Heart Doctors Collection Read online

  “Nobody to be seen right now, if you can believe that, Dr. McLean,” Jenny says, over the warm buzz of the male tones behind me, two EMTs joking together.

  Nothing urgent at the moment. Why is my heart beating so fast? Why can’t I catch my breath? Why, for heaven’s sake, are my panties sticking to my suddenly-sensitive ladybits? But I know, really.

  I take a deep breath and turn around.

  TWO

  Troy

  It’s been a crazy night. You know what they say about full moons, right? It’s all true.

  I was thinking that since I got transferred out of Eastside, I’d have easier night shifts. Short Pump is suburban, not ghetto, and I figured I’d have fewer drive-by shootings to deal with. Over the past two weeks, that much has been the case, but there are just as many domestic violence calls and probably more car accidents. But I keep reminding myself that the human condition can basically suck when people are shitty to each other, and there’s never any shortage of shitty people no matter where you are, and at least I’m goddamn helping people.

  That matters to me.

  Eight and a half years ago, I was a college quarterback hoping for an NFL career. I was about to earn a degree in chemistry. I had great teammates and the best fiancée you could imagine. I had a bright future. And then two defensive backs plowed into me from opposite directions, and I suddenly had a knee that had been turned to fruit salad under the skin.

  And one by one, all those great things that I had went away.

  The NFL career went first, and I understood why. Nobody wants a rookie quarterback with a replacement knee. But I was so angry at the universe for screwing me over that I did all the wrong things to try to deal with it. I argued with my coach. I turned my back on my teammates, I cursed at my other friends, and I told my parents to leave me alone. I ignored my professors and blew off my classes. And I spent a lot of time drunk. I abused my girlfriend’s patience deliberately, watching to see how much it would take to push her away: I said mean things to her, I yelled at her, I ignored her, and I finally did the stupidest thing I could think of. I broke her heart, and I did it on purpose, just so I didn’t have to see her look at me with pity any more.

  As you might expect, she dumped me. Even then, she was polite, too polite. She gave me back the engagement ring and said she didn’t want to see me again, and I knew I deserved it.

  The university put me on academic probation, twelve credit-hours away from my B.S. I never went back. Even after I hit bottom with the drinking the year afterward and my family insisted on rehab and counseling, even after I got sober, I couldn’t bring myself to go back there. I realized that what I really wanted to do was help people. Social work? I pondered. Teaching? Working with kids?

  And then I remembered the way I’d felt when the EMTs came for me on the football field that day, when my knee was such agony that I was banging my head on the ground to try to distract myself from the pain. So that was it for me. I could help people. I got my certification three years ago, and mostly I love it.

  I’m not saying it’s great to go home with blood and piss and snot all over my uniform, but it helps to know that I’m helping.

  Tonight the drunks and the crazies are out in full force, and close to the end of my shift, we pick up a young guy who’s taken too much of his prescription pain meds. We bring him back from death with a couple of doses of Narcan, and his vitals are improving when we deliver him to Hopedale Hospital. And then I see her.

  I see her.

  I stop talking mid-word because I know that wheat-blonde ponytail. I know that straight back and that fine ass, contours noticeable under the white coat.

  She turns and walks toward me. “Troy,” she says, and her voice is level. Eyes level. Everything straightforward, and the icy-cool tone of her voice would fool me if I hadn’t seen her pulse beating fast in the hollow of her throat, above those magnificent breasts of hers. My dick, which has an excellent memory, goes instantly hard in my tactical pants. Thank God they’re loose.

  “Dee,” I say, but my voice is hoarse.

  We have one short polite conversation, in which she asks about my parents and my younger brother, and I ask about her parents and her older brothers. Everybody’s “just fine, thanks for asking.” And we are all the time looking at each other and seeing all the ways that we’ve changed and all the ways we are the same. I clock her noticing the heartbeat tat on my inner wrist. Her eyes are the same sharp frosty blue, and they don’t soften the way I know my eyes have softened with looking at her. Her medical-green scrubs don’t really flatter those lush hips of hers, but I bet she still looks her very best naked, a substantial armful of tall athletic woman.

