Healing the Doctor's Heart

by Shirley Hailstock

“They’re polar opposites. Richard is kind and sensitive. Jake is gruff and wants his way all the time.” As soon as the words left her mouth, Lauren wanted to take them back. She tried to cover herself. “Just to be clear,” she said to Amy, “I had a relationship with Richard, but I am not in one with Jake. I’m his friend and his companion, nothing more.”

  “Really?” Amy’s brows rose.

  “Really,” Lauren insisted.

  “Then why does your voice soften when you talk about him?”

  “It doesn’t.”

  Amy went on as if Lauren hadn’t said anything. “Why didn’t you tell him about his hand? Or give him a definite date when you were leaving. You haven’t even thought of a place to go yet. And why did you accept an open-ended ticket to ride?”

  * * *

  LAUREN WAS STILL thinking about Amy’s question when she let herself into the apartment. It was after nine o’clock. They’d spent more time than expected at dinner, yet in the back of her mind Amy’s question worried her.

  Had she really left Jake with the impression that she was staying? She supposed she had. Lauren hadn’t agreed to stay on, but she hadn’t disagreed either. And she had no plans about where to go. When she put her personal items in storage, she’d planned to leave the city and travel a while, find a place to settle that felt right. She would talk to the local medical community and find out if the fit was right.

  But none of that had happened. She saw the ad that Caleb placed and decided on the spur of the moment to satisfy her curiosity and see if Jake was the way she remembered from their college days.

  “Lauren, where have you been?” Jake rushed down the steps. “I’ve been calling you all afternoon.”

  “What’s wrong?” Lauren’s heart kicked up a notch.

  “You went missing.”

  “Jake, today is my day off. I wasn’t missing and I left word with the housekeeper. Didn’t she tell you?”

  “She was gone by the time I came out of the office.”

  Lauren let out a breath, relieved that nothing had happened while she was away.

  “I know I’ve told you in the past when I was going out, but you were busy with the hospital and I didn’t want to interrupt.”

  His shoulders dropped. “I forgot. You’re always here.”

  “I’m glad nothing happened. Did you eat?”

  He nodded. “Where were you?”

  “Out with a friend. We went shopping, then had dinner.”

  “All day?” His voice held a challenge.

  Lauren lifted the bags in her hands. “Yes, all day,” she replied sarcastically. She’d bought a few personal items and a new dress. “I’m allowed,” she emphasized.

  After dropping the bags on a chair, she faced him and in a normal voice, asked, “What did you do today?”

  “I consulted a lot. We were on the phone for hours.”

  “Why don’t you go into the hospital and consult in person?”

  He hadn’t wanted to in the past, but Lauren thought he was ready to appear in public and not be self-conscious of his arm. There was also the movement of his finger. Amy had said she should talk to him about it. Maybe the function was returning.

  “Are you tired?” she asked.

  “Not especially,” he said. “Why, are you?”

  “I want to talk to you about something.”

  She hoped the discussion wouldn’t have him trying to force his hand to move. It would add another level of stress to his life. Only recently had he seemed more relaxed.

  Lauren gestured toward the sofa. The two of them sat down. Lauren purposely took a seat on his right.

  “What do you want to talk about?”

  She heard the caution in his voice. He was obviously expecting bad news.

  “We went to the movies last night,” she said.

  He nodded.

  “Did anything unusual happen while we were there?”

  His eyebrows knitted, and he looked confused by her question. “Other than the two of us sitting in recliners, there wasn’t much that was different than when we watched a movie here, except the place was filled with strangers, apart from your ex.” He showed a small smile, one of those quick ones that were more anticipation of something to come than changing the mood.

  Lauren looked down for a moment. Then she took Jake’s hand and held it. He watched her closely. She knew he didn’t understand what she was doing.

  “Something unusual did happen in the theater.” She was staring at his hand.

  Jake did the same. “What?” he asked.

  “Move your finger,” she said.

  “What?”

  Lauren looked up. “In the theater, when the explosion came, you tensed.”

  He didn’t nod or acknowledge the fact in any way.

  “I took your hand.” She paused, hoping he’d remember. She looked directly at him. “You curled your finger.”

  Jake stared at his hand. Lauren could tell he was concentrating, forcing his mind to order his hand to move.

  “Don’t force it. You know it doesn’t work that way. But you are healing. It was a small movement. The important thing is it happened. Maybe you should have an EMG.”

  “A what?”

  “Electromyography. A diagnostic procedure to assess the health of muscles and nerves.”

  “How would you know that’s significant or how it works?” he asked.

  Lauren felt her face grow hot. She’d made a mistake. Had she revealed her training? “When I took this job, I checked out your condition on the internet.”

  He frowned. “That doesn’t give you everything.”

  “It was enough for me to know a little bit about how such injuries work. I don’t claim to be an expert, but I wanted to be able to help if I could.”

  He seemed to accept that.

  “You should probably see your doctor and let him or her know this happened.”

