by Sarah Jio
“Hello, Jane,” Dr. Heller says, taking her usual seat beside me in her exam room, with its beige walls and windows that look out over Seattle’s Capitol Hill neighborhood. “And how are we doing this week?”
Dr. Heller speaks in “we’s” not “you’s.” When her patients have cancer, she has cancer. When they have migraines, she rubs her aching forehead too. No, Dr. Heller may not be an emotional woman, but she does have the gift of empathy.
“We’re . . . OK,” I say.
“Just OK?”
I swallow hard as I begin to relate the details of my visit with Colette.
Dr. Heller sets my chart down, then nods. “So let me get this straight. A woman you’ve never met told you that the changes in your vision can be explained as your ability to see”—she pauses to clear her throat—“love?”
“Yes, in short.”
“And do you believe this woman?”
I shrug. “I don’t want to, but she spoke about my condition in a way that, for the first time in my life, made sense.”
“What?”
“Well, she said that I have until sunset on my thirtieth birthday to identify the six types of love as they appear in my life, or I risk losing the ability to ever find meaningful love myself.”
She takes off her glasses, rubs the lenses with the sleeve of her white coat, then replaces them.
“You think this is all nuts, don’t you?” I say.
“No,” she says. “I do not. Jane, do you know the old parable about the maiden and the fox?”
I shake my head.
“It goes like this: There once was a beautiful maiden in a kingdom far away. She watched as her four younger sisters were married off to eligible suitors, but the maiden, despite her great beauty, remained unmarried. A wise old woman in the neighboring village told her that for her to ever find love and marry, she’d have to identify a red fox in the forest under moonlight. Well, red foxes are exceedingly rare. But the maiden accepted the challenge. And night after night, year after year, she consumed herself with finding this elusive red fox. And then, one night, she found her fox, standing on a mossy rock in the moonlight. Moments later, it was shot with an arrow, by a prince on horseback, who immediately noticed the maiden’s great beauty. They married, and she became the princess of the land. So I ask, was it the fox or was it the maiden’s persistence to be thanked for her collision with love?” She nods to herself. “Jane, I believe in science, not magic. I believe there’s a logical explanation for most everything. And while this journey may not cure you of your condition, it may give you some sort of understanding into yourself. And in that, you have my full support.”
“Thanks,” I say, just as the door opens and Kelly, one of Dr. Heller’s longtime nurses, pokes her head in. “Dr. Heller, Dr. Wyatt needs to have a word with you.”
“Tell him to come in,” she says.
Kelly and Dr. Wyatt enter the room.
“Sorry for the intrusion,” he says to me.
“It’s no problem,” I say. I watch as Dr. Wyatt, a handsome, slightly younger doctor, hands a chart to Dr. Heller. Kelly looks on as they exchange a few words about another patient, which is when my vision begins to cloud.
“Sorry about that,” she says a moment later, after Kelly and Dr. Wyatt exit. “Male physicians,” she says with a sigh. “They come in so cocky, and when it turns out they’re wrong about something, well, don’t even get me started. I just had to . . .” Her voice trails off when she sees me rubbing my eyes.
“It’s happening, isn’t it? You’re having an episode.”
I nod.
“We need to track this. We need to see this on imaging. I’ll fast-track an MRI. If we’re lucky, we’ll pick up the tail end of this. Hurry, Jane.”
Kelly, the nurse, returns with a wheelchair and pushes me hurriedly down the hall.
“You OK, sweetie?” she asks in the elevator.
I rub my eyes again. The fog is lifting now. “Yeah,” I say. “But you have to tell me. How long has she loved him?”
“Honey, whatever do you mean?”
“Dr. Heller,” I say. “How long has she loved Dr. Wyatt?”
Kelly laughs nervously. “You’ll have to ask her about that,” she says, wheeling me down the long hallway to the imaging department.
