To Begin Anew (Blue Jay Romance) (7 page)

~*~*~

Lunch for Eric felt to him as if he was back in middle school - the odd kid out - and that all of the eyes he felt boring into his back could see right into his soul. Just what Julia had been thinking when she forced her way to see him in his office was anyone’s guess, but she sure hadn’t made existence easier. Especially for him.

The problem now was to grab the tail end of the gossip beast and put an end to it before it went out of control. Eric could practically hear what his co-workers - people who held respectable jobs - were saying about him.

Eric picked at his food - a tuna fish sandwich, an apple, and a bottle of water - and pretended that he was actually hungry. He wasn’t, but no one needed to know that. A piece of paper, pink with pretty feminine squiggles that formed a woman’s name. He eyed it thoughtfully.

Earlier, after the bout with Julia, he’d met with his first patient who turned out to have a deep interest in her new doctor that had nothing at all to do with medicine or her health. Before he’d parted ways with her, she’d handed him her number - as if he didn’t have it from the hospital’s records - and she’d asked him in an all-too-sweet voice if he would please call her for dinner sometime.

Feeling decisive, Eric crumpled the piece of paper and stuffed it under his half-eaten sandwich. As pretty as the woman might have been, he wasn’t interested. In fact, despite Julia’s claims that he hired pretty women to watch his children so that he could seduce them, he wasn’t interested in anyone.

Liar
, he thought. Eric smiled, even as he admonished himself for calling himself a liar. He wasn’t interested in anyone and that was that - even if there was a certain person he found cute and refreshing and exotic and wonderful all at the same time.
That
particular woman was off limits. She was nanny to his boys and that’s all she was. Sure, they could be friends, but he was determined it would never get beyond that point. Or would it? No, it couldn’t.

The lunchroom suddenly became quiet. The television, set out for doctors on their breaks to catch random minutes of programming, was turned way up so that everyone with a set of ears could hear what it had to say.

“And here’s Chatty Cathy with the Afternoon Juice! She’s coming to you live in the station with a particularly fascinating bit of news for all you girls out there!”

Eric looked in the direction of the television, curious despite himself, and nearly swallowed his tongue. Julia was sitting in a chair, her pretty hair around her shoulders, sparkling as if it knew the secrets to the universe. She was looking at Cathy as if she couldn’t wait to spill her guts. Cathy turned to Julia, her eyes bright with curiosity, and as the camera panned to get a close up of Julia’s face, Cathy asked, “So, you say that you know who Dr. Nelson is currently dating. Is that correct?”

Eric watched as Julia flicked a manicured hand through her hair. She replied, “Of course I do. After all, he finds all his women in the same way. I was his girlfriend for a time - he hired me to take care of his two boys. But then he got tired of me and decided to hire himself a new nanny. I believe she was out with him at Taylor’s restaurant last night.”

Astounded to his core, Eric got up from where he was seated and turned off the television before he did something he would have regretted, such as throwing his lunch tray through the screen. There were exclamations of dismay, but as he took a look around the room, every set of eyes he met said they weren’t going to protest too much.

Eric turned from the television and moved to clean his tray from the table when a hand clamped on his shoulder.

“Don’t worry too much about that show, boy.”

Eric glanced at the man who was talking with him, and realized that it was a senior resident, a doctor by the name of Trent. He was in his fifties, plump like a turkey and salt and peppered to taste. Eric said, “I don’t put any stock in that type of gossip. There’s no truth in it.”

Dr. Trent smiled and his round face dimpled. “Well no one ’round here pays any attention to that kind of thing. People’s business is their own.” He chuckled. “Kind of has to be that way, don’t it? In a small town like this, where everyone knows everyone, you have to look the other way now and again for anyone to have privacy.”

Eric frowned and folded his arms to his chest so that his white coat bunched around his arms. “I’m not worried about
my
privacy.” He looked at the lunchroom clock and said, “Excuse me, Dr. Trent. I have to be making my rounds now.”

“Take care, Dr. Nelson,” Dr. Trent said to his back as Eric walked away from him.

~*~*~

David and Danny were waiting for her patiently by the time she pulled into the school to pick them up. She was five minutes late and kicking herself for it, but by the looks on their faces, they couldn’t be happier. They were ruby faced and fresh, looking as if they’d just come from the playground, and when Debra stopped the car, they climbed in. It was then the speaking began and it was all she could do to pick syllables out from their words as they told her all about their day.

The boys still weren’t done talking by the time she pulled into her driveway, and the conversation continued as they set their school bags against the door and all the way up until she made them a snack to stuff their mouths so that she would have at least five minutes of silence.

David was the first to finish his snack and as he swallowed the last bit of it, chased it with a glass of milk, his blue eyes glittered at Debra and she had to laugh.

“Okay, David. So, you were telling me about your teacher? Did she really get paint all over her nose?”

David blinked, looked at his brother - who was still stuffing his face with a muffin - and then back to Debra. It was as if he couldn’t believe that she’d actually listened to him. It took all of about thirty seconds for him to take a breath, and then, in a rush, “Yes! She really did have paint on her nose! Trevor giggled at her and he wasn’t going to tell her, but I raised my hand and let her know and she gave me a gold star on my calendar! I had all my stars for the week, and ’cause today’s Friday, Mrs. Lemon gave me this!” As if he’d planned it, David pulled out a small metal frog.