  “You’ll have to come with me.”

  “Why?”

  “Because I didn’t see it happen. You’ll need to answer all the questions.”

  “This seems like something a parent or wife would do. I’m not related to you.”

  “I’m an adult,” he said. “I have the right to allow you access if I wish.”

  Of course, that was true, Lauren knew. She was used to dealing with parents, having them explain symptoms to her because their child had a problem answering questions. Some kids were shy, some afraid, but she didn’t think she’d end up in a doctor’s office giving the details of what had happened to Jake.

  “I don’t have much to say,” she said. “You should see a doctor and request another appointment to have them check for muscle activity.”

  Jake frowned at the word doctor. Lauren remembered Cal’s comment on how his brother refused to see any more doctors.

  “If I agree to go with you, will you make the appointment?”

  He hesitated a long time. “Maybe.”

  “What is it?” Lauren asked. “Other than a dentist, you haven’t been to a doctor. You are a doctor, so if you can get help, why won’t you take it?”

  “Suppose it doesn’t work?”

  “Suppose what doesn’t work? You aren’t going there to find something that works. You want to know the progress, the status.”

  “I want hope,” he said.

  Lauren stopped. How could she not see that this conversation was heading in that direction?

  “I want to be assured that something positive will happen as a result, that I will get the use of my arm back. I want to know that I’ll be able to tie my shoes and hug a woman with both hands. Going to another doctor and finding out nothing has changed takes my hope away.”

  “Is that what you feel you did to patients?”

  “Sometimes. There comes a time when there is not
hing medicine can do. I had to tell the patients.”

  “How often did you do that? I mean, were you giving hope more than taking it away?”

  He thought a moment, then said, “It was more giving hope. While some patients’ problems weren’t totally corrected, they had hope that someday they would be.”

  “Jake,” she said quietly. “So do you.”

  She wrapped her fingers around his, alert for movement, but nothing happened. When she looked up, Jake’s eyes were on her.

  “See what I mean?” he asked.

  Their faces were close to each other. Lauren reached up and smoothed the frown from his brow. “Isn’t it better to know than not know?” she whispered.

  “I guess it’s better to know.”

  The look that Jake gave her nearly burned. Lauren knew he wasn’t talking about his paralysis. He took her hand and pulled her closer.

  “Jake,” she said, her voice full of emotion.

  “I need to know,” he said and kissed her.

  * * *

  JAKE DIDN’T KNOW how to begin. Lauren had known right away that there had been a woman in his life. After the accident, Jake tried to put her out of his mind, but it didn’t work. He’d gone through scenario after scenario about that day. If he hadn’t gone to Europe. If he’d stayed at the hotel for lunch. If he hadn’t run across the street against the light, he’d have been several yards behind the explosion. The concussive force of the impact might have knocked him down, but it wouldn’t have had the devastating effect on his arm and hand that it did.

  “Jake.”

  Lauren’s voice was soft, almost a whisper when she called his name. It was uncanny how she could read his moods and try not to intrude on them, while also bringing him out of any introspection that she deemed unhealthy.

  “What are you thinking?”

  Lauren didn’t talk in riddles or offer rationalizations. She was clear and direct.

  “Dance with me,” he said.

  She looked around the room. They were in the windows room. She called it that sometimes and Jake had begun to think of it the same way.

  “There’s no music.”

  Taking out his phone, he pushed a few buttons and music filled the air. Jake opened his arm and Lauren stepped forward. He slowly waltzed her about the room, avoiding the furniture.

  When the song ended, another began.

  “Her name was Jennifer,” Jake began.

  Lauren didn’t move in his arm. She said nothing and Jake understood that she knew who he meant.

  “We met during a sailing competition. I was on a crew team. We’d been challenged by a rival team and were gathered on the lake. I don’t remember if Jennifer came with anyone, but we left together and from then on we were rarely without one another.”

  They were no longer moving about the floor, no longer dancing, just turning around and around in the same place.

  “We were engaged. I thought I was what she wanted. We had fun together, but we’d never talked about the important things that a marriage meant, children, careers, hopes and dreams. Then the accident happened.”

  Their steps stalled, but the two of them didn’t part. Lauren looked at him. Her eyes seemed huge this close to him. “What happened?” she whispered.

  “She stayed around while I was in the hospital, but when she found I couldn’t use my arm or hand, she ended our engagement. She said she couldn’t take care of an invalid. She didn’t want the kind of life that would entail for us now.”

  Lauren gasped. “I’m so sorry.”

  “It was for the best in the long run,” he said. And now he believed it. “She was honest, at least. I wished her well in the end.”

  “You must have been heartbroken,” Lauren said.

  “I thought I was. There was so much on my plate at the time that it was difficult to separate one emotion from another.”

  When Jake sorted them out, Jennifer was the least of his worries. He put her out of his life, but both he and Cal knew that the experience had soured him for another relationship. No one, however, had prepared him for a kindergarten teacher with the ability to massage the pain from his arm and talk his ear off.

