The Life Saver

by Lilian Darcy

  'Dr Middleton, hi.' Nina looked tired, but she managed a smile.

  'How's Cody?'

  'Doing way better than we feared. Or than I feared when it first happened. I panicked totally. But the water wasn't quite on the boil, the burns were only partial thickness and they're healing well. The doctors think he'll be able to come home in a day or two, with some follow-up treatment later on.'

  'That's great news!'

  'When I woke up after the seizure, I didn't even remember he'd been burned. I just knew I wasn't where I should have been, and he was nowhere to be seen. But I'm always so vague and wrung out afterward. I'm used to finding myself in the hospital without knowing exactly how it all happened, but this time it was a shock that Cody was the patient.'

  'I can imagine.'

  'We're just grateful the burn isn't as bad as it could have been. If I hadn't been there to get cold water on it so fast... It must have been a crazy afternoon for you at the practice, though.' Nina smiled ruefully.

  'Alice was great. She told us most of what we needed to know.'

  'And I can't believe that Genie pressed her ambulance button. It's not what she was trained to do. She's only supposed to respond to an actual seizure. But somehow she put two and two together—'

  'And confused the dispatcher no end.'

  'Hey, don't you criticise my girl!' But Nina was smiling again as she said it.

  'Oh, would I, after last Thursday?'

  'We'd planned the whole move so carefully, including my coming in for an appointment with you and putting you in touch with my doctor in Brattleboro, telling you everything you needed to know, but then someone got sick at Andy's work and they wanted him to start a week early. He didn't like to say no, because we like to make it clear that my illness doesn't affect his ability to do his job. Then first we had Alice's splinter, and then Cody. I knew from Genie's reactions that I was heading for a seizure and I panicked. Thanks, too, for calling Andy about the lump.'

  'Can you give me an update on that, too?' Jo asked. She'd tried the Grafton house again after she and Rip had eaten, and Andy had picked up the phone. She knew he'd been concerned about the dog after she'd told him what she'd found. 'She looks the picture of health.'

  Genie was sitting obediently and watchfully beside her mistress.

  'Andy took her to the vet Saturday morning. It was a lymphoma, a fatty tumour that's benign.'

  'But of course you can't know that until it's been taken out,' Jo confirmed.

  'That's right. The vet did the surgery on the spot, and we got the result on the tumour this afternoon, although he'd already told us he was confident about what it was.'

  As fast as their own pathology, Jo noted.

  'Thank goodness!' Nina was saying. 'Hey, girl, just a couple of stitches in there? Healthy, healthy dog? I'm not going to have to do without you any time soon, am I, Genie-girl?' Nina crouched down and gave her beloved watchdog some hearty pats and a big hug. Genie panted enthusiastically. 'Don't you go getting sick! Don't you go giving your best friend any more scares with horrible lumps, OK?'

  'She's a beautiful dog, Mrs Grafton.'

  'Please, call me Nina!' the other woman said as she straightened again. 'You look as if you're walking home, so we must live pretty near each other. Please, stop by some time. We have a great deck out back for sitting on when the weather gets warmer. Seriously, do stop by.'

  'I will,' Jo promised, and meant it. She hadn't found the opportunity to make the kind of female friends she needed in this town—part of that rut she'd let herself get into and was so determined to climb out of this spring.

  Heading on up the hill, her feet and her spirits felt light. Helium balloon light, almost enough to make her dizzy. How long did she have to wait until she'd see Rip? Two hours, three at the most.

  It was silly to count the minutes and watch the clock, but Jo did it anyhow, and enjoyed the giddy teenage feeling it gave her. Six o'clock came and she had her laundry done, soup made, wine chilling and the ingredients for a quick-pasta sauce cut up and sitting neatly beside the stove, in various-sized bowls as if they were waiting to star in a TV cooking show. She didn't expect Rip to arrive on the dot, so she wasn't worried or annoyed, although counting the minutes that elapsed after six wasn't as delicious as counting the ones before.