To Debra, the thing looked like the kind of knickknack you could pick up at the corner store for a dollar - a little paperweight statue that did nothing more than collect dust, but as she looked David over, she knew that it was like he’d gotten to take a piece of buried treasure home.

Debra smiled and leaned on her kitchen counter. The morning had been a little dismal, and after her crying session, she hadn’t bothered to do much of anything except crawl into her bed and go back to sleep. Which was why, of course, she’d been late picking up the boys from school. Five minutes wasn’t much in her book, but it had been her first day and it wasn’t a standard she wanted to set.

“It’s a fine prize, David,” Debra said. “I’m sure your father’s gonna be happy that you got all of your stars this week.” She assumed that getting all of his stars meant that he’d been on his best behavior. Debra could remember something similar that her teacher had done when she was in school.

David shook his head. “I’m not gonna tell him. I’m gonna give it away, and make a wish.”

Debra lifted an eyebrow. “What do you mean?”

David said, his sandy blonde hair wiggling about his head, “It’s a lucky frog. And it’s really shiny so it must be worth a lot of money, right? I’m…”

“No, David!” Danny said, finger pulled up against his lips as if telling his brother to be quiet wasn’t enough. “You know what daddy says about wishes. You can’t tell ’em because then they don’t come true.”

David sighed and put the frog back in his pocket. Debra smiled at them and, using both hands, she scruffled their heads in unison. “It’s okay. I’m sure that whatever wish you have, it’s a good one.” She grinned, took a glance at their neglected knapsacks, and asked, “So how about we all sit down and do homework?”

David and Danny groaned together, the sounds mixing in with Debra’s laughter at their expense.

Debra felt like the world would end before Dr. Nelson was going to come by to pick up his children. In the short time that she’d known the twins, she’d been bitten by their cuteness and of course won over, but in no way, shape or form did it give her the tolerance or patience to put up with their tireless exuberance.

Once the boys figured out that she had nothing for them to play with and nothing left she was going to feed them, they set out to torture her with stories. Torture in the sense that as soon as one of them ended, another began and then another.

“Daddy’s really lonely,” David said, his eyes glancing at his brother. He’d just finished a story about the time Daddy stubbed his toe and said a dirty word.

Danny chimed in, “Yeah, he says he’s not but we can tell. Daddy doesn’t have any friends.”

Debra didn’t think that the lack of friends meant a person was lonely, but then again, children saw the world differently. She said, “He works very hard and sometimes that means you have to give up things that other people have. I’m sure he has friends at work.”

David shrugged. “We think we should find friends for him.” His eyes glanced up at her and when they met hers, he looked away quickly. “I think you should be Daddy’s friend too.”

Danny sniggered. “We tried with Miss Morgan, but Daddy really didn’t like her.” He looked at Debra expectantly.

Debra rolled her eyes but then smiled. “I’m his friend, I suppose.” She smirked, “I’ll be an even better friend if he doesn’t take anymore of my apples.”

~*~*~

Eric ran down the long, confusing corridors, almost skidding as he came to a stop at the elevators. The overhead speaker was buzzing in his ears from previous calls to get his rear downstairs, his pocket cell phone having gone haywire. They needed more hands down in the E.R. and needed them yesterday.

He felt his heart pound in his chest, sure that when he’d moved to a small town accidents would be few and far between and nothing like he’d seen on a regular basis in the city. He’d handled his share of cases where the wreck was the person and not the train. If his stint on the television had taught him anything, it was the fact that real life was far different than the edited version people were bottle fed as they sat on their sofas.

As soon as he stepped from the elevator into the E.R., he was yanked by his white jacket and directed to triage, where he’d been told a man with severe lacerations was fighting to hold onto life.

Eric’s eyes took the man in, his experience telling him all he needed to know in a matter of moments and with measured breaths he directed the nurses to do what they could beyond what the emergency technicians had been able to do. The man was recognizable as human as far as basic shapes in preschool went. When it came looking closer, there was nothing left that distinguished the man as an individual. In the back of his mind, Eric always fought the logic that warred with his heart, the cool and all-inclusive logic that never took emotion into account. Logic told him that this man had suffered too much blood loss, that in a small town like this the hospitals weren’t equipped to treat the severity of the wounds - that at most, he could attempt to fly him out to a larger city - even if the math said he would die before he got off the tarmac.

Eric knew logic didn’t hold a candle to the perseverance of the heart, that sometimes no matter how much the facts dictated something was going to happen, if you believed hard enough, prayed hard enough, the outcome could change. He had seen it on more than one occasion, had known that sometimes what you thought didn’t matter to what fate had planned, to what The Plan was.

He was in the middle of sealing a laceration when the heart monitor flat-lined.

“No,” Eric managed in a whisper, his eyes darting to read the machine as his mind raced with his hands. As the nurses dropped what they were doing and prepared a defibrillator, he equipped his emotions to catch up with what his mind already knew was about to happen.

Not like the movies
, he thought briefly and strangled it before the nurses were clear of their patient’s body as he pressed the charged paddles to the man’s chest. The electricity conducted through the limbs, making the body jump and there was a second or two as the heart monitor responded before it flat-lined again. Eric hit the man again, noticed the same response and then nothing at all. The heart monitor continued to sound the alarm.

Eric waited a full minute before he turned off the man’s monitor and looked at the E.R. clock. In a voice summoned robotically from the pit of his stomach, he said, “Time of death, seven seventeen p.m.” A nurse in a corner wrote it down.