Violet’s Bucket List

by Embers, Tuesday

  Eli rubbed the sleep from his eyes so he could better pay attention to the offer no one expects first thing in the morning. “When are ye going? I haven’t been skydiving in ages.”

  “Saturday morning,” Brady answered before I could shove my foot any further down my throat. “Come. It’ll be fun.”

  “Aye. Alright, sure. I didn’t know ye were into stuff like tha.”

  I expected a brush-off answer, but Brady was sincere. “It’s on the list,” he said, pointing to the piece of paper on the fridge with his spoon. I had been shoving papers haphazardly into folders so I could escape, but I froze when Brady dove in for the hard truth. “Two years ago, I was diagnosed with testicular cancer. It was stage three, pretty dire stuff. Caty, Vi and I sat down and made a list when we were pretty sure I’d been given a death sentence. It’s our list of all the things we want to do before we die.”

  Serious talk thrown at a person first thing in the morning was uncomfortable, no matter how cool a person you were. I could see that Eli had a streak of true kindness in him, rolling with the wave of a possible deeper connection to us strangers with surprising grace. He lowered his chin and turned it from side-to-side. “Jays, I’m sorry, Brady. Tha’s terrible. How are ye now?”

  “Had the cancerous testicle removed, and that was that. A few rounds of chemo, and I was given a clean bill of health. Total remission,” Brady declared proudly, beaming every time he told someone that part. “But the bucket list still stands. Most people make them and treat it like a series of suggestions, but we’re determined to get through the whole thing. Every month, the three of us pick a couple to cross off.” He pointed to number seventeen. “Skydiving is next, and since you live here, you should come. You’re one of us now.” Brady was just that kind of guy, welcoming people in without hesitation. I loved that about him.

  Eli met Brady’s eyes in a dude way that held a promise of brotherhood to it, though they had only known each other a short time. It was precious, and I hoped Eli would become someone solid for Brady to lean on. “Aye. I’ll be there.” Then his dazzling green eyes cut to me. “What about ye, wee mouse? Ye aren’t thinking about bailing on a man who’s had one of his balls taken, are ye?”

  Brady cast me a dramatic frown. “Come on, Vi. What’s a boy with cancer gotta do to get some attention?”

  I glared at Brady for being a tool, and cringed that my new nickname was “wee mouse”. Not sexy kitten. Not gorgeous vixen. Wee mouse. “I’ll be there. I gotta get going to work, guys. See you later.” I picked up my backpack from the floor, but didn’t realize it was upside-down. I slung one of the straps over my shoulder in a huff, and paled when all my folders and papers dumped out all over the hardwood. “Oh, man!” I dropped to my knees, grateful that a few loose strands of my hair fell forward to cover the beet red my cheeks were turning. I didn’t bother to be gentle with the papers, but randomly shoved them into my backpack with a haphazard lack of grace, no doubt crinkling a few. I wasn’t worried about the HIPAA law, since the files only had numbers instead of a patient’s name; I was scared of the Lucille Ball antics that might happen if I was near Eli for another minute. Brady was my bestie. That Eli was kind to him? It made the man all the more appealing, which I’ll admit, I didn’t think possible.

  Brady hooted so hard, he choked on his oatmeal. “That was awesome!”

  I was drowning in my chagrin, while my lifeline was laughing. “Shut up, Brady!”

  When Eli bent down to help me pick everything up, he shot me a smirk. Beneath his scruff, I made out a light freckle on the crest of his top lip that was too adorable for words. I fought the urge to lick it with everything in me. It was like every time the guy got near enough to observe, I found ten new things that were perfect about him. I wished I could get far, far away from him, so I could be a normal human again. When his finger brushed mine as he helped me with my papers, unquenchable heat lit through my body, zinging around like a pinball, exciting every part of me I’d written off as being of secondary importance.

  When he touched my knuckle again, I knew it was on purpose. He hadn’t even been trying to pick up any papers in the process. I shot up off the floor, eyes wide and my volume totally out of control. “I don’t need the papers. I can pick them up when I come home later. I’ve gotta go. Can’t be late!” I spun around to run for the front door, but Brady moved to intercept my escape.

