Chapter 19 #2
“Enjoy being alone. Especially while sailing. It’s thrilling.
With nothing but you and the ocean and a boat you have to captain.
The yacht is huge and does require a small crew to help man it, but they’re staff, and they never bother me.
And when it’s just you on the deck at night with nothing but the ocean rocking you below and the sea of stars overhead… it’s humbling. And heaven.”
“You know, I’ve never been on a boat before.”
“No?”
For some reason that surprises me.
“No. My mother gets terribly seasick, so cruising was never something we did. Europe. Asia. Australia. Africa. I’ve visited them all but have never been on a boat.”
“I’ll take you some time, but if you throw up on my sloop, I’ll be forced to toss you overboard and feed you to the sharks.”
She doesn’t laugh. Her eyes are fraught with panic as we hit the floor and the elevator doors open. I have to give her a solid yank, dropping my other hand to her lower back and pushing her along.
“You have a tattoo on your shoulder. An old nautical compass. It’s partially intertwined with a heart. Not a heart shape but what looks like an actual, beating heart, complete with tubes sticking out of it.”
“Vessels,” I correct. “And yes. My two passions, the heart and the ocean.”
“You’re like that blue diamond in Titanic.”
“Thanks,” I deadpan. “Hopefully with a better outcome, though I guess if I’m going to die, doing so at sea isn’t the worst way to go.
” I haul her into my chest and dip her backward, her hair hitting the floor.
She belts out a shriek followed by a laugh.
“Open your eyes. This is the door to your office. Completely away from the patient part of the floor. You can shut the door and shut out the hospital.”
Flipping her back upright, I spin her around so she’s facing the door. My hand still in hers, I drag her until her back is against my chest. Exactly as it was Saturday night when I made her tremble and fall apart in my arms.
“Go open it.” I nudge her forward and she takes a hesitant step, her hand landing on the nob and then she’s opening it up.
“It looks like a regular office.”
I smirk. “What were you expecting? Cadavers?”
A glare over her shoulder and then she’s stepping inside. It’s small. Not much more than a desk and a couch, but since she’s only here three mornings a week, I think it should suffice.
I follow her inside and suddenly her arms are around my neck, hugging me. “Thank you,” she breathes into me. “Thank you for helping me with this and for giving me a space that is intended to make me comfortable.”
A small peck on her neck, one quick inhale, and then I let her go.
“I have to get going to surgery. You good?”
“I’m good.” She’s beaming at me like I’m her hero and something inside me shifts. Stirs. Swirls. Feels fucking fantastic.
* * *
My morning kicks into high gear with two surgeries that don’t go according to plan.
The first was a five-year-old on my table whose vessels were extremely friable.
She started bleeding out with barely a touch.
The second is a fourteen-year-old who was discovered to have a patent foramen ovale, which is a small opening in the septum between the atria, which are the two upper chambers of the heart.
Typically that defect closes before or shortly after birth, but not in his case.
If left untreated, it can potentially cause a stroke.
A pretty standard procedure, except he decided today was the day to tempt the fates and coded not once but twice on my table.
I’ve never seen anything like it with that condition.
What should have been two relatively straightforward cases ended up taking hours longer in the OR. I haven’t eaten anything since breakfast. I haven’t checked on Bianca. Hell, I haven’t even had a chance to check in on my other patients.
Fucking Mondays.
Armed with a protein bar and a sore back, I amble down the hall, knocking on Bianca’s closed door.
“Come in,” her sweet voice rings out and I nearly sag at the sound. I open the door, find her sitting at her desk, all sexy vamp, and collapse on her couch. “Long day?”
“Is it over? What time is it?”
“Two.”
“Shit.” My face digs into the soft leather of her couch and I close my eyes. That is until my back tenses up like someone is poking it with hot daggers and I grunt, twisting this way and that to get it to release.
“You okay?”
“Just a back spasm. It’ll pass.”
“Here.” I hear her chair push back, the soft click of her heels on the carpet and then she’s… sitting on my butt.
“What the hell are you doing?”
“Relax. I’m giving you a back massage. I’m amazing at them. Years and years of PT and weekly massages for my scoliosis. Trust me, I know what I’m doing.”
“By straddling my ass in a dress?”
“Just don’t flip over.”
I half groan, half laugh. But then her hands are on my lower back and it’s a full-on groan. “Up. Left. Yesss. That’s the spot. Don’t stop.”
“That’s what she said.”
I laugh. “This might, in fact, feel better.” As long as I ignore the heat of her pussy against my thin scrub pants. “Please tell me you’re wearing underwear today.”
“Oh, I knew I was forgetting something.”
“Bianca—”
“Relax. I’m wearing underwear. Seriously, your back is a tight ball of knots. Don’t move.” She climbs off me and I crack an eye open, watching as she digs through her purse for something only to return seconds later, her ass back on mine, only now she’s squirting something into her hands.
“You carry lube in your purse?”
“You wish. No, it’s hand lotion. Don’t worry, it’s unscented. Lift up your shirt.”
I don’t argue with her because whatever she was doing before with her hands was magic and I need more of it. Shifting ever so slightly, I lift my scrub top and long-sleeve shirt up and over my head, tossing them on the arm of the couch.
Her hands hit my back, but I feel her tense on me. “What’s wrong?”
“Nothing. I just… I haven’t seen your back yet.”
Her hands start to move, but I can feel it in the air. Something has changed. Her voice. Her posture on me. The sound of her breath. She works my muscles for a few minutes and then her fingertips trickle over my lower spine, right at the base where my scrub pants sit.
“What made you get this?”
I don’t have to ask to know what she’s referring to.
It’s a tattoo of a forest. Only the trees are all evergreens, thick and wide and clustered together.
Almost cartoonish. “My best friend in prep school and college… his name was Forest. He died about ten years or so ago. He had this same tattoo on his back in the same place. Actually, I went with him to get it.”
“You did?”
Her voice is barely above a whisper.
“Yes. He um… he had a breakdown our junior year of college. Started talking to himself a lot. Had delusions. Was paranoid. When he started blurring the lines between what was real and what wasn’t was when I involved his family.
He left school and then, six years later, took his own life.
Hanged himself. I spoke to him an hour before he did it and I… I didn’t know what he was going to do.”
“Kaplan…”
Her voice is thick with emotion as her fingers continue to stroke the tattoo.
“It’s okay.”
“No. I… Kaplan, I have something I need—”
Her voice gets cut off as my pager goes off.
“Shit,” I groan, reaching down to check it.
My five-year-old. Dammit. “I gotta go.” Slipping out from beneath her, I toss on my shirts and head for the door.
“Sorry. Thanks for helping my back. You can go if you’re done for the day.
You’ve already stayed longer than needed. ”
I shut the door behind me, but something is sticking in the back of my head. Even if I can’t quite place what it is.