Love Gone Mad

by Rubinstein, Mark

  Three

  Megan thinks Adrian Douglas is quite a physical specimen. He has a great body—wide, powerful-looking shoulders, a narrow waist, athletic-looking from stem to stern. She noticed it as he was ambling toward the table. She’d long ago learned to recognize a man’s athleticism from Conrad, her ex—a superb athlete and winner of the Colorado State high school heavyweight wrestling championship. He was also a cross-country skier and a superb mountain climber.

  The thought of Conrad sends a galvanic charge through her; and at that moment, Megan wonders if Conrad will always haunt her life. He’s part of your past life, girl, so just live in the present … Forget back then. Without seeming obvious, she focuses on the man sitting across the table.

  Adrian Douglas is probably about six one. His hair is light brown and closely cropped. He has cornflower-blue eyes, a strong jaw, and good, manly features. Yes, Adrian Douglas is handsome, but not in a pretty-boy way; he has what she would call rugged good looks. But unlike Conrad, there’s a gentleness glimmering through, and Adrian Douglas has kindly looking eyes, so different from Conrad’s, which could sear you like a scalpel.

  Please, Conrad, go away. Just go and be gone forever.

  Adrian … It’s an unusual handle for a man, but in its own way, quite masculine. Douglas. It’s likely of English, or maybe Scottish origin—probably a mixture. It’s kind of rare in this part of America—the border between Fairfield and New Haven Counties, Connecticut. Actually, if Megan thinks about it, Adrian Douglas is—what’s the old-time expression?—a bona fide hunk; but she senses he doesn’t realize how good-looking he is. He exudes a sort of calmness she sees too little of in the hard-bitten, life-and-death world of doctors and nurses. That’s especially true with surgeons. And he has a soft voice, not brash sounding like so many of the galloping surgical cowboys she’s run into. Probably has a great bedside manner. She nearly laughs to herself. Is this high school back in White Plains? Is there a girlfriend to whom she can give a slight elbow nudge? Bedside manner … It’s been ages since she’s had a bed partner.

  She peers at Adrian’s baby blues. God, his eyes are so different from Conrad’s.

  But remember how charmed you were by Conrad when you first met him.

  So, Megan thinks, Adrian Douglas lives in Simpson—really, a bedroom community. When she heard that, she was certain he’d be married, but he’s a renter, not a homeowner. Renters can be transient. But he’s around forty, not a kid. So where is he in his life? Megan wonders.

  God, she’s been talking her head off about the newbies and her hectic schedule. In the middle of their conversation, she finds herself wondering if Adrian Douglas is simply toying with her because she’s just here. The hospital’s a player’s paradise.

  He’s glanced at her ring finger—twice. He tried to be subtle, but she spotted the furtive looks. There are always messages … unsung songs wafting through the air. It’s a virtual chorus in this hospital with its singles—divorced and separated doctors and nurses. Megan wonders if he assumes she’s married but doesn’t wear her ring, or assumes that she’s divorced. Does he assume anything at all?

  Still overthinking it, Megan, like you always do … But then, you didn’t overthink things when it came to Conrad.

  She asks herself why Adrian Douglas should be more than an afterthought to an egg salad sandwich and coffee in a crammed cafeteria in Eastport General.

  “How come Simpson?” she asks.

  “Well, after my divorce, I wanted to get away from New Haven. Eastport had begun a new heart surgery program. I had to decide about living arrangements, and the housing market in this town is abysmal.”

  She nods. “So is it Wednesday nights at Applebee’s with the kids?” she asks, imagining a dad—guilt-ridden as hell—doting on his spoiled-rotten kids.

  “No kids,” he replies. The corners of his mouth seem to droop. He blinks.

  “I guess I made a silly assumption,” she says, shrugging, trying to appear casual but feeling she made a cringe-worthy comment.

  “Most people do.”

  Megan feels exquisitely embarrassed by her supposition. But he’s not defensive; in fact, he’s smiling, and those eyes of his—indulgent, but not patronizing. And besides, doesn’t everyone assume things at some point in life? “Yes, having kids is a big deal and they’re complicated,” she says.

  Now his eyes are wet. Did he lose a child? You never recover from that, ever. And it can lead to mutual blame, resentment, anger … divorce.

