful ballerina. “I certainly couldn’t go to dinner with a . . . man.”
“What’ll you do when the Phantom comes to take you out?”
“He’s never coming. He just wants to write pretty notes.”
“How do you know that? He keeps the floral industry in business on your behalf.” David glanced at the Phantom’s latest bouquet on the dining-room table. “I think he’ll come to take you to dinner one day.”
“Why have you appointed yourself as his spokesman?”
“I feel sorry for the poor guy when you pick on him.”
“I’m glad he hasn’t come around. I wouldn’t want to go to dinner with him the way I am now. He’d have to lead me around, explain my food to me, clean up after me when I drop something! I’d feel horrible about that.”
“I think the Phantom would see things differently. He’d feel like a kid on New Year’s Eve to have you all to himself for an evening. I’ll bet he’d like to paint you a picture of the city through his eyes and watch you react. And he’d want you to paint the world for him through your special vision. He needs you to do that, you know. I think he’d gladly help you climb a staircase or walk across a room, not as your nursemaid but as someone who cares about you. The Phantom wouldn’t want you to feel pressured to do things you can’t yet manage. He would just want you to be yourself.”
Giant blue eyes stared in his direction with a child’s enchantment at learning something new.
“Maybe you should accept that, Nicole. And to prepare for having dinner with the Phantom, you should practice with me.”
She smiled. “David, really—”
“You haven’t played it safe your whole life. You’ve taken chances. I want you to take one now.”
Her lips pursed as she pondered the matter. Then she smiled. “I do need to practice having fun.”
“We both do.”
She disappeared into her bedroom wearing jeans, then reappeared in a backless black evening dress that hugged her body, rising at her breasts, tapering at her waist, and curving around her hips. The dress stopped at midthigh to display long dancer’s legs in dark stockings and fashionable heels. In front the dress covered her completely, from chin to wrists, with a necklace of pearls around the high collar at her throat. From behind she was naked to the waist, the soft white skin of her back a stunning contrast to the black dress. She wore dangling pearl earrings with her inch of boyish blond hair. The flawless skin and carved features of her face glowed with a fresh, natural beauty. Embellishing her striking face was a touch of makeup that she managed to apply well. A clutch bag contained the only evidence of her blindness, a retractable cane.
For one speechless moment David surveyed every inch of her exciting landscape.
She smiled at him with a wide-eyed gaze and tantalizing mouth. “Am I put together okay?”
“Is stunning good enough for you?”
They stopped at his office, where he kept extra clothing. Leaving Nicole in the inner office, he changed in another room, selecting an outfit of brown and tawny fall tones for a look of casual elegance. When he returned, she was touching his bookshelves. On this occasion, her first nonclinical visit to his office, she wanted to “see” the room in a different way than she had previously.
“What’s this book?” she asked.
“The Journal of Neurosurgery. There’s a whole shelf of them.”
Her hands moved along the row of volumes and on to another shelf. “And this?”
“Vascular Neurosurgery.”
“This?”
“Neuropathology.”
“This is a very thick one.”
“That’s the Atlas of Neurological Surgery.”
“This one smells old,” she said, pressing her nose to the binding. “I love musty old books.”
“That’s from the 1930s, called Meningiomas. It’s a great read on neurosurgical techniques.”
Her hands moved on to touch a picture hanging on the wall. “What’s this?”
“It’s a portrait of Harvey Cushing, the father of neurosurgery. He’s smiling at us.”
She did not know why she wanted to linger in the room, to discover its objects, and to know them intimately. Her hands wandered farther along the wall.
“This feels like a glass case. What’s in it?”
David opened the door, removed an object, and placed it in her hands. “It’s a plastic brain that I used for many years, until it wore out. It comes apart, like this,” he demonstrated, “so I can explain things to patients.”
Nicole ran her fingers over the pieces of brain. “Why would you put this in a glass cabinet?”
“It was my first model of a brain. My father gave it to me when I was eight.”
Her head dropped. “You preserved your first brain the same way I kept my first ballet slippers. But I got my slippers from the trash, whereas you had someone special. . . . You miss him terribly, don’t you?” she whispered, her voice heavy with grief.
His hand slipped under her chin and raised her face to him. “I’ve missed him for years, Nicole.”
She nodded sadly, and then continued her leisurely inventory of the office. He watched her silently while putting the plastic brain back in its display case. She felt no need to explain or to hurry. He felt no need to ask for her reasons or to direct her tour. They had always been supremely comfortable with pauses, silence, and their own thoughts in each other’s presence.
She passed her fingers over the top of his desk and stopped on a framed picture.
“What’s this?” she asked cautiously, expecting the picture to be personal and wondering why it could somehow intrude on the intimacy of this moment with him.
“That’s a photo of two normal four-year-old kids,” he said proudly.
He told her about Artur and Bernard, the conjoined twins whom he had separated. He described the children and their case as she held their photo. Always fascinated by his work, she listened enthralled, as if a master storyteller were relating a great adventure.
