We sat on rocks under the shade of a tree near the stream and ate. The day was unusually warm for spring. Ava wore faded, tight jeans rolled up and a beige cotton blouse with short lace sleeves. When she leaned over I could see the swells of her breasts? glistening from sweat. Her skin was a warm, natural tone.
“Why did you move here from California?” I asked.
She glanced up, looking conflicted. “Nate . . .” I could tell from her expression that she wanted to tell me things but couldn’t find the words. She looked back down at her feet. I remembered our rule of no talking.
I stopped chewing and swallowed while I stared at the side of her face intensely. “Take down your hair, Ava,” I said in a purposeful tone. Something came over me suddenly and I felt the need to touch her, like my body was moving of its own accord.
Facing her on the rock, I watched as she kept her gaze straight ahead and slowly slipped the tie from her ponytail. Her long, straight hair fell cleanly down her shoulders. I reached and grabbed her by the side of the neck and pulled her toward me. She didn’t resist but didn’t face me either. I leaned into her hair and inhaled so deeply I felt drowsy. I was shocked by how drawn I felt to touching her and equally shocked that she had obeyed me and submitted to my touch.
It was like there was a force beyond me creating the involuntary movements of my hands on her body. She smelled of sweet alyssum like no one I had ever known, so sweet and natural only God could create it—a reminder of salvation in the secular age we were living in.
I wanted to rub her skin against mine. I glanced down her shirt and wondered if her sweat tasted as sweet as she smelled. I wanted to be inside of her. I was impossibly close to telling her to take her clothes off. Somehow I knew she would do it if I asked. It seemed like she was that directionless at times. It was as though her mind was a pinwheel endlessly spinning on a TV screen, and she was waiting for someone to come along and change the channel. She seemed lost and fragile one minute and then sharp and callous the next. I knew I couldn’t take advantage of someone like Ava, even though in the moment I was one hundred percent sure she wanted to escape it all with me.
My heart was racing, pushing blood to the center of my body, thumping so powerfully that it actually scared me. I ran marathons and cycled for miles, I was conditioned for stamina, yet I found myself completely out of breath in her presence. I hadn’t thought about the hospital or Lizzy or surgery at all that day, but suddenly, and for the first time in my life, as I sat there breathing Ava in, I thought about our hearts in relation to love.
Surprised by the thought, I got up abruptly, breathing rapidly. I stood prostrate from the shock, held my hand over my chest, and stared down at her. I couldn’t form words.
A horrified look washed over her face and then morphed into embarrassment as her cheeks flushed pink. She got up and began running over the rocks toward the hill. I felt confused and guilty and chased after her.
“Ava, wait!”
Her bare foot slid across a moss-covered rock and sent her flying off her feet backward. It seemed like slow motion as I watched her turn in the air to protect her body. She landed on her side violently over jagged rocks.
She let out a deep moan. I ran to her and knelt. Her eyes were pressed shut as she began to cry. Her cry reminded me of Lizzy’s mother, unprocessed and real.
“Are you hurt?”
“Yes,” she managed to force out with a heavy breath.
“Where?” I said frantically. I scanned her body as she lay curled in the fetal position.
“Inside.”
“For Christ’s sake, where, Ava? Please let me help you. I’m a doctor.”
Her bloodshot eyes opened as her hand moved slowly to her chest. She firmly pressed the space over her heart. “In here. I’m bleeding. I must be,” she said, falling into a fit of full, powerful sobs.
Complete understanding struck me. I took her into my arms, cradled her like a baby, and let her sob into my chest. I had gone too far back on the rock and she was struggling with it.
After an hour of holding her tight, I felt her body relax. She had fallen asleep in my arms.
I thought back to a time when I had assisted on an eighteen-hour surgery with my father and another established doctor. Things kept going wrong but my father had remained steadfast. It was hard to understand how he had the physical stamina but I quickly learned that being a doctor required that. I had held forceps and a clamp on a bleeding artery for four hours straight during that surgery while my father tried to figure out the problem.