  “How about you?” he asks. “Are you married?”

  “I’m divorced, too.”

  He nods.

  What does that mean? God, Megan, you’re reading too much into every little thing, each inflection or gesture. Straighten up, girl. Get with it; you’re not a kid back in White Plains in the high school cafeteria.

  “So … we’re bobbing along in that sea of uncertainty,” she says.

  “It’s tough out there,” he says. He clears his throat and blinks.

  Yes, there’s a scab there, she thinks, and she’s unwittingly picked at it. Now it’s raw and exposed.

  She nods knowingly.

  “You know, it’s funny,” he says. “I thought medical school was rough …”

  Megan’s certain she knows what he’ll say next.

  “Then there was the internship and residency, the whole life-and-death thing …”

  She anticipates his next words.

  “And when I got to be a surgeon, I thought the hardest part of my life was over.”

  She feels her lips spread into a smile.

  “But then it really got rough.”

  “And it isn’t over yet,” she says, giving him a don’t-we-know-it look.

  They talk on—it’s a zigzagging, word-filled blur, a back-and-forth exchange of thoughts and feelings about marriage and divorce—amid a fluorescent-lit sea of people with plastic spoons, knives, forks, plates, and paper cups—all disposable—the air redolent of soup, pizza, tuna fish, and fried chicken, and they’re surrounded by a babble of voices, volleys of laughter, chirping beepers, and trilling cell phones. They talk about other things, too: the realty market, the hospital’s fund-raising campaign, the demands of the OR and neonatal ICU, comparisons of Eastport to Yale, plenty of conversational fodder for people uncertain of what direction—if any—the encounter will take.

  And Megan realizes that not only does she find Adrian Douglas attractive, but feels comfortable with him, and she could actually imagine being with him, doing things together, enjoying each other. She’s startlingly aware that it doesn’t feel choreographed, like the Waltz of the Singles, that overly practiced art form that’s become so old and so very stale at this time in her life—thirty-two years old. She also feels an edge of wariness: after all, how much do you know about someone in a half hour? Or, for that matter, how much can you really know in the first few weeks or months?

  Don’t forget, there was Conrad.

  She glances at her watch. “My lunch break’s pretty much over,” she says.

  It’s an opening. God, she’s on tenterhooks. This is so absolutely silly—even juvenile.

  “You haven’t eaten a thing,” he says.

  “Neither have you …”

  His laugh is robust, uncontrived. Sometimes things can be so simple, so uncomplicated, she thinks.

  What happens now? Is there more?

  The cafeteria hum peaks. It’s a frenzy of movement as people come and go.

  “You know, since we didn’t really eat lunch, maybe we could get together and have dinner,” he says.

  “Yes. Eating like this, we’ll both starve.”

  There’s more laughter.

  “That’d be nice.” Nice. So plain vanilla, she thinks. “Actually, dinner would be fun.”

  “Can I have your number?”

  “Of course,” she says, reaching into her lab coat pocket; she sets a pad onto the table and scrawls on it. Then she rips out the page and hands it to him.

 
He tucks it into his pocket and says, “Are you free this weekend?”

  “I can find time …”

  “Can I call you this evening?”

  Her eyebrows rise. “I work until seven.”

  “How ’bout I call at eight thirty?”

  A fluttering rises in her stomach. She nods and picks up her tray. “That would be fine,” she says, trying not to sound too casual or overly eager. She gets up and looks into his eyes. “Actually, I’d like that,”

  “Talk to you,” he says, “tonight …”

  “At least eat your carrot cake,” she says with a grin.

  He laughs and picks up his plastic fork.

  She wends her way past people chomping, talking, and laughing. Megan feels Adrian Douglas’s eyes bore into her. It’s like heat searing through her lab coat and greens; it shreds the skin on her back. It’s that strange feeling of being watched, of being followed. It reminds her of Conrad, of his rage-filled explosions and his stalking her. As thoughts of Conrad shuttle through Megan’s brain, she shudders inwardly.