She was struck by the fact that every object in the office seemed to hold a special meaning to its proprietor. The room she touched was like a temple to something sacred in him. He, too, felt a need to linger in the office and to share it with her as a tribute to something too dangerous to divulge to anyone: the glorious event that had just occurred in the lab.
When she finished surveying the office, one question still remained unanswered. “And what do you look like, David?”
He raised her hand to his face. She felt a dangerous excitement at her first touch of the object of her curiosity for three months. Her sensitive ballerina’s fingers stroked his eyes, nose, and mouth and weaved through the silky strands of his hair. She closed her eyes in concentration, trying to visualize his face.
“Mrs. Trimbell says you’re terribly handsome.”
“Does she?” he asked matter-of-factly.
She could feel a slight contraction of the muscles on his cheek that produced a telltale rift—a dimple!—telling her he was amused, a fact his voice did not reveal. What untold information could she learn if only she could feel the subtle muscles of his face? How much had she missed about him without this remarkable window into his feelings? She dropped her hand, fearful
of the power she had discovered and the thrill it gave her.
Nicole’s hand fell onto the soft texture of his sports jacket. “Cashmere,” she said, smiling. Then her fingers slipped gently underneath to feel the sheen of the shirt and the warm, taut body beneath it. “Silk,” she said, her fingers lingering a moment longer than necessary for her assessment.
The maddening touch of her hand on him made David’s eyes dance excitedly over her rising breasts, taut stomach, and slim hips. He was relieved that she could not see a desire that he could not contain.
“Am I put together okay?” he asked.
She laughed with the exuberance he knew from the stage. “Yes, David, I think you are.”
He took her to a quiet, elegant restaurant in Central Park, where they sat beside each other in a booth.
“We’re looking onto a wooden dance floor with a piano on the right. Candlelit tables surround the circular floor. Giant windows wrap around the room, looking out at Central Park. The restaurant has a sparse group of smartly dressed diners who are smiling as they eat and make conversation. The lighting is soft and golden. It makes your face glow.”
“Is the restaurant really this enchanting, David, or is it your eyes making it so?”
“It’s both, and it’s you making it so, also,” he said, smiling. “With the room dimly lit, you can see out the windows. The bare branches of the trees are trimmed with tiny white lights. A winding stone path goes behind the shrubs to a place we can’t see, maybe a mysterious garden still in bloom.” He took her hand and pointed her finger toward the objects he named.
“It sounds as if we’re in the woods where the sleeping princess of my favorite ballet lives.” Feeling more relaxed, she lifted the menu. “This dish looks good.” She pointed to the line naming the chef.
“That’s one of my favorites.”
She giggled, and the sweetness of her laughter sounded like the first bird of spring to David.
Countless hours of dining lessons with Mrs. Trimbell had paid off, for Nicole ate with grace and dignity. She even had a little wine, a rare indulgence in her efforts to keep her remaining senses sharp. The drink was a testimony to her trust in her companion, to her certainty that she could never be harmed in his presence.
His enduring awareness of her made the evening easier than she had imagined. He walked with her on his arm, describing their surroundings, stopping before steps, directing her to railings, warning her of cracks or other impediments. His assistance was unobtrusive, as if seeing for her were as effortless as seeing for himself.
“David, I’m so glad you made me come here tonight and forced me to have fun,” she said, her head thrown back against the booth, enjoying the music and the savory smells of dinner floating in the room.
“The world is still open to you, Nicole. I hope you realize that now. But it’s not the reason I brought you here. The real reason is that I wanted to have fun, and you helped me do it.”
She smiled. “I’m glad that’s the reason.”
“Are you ready for our next big get-together?”
She knew what he meant. “Yes.”
“I want you to come to my office tomorrow, so I can examine your eyes. From there I’ll send you to Admissions, and I’ll operate on Tuesday.”
“You’ll operate legally, right?”
“I’m supposed to get final permission from CareFree tomorrow.” He grabbed her arm, a sudden tension penetrating his hands and voice. “Promise me you won’t pull any stunts. The timing of this surgery is critical. If we wait any longer than I say we can, we risk losing everything. That means you must be in the hospital when I tell you to be there.”
“Don’t worry. Nothing could keep me away.”
“I must do your surgery early in the week.”
She touched his face—in reassurance, she told herself. It was okay to indulge this fascination she had with touching him if it were merely to reassure him.
“I’ll be in the hospital when you say.” Her fingers gently brushed his hair, his eyes, his mouth. “Tell me something, David,” she said, wanting to change the subject, “in the OR, do you see your patients . . . naked?”
“Momentarily, after they’re anesthetized and the nurse is about to cover them with surgical drapes.”
“Did you see me naked?”
He paused. She felt a telltale dimple form on his cheek and a smile on his lips. “Yes.”
“I suppose you were too busy to notice—”
“I did notice that you were beautiful.”
The muscles of his remarkably expressive face revealed an amusement that had not reached his voice. She pulled her hand away, fearing that her game had gone too far. She felt a new, enticing danger in provoking reactions to read off his face.
