Among the Ducklings (4 page)

“Hello.”

“Tia
Marcia?”

“Rebecca,
is that you? You're OK?” Marcia asked, with a feeling of dread upon hearing Rebecca's
loud sobs.

“It's
Isabel. There has been an accident.”
 
Rebecca's last statement caused Marcia to hurl herself out of bed.

“Is she OK?
What happened?”

“Isabel was in a car crash. She was brought here
to Baptist,” Rebecca said, still crying loudly on the phone.

“Where are
you?” Marcia asked.

“I am in
the emergency room, but no one is telling me anything. They said that I had to
wait and that she was in surgery,” Rebecca said, weeping.

“Stay
there.
 
I will call you back on your
cell,” Marcia firmly said. She then called the hospital, identified herself,
and was forwarded to the nurse on duty, whom she knew from her days as an
emergency room physician at Jackson Memorial Hospital.

“It’s
really bad, Marcia,” she said. “She is in surgery now.
 
But we're not sure she will make it. We think
that she may have a broken back and other internal injuries, but we won't know
for sure until after the operation.”

##

Although
Rebecca and Isabel were sisters, due to the age difference between them, Marcia
always treated Isabel as the daughter she never had, and Rebecca as her
granddaughter. During the last stages of cancer of Marcia’s sister, Marcia
promised her that she would take care of them and she had.
 
When her sister passed away, having spent her
last penny fighting the disease, it was Marcia who, with the help of an
attorney friend,
 
arranged that funds be
given to Isabel under the pretense that they came from the insurance policy
that her sister had left.
 
Had she done
otherwise, Isabel might have insisted on a loan or could have refused her offer
of help entirely. She didn't stop helping, whether it was in the form of the
discreet scholarship that paid for Isabel's college tuition, or the private
loan that helped Isabel start her own IT consulting firm.

Marcia knew
that she would do anything for her two nieces, and would even give her life for
them if that was what it took. It was why, prior to calling Rebecca back to
tell her that she was on her way to Miami tonight, she had one thing she needed
to do. It was one thing that Marcia had not done in a long time.
 
She needed to kneel and pray.

##

Spending
his Saturday night in a hospital was not fun.
 
This was not what Phil had in mind when he drove to town Friday for his
birthday party.
 
The hospital fronted a
saltwater inlet called the Matanzas River.
 
One of the nurses told him that the Matanzas River was named after a
massacre in 1565 by Spanish forces of a group of several hundred shipwrecked
Protestant French forces, for refusing to become Catholic.
 
It was ironic to Phil that a place of healing
could be so close to something that represented violent death.
 

He spent
the whole night tossing and turning. He tried to sleep, but once in a while, a
siren, sounds of running feet, or some other hospital noise would wake him
up.
  
That’s why he was relieved when he
found out the next morning that he was being discharged.
 
In the past, he would complain about health
insurance companies cutting costs and shortening patient's stays at
hospitals.
 
However, for one day, this
Sunday, he would not complain. He was going home.

When
Jeremy came to his room on the fourth floor, Phil was eager to leave.
 
No matter how pretty a hospital was, no
matter how beautiful the scenery was outside his window, to Phil, a hospital
would always be a hospital, a place where you want your stay to be as short as
possible.
 
If you had to stay long, you
were in trouble. As Phil and Jeremy were walking in the hallway toward the
elevator, it was the first time that Phil noticed how big the hospital was,
with numerous rooms on both their left and their right.
 
This caused Phil to pick up his pace. “The
sooner he left, the better,” he said to himself.

Seeing
Phil's struggles with his new crutches, Jeremy asked, “Are you getting used to
them?”

“The
sooner, I get rid of these crutches, the better,” Phil answered.

   
When they reached the elevator, Phil
checked his watch and noticed that it was already past 1:00 pm.

“How long
you think it'll take to get to the airport?”

“It will
take us about one hour to get to the Jacksonville Airport from here, and then
another hour for you to check in. Don't worry Phil, we are making good time,”
Jeremy added.

They were
still waiting for the elevator to come when Jeremy remarked, “Wow, this elevator
took a long time.” As Phil was about to respond, the elevator door opened and
Jeremy held it for Phil to step in, and then said, “Michelle is downstairs
waiting for us.” Michelle and Jeremy had been married for four years.
 
They met each other when both were studying
for the Florida Bar Exam. Jeremy was now a partner at a prestigious law firm in
Jacksonville, while Michelle opted to teach pre-law classes at the local
college. Jeremy was one inch taller than Phil and didn't look like a lawyer,
with his hair always in a ponytail. He looked more like the surfer that he also
was. Both Jeremy and Michelle loved surfing, and Phil knew that this was why
they chose to live in Saint Augustine Beach.
 