  She suddenly recalls how it felt to look over her shoulder entering a supermarket or a boutique, or going to the hospital. How she wouldn’t work the night shift. How she asked a security guard to walk her to her car because the darkness was too eerie. And how she changed her phone number and made sure it was unlisted. How she got an order of protection. How her skin crawled back then. Yes, being watched—that feeling of exposure, a raw sense of nakedness—was creepy.

  But maybe with Adrian Douglas, being watched is a good thing.

  She feels lightness in her chest. It’s been so long since she’s flirted with a man, she’d begun thinking she forgot how. But you never forget. Yeah … it’s like riding a bicycle.

  Megan asks herself if they’d actually been flirting. They’d spoken about work and marriage and divorce and living arrangements, about nursing, the ICU, and surgery—yes, they’d talked about very substantial things.

  So, they were substantially flirting.

  And … she never said a word about Marlee.

  But they’d just met, and they knew very little about each other—even after a half hour. It’d be crazy—utterly insane—to talk about Marlee, to dive into the complications of her life.

  And yet she felt tempted to tell Adrian Douglas how it all began.

  Why on earth would she even want to tell him her most deeply held secret? For that matter, why would she tell him a single solitary thing now? That would be crazy.

  Four

  Megan’s apartment is on the ground floor of a two-story, cedar-shingled condominium complex near Eastport’s heavily trafficked Post Road. Getting out of the car, Adrian feels his stomach flutter. A first date and he feels the slow burn of anxious anticipation. How juvenile, how incredibly retro it is—to be wondering how the evening will go, if the momentum will slow, if she’ll be as attractive tonight as when they met a few days ago. He’s amazed at the tingling in his chest and realizes it’s the sheer vitality of the unknown. He recalls these feelings as a student at Cornell—dates and mixers—thinking back to when it all seemed new and exciting, all of it muted now in the stream of time.

  Megan appears at the door and, God, she’s beautiful, even more striking than in the cafeteria. She wears charcoal-gray slacks and a beige sweater. A pearl choker offsets her neck. She looks incredibly different out of her hospital scrubs and white coat—so non–Eastport General, so I’ve got a real life and you’re about to enter it. Her hair is swept back in a fiery French braid. Her hazel eyes with those incredible green rings look ethereal. He’d thought of Megan so often these past two days; the reality of her seems chimerical.

  Her apartment is a potpourri of contemporary style: the walls are eggshell white; the space is open and airy, with skylights, oak hardwood flooring, and trapezoid windows. The apartment is furnished with a mix from IKEA, Pier 1, and Pottery Barn; the impression is one of casual modernity and slap-dash transience. Adrian suddenly realizes he’s squinting as he peers about the place.

  “It’s strictly utilitarian,” Megan says, as though she’s read his thoughts. “It’s a month-to-month rental until things get settled.”

  “Settled? What things?”

  “Oh, my life,” she says with a quick laugh. But Adrian detects discomfort when she says my life. “I should really say our lives,” she adds, pointing to a beige-colored Victorian-style dollhouse with lilac and pink gingerbread trim. “That’s Marlee’s … my daughter …”

  “How old is she?” he asks, trying to sound casual, as though it changes nothing, but it had been a big problem with Peggy.

  “She’s five.”

  “Is she here?” He half expects to see a kid come charging out of a bedroom.

  “She’s at my sister Erin’s for the evening. I couldn’t get a sitter,” Megan says, slipping into her coat. “And she loves staying with Erin and Bob. It’s almost Marlee’s second home. My sister’s a stay-at-home mom, and Marlee spends the days there when I’m working. She’s crazy about her cousins and their little dog.” She pauses and then says, “Also, there’s something I’m trying to avoid …” She looks up at him with those emerald-ringed eyes.

  “What’s that?” he asks, sensing he knows.

  “She can get attached very easily. She really misses out on having a dad.”

  He thinks suddenly how he and Peggy were childless. But it’s a loaded topic, not to be discussed, at least not now.

  “Does she see her father?”

  “No. He’s been in Colorado since Marlee was two.”

  “You said things need to get settled? What things?”

  “Oh, my sister and brother-in-law may move to Hartford. It depends on his job situation. And I can get a good position at Hartford Hospital, but I’d hate to move again. They’re family, and Marlee’s cousins are almost brother and sister to her.”

