Chapter Two #2
It was hard to believe that Hamlin was only eighty miles outside New York City, because it felt like another world.
Over time, he came to be known around town as a fixer of sorts.
A healer of broken creatures, large and small.
He would take a house call, only to be led toward a barn and introduced to a limping goat.
Or he would wake up in the morning to find a Girl Scout troop standing on his front porch with a box full of baby chickens.
Perhaps because he couldn’t save his own marriage, he always gave his best effort to save animals.
“You really want to do this now?” David asked.
“No, David!” She stood up from the cot she had been sitting on. “I wanted to do this two years ago! Instead, you just up and disappeared on me. I suppose I would call you a coward for leaving me the way you did, but that would be an unfair insult to deserters and quitters everywhere.”
The words cut him to the core. “Maybe . . .” he said, leaning into her, the scent of her triggering every memory shared between them “ . . . if you had come home from work once in a while, we could have had that conversation. But how long did it take for you to realize I was gone, Evelyn? A day? Two days? All eight nights of Hanukkah? Maybe the real miracle of the holiday is that you even came home long enough to notice I was missing!”
Her jaw fell to the floor. The room settled into a charged silence. He stepped back, shaking his head, embarrassed to have lost himself in the moment.
It was all so surreal, standing here in his old life, back with Evelyn.
He had thought that moving away—focusing on his own dreams, laboring with his own hands—would have allowed him to move past the losses of his life.
But sometimes, he would awaken to the sound of the rescue chickens clucking in their coop each morning and, blinking his eyes open, wonder how he had found himself living in a parallel universe.
They weren’t supposed to have ended up like this.
They were supposed to be happily married. They were supposed to have a beautiful family, happy and healthy children. He had envisioned himself and Evelyn growing old together, a bucket list of places they wanted to visit during their golden years pinned to the refrigerator . . .
And then, some sort of glitch in the matrix.
The universe conspiring against them, changing everything in an instant.
A knock on the door drew his attention away. David turned to find a woman with short black hair in the threshold.
It took him a minute to recognize her. The last time he had seen Demi Meyers, she was a nervous recent hire at CBS7-T studios, having just been taken under Evelyn’s wing as part of her mentorship program.
Now the woman at the door in the smart black jacket and tailored blue jeans was all confidence.
“Sorry to interrupt,” Demi said. “The bulk of the crew and chorus are returning, and I just wanted to check how you were feeling in terms of . . . Oh crap.”
David waved sheepishly. “Hey, Demi.”
“Hey, David. Long time no see . . .” Demi glanced nervously between him and Evelyn. “You back permanently?”
“No.”
They said it at the same time.
Evelyn explained, “Vikram had a family emergency and had to fly back to India last-minute. David was kind enough to cover for him.”
“Well, that’s great,” Demi said, being entirely too chipper. “That’s wonderful.” She rubbed the back of her short black hair nervously. “And you’re both going to be okay, working together . . . after everything that happened?”
The room fell into silence once more. After everything that happened. Understatement of the year.
“Of course, we’ll be okay,” Evelyn confirmed with a smile. “We’re both adults. We are perfectly capable of working with each other for a week without allowing our personal feelings to make it a hostile work environment for ourselves and others. Right, David?”
“Right.” He smiled, clasping his hands together. “The past is just that . . . the past.”
Everyone was smiling, which was good.
“Now, if you don’t mind, Demi,” David said, “I’m just going to finish up my exam here. But if all goes according to plan, I should have Evelyn back to you shortly.”
“That’s great news,” Demi said, mock wiping sweat away from her brow. “Because it’s not even one p.m. and we are already way behind schedule.”
“Of course.” David smiled.
With that, Demi departed. David made it a point to close the door fully behind her. Alone again, he turned back to Evelyn. Her smile had fully faded. The act she had put on for Demi was no longer necessary. Instead, she closed her eyes once more and rubbed at a spot in the middle of her forehead.
“How’s your head doing?” David asked, softly.
“Terrible,” she said, before adding, “You know, I meant what I said . . .”
He squinted. “What you said?”
“Just now, to Demi,” she clarified. “Despite our personal feelings toward each other, my shock at seeing you after all this time . . . I think it’s best that, for the remainder of this production, we keep away from one another.
And, if we can’t do that, then we should attempt to be as professional as possible.
Nobody wants to come to work and deal with our crap. ”
David nodded. “Fair enough.”
