Isaac breathed like he had trust. He pulled in his air steady and deep and exhaled it like a sigh. I wished I could be like that. But that was all gone. I listened to him for a long time, time enough for the sun to come up and try to press through the clouds. The clouds won, in Washington they always won. I was still wrapped in him, leaning against his chest—this man I didn’t know. I wanted to stretch my muscles, but I stayed still because there was something good about this. His hands were draped across my abdomen. I studied them since my eyes were the only things I dared move. They were average looking hands, but I knew that the twenty-seven bones in each of this man’s hands were exceptional. They were surrounded by muscle and tissue and nerves that together saved human life with their dexterity and precision. Hands could bruise or they could fix. His hands fixed. Eventually, his breathing lightened and I knew he was awake. It felt like a standoff to see who would make the first move. His arms left my body, and I crawled forward and stepped out of bed. I didn’t look at him as I walked to the bathroom. I washed my face and took two aspirin for my headache. When I came out he was gone. I counted the cards on the counter. He didn’t leave one that day.
He didn’t come back that night, or the next.
Or the next.
Or the next.
Or the next.
There were no more dreams, but not for lack of horror. I was afraid to sleep, so I didn’t. I sat in my office at night, drinking coffee and thinking of his red bike. It was the only color in the room—Isaac’s red bike. On January thirty-first my father called me. I was in the kitchen when the phone vibrated on the counter. There was no house phone, just my cell. I answered without looking.
“Hello, Senna.” His voice always distinct, nasally with an accent he tried not to have. My father was born in Wales and moved to America when he was twenty. He retained the European mentality and accent and dressed like a cowboy. It was one of the saddest things I’d ever seen.
“How was your Christmas?”
I immediately felt cold.
“Fine. How was yours?”
He began a detailed minute-by-minute account of how he spent Christmas Day. I was, for the most part, grateful I didn’t have to speak. He wrapped things up by telling me about his promotion at work; he said the same thing he repeated every time we spoke.
“I’m thinking about taking a trip out there to see you, Senna. Should be soon. Bill said I get an extra week’s vacation this year because I’ve been with the company twenty years.”
I’d lived in Washington for eight years and he’d never come to visit me once.
“That’d be great. Listen Dad, I’ve got some friends coming over. I should go.”
We said our goodbyes and I hung up, resting my forehead on the wall. That would be it from him until the end of April, when he would call again.
The phone rang a second time. I almost didn’t answer it, but the area code is from Washington.
“Senna Richards, this is the office of Dr. Albert Monroe.”
I racked my brain trying to place the doctor and his specialty, and then for the second time that day, my blood ran cold. “Something came up on your scan. Dr. Monroe would like you to come in to the office.”
I was leaving my house the next morning, walking to my car when his hybrid pulled into my horseshoe driveway. I stopped to watch him climb out and pull on his jacket. It was casual, almost beautiful in its grace. He’d never come this early before. It made me wonder what he did on the mornings of his days off. He walked toward me and stopped just in time to keep two solid feet between us. He was wearing a light blue fleece, pushed up past his elbows. I was shocked to see the dark ink of tattoos peeking out. What type of doctor had tattoos?
“I have a doctor’s appointment,” I said stepping around him.
“I’m a doctor.”
I was glad to be turned away from him when I smiled.
“Yes, I know. There are quite a few others in the state of Washington.”
His head jerked back like he was surprised I was anything but the stoic, expressionless victim he’d been cooking for.
I was opening the driver’s side door to my Volvo when he held out his hand for my keys.
“I’ll drive you.”
I dropped my eyes into his hand and snuck another look at the tattoos.
Words—I could just make out the tip of them. My eyes slid up the sleeves of his shirt and rested on his neck. I didn’t want to look in his eyes when I handed him my keys. A doctor who loved words. Imagine that.
I was curious. What did a man who had held a screaming woman all night have written on his body? I sat in the passenger seat and instructed Isaac where to go. My radio was on the classical station. He turned it up to hear what was playing and then lowered it back down.
“Do you ever listen to music with words?”
“No. Turn left here.”
He turned the corner and shot me a curious look.
“Why not?”
“Because simplicity speaks the loudest.” I cleared my throat and stared straight ahead. I sounded like such a chump. I felt him looking at me, cutting into me like one of his patients. I didn’t want to be dissected.
“Your book,” he said. “People talk about it. It’s not simple.”
I don’t say anything.
“You need simplicity to create complexity,” he said. “I get it. I suppose too much can clog up your creativity.”
Exactly.
I shrugged.
“This is it,” I said softly. He turned into a medical complex and pulled into a parking spot near the main entrance.
“I’ll wait for you right here.”
He didn’t ask where I was going or what I was here for. He simply parked the car where he could see me walk in and out of the building and waited.
I liked that.