  Giovanni’s is an intimate, candle-lit trattoria on the Post Road in Westport. It has rough-hewn stucco walls, the clichéd checkered tablecloths, and black metal wall sconces. A recording of Pavarotti singing Neapolitan love songs pipes through the sound system. They feast on bruschetta, Caesar salads, shrimp scampi, and a seafood pasta, all washed down with a straw-colored Pinot Grigio. They talk for a while about hospital gossip—it’s safe, neutral ground—nothing intimate or overly revealing.

  “I see you stay with the low-fat dishes,” she says. “Does being a heart surgeon influence what you eat?”

  “It probably does. I see decrepit hearts every day,” he says with a laugh. “How about you? Does the ICU influence how you feel about kids?”

  “It’s the other way around. How I feel about kids got me into working with them.”

  “In the cafeteria, you talked about feeling terrible when a child is unwanted.”

  “It’s a tough topic for me.”

  He nods, hoping she doesn’t think he’s too inquisitive.

  “I was adopted,” she says with a slight tremor in her voice. “It’s something that stays with you forever.”

  “That somebody didn’t want you? Gave you away?”

  “Exactly.” She smiles weakly.

  “But somebody else wanted you.”

  “And that’s the lifesaver. There’s a special place in heaven for adoptive parents.”

  “Tell me about them.”

  “My parents couldn’t have kids, so they adopted Erin and me as newborns—Erin first and then me a few years later. We grew up in White Plains. Dad worked at an ad agency in Manhattan and Mom was a teacher in Yonkers. It was a pretty traditional Irish family.”

  “Megan and Erin … it doesn’t get more Irish than that.”

  She laughs. “Erin’s three years older than I am.”

  “And you two are close?”

  “As close as sisters can be.”

  “Where’re your parents now?”

  “They died in a car accident when I was nineteen,” she whispers.

  “I’m sorry.”

  “Erin a
nd I moved to New Haven, where Erin was working.”

  “Then what?”

  “Erin was at Merrill Lynch; then she met her husband, Bob, an engineer at Sikorsky. I went to nursing school at Yale. When I found pediatric nursing, I knew that was what I wanted. And then … the newbies.”

  “So it’s not just a job, is it?”

  “It’s much more than that to me, Adrian.”

  A flush creeps into his face when she uses his name.

  “How about you? Why cardiac surgery?”

  “I guess the easy answer is that my father died when I was six … a heart attack.”

  “My God, how terrible.”

  “Right in front of me and my mother.”

  Her hand covers her mouth. “You actually saw it happen?”

  “Yes. We were in a restaurant and he just keeled over and died.”

  “How terrible that must have been. A young boy seeing his father die.”

  He nods. He hadn’t expected the conversation to veer in this direction. Not great topics for a first date—abandonment, adoption, and death. His throat thickens and his toes curl.

  “That’ll make a difference in your life,” she says with wet eyes.

  “For sure,” he replies, watching her hands on the tabletop.

  “So … we come to our work because of our early lives,” she adds. Her voice sounds clogged.

  He nods, staring into her eyes. “Is Haggarty your married name?”

  “It’s my adoptive parents’ name.”

  “Do you know your birth name?”

  “No. As far as I’m concerned, I’m pure Haggarty.” She smiles. “It’s who I am.”

  “Even when you were married?”

  “Even when I was married. It was the name I grew up with and the one I became a nurse with. So I stayed with it.” She pauses and then says, “And Marlee’s last name is Wilson … her father’s surname.”

  “Marlee Wilson. It’s a pretty name.”

  “She’s a pretty little girl.”

  “Well, her mother’s very beautiful,” Adrian says, aware his pulse is throbbing. And his hand is now resting on the tabletop.

  A smile forms on her lips. He thinks she’s blushing, though it’s difficult to tell in the peach-hued lighting. She looks surprised, even embarrassed. Adrian wonders if Megan Haggarty realizes how ravishingly beautiful she is. He’s certain many men have told her that, and he wonders if she carries the burden of beauty. Has she been the target of a lifelong cortege of flattery—mostly genuine, some counterfeit, meant to entice, to seduce—and has it made her skeptical, even untrusting of men? Or is she like some women he’s met—beautiful, yet convinced they’re ugly, scarred by disappointment, by rejection?