  Rip only left her in doubt for twenty such minutes, and then the phone rang and she heard his voice, pitched at a confidential level. 'Listen, I'm still going to make it,' he said, 'but something's come up.'

  'At the practice?'

  'No, at home. I can't...uh...' His tone changed. 'There's not much detail on the prognosis at this stage.'

  Translation—someone's listening in the background now, and I can't talk freely.

  'Are you expecting some results tonight?' Jo asked, playing along while feeling ridiculously close to tears. He didn't sound angry or distant or— But her intuition had gone into overdrive and she knew this wasn't a quick-fix hiccup.

  'I'm not very experienced with this kind of surgery,' Rip said.

  'Oh, can't we drop this? Why can't you talk?' she asked bluntly.

  'Because there are staffing issues...uh...a colleague... Look, it's OK. I'll get there when I can. It's OK. I'll get there.'

  'When you tell me it's OK that many times, I know it's not.'

  'We'll discuss the prognosis when I have more information.'

  Jo gave up on any possibility of a straight, meaningful conversation. 'All right.' She managed to keep her voice upbeat. 'Will you still want dinner?'

  'Don't know. Don't wait, though, OK?'

  'No?'

  'Because I can't guarantee when—'

  'All right. I'll see you whenever.'

  The trouble with experiencing teenage elation in all its Technicolor glory was that you then experienced a commensurate level of teenage despair when your rosy dream castle came crashing down around your ears.

  He said he'd get here, she reminded herself. He didn't say he never wanted to see me again as long as he lived. He's probably had a neighbour with a problem dropping in and wanting to talk.

  But she knew in her heart that it wasn't anything like that.

  'Do I get the feeling that my timing is off?' Tara asked Rip.

  'No, no,' he told her, while distantly observing a feeling inside himself that was akin to being torn in two.

  New, he decided. When Tara had left, he hadn't felt like this. Gutted, yes. Physically wrecked like someone with a terminal dose of flu, but that was different from your basic sensation of getting ripped jaggedly down -the middle like a piece of paper.

  And, patch or no patch, he was desperate for a cigarette.

  'Should I have called, or emailed? Are you turning me away? I've been in the house for ten minutes. You've even taken time out to make a phone call. But you've said nothing about what you want and how you feel. My heart's going like a jackhammer, Rip, I need to hear something from you.'

  'We're divorced.'

  'Is that your answer?'

  'You were the one who left, who told me it was over. I never wanted it.'

  'And you're going to keep on punishing me—punishing both of us—for the worst mistake of my life, as if I'm not as sorry as it's possible to be that I made it? You're not even going to give me a chance?'

  It was the 'worst mistake of my life' line that did it, that stopped him from showing her the door, because in his darkest moments the previous winter he'd imagined her saying exactly that.

  Forgive me, Rip. It was the worst mistake of my life, but that's all it was. A mistake. Can't you forgive me one mistake?

  Could he? he wondered now.

  Hell of a mistake. More than eighteen months of upheaval and anger and grief. Lawyers, bankers. He'd bought out her share of the house at a generous interpretation of the market rate, which was still stretching him financially because, although comfortably situated when compared to many people, a doctor in family practice in rural Vermont wasn't exactly rich.

  He'd su
bmitted to the torture his imagination had put him through, over and over, thinking of her with another man. He'd spent months laying the groundwork in himself for forgiveness, for listening, for taking her into his arms and telling her, 'It doesn't matter. You're back,' because he'd done that before during their marriage, when they'd had a fight about some silly thing and she'd stormed out.

  In fact, he'd spent their whole marriage being the rational, grounded one, the one who'd protected them both from the accidental downside of her flamboyant, emotional temperament by keeping his own feelings on an even keel, by being the first to listen, and the first to say, 'It's OK.'

  So he told her, 'Of course I'm not turning you away.'

  They knew each other pretty well. She was attuned enough to his way of expressing things to understand that he wasn't quite saying, 'Of course I'm taking you back.' Or not yet, anyhow.

  She gave a slow burn of a smile, ducked and tilted her head a little, and said almost timidly, 'Hug, then?'

