Chapter 3
CABIN FEVER
Melinda
I smell coffee before I open my eyes.
Rich and dark and already made.
For one perfect second I forget where I am.
Then it all comes back.
The parking structure.
The shot. The running. The wall I ran into that turned out to be a person.
I lie there staring at a ceiling I don't recognize in a room that smells like pine and closed-up air and the faint presence of whoever stayed here last.
First morning.
One night down.
No idea how many to go.
I get up and pull on yesterday's scrubs, the same I was wearing when my life changed.
I need to ask for some of my things to be brought over at some point.
I add it to the mental list that already includes clean underwear and the plant on my windowsill that is almost certainly already dead.
I pad out to the kitchen in my socks.
The floors are old wood, cold, the kind that creaks if you hit the wrong board.
The coffee is made.
A full pot of still hot, black, coffee, which is not how I take it.
I’m able to find sugar in the cabinet and fix that and stand at the counter with both hands around the mug.
He's not inside.
I notice that before I notice anything else.
I drift toward the window.
Then I stop.
He's on the porch.
Doing pull-ups.
From the beam.
Without a shirt.
I stand there for longer than I should.
I cannot help it.
Yes, I am a doctor.
But I’m also a woman.
I have a precise and clinical understanding of human musculature.
I can name every muscle currently in use as he pulls himself up and lowers himself down in a slow controlled rhythm that suggests he has been at this since well before I was awake.
I do not name the muscles.
Instead, I stand at the window and drink my coffee and pretend to not be admiring his chest, muscles and tattoos.
I take in the view of the mountainside while out of the corner of my eye I can still appreciate the broad shoulders rolling with each rep.
Not to mention the long line of his back.
The scar along his ribs, pale and jagged against tan skin, that catches the early light.
A story I don't know yet, but I make a note to ask later.
And the tattoos.
A dark band of ink around his left bicep.
There is something I can't quite read across the right side of his chest, simple lines, no color.
And down his ribs on the side opposite the scar, what looks like a small set of coordinates in dense black numerals.
Nope not coordinates, a date and a place.
Something important he keeps written on his own skin, so he doesn't forget.
His jaw is set. Eyes somewhere else entirely. He's not performing. He doesn't know I'm watching.
He drops from the beam in one clean movement and turns around.
Catches me at the window.
I should look away, but I don't.
There is a moment, brief, suspended, where we just look at each other through the glass.
The morning between us doing something I don't have a clinical term for.
His expression doesn't change.
Mine probably does everything.
He reaches for his t-shirt on the porch railing, pulls it on, and comes inside.
The doorway is narrow and he fills it completely, and I am suddenly aware of how warm the cabin is compared to the cold coming off him.
"Coffee's ready," I say.
Brilliant. My finest hour.
"I know. I made it."
He pours a mug and leans against the opposite counter.
He looks at me the way he looks at everything, steady and thorough. Like he has all the time in the world.
Except this doesn't feel like he’s taking notes about me.
This feels like being seen.
I have been seen by a lot of people in my life.
But this is different.
And I don't know what to do with different, which is how I end up doing something impulsive before the sensible part of my brain catches up to the rest of me.
I lean up and kiss him.
It’s. quick and soft and over before it properly begins.
He goes completely still. All of him.
Like I've pressed pause on the whole room.
I pull back.
His expression hasn't changed, but something behind his eyes has moved into territory I don't have a map for.
"Sorry," I say. "I don't know why I?—"
"Don't."
I blink. "Don't apologize?"
He holds my gaze. Something deliberate in it. "Don't."
He reaches past me and refills his mug.
Then returns to his side of the kitchen.
The words settle.
Not don't do that.
Not a door closing.
Don't apologize for it.
I turn to face the counter and give myself a firm internal lecture about professional circumstances and the appropriate order of events.
My lips are still warm, and the lecture is less persuasive than it should be.
"You should eat something," he says completely even, like a man unaffected.
"There's more than protein bars in this kitchen. I've already been through the cabinets twice,” I say appreciatively.
He looks at me. "It was restocked before we arrived. Standard Eagle kit."
"Standard Eagle kit includes actual eggs and what appears to be a very respectable selection of spices?"
"It includes sufficient provisions for?—"
"I'm making breakfast."