  “Not so fast. You know you need all your files for work. Let Eli help you.” He shook his head at my panic, his usually friendly smile turning to a scold. He licked his spoon and then used it to point at my socks. “You don’t even have any shoes on!”

  I cringed at what a loon I must seem like. The tight glare I shot Brady begged him to have pity on my plight.

  Eli mumbled from the floor with a frown. “I just had these all organized, too. I keep putting them in order by patient number after you’ve been passing out on the couch, but now they’re all messed up.”

  My mouth fell open as I turned to face him. “That was you?”

  “Of course. Who did ye think did it?”

  I rubbed the nape of my neck, and cringed when I realized I was sweating from getting too near the hot guy. “I thought maybe I did it in my sleep.”

  Eli looked up at me, staring straight into my eyes with palpable sorrow, as if he wanted to tell me something important. “Ye dream about work? Tha’s the saddest thing I’ve heard since all the talk about cancer. You’re a grim couple.”

  “We’re not a couple,” Brady explained through his mouthful of oatmeal. “But he’s right, V. It’s sad.”

  “Hello, I’m going skydiving. I have a life. I just like to… I don’t have to explain myself to either of you.” I dropped to my knees and shoved the papers into my pack at random. “I’ll sort through these later. Thanks for your strong hands. I mean your sexy hands. I mean your help! Thanks for your sexy help.” I let out a bleat of agony. “Your regular, nonsexual help!”

  “It’s no trouble. Ye fancy my hands?” Eli looked down at his rough knuckles, as if seeing them in a new light. He had the kind of hands that looked as if they could snap a two-by-four in half, and do what they wished without apology.

  I was about to say yes, but knew that would come out creepy. I wanted to compliment his musculature, but bit my tongue through that outburst of insanity. Progress. “I’ve got to go.”

  “Hold on. A few slipped over here. Your boss is really tha strict?”

  I shook my head, keeping my chin down, inching out of the kitchen and towards the door, readying to bolt. “No, but if I don’t get out of here, you’ll touch my finger again, and I’ll get the feelings!” When that was clearly the wrong thing to say, I started to sweat anew, my voice cracking. “I didn’t mean it like that!” I didn’t think it was possible for me to turn any redder, but there was apparently a whole new shade I could blush.

  Brady keeled over with laughter, and if I had the wherewithal to shove him, I would’ve. “Why do I never have a camera going to catch these moments on film?”

  “I have to go!” I snatched the last few pages, shoved on my shoes and literally ran out the door. I fled down the stairs, as if putting distance between myself and the horrifying admission would make it all not so.

  3

  Special Assignment

  “You got home way too late last night,” Mr. Li lectured, coming out from behind the counter to wave his order pad at me. He was always gesticulating with the pad, making it look like it was part of his hand after so many years with variations of the same greeting. “Why’d you work so late, young lady?”

  I grinned at the mid-sixties man I could only ever adore. Mr. Li had a nicely lined face, a missing eyebrow (I never should’ve asked him about it. That totally gross story still makes me shudder), thin lips and a round face that smiled for me after he’d finished yelling.

  I shrugged at the father figure I’d adopted over the past five years. “I took on more patients at the clinic. You know what that means? Overtime, baby!�
� I raised the roof, even though my arms were yelling at me that my silly dance totally wasn’t worth it. My whole body was exhausted from overuse, and then waking up at three in the morning to make a fool of myself in front of the new guy.

  “I’m not the baby. You’re the baby, young lady, and you were out way too late.”

  I shrugged at the lecture. After his son went back to China to get married, he’d needed someone to look after, to pass his wisdom onto. Since he rented out the apartment above his shop to me, I was the perfect candidate, and didn’t mind the hovering one bit. It was nice to have someone worry if I stayed out too late. “I left a message that I’d be home after dark.”

  He squinted at me, and I knew his sarcasm was coming. “Oh, did this message go upstairs and tuck itself in at a reasonable hour? Did the message eat the dinner I’d made two hours earlier?”