“Any more questions?” he asked.
“No.”
“Then let’s dance.”
“I couldn’t!”
“That’s what you said about coming here. Dancing is one thing you can’t deny you know how to do.”
Hesitantly, she let him lead her to the dance floor. The pianist played a medley of romantic songs. She could feel his eyes on her for a long moment before he took her in his arms and began dancing. Like everything else that evening, dancing was easier than she had imagined. She quickly developed a keen awareness of his body close to hers. She moved when he moved, knowing by the slight shift in his balance and the subtle motion of his limbs where he was leading her. The result, Nicole sensed, was the supremely graceful vision of two bodies moving as one.
They remained holding each other after the music had stopped. Then he led her to a window looking out at the park.
“You can see the skyscrapers in the distance, above the shrubs.”
She stood in front of him, feeling the glass before her. He raised her hand, tracing the objects that he described, as if drawing her a picture.
“It’s a clear night, with a full moon and a sky dense with stars. The buildings are tall and bold against the bright sky. They look as if they’re stretching up to mingle with the stars. The city looks proud tonight.”
She leaned back against him as he spoke. He slipped an arm around her waist. She rested her head against his chest and felt his words brush the top of her hair.
“The park is peaceful. It looks as if winter has already passed and it’s time for spring. There are wooden benches on a stone walk surrounding a fountain. Maybe the water will spurt at any moment and the birds will come to drink. And I think I see your princess dancing in the woods.”
“David, you seem happier tonight.”
He thought of two bandaged cats with lively optic nerves firing impulses. “Tonight I break with the Phantom. I’m having no more of his bitterness and discouragement. I look out and see opportunity and hope tonight. The Phantom is too negative a guy for me.”
She turned to face him. “I’m thrilled that you’re happy, David, but you’re wrong about the Phantom. He’s had a terrible struggle that’s left him disillusioned. I think he’s the most desperate man in the city. But I hope it’s only temporary. I think he has a great capacity for happiness, so that’s why I can’t let you call him a negative guy,” she reprimanded.
Against her will, her hand brushed his face again. She discovered a reaction his silence had not shared with her. He was grinning.
When they entered the foyer of her apartment, they stood facing each other in one of their long, wordless pauses.
Finally, Nicole spoke. “Thank you, David, for making me feel . . . alive.”
She knew he had not intended it. She sensed him turning toward the door to leave when he suddenly grabbed her by the waist and pressed his mouth against hers. Her head fell back, her mouth opened to his, her hands traced the slender lines of his taut body from his hips to his chest to his neck. Her arms flung around him with the same urgency that she felt in his grip. His hands memorized the soft patterns of her naked back, her hips, her stomach, her breasts, and his mouth was hot against her face, her hair, her
neck.
Then, suddenly, he pushed away. The front door swung open, and like the Phantom, he vanished.
He drove to the lab, fighting a desire to return to the welcoming arms in the foyer. The delirious scent of her perfume lingered on his clothes, tormenting him to return. He had managed to bear his own desire since the first letter that he had sent to her. But it was beyond his endurance to feel her body answering his, surrendering to his will, inviting him to do anything he pleased. He reminded himself that he must perform brain surgery on the source of his torture. He must remain cool, calm, clinical—just the opposite of the way he felt then. The scientist in him prevailed. The moment passed; he would not return.
He slid through the creaking door of the William Mead Research Center. In the dead silence, he passed the laboratory where the scientist charged with cruelty to animals had been removed in handcuffs. He thought of the many laws that he was violating— experimenting illegally, performing multiple surgeries on the same animal, operating without the presence of a veterinarian and without an approved OR, keeping the animals outside of the proper holding area. Then he thought of the dainty, sensitive creature he had held in his arms, and his fears vanished, replaced by a ruthless determination to accomplish his aim. He would prepare for Nicole’s surgery as thoroughly as he could. He had three cats and six optic nerves left to practice on. He would perform one surgery that Sunday night, two on Monday night, and then be ready for Nicole on Tuesday.
As he entered the windowless lab on the second floor, he paused to play with his newly sighted cats, the most important felines on Earth because they held the answer to the mystery of the nervous system. Stronger now, they eagerly eyed their toy mouse and jabbed at it. He thought of Nicole laughing on stage. Her precious life would soon be restored.
He placed a mask over the third cat’s face, and the creature fell limp on the lab counter. He dripped an anesthetic into its veins, placed a breathing tube down its throat, hooked it up to a monitor, shaved its head, and began the surgery. He could see Nicole in Pandora’s costume. Her white ballet slippers would be brushing against a Broadway stage once again.
He opened the cat’s brain and examined the optic nerves. They had grown back! So had the strangling scar tissue. With the music from Nicole’s show playing in his mind, he painstakingly removed all of the scar. The cat’s vital signs were fine. Its heart beat steadily. The respirator hummed rhythmically. Everything was completely normal. He took a syringe full of the scar inhibitor and injected it onto the nerves.