Chapter 5
1301 4th Avenue
Flynn opens his eyes and turns to his right, where a nude woman sleeps beside him. Her blond hair is spread out on the pillow, and her mascara is smudged beneath her eyes. He sits up and notices the empty wine bottle on the nightstand beside him as the events of last night, still foggy, slowly come into focus. He was at his art gallery in Pioneer Square for his friend Ryan’s new body of work. His paintings weren’t memorable, or even very good, but Ryan was a friend, and Flynn couldn’t say no to hosting a friend’s exhibition. Thankfully, Ryan’s wealthy family dutifully bought every single canvas.
Flynn climbs out of bed quietly. He doesn’t want to wake what’s-her-name. Jenna? Cara? Julie? Is she a cocktail waitress or a dental hygienist? An esthetician or a flight attendant? He can hear his sister’s voice in his ear then: “You only date one kind of woman: bimbos.” But what does Jane know about love? At least Flynn has a love life.
He steps quietly onto the cold hardwood floors beneath his feet, careful to avoid the floorboard that creaks three paces from the bed. One creak and what’s-her-name would call him back to bed. Not that that would be a tragedy. But Flynn has a code of conduct. And morning sex, though quite enjoyable, is not something one does after a one-night stand. Morning sex is for relationships. Morning sex is for love. And Flynn has never been in love.
He thinks about this as he stands naked in his kitchen, gazing out at the city beyond the floor-to-ceiling windows of his eleventh-floor loft apartment. He scoops the pre-ground espresso into the machine and pulls a shot. As he listens to the familiar hum of his espresso machine, a gift from a girlfriend whose face six years post-breakup is now fuzzy in his mind, he thinks about his life. Thirty-five. Never married. Never in a serious relationship. And maybe he’ll always be this way.
He takes a sip of his espresso and looks out the window at the apartment building directly across the street, where he stares into the first bank of windows on the eleventh floor. Flynn wonders if she’s awake yet, the woman he sometimes sees cooking in her underwear, or nothing at all; crying late at night, or early in the morning; working in the spare bedroom that she uses as a pottery studio, spinning her wheel with such concentration, such intensity, he cannot look away. And then she emerges from her bedroom. She wears a white tank top and a pair of red panties. Her long brown hair is pulled back into a messy ponytail and it swings from side to side as she wends her way into the kitchen, where she pours a cup of coffee into an oversize white mug before walking to the window. She looks out across Fourth Avenue to Flynn’s apartment. For a moment, time stands still as their eyes meet. Flynn lifts his hand to wave just as he feels a pair of thin arms around his waist.
“Whatcha lookin’ at?”
He turns around to face the woman from last night. She’s wearing one of his T-shirts, her long tan legs exposed beneath. And he remembers the way he lifted them this way and that only hours before.
“Oh, nothing,” he says quickly, pulling the blinds down.
“Come back to bed,” she says seductively.
“I shouldn’t,” Flynn says with a grin. “I’ve got a packed schedule today.”
“Oh,” the woman says, a little injured. “Tonight, then?”
He shakes his head. “I’m busy tonight too, sorry.”
“Call me, then?” she asks, with puppy dog eyes.
“Of course . . .”
“It’s Julia,” she says.
“Right, exactly. Julia.”
“I gave you my phone number last night. So you have it. I mean, if you
wanted to call. We could go out sometime. Do this again.”
“Right,” he says, making a mental note to delete her number from his phone. It’s not her fault. She’s twenty-five, beautiful, and just so . . . typical. Flynn knows women like Julia well. They were psychology majors in college, but now work in advertising or marketing. They order fruity drinks at bars and spend all their money on expensive shoes and handbags. They laugh about vapid things and bat their eyelashes at him. And so he dates these women. He buys them their fruity drinks and takes them to restaurants and tells them things they want to hear, while he waits for it to come along, even if he doesn’t quite know what it is.