  “I told Chen I’d be out late, so that you didn’t have to go through the trouble. Didn’t he tell you?”

  “He did, but it was so ridiculous that I didn’t think he could be serious.” Then the twinkle in his eye overruled his frustration when he saw my faux-contrition. “Oh, I can’t stay mad at you. Your lunch for the day is in the fridge back there.”

  “Aw, you didn’t have to do that.”

  “If I don’t feed you, you wither away into nothing! You’re already too skinny.”

  Mr. Li, Brady and Caty were the only ones who ever called me skinny. Caty was a rail, and I was… curvy. Yeah, we’ll go with curvy. “What’d you make me? Fried rice with extra peas?”

  Mr. Li let out a loud raspberry. “I don’t want you eating that junk. Too much sodium. Not good for you.”

  I chuckled at him dissing his own food. I leaned up on my toes and kissed his cheek. I smiled at his smirk that he tried to suppress, so that I knew he was serious about me cutting down my hours. “Thanks, Dad.”

  My own dad had split when he found out my mom was pregnant, so Mr. Li had taken up that post, even though I was too old to need parenting anymore. He was first-generation Chinese, and I was first-generation Mexican, so people always cocked their heads to the side when I called him my father.

  I skipped to the fridge and pulled out my lunch, which didn’t have my name on it, or his usual inspirational saying he liked to write on the large brown paper bag. “Next time you’re out after dark, I’m eating your meal” was written in angry block letters across the front, making me laugh. Mr. Li totally got me. Before a long day at work? Sometimes, that’s all I needed.

  I counted sixteen fire hydrants on my way to work, smiling at joggers who wanted to get a jump on their day. When I strolled into work and set my backpack down on my desk, I was only one of two people in the entire building, though I knew that would change in the next fifteen minutes. Pretty soon the place would be buzzing with possibility and breakthroughs.

  My boss popped his head through the door. “Violet, can I see you in my office for a minute?”

  Being called into my boss’ office wasn’t usually a bad thing, but it still gave my stomach the nervous jitters. “Of course, Keith.” I followed behind him, worried over what could possibly so big that he couldn’t just tell me in a few sentences.

  “Have a seat,” Keith offered, motioning to the empty chair across from his mammoth desk. Keith was two inches shorter than me, and I stood a measly 5’6”. Still, he had a presence about him that demanded respect and order with a firm, but not terribly unkind, hand. “I’m sure you know our funding has never been great. Insurance only covers so much. And now with all the extra hoops we have to jump through for some of these insurance providers, we often don’t get paid for an appointment until months after we’ve seen the patient.”

  “Yes, sir. That’s very frustrating.”

  “I wanted to see if you’d be available for a special project that might be able to free up some more overtime for you.”

  I quirked my eyebrow at him, leaning forward in the sleek, black chair. His whole office smelled like rich people cologne and leather. The rest of the facility smelled like the floor of a sweaty men’s locker room. “I’m listening.”

  “You know you’re my favorite worker here, right?”

  “Well, you’re my favorite boss, so that works out perfectly. What do you need?” It was so easy to talk to every other man on the planet. Why did I have to turn into such a spaz around Eli?

  “I need your help writing up a grant proposal. Several, actually. There are a dozen or so grants I’ve got my eye on, but I’m swamped here. If you could write those up, that might bring in extra funding, which would mean more overtime for the staff. What do you think?”

  I tried not to balk at him. “Oh, wow. Um, thank you. I’m flattered you thought of me for the project. I’ve never done any grant writing, though. You sure you want to gamble on me for something like this? Seems like a lot would be riding on it. I wouldn’t want to let you down.”

  “The only way you could let me down is by not trying.” That was one of the mantras we had painted on the wall of the gym. Keith took out a paper from his drawer and slid it across the polished wood desk to me. “Here’s all the information you need to get started. Write one grant, then move on to the next. They each have to be tailored to fit the specifications listed, and there are a lot of them. I couldn’t make heads or tails of this one,” he admitted, pointing to an item halfway down on the page.

