4. Dalton
4
DALTON
I ’m toast after a twenty-hour ER shift that involved more bodily fluids than the morning after a frat party, and about as much regret on the part of our patients. It was messy, unglamorous work, the stuff an intern’s bad days are made of.
But today I have a bed waiting for me, a real one. I don’t have to sleep on Jerry’s floor or end up the jungle gym for his pair of hyperactive chihuahuas.
Nadia shouldn’t be at the new place. I haven’t talked to her since we got the keys. But it’s a little past nine a.m., smack in the middle of her deli shift, and I have hours ahead of blissful solitary sleep.
I can almost feel the pure bliss of smooth sheets on my cheek.
Sunlight angles into the space as I open the door. It’s spotlessly clean, which is good. The stranger I’m living with isn’t so much of a slob that she wrecked it in a day.
I look for signs of her, a few clues to who she might be other than the goddess in a pencil skirt I’ve known for maybe two hours.
There are blackout curtains on the window and a blue comforter on the bed. Nice. Living with a woman has its perks.
I drop a trash bag and my oversized army duffle onto the floor. For a moment, I run my hand over the name MURPHY stenciled in black on its dark green surface. It belonged to Dad. I lost him a long time ago to complications from a wound he got in Afghanistan.
I already know enough from med school that I could have helped. But I was only fourteen then. And nobody could make him go to doctors. He was stubborn that way.
He might not even approve of my med school, had he known. I like to think he’d be proud, though. No sense assuming any different.
I open the closet. It’s empty. I realize there’s not enough space for one of us, much less both, so I leave it to Nadia. Maybe she wants to discuss it before we fill it. It doesn’t matter. I don’t have much and no time to accumulate more.
There’s a dresser up against the wall. I pull the drawers open. Also empty. I take only the bottom one. She can have the other two.
I don’t need much in the drawer, just extra scrubs, socks, and underwear. I don’t have a life outside of work at the moment. I remove my toiletry bag and leave my workout clothes and a few nicer outfits in the duffle.
I head to the kitchen. The cabinets are mostly empty and the refrigerator bears only a stack of peach yogurt and a bag of apples. We will fill it in time.
Maybe I can spot a garage sale this weekend and nab some dishes. Mom loves a good yard sale. She copies the pickers on the TV shows and always offers a price for multiple things, so it seems like a lot of money even if she’s getting half of it for free.
She’s smart. Her ship simply never came in. I hope I can change that. I’m determined to. Now that I’m paying half of what I expected, I can send her more.
We were homeless more than once growing up, Dad going to one shelter, and Mom and I to another. If Dad was too bad off to leave, we would sleep in the backs of post offices that had all-night access to the mailboxes, mainly so we could all be together to make sure he was okay.
That won’t happen again to Mom. Not on my watch.
I flip on the light in the bathroom. This smaller space smells of Nadia, a scent I didn’t expect to already know.
My hair is wild and my eyes are bloodshot. That’s terrifying.
I’m relieved to see there’s a shower curtain up. I expected Nadia to do something pastel and feminine, but it’s clear with cartoon images of cats all over it. Maybe she does rescue kittens.
I set my toiletry bag by the sink and return to the duffle to fetch one of my two towels plus something to sleep in.
Shower, then shut-eye.
The water is hot and plentiful, even if my cheap shampoo obliterates the smell of Nadia. I dry off and change into a T-shirt and shorts.
I consider my bag with a toothbrush and toiletries. I’ll leave them in my zipper pouch for now. I shove it in the cabinet under the sink.
Nadia can have the shelves behind the mirror. She’s bound to have more things than I do.
Right as I turn out the light, I sense a movement in the main room.
She can’t be here. It’s too early, plus there’s no place that isn’t obvious. There’s only one big space plus the bathroom.
Still, I say, “Nadia?”
No answer.
It’s dim in the main room with the lights out and the windows covered. I’m tired and probably seeing things. The place is unfamiliar.
The bed calls to me. I almost lie on it when I realize I shouldn’t take over her pretty bedding.
I open the black trash bag that holds the old comforter I used on Jerry’s floor for the last two weeks. It’s black with the colorful figures of four Transformer figures emblazoned on both sides.
Jerry gave me real hell about it, but it’s one of the few things I have from childhood. Mom would lug it around in a trash bag like this to make sure I was always warm and comfortable wherever we landed.
It’s big enough to cover Nadia’s ruffled number. As it lands over the expanse of the bed, I quickly follow its path.
I’ve just sunk my head against Optimus Prime when I sense another movement, a quick shadow near the floor.
Then a rustle of plastic.
I jump to my feet. A rat? This place seemed cleaner than that.
My ears tingle as I stand still to listen.
There’s nothing.
But I can sense something here.
A broom leans against the wall. My fingers tighten around the handle. I sweep beneath the bed, instantly hitting several solid objects.
I flip on the flashlight function of my phone as a light and kneel to take a look. A row of suitcases fills the space, a matching set with Louis Vuitton stamped on the sides. Figures.
I scoot them with the broom, trying to flush out what’s under there, not completely sure I want to deal with whatever it is.
Then something brushes against my forehead, soft and sweeping, like a feather. It’s on the bed now.
I imagine a squirrel or a raccoon.
But I look up, and I swear it’s a furry mountain lion staring down at me. It’s huge. It opens its mouth, but no sound comes out.
Like a horror movie.
I back up like a crab, shocked and startled. The broom falls to the carpet with a thud.
But the thing doesn’t move, tilting its head in a question.
What is it exactly?
It’s a cat, but no cat like I’ve ever seen. It’s the size of a cocker spaniel, with tan and black stripes like something wild.
“Who are you?” I ask.
It simply watches me.
“Are you friend or foe?”
It apparently decides I’m no threat and curls up on my transformer bedspread. It takes up a good quarter of the bed, its fuzzy tail wrapped elegantly around its body.
So it is a cat, maybe in its monster form.
I lift my phone to text Nadia about this intruder, then realize that I don’t know her number. We never exchanged contact information even as we signed paperwork to share a home.
Is this cat hers? Is it one of her rescues? The one that made her ask about the pet policy at the first apartment?
She didn’t mention it, but then we were always with the leasing agent when we were together.
It’s one thing to hide an illegal cat when it’s normal sized. But this one?
I reach out to poke it, but the monster feline narrows its gold eyes at me.
Yeah, it could probably eat me for breakfast.
I’m too long for the sofa, so I guess it’s back to the floor for me, this time without so much as my Transformer blanket. At least there’s carpet.
I might sleep with one eye open.