Julia manages to find her clothing, strewn across his bedroom from last night. She dresses, and he gives her the obligatory good-bye kiss. After the door clicks closed, he pulls on a sweatshirt and laces up his running shoes, then opens the blinds and looks out the window again, across Fourth Avenue. She sits at her pottery wheel. He loves watching her work. And he’s thought, dozens of times, that he should walk over and introduce himself. He could invite her to display her pottery at his gallery. It would be a perfectly natural thing to do. A business opportunity. And yet, when he thinks about doing it, his stomach quivers, though Flynn never gets nervous. Point to any beautiful woman at a bar and he’ll walk up to her.
But this woman? She looks up from her wheel then and adjusts her dark-rimmed glasses with the edge of her hand, and Flynn feels weak. She sees him again. And this time, she lifts her hand up to wave to him. He smiles, but she looks away quickly. He watches as she suddenly leaps up from her chair and runs to the door. She peers through the peephole and then pauses with trepidation.
After a long moment, she unlatches the lock and opens the door, slowly. She takes a few steps back, as a man walks through the door. He’s carrying flowers, an enormous vase of pink roses. She takes them in her hands, but Flynn can’t tell if she’s smiling. He can’t see her face. He can only see the man, tall and businesslike in a well-tailored pinstriped suit. He takes off his hat, a fedora (who wears fedoras?), and his silver hair is the only indication that he’s older than she is. Flynn hates to admit that this man is handsome, perhaps better-looking than he is.
The man points to the couch, and the woman nods slowly, as if she’s hesitating. Flynn knows he should look away, but he can’t. He is transfixed by every detail of this living room scene, every detail of her life. Who is he? Clearly he’s in love with her. But is she in love with him?
The woman walks to the window, and Flynn’s neck erupts in goose bumps once again when she catches his gaze. But this time, her eyes are sad, distant. She reaches her arm higher, and in one movement of the wrist, the blinds are lowered and, once again, the iron curtain is drawn.
Chapter 6
New Year’s Eve
Lo is hovering over an arrangement of gerbera daisies when I walk into the shop. “When will people lose their love for these flowers?” she says with a sigh. “They’re so cliché.”
“But they pay the bills,” I say with a smile.
Lo smirks. “I wouldn’t trust a man who gave me gerbera daisies.”
“What if what’s-his-name gave you them?”
She pauses for a moment as if I’ve just hit her in the Achilles’, then shakes her head. “He wouldn’t. He gets it.”
I set my purse down on the counter and fiddle with the stereo system, then pop in Lo’s Sarah McLachlan CD. “So you’re still going out with him.”
“Grant, yes,” she says. “You disapprove, I know.”
I shrug. “I do, but I’m starting to sound like an overprotective mother.” I fix my eyes on hers. “Just be careful, OK?”
“Deal,” Lo says with a smile. “Are you going to Flynn’s party?”
I nod. “Reluctantly.”
“Oh, Jane, you’ll have fun. Drink some champagne. Talk to a boy. Enjoy yourself a little.”
“Easier said than done. Especially among the kind of guys in Flynn’s circle.”
“What are you going to wear?” she asks.
“I have no idea.”
She nods and walks to the back room, where a bunch of freshly dry-cleaned dresses hang on the door. “I just picked these up from the cleaners. We’re the same size. Take your pick.”
I shake my head. “I can’t pull those sorts of dresses off like you, Lo.”
“Of course you can,” she says, pulling the plastic wrapping off of them and selecting a black dress that’s cut low on top and daringly short. “This would look perfect on you.”
I hold it up, then shake my head. “I’m not so sure.”
Lo nods. “I’m sure.” Then she reaches in her bag. “And take my Louboutins,” she adds, handing me a pair of black patent leather heels. “You’ll wow in these.”
“I don’t know,” I say, kicking off my UGGs and slipping one on.
“They fit,” she says. “Perfect.”
My phone rings, and I reach for it on the counter. I don’t recognize the number. “Hello?”
“Jane, this is Dr. Heller.”
“Oh, hi,” I say.
“Have I caught you at a bad time?” Her voice sounds a bit more serious than normal, and I feel a surge of adrenaline.
“No, no, this is fine. Is everything OK?” I think of the recent MRI. Did she have bad results?