  “Okay. Sure, Keith. When do you want me to get started? Is someone going to take a few of my patients so I can work on this? I really don’t want to give up Frank, if it’s possible. He’s doing so well, and we’ve come so far.”

  Keith’s eyes were on his computer monitor, half in our conversation, and half onto the next thing. “Oh, no one’s going to take your patients from you. You can just work on the grants when you’re off the clock. See? That’s what I like about you. You fight for your patients.” He typed a few lines on his keyboard. “Can you have the first proposal to me next week? I know there are a dozen on the list there, but the first two have a ticking timeclock on them.”

  I glanced at the list, a knot in my chest forming at the organizations that would demand my best at something I’d never attempted before. And there weren’t a dozen. There were twenty. “I can try.”

  “Thanks, Violet. You’re the greatest. My favorite PT, by far.”

  I don’t know why his compliment didn’t sit right. I should be honored to be given such an important task he didn’t trust with anyone else. Though, I barely had enough time to do the admin work on the patients I had. I wasn’t sure where I’d find the space in my schedule for a whole new project. I straightened my shoulders and steeled myself with a fortitude I often employed at this job. If Keith thought I could do this, then I could.

  I walked through the halls in a haze of worry, and set the paper on my desk in the office I shared with two other women before I went down to welcome my next appointment. I’d been looking forward to meeting John Freedmeyer in the same way you look forward to drilling around landmines. It’s exciting, but not always in a good way. I moved into the waiting room and greeted him with a smile. “Good morning, Mr. Freedmeyer. I’m Violet Rodriquez, and I’ll be working with you today. Right this way.”

  John didn’t smile back. It didn’t look like he was all that familiar with the practice of making your face be kind. “I don’t need to be here. I’ve been seen by enough quack doctors.” The woman I could only guess was either his sister or his wife mouthed an apology at me behind his back, stiffening when John barked out, “Don’t apologize for me, Deanna!”

  I raised my chin to level my gaze at John, holding up my hand when one of my patients rose from his chair to back me up. Lance was sweet like that. I’d done Lance’s rehab, and now he came in once a month to use our therapeutic hot tubs to soak his bum knee.

  John glanced at Lance and muttered a string of racial slurs, sneering at the kind eyes he couldn’t see beneath Lance’s African American heritage. Lance took it in stride, keeping his gaze on me in
stead of participating in John’s ignorance.

  I kept my voice even, refusing to let John control the volume of the waiting room, and spook the other patients, who had been through enough. “You’re here voluntarily to be seen by the quacks who work in this facility. I can always write up that you were too hostile to be evaluated, but something tells me you wouldn’t want that to happen again.”

  John was much bigger than I, but I’d defended myself against enough veterans with PTSD and misplaced outbursts. I knew I could handle myself. Still, Lance hovered, the sweetie. When John saw that he was outnumbered, and no one except for Deanna was cowering to his temper, he grumbled and shoved past me. “Well, come on! I don’t know where I’m going.”

  As gently as I could, I replied, “And you’re not going to know where to go until you speak to me more nicely than this.” I cast Deanna a wink and gave Lance a fistbump before shutting the door to the waiting room, cutting us off from our audience. “I’ll wait.”

  John stomped toward me, nostrils flared, and for a second, I was worried he might take a swing at me. He stopped directly in front of where I stood, towering over me with anger that seemed too deeply engrained to be from a recent trauma. “Let’s start, please, so I can get out of here, please. Do your job, please.” Then he looked me up and down with a sneer meant to intimidate. “Lazy wetback.”

  “It’s Miss Violet,” I corrected him, my toes curling in my shoes at the offensive term.

  Yes, John was going to be an absolute joy to work with. The problem cases were always shunted my way, which wasn’t a bad thing, but it could be taxing on days like today, with patients like John. Racial digs weren’t totally unexpected, but they were never without a ding to my armor. However, they didn’t faze me more than the perfunctory sting anymore, not like when I’d been a kid and would burst into tears.