Between You and Me

“That’s a big question for a little boy.”

Another long silence. Reese had no idea what more to say. She was rescued from having to respond when someone from the chaplain’s staff stepped in. She said a reluctant farewell, and on her way out she took a shortcut across the skybridge that led to the maternity ward, which was called, not incidentally, the Powell Pavilion. It had been named in honor of her grandfather, a pioneer in human fertility in his day. She had a thought of her parents and their high-stakes, high-tech world, playing God and bringing miracles to life. What would Caleb Stoltz think of doctors whose daily work involved chemically freezing a woman’s uterus to force her to conceive?

And why should she care what he thought?

5 (#ulink_c7c60acd-b663-5f9f-ac84-dd6032bcc202)

When Reese got to her apartment that night, she stepped inside, locked the door, turned, and realized she wasn’t alone. Something strange and intrusive hung in the air—an unfamiliar energy, a sense of things out of place.

Muttering under her breath, she made her way to the kitchen. The man she was expecting to see sat at the scarred maple table, drinking a glass of wine and reading the latest issue of Vanity Fair, the Young Turks of Hollywood edition she’d stolen from a hospital exam room. It was the closest thing she’d had to an actual date in six months.

Her intruder was a slender, handsome man several years older than her, with soft eyes and a cheeky grin.

“Hey,” she said. “You know, I gave you that key to use in case of emergency.”

“It is an emergency,” said her across-the-hall neighbor, Leroy Hershberger, who had been steadily nudging his way toward a true friendship with her since he’d moved in the previous year. “I ran out of wine.”

She grabbed the bottle and poured herself a glass. “Very funny.” She clinked her glass against his and took a sip.

“I was pretty sure you wouldn’t mind,” Leroy said. “I signed for this package that came for you.” He indicated a thick clasp envelope from Johns Hopkins in those large gentle hands that made him a gifted physical therapist. “Another residency program for you to go into a cold sweat over.”

“Thanks,” she said and drank more wine, eyeing him over the rim of her glass. He had a fresh haircut from the expensive salon he frequented, and he was dressed in Abercrombie & Fitch, indulgences he claimed kept him sane by reminding him that he had a life beyond scrubs. “You look nice. Plans for the evening?”

“I got stood up. Hence the drinking.”

“No way. Who was the culprit? And how dare she stand you up?”

“Some girls have all the nerve.” He stretched his legs out, looking nonchalant, though Reese knew he was struggling with disappointment. Leroy was single and lonely. Though the two of them were not a match romantically, they often commiserated over their uneventful love lives.

“Spending a quiet evening at home is underrated.” She glanced around the room. This apartment had potential, but it didn’t feel like home. Her place had a transitory atmosphere, as if someone were just packing to leave. She’d never gotten around to hanging a picture or two on the wall, or properly shelving her collection of textbooks and favorite novels.

A few touches of her personality lingered here and there, glimmers of a need for more depth and permanence. There was a quilt made for her by a former patient, draped over a painted wooden chair, and a cuckoo clock that had once belonged to her grandmother. Her kitchen tools included an embossed rolling pin and a pie fluter, which she’d never had a chance to use. She had a working fish tank with nothing but water and plastic plants in it.

She kept meaning to make the place feel more lived in, but work and studying kept getting in the way. If she followed her parents’ plan for her, she’d eventually be able to afford a fabulous house on the river, or a highrise condo, or maybe a colonial tract mansion in the suburbs. The trouble was, she didn’t seem to fit into the picture of her own life.

Like Caleb Stoltz didn’t fit, she thought, remembering the image of him standing hat in hand in his nephew’s hospital room.

She took another quick sip of wine. How much would the Amish man tolerate of the therapy Jonah was going to need?

Leroy stood up and walked around behind her, using his gentle, talented hands to massage her neck and shoulders. A skilled physical therapist, he had a way of digging into the source of tension. “I think rigor mortis has set in,” he said. “You’re stiff as a … stiff.”

“Very funny.”

“Rough day?”

“You could say that. Strange day.”

“I thought you were having dinner with your parents tonight,” he said.

She glanced at the calendar stuck to the refrigerator. “Nosy.” Every single day, it seemed, had something written in it. Interview with Jacobson. Study group, 6:00 P.M. Board review, 6:30 A.M.

“Jesus,” Leroy said. “Look at the way you schedule yourself. It’s not normal. I bet you schedule your bowel movements.”

She finished her wine. “Who has time for that?”

“There’s one thing missing on that calendar,” he said.

“Yeah? What’s that?”

“A social life. A life of any kind at all. In case you haven’t noticed, it’s something most people aspire to.”

“I’ll get a life once I get through the Match.”

“Sure you will. Except once you get yourself placed in the first residency, you have to make it into the next one, and once you find that, you have to apply for another, and after that you need to concentrate on your specialty, and then your subspecialty, and then—”

“All right, all right. You made your point.” She went over to the refrigerator, picked one of the few dates that wasn’t taken, and scrawled Get a life in the empty space. “At least I wasn’t stood up by—who was it this time, Roberta the caterer, right?”

“Roberta, yes. And yes, she’s a caterer. The rest of my day was fine. Two stroke patients, some back therapy, an accident victim with a major chip on his shoulder. He was no picnic, but I made him channel his rage into getting around in a wheelchair.”

She sat back down, poured more wine into her glass. “Have you ever worked with an amputee?”

“Sure. I have a certification in prosthetics.”

“There was an amputation in trauma today,” she said. “A little boy lost his arm.”

“That sucks. Poor kid. What happened?”

“It was a farming accident. He stuck his hand in a grinder or shredder of some sort. Amish kid,” she added. “I’d never treated an Amish kid before today. I’ve never even met anyone Amish.”

A funny look came over Leroy’s face. “I wouldn’t be too sure about that.”

She didn’t get it at first. And then, all of a sudden, she did. “Holy crap, Leroy. Do you mean to tell me you’re Amish?”

“I was. Not anymore, obviously.”

In an odd way, Reese felt betrayed. “How can you be Amish and never have told me? You’re my closest neighbor. I’m supposed to know everything about you.”

“I knew you for six months before you told me you were a test-tube baby,” he pointed out.

“I didn’t think it was important,” she said with a distracted wave of her hand.

“Oh, right. Being the result of your parents’ medical specialty has defined you, princess. The petri dish princess.”

“And being Amish has obviously defined you. Why the hell didn’t you tell me?” She stared at him as if regarding a stranger. Leroy? Amish? How could Leroy be Amish?

There was nothing remotely Amish about this man. Yet now that he’d said something, a few facts became clear. Since she’d known him she’d never met anyone in his family. When she’d asked about it, he’d said his family shunned him because he’d refused to marry a girl he was promised to and had moved to the city.

“You weren’t kidding,” she said, “about the shunning you once told me about. Your family really did shun you. In the Amish way.”