Page 22 of Bonds of Shame, Bonds of Lust

I sat staring at the closed door. That last line was a little creepy.

I knew what was in his donor file without opening it. Forty-six, military contractor. Foundation in his late wife's name. Hospital board seat. And underneath all of it, in every appointment I'd ever had with him, Jessica. Mostly Jessica.

Almost five years. Every appointment involved an argument. He'd made me a better doctor, and I'd never told him so.

And then there was the scarf.

Camel-colored cashmere, folded and tucked into the inner pocket of his coat. I'd glimpsed it once, months ago, when he reached for his wallet at the coat check after a benefit dinner. He didn't use it. It wasn't a scarf he wore. It was a scarf he kept. I'd known it from Pamela wearing it when she was pregnant, the scarf bright against her dark coat. Derek had never mentioned it. He tucked it into his pocket with a quick, practiced motion and went back to being Derek F. Harrington without missing a beat.

I'd thought about that scarf more than once since. It was the folding, I think. He folded it perfectly, almost obsessively.

I thought about the exam room. How he positioned himself between me and the door when he disagreed with something, not aggressively, just there, solid, taking up more room than he needed to. The time, midway through an argument about Jessica's cardiac rehab plan, he glanced at me with real puzzlement and said I was the most stubborn person he'd ever dealt with. And the way he arranged things. On desks, counters. I don't think he even knows when he does it.

He challenged everything I said and arrived prepared to cite the literature back at me, and he came to every appointment, on time, Jessica's hand in his, regardless of his grudge against the medical system. This was a man who showed up and paid attention.

Outside the window the early light had shifted. I hadn't gone back to my report.

A gala was different than the clinic. I'd seen him outside it once, at the benefit dinner, and even there he'd carried a weight on him, the same gravity in a better suit. I had never seen him set it down. And I wanted to know what was left when he did, whether there was a person under the gravity, at a dinner, with a glass in his hand.

Derek Harrington. Of all people. A column of restraint with a checkbook attached.

I tried to put it where I put these things.

This wouldn't go in. I turned it one way and another and it didn't fit anything I understood, because it wasn't quite wanting, and I had no compartment for a man who kept his grief folded in his coat.

I pulled the report forward. It was just a dinner. I read the first line three times, flustered by my assignment. I closed the laptop and went to find my first patient.

That night I called Janice and told her my bad news. "Allison's making me be Derek Harrington's date at the gala."

"Derek Harrington." A pause. "You don't sound all that upset."

"I'm furious. The man's insufferable. He thinks he owns every room he walks into, he argues with everything I say, and Allison, for reasons known only to God and Allison, keeps throwing me at him."

"Well, you aren't getting any argument from me, sister. I hardly know the guy and I can't stand him." I could hear her thinking. "But the MRI's for your department. You'd be the one using it. You're his kid's doctor. From where Allison sits, you're the obvious person to charm the checkbook out of him."

"Traitor."

She laughed, the easy one. "Sorry, babe. I call it like I see it."

"Yeah, yeah." I leaned back against the headboard. "Well. He's single and miserable, same as me. Maybe we'll bond."

"Misery loves company. But I wouldn't bond with that one for anything." I could hear her smiling. "But you might have fun."

"Fun." I turned the word over and set it back down where I'd found it. "Right."

14 - JUST LUNCH

Lacey

Lunch. Sunday. But if it gets weird, I'm leaving.

She replied in under a minute.

Deal. 1:00, The Bluebird. I'll be there at 12:45 so you don't have to walk in alone.

Lunch felt safer than dinner. Dinner implied evening, which implied darkness, which implied things I wasn't ready to imagine. Lunch was just food in the middle of the day. And I could always get up and leave from lunch.

Sunday arrived without fanfare, with no regard for the fact that this one was different. Morning rounds, the routine of the work that had been holding me together since the cat cam, the way a cast holds a bone. I got home to Whiskers winding around my ankles and an empty house that had finally stopped feeling like a wound. Progress, maybe. Or just time.