The Alphabet of Love Ch. 02

I wasn't in any hurry to get to Wenatchee. My friend Isabel would still be awake no matter how late it was; she was a raging insomniac. She did most of her baking and laundry in the middle of the night. Weekends with her generally exhausted me so I knew any idea of rest was out of the question. Still, I loved seeing her. We'd been friends since high school and our lives had taken widely diverging paths. While I'd gone off to college, she stayed in Wenatchee and took some classes at the junior college before taking a job with a real estate office. She was out every weekend partying, dating, swimming or skiing - just doing what a young, single girl does when she's free and exploring life.

About six years ago, after I'd entered medical school and had virtually no life outside of it to speak of, Isabel married a guy she'd only known for three months. I met him at the wedding and I had a bad, bad feeling about him. He ended up beating her on a regular basis, and fathering her child somewhere along the way. Isabel escaped to her mother's house just before she gave birth to her daughter, Tila. She lived with her mother for the first two years of her child's life, in fear of her husband. Eventually he lost interest in her and the baby, and left town with some other woman. Isabel divorced him and had been trying to get back on her feet ever since.

These days she was working toward her real estate license, living in an apartment in East Wenatchee, and thinking about dating again. She and I had plenty of horror stories about men between the two of us, though I'd never been physically abused.

I stayed with Isabel most of the time when I came back to Wenatchee, even though my family mostly still lived here. My parents divorced when I was small, both remarried and had more children. I'd always been the odd one out - older, not fully belonging in one family or the other. I became a loner or a babysitter, depending on what was required of me. My Mom was currently on her third husband. Her son and daughter, my half-siblings, were the apples of her eye and could do no wrong. She'd doted on them as she never had me. I'd been expected to buck up and deal with being shunted off to one parent or the other all the time, never really wanted in either place. My Dad's two daughters got the same treatment as my Mom's other kids. He liked to ask me if they weren't little angels - he'd never called me a little angel in my life.

Resentful? Yes, I was. I determined that I was the only person I could rely on, so I aimed high. I didn't ask for any help to get into college or medical school. I worked my ass off. I went to bed dog tired more times than I could count, and dragged myself to class or to an extracurricular job at ungodly hours. I'd determined to prove to myself that I did not need any of them, with their sanctimonious condescension and their expectations that I'd do whatever they wanted me to.

Once I became a resident and actually started to make some money, the demands and pleas began. Mostly it was my mother, exhorting me to help my siblings out since, after all, I was a doctor and I should do my duty to my family. She seemed to conveniently forget that I had thousands in college loans to pay back, and became quite annoyed when I refused to fork over money to her two spoiled rotten brats. To this day, neither of them had moved out of her house; the boy, Adrian, lived there with his knocked-up girlfriend, and his sister, Morwenna (an ugly name for an ugly person) flitted from dead end job to dead end job because her coke habit was more important to her than anything else.

My intent was to arrive in Wenatchee after dark so that there would be no chance of anyone in my family seeing my car. I didn't want them to know I was in town lest the begging and guilt-tripping take up where it left off the last time I was here. Wenatchee was small enough that I might very well drive past someone I knew on any street. Once I got to Isabel's I'd let her drive us wherever we needed to go.

All my family drama was old news, and the less I thought about it, the better. I'd long since made peace with my situation and now only saw my family when I absolutely had to. The last few years I'd volunteered to take call at the hospital on Thanksgiving and Christmas so I wouldn't have to spend time with them. This year, I'd already booked myself a week in Vegas for Christmas. I could hardly wait.

As excited as I was about going to Vegas, I hated admitting to myself that I wished I had someone to come along. A man. Someone to have fun with. Someone sexy and smart. Like Trevor. Oh no, I scolded myself. The guy would probably say yes if I asked him to join me. He'd tell me his wife wouldn't even miss him. Maybe she wouldn't but - no. No married men.

As I drove East on I-90 out of Seattle, I thought about the short time I'd spent with the very handsome Dr. Banks, our conversation, his smile, and those blue eyes. He could have any woman he wanted, I knew that. A guy like that, whose father might become President of the United States - he wouldn't seriously waste his time on some boring nephrologist. Fashion models were more suited to his lifestyle, I thought. He needed a trophy wife. He'd probably divorce his political junkie wife, I thought. She didn't seem all that interested in keeping him if she worked all the time. If I had a man like that I'd sure as hell be finding ways to spend time with him. Holy shit.

Two hours later, Isabel uncorked one of the bottles of wine I'd brought and filled two glasses.

"To good friends!" she cried, as we clinked glasses and spilled wine on her kitchen counter.

It felt great to be here in her slightly unkempt little apartment, Tila's toys strewn about, and a warm smell of yumminess emanating from the oven. Little Tila had conked out before I arrived, but I'd see her in the morning. I'd help Isabel straighten up the place before her friends from pre-school came over for her birthday party.

"Got the couch made up for you," Isabel said, taking a rather large gulp of wine. "I really wouldn't mind if you want to sleep with me, you know."

I shook my head. "I know you, you don't sleep. I had a long day, I had to get up early to see a patient, and I'm beat."

"Damn," she said with a smile. "I swear we'd make great lesbians."

"Oh, so that's your new plan?" I asked her with a laugh.