"You don't have to?—"
"I know I don't have to." I'm already opening the refrigerator. "I'm doing it anyway. Sit down."
"You're telling me to sit down in my own house."
"I'm telling you to sit down so I can cook without someone running a threat assessment on my technique."
He sits down.
I find eggs and real cheese, not the processed kind.
There are fresh herbs in a sealed container that tells me whoever stocks this place takes food seriously.
"This is significantly better provisioned than a safe house has any right to be."
"Eagle doesn't cut corners on provisions."
"Eagle cuts corners on sleeping arrangements but not on fresh thyme."
"The couch was here before we made it a last-minute safe house."
"Well, the couch is medieval."
I hear something from the table. Not quite a sound, just the suggestion of one.
I glance over my shoulder.
He's looking at the table, but the corner of his mouth is doing the tug, and the sound was the less than a syllable grunt.
I turn back to the eggs before I do something inadvisable.
I cook the way I do everything: fast, talking the whole time, adjusting as I go.
Then I stop.
I steady my breath and set the pan more deliberately on the burner.
I let myself work in silence for almost a full minute.
The eggs go from chaos to method with heat lowered, and butter added at the right moment.
The wooden spoon moving in the slow steady rhythm I learned in residency when there was no margin for anything else.
When I speak again my voice is different.
It’s lower, the voice I use with families in waiting rooms.
"The secret to eggs is heat management. Most people are afraid of them. The fear is detectable."
"Eggs respond to fear?"
"Scrambled eggs especially."
"You're saying eggs are sentient."
"I'm saying they're responsive. There's a difference."
"Is there?"
"Ask any cook."
"I'm asking you."
I look over my shoulder. He's watching me with an expression I can't fully read.
Something in it that isn't part of the job.
Something that is paying attention the way you pay attention to things that matter.
"Yes," I say. "There is."
I plate the omelets and slide one across to him.
Then I sit down with my own.
He picks up his fork and takes a bite. Says nothing.
"Well?"
"It's good."
"It's better than good and you know it."
"It's good," he says again.
I watch him. He eats his omelet.
But his face gives nothing away.
"You have the most aggressively neutral expression of any person I've ever met."
"Thank you."
"That wasn't a compliment."
"I know."
He has a second cup of coffee.
So, do I.
The morning light comes through the east window.
It’s not as good as my apartment, the one I chose because of the light, but it’s something.
Something that is, quietly, enough.
The problem with a man who doesn't talk is that the silence has weight.
It sits in the room like a third person.
It takes up space and offers its own opinions.
He settles at the table with his phone after breakfast and becomes part of the furniture.
He is completely still, completely contained, completely unbothered by the fact that I am a person who requires stimulation and we are in a cabin with finite options.
I try the news on my phone.
I get the impression that Torres has restricted my data access to headlines only.
I try the kitchen cabinets.
Now that I know what's in them, I reorganize by frequency of use.
He looks up when I move the coffee to the front but doesn't say anything.
I try the bookshelves.
There is a water-damaged thriller missing the last forty pages, a field guide to Pacific Northwest birds, and a 1987 almanac.
I read the bird guide for twenty minutes.
The varied thrush has a distinctive buzzing call unlike any other North American thrush.
I put the bird guide down.
I pace.
He watches and goes back to his phone.
I pace more.
The cabin is eleven steps from front wall to back.
I know because I count.
"Is there anything I'm allowed to do?"
"Within the cabin."
"That's a parameter, not an answer."
He looks up and I lose my train of thought.
He has very direct eye contact.
It's becoming a problem.
"You could read."
"I've read everything Torres hasn't blocked on the internet, which is the weather, half a banana bread recipe, and the complete behavioral habits of the varied thrush."
"What did you learn?"
I look at him.
"They have a distinctive buzzing call. Unlike any other North American thrush."
"Useful."
"It is not useful."
"You never know."
The corner of his mouth moves. Again, not quite a smile. The ghost one. The same one I saw last night when I told him yes, I was going to be difficult, and he said good .
I've been thinking about that since the parking structure.
I should stop thinking about that.
"I need something to do. Give me something useful."
He looks at me. "After lunch. We go through everything you remember. Every detail. I want all of it."
"A proper debrief."
"Yes."
"You should have done that last night."
"You'd been through enough last night."