  He closed his eyes. 'Yeah, a hug.'

  He felt her easing herself against him but didn't look, didn't want to see her big, dark, soulful eyes if they happened to be looking up at him. Her body felt so familiar. Small and supple and firm. A dancer's body, even though she'd never danced, with bony hips and neat, round breasts that would probably stay young and high well into her middle age.

  Nothing like Jo.

  He eased away from Tara, unable to deal with comparing two women's bodies when one of those women was in his arms but it wasn't the one he'd been thinking about all day. 'Look, as you must have heard from my call just now, I'm supposed to be somewhere. Let's get you settled.'

  'In the spare room,' Tara said, not phrasing it as a question.

  He was grateful for that, but didn't want to bring the issue out in the open by thanking her for her tact. 'It's clean, and the sheets are fresh,' was all he could say.

  'I heard you say not to hold the meal. Can't we talk before you go? Can't I tell you how I'm seeing everything now? And what I think was really going on with the divorce? I know you've always hated the idea of divorce.'

  'Didn't our lawyers decide what was really going on with the divorce?'

  'Don't be like that.'

  'Tara, you show up out of the blue, wanting to un-derail nearly two years of our lives, two horrible years of our lives from my end, and I'm the one who's being "like that"? If there's any question of our starting afresh...'

  He knew he shouldn't have said it as soon as the words were out. He'd given her something to work with now.

  Maybe he'd wanted to.

  She was right. He had strong feelings about how important it was to work hard at a marriage.

  'Then one thing that has to change is the way we argue!'

  'OK, tell me how. I want to listen, Rip.'

  'No vague accusations. No "like that" and "you always" and "why can't you ever just". Let's keep it concrete. And rational.'

  'Oh, Rip, I barely know what that word means, and you know it.'

  'Then maybe you should start to find out.'

  'I don't work on rational, I work oil emotional, and I think emotion is just as true and real as logic and principles.'

  'That's not the point.'

  'OK. If you want. I'll try. Rational. Cool-headed. Logical.' She was teasing him, poking fun. Her face had fallen into a parody of sober earnestness. She couldn't hold onto it for long. 'But there's always been an upside to the emotion, don't you think?'

  She gave him her doe-eyed smile again, but he wasn't ready to let it melt him.

  'I don't think we should talk tonight,' he told her. 'Let me bring your gear upstairs. You don't exactly need to be shown around. There's food in the refrigerator. Make yourself at home.'

  'But don't assume that it is my home, right?' Her brave doe-eyed smile this time.

  He hardened his heart. Out of self-protection? 'Assume that you'll be checking into a motel tomorrow. It's just not fair on either of us to try and talk about the past or the future when we're under the same roof. We both need some distance.'

  She pressed her lips together, closed her eyes and nodded—conceding, taking it on the chin. He couldn't help suspecting that this was all a performance, and yet he didn't understand why she'd think that necessary.

  Surely one thing that had always worked between them was honesty? Blazing, ever-changing honesty on her part, because she didn't believe that honest feelings had to be consistent, but honesty none the less.

  Ripley hadn't needed to find her in bed with Trent Serrano to know that she'd been having an affair, for example. She'd told him straight out.

  'I'm in love with another man, Rip. I'm sorry. It just happened. I haven't slept with him yet, because I couldn't do that to you.'

  Had she wanted a medal for that? he'd wondered later, when the anger had hit.

  'But he wants me to go back to Nashville with him and I can't say no. I want to say no, because I still care about you. So much.' Her voice had dropped to a whisper on those two words. 'But this thing is pulling on me so hard. I never knew it was possible to feel this way. I'm so sorry.'

  Now she said, 'Thanks for not sending me to a motel right now, tonight. I guess you're right. We need to take this one step at a time.'

  He considered challenging her assumption that there were any steps to take, but that would only launch them into just what he didn't want tonight—a piece by piece picking apart of what had happened in the past and what might be possible in the future, while Jo was waiting for him, not knowing what on earth was going on.