She pushed a strand of dark hair out of her face and shrugged. "Maybe women wouldn't fuck me over like guys do."

"Nah, I think women are just as bad. More petty, even."

"I'm just doomed to never find anyone," she sighed, shoulders slumping.

"I find plenty of men," I nodded. "But they're either assholes, losers, or married. Met one of those today, in fact."

"Yeah?" she perked up.

"And what's worse is, he's fucking hot. Tall, blond, blue eyes. You know that actress, Lindsay Banks?"

She nodded. "She's in my favorite HBO show! Happy Hearts!"

"He's her brother."

"No way!"

"Way. And his Dad is going to run for President."

"Are you shitting me?" she asked, just as the timer went off on her oven.

"No," I assured her.

She grabbed a potholder and drew out a cookie sheet with perfectly golden handmade bread sticks. My mouth started to water. She slid them off onto a plate and set them in front of me.

"So how did you meet this guy?" she asked me, hunting in the fridge for butter.

I gingerly picked up a hot bread stick. "He's a surgeon. We have a mutual patient."

"A surgeon!" she wheeled around to look at me. "You always wanted to do a surgeon, you said. To see if they're really that good with their hands."

"Oh Jesus," I hung my head. I'd completely forgotten I'd ever said something so inane.

"But he's married, huh," she said, shaking her head, setting butter on the counter between us. She hoisted herself onto a barstool and spread butter on a hot bread stick.

"Yes, but he was giving me this story about how his wife works all the time and she's more in love with her job than she is with him."

"He wants to fuck you."

"Isabel!"

"He's obviously hinting around. Come on, you know that."

"I'm trying not to be such a slut anymore," I told her.

She waved her hand. "You're not a slut. He recognized a good thing when he saw it."

"You know I can't fuck anyone without falling in love. I'm done with that, it just hurts too much."

"Don't give up," she advised me. "He might dump his wife and then you'd have a clear shot at him."

I laughed. "You sound like we're talking about hunting. I guess I need to get some camo and a big rifle."

"Whatever it takes, girlfriend," she grinned.

Next to my wine glass on the counter, my phone made its text message noise and the screen lit up.

"Not work!" Isabel cried. She knew I never left my phone far from me, in case I got a call about a patient.

At first, the message made no sense to me. I re-read it, and couldn't believe it.

"It's him," I said, reading it for a third time.

"The married hunk?"

I nodded. "He says our patient fell at home and he's in the ER. Shit. He was just discharged today after knee replacement surgery and he was doing great. Dammit!"

"You don't have to go back, do you?"

"No, there's nothing I can do. But it looks like Trevor might be doing some more surgery."

"Ooh, Trevor. So you're already on a first name basis."

I tapped a message back to him and gave her a long look. "We're professionals."

"Oh. Right." She rolled her eyes.

My phone rang. I gave Isabel a warning look as I tapped to answer the call.

"Hello," I said. "Are you there at the hospital with him?"

Trevor sounded upbeat despite the sad circumstances. "Yes, I'm here. Dr. Godfrey left me on call tonight. I don't think it's too bad, but we'll probably have to go back in and repair a couple of things."

"That really sucks for Mr. Brooks," I said.

"He's taking it well. We're keeping him until we can get surgery scheduled, might do it tomorrow. He's in some pain and I'd rather repair it now than make him tough it out for the weekend. I'm waiting for the okay from the on-call real surgeon."

I laughed. "I know what you mean. I loved being a resident. You're called a doctor but you still have to defer to the real doctors. Tell him hello for me. He had dialysis today so he should be okay until his next treatment on Monday."

"Will do," he said, and hesitated a moment before he spoke again. "What are you up to tonight?"

"I'm in Wenatchee," I said, squashing any idea he might have had for a midnight meet up when he was finally off call.

"Yeah? You go home often?"

"Occasionally," I said, being deliberately vague.

"I don't have a lot of free time, as you know, but it'd be nice to see you sometime. Just to talk."

I wasn't sure what to say. I couldn't very well just blow him off, but I didn't want to sound overly interested. "We'll see," I said.

"I know you're standoffish because I'm married," he said, surprising me with his directness. "There are some things you need to know, though, and I'd like to talk to you sometime. If you're okay with that."

Oh sure, I thought cynically. He was going to tell me they had an 'open marriage' and his wife was okay with him diddling other women anytime he felt like it. I'd fallen for that line once or twice in my life.

"I'll think about it," I told him.

"That's all I can ask," he said. "You have a good weekend."

"Thanks, you too."

I put my phone on the counter and downed my wine while Isabel stared at me.

"What did he say?" she wanted to know.

So I told her.

"Damn, he's putting the moves on you! What do you suppose he wants to tell you?"

"That they have an open marriage," I said, rolling my eyes. "That's the married man's ticket to getting laid. Or they think it is."

"Well you could at least talk to him."

I sighed and nibbled the bread stick. "I might. I don't know. I'll probably never see him again." But I knew that was a lie; we still had our mutual patient, and as his nephrologist I'd have to sign off on his discharge again after a second surgery. Somehow I knew Dr. Banks would be around.

I went to bed an hour or so later, after two glasses of wine, and slept hard. I dreamed about Trevor coming to Tila's birthday party. He brought a handful of balloons and kissed me in front of all her little friends.