The truce agreed on between them, she took another deep breath. “So, do I have the all clear to go back to work, then?”
“My professional opinion?”
She shrugged at the throwaway question.
“I think you need to go to the hospital,” he said honestly.
She scoffed. “Well, that’s not happening.”
“You lost consciousness,” he reminded her.
“You have a headache that hasn’t gotten better since arriving in my office.
You’re getting dizzy upon standing, and you’re showing sensitivity to lights, smell and noise.
Yes, it could be a migraine, which we know you’re already prone to, but it could also be a concussion. Or, frankly, something worse.”
“Worse?”
“A traumatic brain injury. Bleeding in the brain. Swelling.”
“Oh, come on.” She waved his concern away. “It’s a migraine, David! God knows you saw plenty of them yourself over seven years.”
He caught on the words. On the memory. Her eyes lifted and latched on to his.
Another moment of silence passed between them.
They hadn’t spoken for two years, but he was surprised by how sitting beside her again triggered a thousand recollections.
He recalled the scar on her hand from when she broke a glass while making apple cider.
He remembered the way her brown curls always fell out of her hair tie at the front and got in the way of her eyes.
He remembered her migraines, too—how she constantly battled them, and him, and her doctors.
All those nights together, just the two of them, when he’d shut off the lights, opened a window to get fresh air, rubbed her temples for hours. And Evelyn had lain on the bed beneath him, eyes closed, one hand drifting casually up, interlocking around his elbow.
And then, divorce.
“Look,” Evelyn said finally, “I appreciate your due diligence on this. I’m glad to know that you’ll be here in Vikram’s stead. Despite my personal feelings—and what happened in our marriage—you were always a good doctor.”
He raised one eyebrow. “Was that, actually, a compliment?”
“Don’t let it go to your head,” she said, nonplussed. “All I’m saying is, I respect your expert opinion and I have considered your advice.”
“Good to know.”
“But—” she elongated the pause between words, driving her point home “—I’m an adult and, last I checked, still fully in charge of all my faculties. You can’t make me go to the hospital for a checkup if I don’t want to.”
“That’s true.”
He returned to his desk and scribbled the last few notes about their interaction in his daily medical records, writing the word noncompliant in big bold print in case she did actually drop dead on set from a brain aneurism and legal wanted to know what happened.
Otherwise, there was no point in talking to Evelyn. She never listened to him.
“So, I’m free to go?” she asked.
“Like you said—” he forced a smile “—my opinion doesn’t matter here.”
“Great.”
Evelyn twisted toward the door, clearly relieved.
He resigned himself to letting her go, to letting her be her own worst enemy.
Like always. But then, thinking about the worst-case scenario—about her hurting herself for real—the doctor in him took over.
Against his better judgment, he rose from his seat, scrambling to grab a pen and piece of scrap paper, and jotted down his number before chasing Evelyn down the hall.
“Evelyn,” he called out to her.
Her entire body froze, caught. She turned back around. “What?”
“Just do me one favor, will you?” he said, coming closer. “If the headaches get worse, if you find yourself having more dizzy spells, or confusion . . . come back here, okay? To the medical bay. If you’re not willing to go to the hospital, then at the very least, let me keep an eye on you.”
She considered the statement. “Okay.”
“Okay?” He breathed out all the air from his lungs, relieved.
She shrugged. “If it gets worse, if I have any unforeseen problems . . . I’ll come back here.”
“Do you still have my cell phone number?”
She swallowed. “I . . . I deleted it.”
He held up his number between them. “Call anytime, okay?”
Her eyes drifted down to the paper. She waited one beat, as if she were considering rejecting the offer, before snapping it from his fingers.
“Are we good now?” she asked quietly. Her eyes were fixed on the wall.
“We’re good.”
Evelyn disappeared back down the hall, through the alleys and channels that led to the main studios of CBS7 Television. David returned to his office, his station at the medical bay, and his desk.
The room still smelled like her.
He fell into his seat, and interlacing his fingers behind his head, leaned back.
Evelyn looked good. It had been two years, and there were a few more fine lines around her eyes, but she was just as beautiful as he remembered.
His mind wandered back to happier times, to those hazy summer nights, winter mornings, folded into each other, his head pressed up against her naked breast, his skin prickling at her touch.
She would never change, and yet a pang of longing still nestled inside his heart.