  Even as her practice partner, he owed her better than that, and as her lover...

  His mind froze, on high alert.

  Good grief, had Tara sniffed at the air and sensed the shift in his feelings the way old Mr Liddle sensed the coming of spring? Her timing, as always, seemed expressly designed to extract the biggest emotional roller-coaster ride out of the situation.

  Rip wasn't Jo's lover yet.

  Would he ever be?

  He needed to see her before he totally ruined her evening.

  His, he knew, was ruined already.

  'So did you eat?' Ripley asked as he prowled into Jo's house, more restless than Miffy on a good hunting night.

  'Not yet. I gave you some grace, and you weren't long, so it was fine.'

  'You should have eaten.'

  'It was fine,' Jo repeated, painfully aware, as she had been on the phone, that it wasn't remotely fine. 'What's happened, Rip?'

  'Tara's here.'

  Two words, and Jo's stomach felt like it had dropped twenty feet in less than a second. She didn't need more than two words. Ripley's strained, hollow tone and her own blow-by-blow knowledge of all the painful steps involved in his separation and divorce filled in the rest of the picture—or at the very least suggested possible scenarios.

  Tara wasn't back in Harriet for next weekend's antique fair, or to pick up the quilts she'd left behind. She was here to pick up their marriage.

  'What are you going to do?'

  'I don't know.'

  She wanted to call him on that answer. It was a terrible answer! The worst! The only virtue in it was that she knew it must be true, because Rip wouldn't lie or prevaricate to her about something like this.

  Her professional colleague Rip wouldn't, at least.

  But maybe the new, personal Rip who'd entered her life would.

  'Any predictions on when you will know?' she asked, trying not to give the words any barb. 'Any mechanisms for achieving certainty?'

  Bzzt! The barb alarm had just sounded. A woman couldn't put that many syllables into five words without sounding sarcastic and desperate.

  'I'm sorry,' she added quickly. 'I was just about to offer you an ashtray, but maybe I should be begging you for a cigarette instead.'

  'You don't smoke, Jo. You've never smoked.'

  'There could be a case for my starting.'

  'And neither do I. So, no, I don't have cigarettes.'

  'You
wish you did, right?'

  'Don't joke about this.'

  'You prefer the bitchy sarcasm instead?'

  'You're not bitchy.'

  'No? Lord, I want to be! I'm trying as hard as I can!' She gave a hysterical sort of sob-slash-laugh.

  He paced closer to her, right into her space, and her new awareness of him slammed against her body like a blast of furnace-heated air. It practically flattened her lungs. It magnetised her body. It shredded her willpower completely and she reached out to touch him because her fingers just couldn't stay away.

  She curved her hand around his upper arm and ducked her head, not quite ploughing it into his chest but waiting for him to pull her against his shoulder. He didn't, even though he didn't make any attempt to move away. They both stood there as if frozen, and Jo felt every pulse in her body beating, centred around an ache of need low in her belly. She wanted the ache, even though it hurt.

  'Can we go for a walk?' Rip said at last. 'If you're not going to turf me out the front door—which I wouldn't blame you for, by the way—then could you keep me company and listen while I say things that I probably shouldn't say to you?'

  'Oh, Rip, what kind of a question is that?' She looked up at him and found a mouth that looked almost numb. She traced its smooth shape with her fingertips and he kissed them then took her hand away. She felt as if he owned her fingers now.

  'I mean, hell, Jo, you should be the last person I say them to,' he went on. 'But you're the person I need to say them to, so if you can stand it... You're right, I want a cigarette. I'm not having one. But I'm going to make a full and fair disclosure of my craving—'

  'So I'm prepared to duck if necessary?'

  'Something like that. It's such a horrible habit.' He still had her wrist imprisoned in the circle of his thumb and forefinger like a handcuff, although it didn't hurt. She wanted to twist her hand so she could lace their fingers together. 'And this is incredibly unfair to you, Jo, I know that.'

  'Tara's the one who is being unfair.'

  'You think so?'

  I'll be able to write a magazine article soon, Jo thought.