  I always knew she’d be a great doctor.

  Patrick tugs at my sleeve. “Hey,” he says. Maybe he has to say it twice, I don’t know. “Shift’s nearly over. Let’s get back to the station.”

  I nod. To Deena, I say, “I’d love to catch up soon. Are you off at six? We could maybe catch breakfast.”

  She hesitates. Shit, she’s going to say no the way she’s said no to any of my overtures. “Breakfast sounds good.”

  I can hardly believe it. “Meet you back here? 6:15?”

  “Make it 6:30,” she says. Her voice is still cool, but she’s said yes. And her pulse is still beating fast.

  I still want her, and that, at least, has never changed.

  THREE

  Deena

  He goes out, throwing one look back at me over his shoulder. His eyes are still that same forest green, deep and mysterious. He is still the sexiest man I have ever known.

  Sure, he was the backup quarterback when I met him, but it was never his prominence that appealed. It was just him: the way he’d look straight into my eyes and not at my boobs. It was the way he was all-in to the things he thought were important, and I was one of those things.

  “Dr. McLean, 14-month-old baby with 102-degree fever in Triage 4,” Jenny says, startling me out of my reverie, and hands me a clipboard. I take it mechanically and walk down the hall to where two distressed parents are holding on to a cranky, snotty, flushed toddler. After taking a history and examining her, I diagnose a common virus and recommend acetaminophen, liquids, and a bulb syringe. She’s going to be fine.

  I update the chart and sign the board, and the day shift is already trickling in. Noah Bonner high-fives me on his way into the doctors’ lounge to hang up his stethoscope. “We survived another Psycho Saturday!” he says, and I give him a double thumbs-up.

  The tiredness hits me all at once. I’m starving and sweaty and unkempt, and oh dear Lord I’m meeting Troy for breakfast in half an hour. Suddenly I get another shot of adrenaline. I clock out, race into the lounge for the set of spare clothes I keep in my bag, and hit the women’s locker room for a desperately needed shower. In fifteen minutes, I’m clean and dry, pits and legs shaved, hoping I have something besides yoga pants and a slouchy sweater in my tote.

  Nope.

  So much for looking and feeling calm and in control of myself, somebody with her stuff together. Because I do not have my stuff together, not where Troy is concerned, and I shouldn’t be meeting him at all after the way he crushed my dreams of happiness.

  I pull out my phone and send a swift message to my friend Sara. We were roommates in college, and she was a bystander when all the mess went down. I don’t have to give her background. Besides, she has a husband who runs early in the morning and a very active five-year-old. She’ll be awake. I text her, I just saw Troy. He’s working as an EMT . . . asked me for breakfast. I said yes. Am I insane?

  While I wait for her to text back, I put my hair up in a reasonably un-messy bun, and flick on a little mascara. That’ll have to do.

  My phone pings. Sara’s text reads, in all caps, HOLY SHIT YOU ACTUALLY SPOKE TO HIM???!!?

  I text back. Less of the sarcasm please. Srsly, am I nuts?

  Sara: Wait, lemme pick my jaw up off the floor.

  Sara: How does he look? Please do no
t tell me he got fat. That would be too sad.

  Me, considering the addictive appeal of my ex: No, he appears to have lost some weight. You know he used to have to be bulked up for football. He’s not skinny now, because his biceps are holy-crap huuuge, but you can see his cheekbones these days. And his hair is long, but it looks good on him. Sort of a Jason Momoa man-bun thing.

  Sara: So he looks good?

  Me, realizing that the fresh panties I just put on are in danger of becoming damp just from thinking about Troy’s body: Um. That’s an understatement.

  Me again: So seriously, is this a mistake?

  Pause. The three dots appear on Sara’s side of the conversation, telling me she’s writing a long response. Fudge.

  Sara: This is weird. You never ask me for advice. You never ask anybody for advice. You must still be shaken up by what happened between the two of you, and I think you never really got over it. I mean, really, when was the last time you got laid?