“Yes,” she says. “At least, I think. But it’s about your MRI. Jane, the results were quite puzzling. In fact, we’ve never seen anything like it. The temporal lobe was lit up in a way I’ve never witnessed on imaging.”
“What does that mean, exactly?”
“We’re not entirely sure,” she says. “At least not at this moment. I’m sending your scans to some of the country’s top experts to see if they can offer some alternate explanations. But the reason why this concerns me, at least for now, is that the type of activity revealed in your scans is most often seen in people who have had significant seizures, even strokes. But we know your health history, and I don’t believe that you’ve had either. It has to be something else. There has to be some other explanation.”
I nod to myself. “Dr. Heller, a long time ago you told me about the various parts of the brain. I was twelve, I think. You showed me a diagram of the different sections and I recall thinking that it was really gross. Remember?”
“Yes,” she says. “I do.”
“So what is the temporal lobe responsible for?
Dr. Heller is silent for a moment. “It’s part of the limbic system. It regulates our emotions and is the place in the brain that researchers have been able to measure . . .”
“Love?”
“Well, Jane, no one can scientifically measure love, but yes, feelings, emotions, affection.”
“Love,” I say again.
I arrive at Flynn’s party at eight. I feel awkward in Lo’s dress and shoes, and as I peek my head through the door, I tug at the hemline nervously. For 2.5 seconds, I consider turning around, running back to my apartment, and changing into my typical uniform—a pair of black leggings and a sweater—but Flynn sees me instantly and gestures grandly from the bar in the kitchen. I’m trapped.
“Jane!” he calls out. “You made it!”
I smile and walk to the bar, where I kiss my brother on the cheek.
He hands me a glass of champagne. “Look at you,” he says. “You look stunning.”
“I’m glad you think so,” I say. “I feel like an idiot in this dress, honestly. Lo made me wear it.”
“How is Lo?” he asks.
“Good,” I say with an eye roll. “Up to her usual antics. Tonight’s she’s out with a married—well, ambiguously separated—man.”
Flynn raises an eyebrow. “Oh?”
“And who is your woman of the hour?” I ask facetiously.
He hesitates for a moment and looks out the window of his loft apartment, where
the city lights sparkle all around, then snaps his head back to a group of young women standing across the room.
“Good luck with that,” I say with a grin.
“Hey, there’s someone I want to introduce you to,” he says.
“No, please,” I say. “Not another guy in a band. Or an artist.”
Flynn shakes his head. “He’s a writer, actually. Just relocated from New York.”
“A writer, huh?” I take another sip of my champagne and yawn. Sam woke me up at five a.m. needing to pee, and I wasn’t able to get back to sleep.
Flynn takes my hand and leads me across the room to the door that opens onto the balcony, where a group of people are packed together smoking or locked in deep conversation.
“Cam,” Flynn says to a man in the far corner. His back is turned to us, and all I can make out of this stranger is his gray tweed suit jacket and dark hair.
He turns around to face us, and I take a step forward, then realize the heel of one of my shoes has gotten lodged in the metal grate of the balcony. “I think I’m stuck,” I say.
“Here, let me help you,” my brother’s friend says, laughing.
I grip Flynn’s arm for balance as my cheeks burn with embarrassment. I slip off my right shoe, painfully aware of the chipped pink nail polish on my toes, as Cameron kneels down to free the heel from the grate. I slip the other heel off before it succumbs to a similar fate.
Flynn grins. “Now that we have this problem solved, Cameron, I’d like you to meet my sister, Jane. Jane, this is Cameron Collins.”
He extends his hand. “Nice to meet you, Jane. Please, call me Cam.”
He’s about my age, and definitely fits the scene at Flynn’s, with his plaid shirt, slim-fitting pants, and a hint of stubble on his chin. But there’s something different about him too. Preppier? Smarter? I’m not sure, and I can’t quite pinpoint if I like it or despise it.
“Cam just moved here from New York. He’s a correspondent for Time. He writes about medicine.”