  Or worm her way into his frozen heart and cause it to thaw.

  “The music stopped,” Lauren said.

  Jake realized the song ended minutes ago, yet they stood in the dance position like two statues watching darkness fall.

  “Do you want children?” Lauren asked.

  Jake hadn’t thought about that. Cal was unmarried. They had cousins who had kids, but few that they spent any amount of time with.

  Jake dropped his arm, but took her hand. He led her to the sofa and they sat down.

  “I had never thought of children of my own. The only child I would think of is the one on the operating table. Since the accident, I’ve had time to think about Cal and my life when we were young, the things we did with our parents, vacations we took, places we explored.”

  “That’s where you get your adventurous spirit,” Lauren said.

  “I suppose. You wouldn’t think so. My mother was a nurse and my father a mathematician. He was the one who went on the adventures with us. If I was a father, I’d like to be like him.”

  “That’s a wonderful story,” she said. After a long pause she asked, “What about careers, hopes and dreams?”

  “They’re still to be determined. I am a doctor,” he said. “I haven’t said that in a while. I haven’t even thought of it.”

  “That’s your career. What about hopes and dreams?”

  “Those are hard to put into words. One day I hope to explain them to you.”

  “But not now,” she said.

  He shook his head. “There’s a lot I still have to work out before I can tell you what they are.”

  “I’ll hold you to that,” she said.

  * * *

  THE DREAM. LAUREN STOPPED abruptly as she pulled a T-shirt over her head. She suddenly remembered last night’s dream. She didn’t often remember her dreams and she was grateful for that. After Naliani, Lauren was plagued with nightmares of her daughter and the Herculean effort Lauren had tried to use to save her. No matter what, the result was always the same. Naliani died. Lauren would wake shaking, her heart hammering and her body drenched in sweat.

  This dream wasn’t like that. It was her birthday and all her friends were running around the yard at her family’s Maryland home. She was ten and about to open her presents. The one she was holding was from her father. He smiled at her and she felt loved and safe. She pulled the ribbon on the box and then everything disappeared as she woke up.

  Where did that come from? Lauren asked herself. She went back to dressing, but the dream didn’t leave her memory now. Where was her mother in the dream? She should have been there. Lauren didn’t know and didn’t remember where she was at that exact moment. Maybe she was in the house or taking a picture.

  Lauren finished brushing her hair and left the room to head downstairs. Jake looked up from the first floor and her thoughts shifted to him.

  “What are we going to do today?” he asked. His voice was jovial and Lauren felt like it was going to be a good day.

  She ran down the stairs and accepted the cup of coffee he was holding.

  “You’re up early,” she said. Lauren was usually on her second cup of coffee before Jake appeared. “What do you want to do?”

  “Well, since we were successful the last time, why don’t we get in the car and see where the road leads us.”

  That’s what they did. When they reached the halfway point on the New Jersey Turnpike and Jake hadn’t taken any exit, Lauren asked where they were going.

  “How about we go to Washington, DC?”

  “What?” It was the last place she expected. “That’s two hundred miles from here. We’d have to stay overnight.” />
  “We could, but I’ve done it in one day. Go down in the morning, like now. And come back at midnight.”

  “We wouldn’t get back until four o’clock in the morning.”

  “We can sleep in tomorrow.”

  Lauren was lost for an argument. He was right. There was no reason they couldn’t go to the capital. It’s not like either of them had a job to get back to. If Jake needed to consult, he could do it from a hotel’s business center or a library.

  “What are we going to do when we get there? Most of the monuments require tickets that have to be obtained in advance.”

  “Even if all we do is walk around, it’ll be worth it. When was the last time you were there?”

  “Not for years,” Lauren said, watching the miles fly by.

  When they reached the city, they left the car in a garage.

  “From here on, we’re on foot,” Jake said.

  “Obviously you’re very familiar with this city.”

  “I’ve spent some time here,” he said. “And while there are new buildings going up all the time, most of the square miles remain the same.

  It was always humid in Washington in the summer and this day was no different. Lauren wore a T-shirt and shorts. They bought hot dogs and drinks from a street vendor, then walked across the mall and sat down on the grass to admire the scene.

  “We could have done this in Central Park,” Jake said. “But this is different.”

  “It is,” Lauren smiled.

  “I know it was a surprise when I said we should come here.”

  “I’m sure you had another reason than just going for a long ride.”

  He laughed. She knew him so well. “I spent a couple of summers here after I got out of medical school, met some friends, did some outrageously stupid things.” He laughed remembering some of the foolish things they’d gotten up to.

  “Like what?” Lauren finished the last of her hot dog and stared at him.

  “Nothing like college students are doing today. Our antics are tame compared to theirs. We used to go to Dupont Circle and run lines of people across the circle and then around it just as the traffic started to build.”

  “You could have gotten killed.”