  I have to think about that. I did try it with a guy in med school, but although he talked a good game, we just didn’t click. Maybe I was too tense or something.

  Me: About three years ago?

  Sara: Did you enjoy it? Never mind, if you had enjoyed it you would’ve gotten some dick again since then.

  Me: [eye roll emoji]

  Sara: Tell him I said hi. And try not to let your panties get shredded.

  Me: WHAT?

  Sara: Never mind the panties, you can let him shred your carnal curtains

  Me: CARNAL CUR—that is vile. You are dead to me now

  Sara: Samesies. Especially if you don’t give me alllllll the dirt afterward.

  Sara: Gotta go, M just spilled her cereal into the floor vent. With milk in it.

  Sara: Dammit, I have a master’s degree. Why do I have to deal with this crap?

  I wait another minute, but she doesn’t text back.

  So, okay, I’m on my own here. My ladyparts seem downright enthusiastic about being shredded, because my panties are even damper than they were a few minutes ago, and I can even feel the texture of my sweater through my bra, against my nipples.

  Because I remember sex with Troy.

  I remember loving Troy, and it was so good, until it was absolutely awful.

  But there’s nothing for it now. It’s 6:28 a.m., I’m almost late, and I still don’t have shoes on.

  When I throw on my Nikes and come out of the locker room, there he is. He’s still in his dark blue uniform and steel-toe boots, facing away from me, standing in the middle of a clump of nurses, including Emma and Lisa. And I’d be super annoyed, but he appears to be backing out of the entanglement in the friendliest possible way, saying he’s happy to meet them and happy he’ll be working with them. Then he turns around and sees me, and smiles with his whole face. My entire insides go gooey as warm caramel, because Troy Mueller smiling has the same effect as a beautiful sunny day when you’re sick of winter.

  I’m so screwed. I am so. Screwed.

  FOUR

  Troy

  My God, she’s still so beautiful. So much else, too, but so beautiful.

  “Willie’s?” I ask, watching her sling her tote bag over her shoulder. The little knot of nurses around me starts murmuring, but I ignore that.

  “I thought Waffle Hut,” she counters. “It’s closer.”

  “Food’s better at Willie’s. In Carver Ward, you know it?”

  She tilts her head to one side, not looking at me. Nods. “Okay.”

  “Will you drive? My Jeep’s at the station.”

  This time she looks at me. “Okay.”

  The familiar waft of Chanel No. 5 off her sweater has my chest aching. My Dee. She’s clearly tired, but that pulse at her throat is busy. Her hair’s a bit darker, or maybe it’s just damp. There are tiny lines near her eyes and mouth, and this fills me with a sad tenderness, because we’ve spent the past eight years apart. Same lovely pink mouth. A deep breath has her beautiful tits rising under that baggy sweater, and I have to tell my dick to calm the fuck down.

  We start out the ambulance bay door, heading for the employee parking lot.

  “So how is it that you’re in the area?” she asks, direct as ever.

  I lay my path out briefly for her as we’re walking: inpatient rehab and Alcoholics Anonymous. She nods. I tell her about EMT training and certification, and my two years working near Charlottesville. Two years working the east side of Richmond. Recent transfer to Short Pump due to administrative personnel-shuffling.

  “You’re doing well, then,” she says firmly. She stops next to a beat-up white Camry. “This is me.”

  I’m surprised to recognize it, and then I’m not surprised at all. “You’re still driving your brother’s old car?”

  “It still gets good gas mileage,” she says, defensively. “And it’s paid for.”

  I nod, fighting the bittersweet feeling of knowing her.

  “What?” she snaps, unlocking the doors.

  “You don’t change much,” I say, hearing the nostalgia in my voice. We get in. I have to slide the seat back to accommodate my legs, as usual. I take a deep breath. “I have. I’m not the same guy I was when I last saw you.”

  “I hope so,” she says acidly, latching her seatbelt. “Because you had your head completely up your butt back then.”

