A Doctor in His House

Claudia. Even in her impaired state, Scarlett could hear the heat and softness in his voice. “No, there’s been a delay,” he said. “I’ll be a little later than I wanted, I’m so sorry.” He listened for a moment, then controlled a sigh. “Hopefully before dark.”

He’d made the decision. It was settled. Daniel Porter was staying.

“Yeah, me, too, can’t wait …” Andy said. He was grinning, she could tell. He ended the call and his tone changed. “Dan, thanks. I really appreciate it. Can I make a list of errands? I’ll pick up the script for her medication and drop it back here, but if you could shop for something to eat?”

“Whatever you need,” Daniel said. “Scarlett—” he cleared his throat again, and again she heard a floorboard creak as he made a shift in his weight “—help me make a list.”

He most definitely knew who she was. It was clear, now.

He felt as awkward about it as she did, she could tell even with her eyes closed and her head throbbing, and the fact of her migraine was almost convenient in masking the odd, complicated feeling in the air, but it still wasn’t enough. “Soup,” she said. “And toast.”

“Yeah, let’s talk about what you’ll need to do.” Andy sounded so much more cheerful, in a hurry to get everything sorted and take to the road.

“For a start, her car,” Daniel answered. “I can head back to the station and get someone to drive me down to Route 47. It’s not far. Then the store. I’ll run home and change, too, grab a couple of things.”

“Okay, let’s check what I have on hand.” Both men began to move, heading toward the kitchen. It was a relief to Scarlett to be left on her own, with their voices in the background, working out the details.

“She can sleep here tonight,” Andy said. “Doesn’t make sense for her to move next door to the rental apartment, where the refrigerator and pantry are both empty.” Scarlett heard the sound of his refrigerator door opening as he checked its contents. “We need milk and bread.”

“I’ll write it all down.”

“This is great, Daniel. I really appreciate it,” Andy repeated. “When you don’t even know her …”

Oh, but he did.

He stayed silent about it, and so did she.

Andy left after about five minutes, apologizing to Scarlett and Daniel and thanking them all the way out the door, saying he’d drop the medication in before he left for the city, probably in an hour or so. They both listened—or at least Scarlett assumed Daniel was listening—to his car backing out of the driveway, and then another eerie and uncomfortable silence fell.

“Please turn on the TV,” Scarlett eventually said.

“What would you like to watch?”

“Nothing. But you must be getting bored.”

“I’m reading. Found some crime fiction.”

“Right, okay, then, sorry.” He must have given the book a flourish, because she could hear the riffle of the pages.

“You should try to rest, shouldn’t you? Sleep?” She heard the creak of the adjacent armchair where he must have sat down.

Sleep was a thousand miles away. “I’ll try,” she lied. Time passed, stretched out and endless the way it had seemed in her car before Daniel had stopped. “Please can we have the TV?” she said at last. “I need the distraction.”

She heard him stand. “Sorry,” he said. “I didn’t realize.”

“It’s okay.”

He picked up the remote, swore under his breath a couple of times as he pressed the wrong buttons, but then the sound came on. She heard snatches of music, gunfire, voices shouting, canned laughter, a newsreader’s measured words, and guessed he was surfing the channels. “What do you feel like?”

“Keep pressing. Stop for a little on each channel. I’ll tell you.”

He surfed some more. How many channels did Andy get? She heard weather and more news, a cooking show, an old Western, then Angela Lansbury.

“Stop there,” she said.

“Murder, She Wrote?”

“I’ve probably seen it.” Every episode, at least three times, late at night while winding down from a heavy on-call or a heart-rending session with the parents of a gravely ill child. She’d watched most every detective series over and over. “I can fill in the visuals from the dialogue.” She liked the old-fashioned, family-orientated crime shows, the less graphic and confronting ones, the ones with a nice twist and a lovable sleuth and a satisfying ending, nothing too confusing or clever or challenging. Comfort food on a screen.

“Okay. Murder, She Wrote, it is.”

“Sorry, it’s probably a lot less interesting than your book.”

“I’m not really getting into the book. So it’s fine.”

“Thanks.”

“No problem, Scarlett.”

I know you know I know.

But still they didn’t say it, and she felt horribly out of her depth about it, because of the fact that she couldn’t see.

Daniel had caught the beginning of the episode. After a few minutes, she recognized which one it was. The one with—

“Well, what do you know?” he said. “That’s George Clooney!”

Yes, she’d remembered it right. George wasn’t the murderer, just the clean-cut love interest for one of the other characters, mugging in the background with a top-heavy mop of 1980s hair.

“Funny where people start, isn’t it?” she said, before she thought. “And where they … end up?”

“Yeah, it is.”

Like the two of them, right now, in Andy’s house, with her unable to look at Daniel or move.

You know I know you know.

But we seem to be agreeing not to say it, now.

“Can I get you anything?” he asked. “Andy has fixings for a BLT, or grilled cheese sandwich.”

“No, thanks. Just … more water?”

“Of course.”

He went out to the kitchen and refreshed the glass. She opened her eyes and could just make out the dark, blurred bulk of his figure on its way through the door. She’d forgotten the size of him, and the big shoulders. She closed her eyes again, thinking that maybe, blessedly, the brightness had grown a little less extreme.

A minute later she heard him bend down to her, heard the sound of his clothing shift and slide against his body. His knuckles pressed lightly against her cheek while she took the same awkward sips as before, and something familiar came to her senses, a charge of awareness and need that she shouldn’t be feeling when her vision still churned and her head still pounded like this.