  Good old Dee, unwilling to say “ass.” I smile.

  When she starts the ignition, the car roars like she’s been pressing on the gas pedal, and she makes an exasperated noise.

  “No, you’re right. I had my head firmly located up my posterior. Took a lot of therapy in rehab to show me that, but I know my behavior was pretty shitty.”

  She shoots me a suspicious side glance and pulls out of the parking space.

  There are eight million questions I want to ask her on the short drive to Willie’s, but I hold back. I let her interrogate me about what my brother’s doing now (the Navy), and whether my friend Mokembe is enjoying playing defensive back for the Chargers (yes, and I miss him). I let her catch me up on her friends. I know what this is: she’s putting up her walls between us, not letting me get too personal.

  Which means she’s nervous and on edge. Which means she’s remembering a lot of things about us, when there was an Us. Which means that maybe she’s wishing there still was an Us.

  Because Deena is perfectly capable of ignoring me the way countless Southern ladies have ignored social undesirables over the last couple of centuries, and she didn’t do that. She agreed to breakfast in my company. Of course, she could simply be planning to tell me to go fuck myself in a very public place, but that doesn’t sound much like the girl I used to know. A straight-shooter concerned with propriety, my Dee.

  We pull into a parking space on the street in front of Willie’s, and I hop out, intending to go open her door for her, but she’s already stepping out of the car by the the driver’s side. Very efficient, my Deena.

  This street’s not very busy before 7 a.m., not like downtown, but I hear sirens close by. Very suddenly there’s the noise of a speeding car behind us, and the sirens are much louder. I take a fraction of a second to look behind me, and I don’t waste another piece of that second to hustle her out of the street by her upper arm, pressing her against the front of the building while a white sportscar followed by a cop car go tearing past.

  I stand there pressed against her, feeling my heart rate jacked by adrenaline, feeling the softness of her breasts against my chest and the warmth of her breath on my throat. We’re both breathing fast. I let the siren fade in the distance before I start to ease my weight back onto my heels. It’s then I notice that her hand is bunched up in the fabric of my shirt.

  “You okay?” My voice is hoarse from adrenaline and desire.

  “Yes.” Hers is breathy, and the remembered sound of it has me back at full-mast inside my duty pants.

  I don’t let go of her. But she doesn’t let go of me, either. She tilts her face up to mine. The longing in her eyes matches the ach
e in my heart. It is the easiest thing in the world to bend my face to hers and kiss her. I kiss her with all the pain and guilt and need and desire in me, feeling the satiny skin of her lips on mine. Feeling her hand at the back of my head and the little hum in her throat, her body rising up on her toes to be closer. The smell of her skin and her perfume. The taste of her mouth. The thousand thousand ways we still fit together.

  The kisses go on, deeper and hungrier, more insistent than the need for food, but we reach a point where it’s either stop kissing or go at it like dogs in the street, and I drag my lips over to her ear. “We can’t keep meeting like this,” I pant into her ear, trying to make light of it.

  “I know,” she says, and licks my throat.

  I growl. “Stop. Stop, or I’ll fucking take you right here.”

  “Is there somewhere close?” she says, her voice husky. I have to close my eyes and fight down the rush of lust that hits my body, but when I look up her gaze is pinned on mine. “Yes,” she says. “It’s like that. I don’t know whether to kill you or rip your clothes off, but now.”

  We stare at each other for three seconds. “If you’re going to kill me, you’re going to need some privacy. My apartment’s two minutes away.”

  She hands me the keys.

  FIVE

  Deena

  Troy’s right. His apartment is literally two minutes away from Willie’s, and some part of my mind is noticing the shabbiness of the mostly un-rehabbed buildings in this area while the rest of it is thinking how much I’ve missed his touch. How alive I feel around him.

  He’s going to break my heart again. But the rush of feeling that swept over me the very second he pushed me out of the path of that speeding car woke me up to how shut-off and dead I’ve been without him, and I’m starting to understand that being hurt is part of being human. I can’t afford to not be human anymore.