Prior to moving there, they always told him how much they enjoyed the
surf.
 
If Jeremy was tall, Michelle was
short by comparison, at 5 feet 3 inches.
 
Both had red hair and in spite of the height difference, they looked
more like brother and sister than spouses.

##

When they reached
the first floor, Michelle was already waiting for them in front of the elevator
door as if she was going up herself.
 
Her
face brightened when she saw them. ”It’s good to see that you’re back on your
feet. Well, at least on one foot,” she said, looking at Phil struggling with
the crutches.

“Me
too.
Did you bring
the luggage?” Phil asked Jeremy.
 
After
the accident, Phil had scuttled his plan to return to Miami by car.
 
Although he could drive back, since it was
his left ankle that was injured, he decided to take a flight back instead, to
rest and avoid the five hour trip.

“It’s in
the trunk outside,” Jeremy replied. “Michelle returned your rental car
yesterday.”
 

“Thanks for
everything,” Phil said to them. Deep inside, Phil knew that Jeremy felt awful
about his injury.
 
It was Jeremy, after
all, who suggested that Phil take a break from Miami and come spend the weekend
with them.

“It was a
heck of a weekend,” Phil said.

“I’m sorry
Phil,” Jeremy blurted out.

“Don't
be.
 
Besides, if it was not for that
fall, I would have kicked your butt again in basketball.
 
The way I see it, the heavens intervened to
protect you from being embarrassed in your own house,” Phil said laughingly.

“At least I
see that you haven't lost your sense of humor,” Jeremy said as the three
reached Michelle's SUV, which was sitting idle in front of
the
hospital.

The
drive to the airport was uneventful. Jeremy and Michelle talked about the
safari trip that they had planned last year to do this summer, and Phil
wondered if he would still be able to join them as he had promised.
 

As they
were getting close to the airport, Michelle said, “By the way, I talked to
Stacy this morning and I told her about your injury.”

At the
sound of her name, Phil, who was sitting in the back seat, tensed. Michelle,
who didn’t notice, continued, “She doesn't model any more. She's been investing
and producing movies this past year.”

“I hope
that she’s happy,” Phil said.
 
It was a
lie but he didn’t know what else to say.

“Can we
talk about something else?” Jeremy pleaded with Michelle, sensing Phil’s
awkwardness.

“I just
wanted Phil to know that she was asking for him and was concerned when I told
her about the injury,” Michelle replied.
 
Phil knew that Michelle never lost hope that Stacy would come back to
him. It had been three years since Stacy left for California and never
returned.
 
Unlike Michelle, Phil stopped
believing in fairy tales weeks after Stacy left. The way Stacy treated him taught
him in a hard way that love does not conquer all.
 
He now wished he had the power to go back,
four years ago, to the day that he met Stacy and change what would happen, in
effect, erase her from his life, his thoughts and his heart.
 

##

That day,
four years ago, was a Saturday and he had been invited by a former law school
classmate, to an art exhibition in Miami Beach.
 
When Phil arrived at the party, many people in the entertainment
industry were present. It was a world that he was not used to, as he met many
colorful characters.
 
There was no
denying their talent, by the quality of the paintings that were being
exhibited.

He
was looking at a painting which was simply a yellow circle on a black
background, when the painter came over and explained what Phil was seeing.

“The black
background represents the chaos in my life,” the young female artist had said.

“The yellow
circle represents my heart's hope and the order in the chaos,” the painter had
added before she left to describe the adjacent painting to a potential buyer.

Phil didn't
realize that someone was standing next to him and listening to the painter
until he heard her say, “Am I the only one who is not stoned here today?”

Phil then
turned and what he saw was the most beautiful woman he had ever laid eyes on.
She was as tall as he was, with the look of a South American movie star, with
her long curly black hair, very white teeth and a skin tone that reminded him
of a painting he once saw of an Egyptian goddess. She looked to be in her late
twenties or early thirties.

“That makes
two of us,” Phil replied, laughing, wondering if he would have the courage to
ask her out.
 
He always heard that there
were women who intimidated men simply by their looks.
 
However he had never met one until that
day.
 
He was intimidated.

She joined
him in his laugh and asked, “Do you have a clue what she was talking about?”
 

“Beats me,”
he said, and then he asked, “Are you a painter?”

“Me?
No.
 
I'm only here for the free food and
drinks,” she said with another laugh. “What about you? You don't look like a
painter to me, either?”

“No.
 
I'm not a painter.
 
I'm here for the food too,” Phil replied

“Liar.
 
Besides, they only have appetizers and I am still hungry,” she said, and
they both laughed.

Until his meeting
with Stacy that evening, Phil never felt such a deep attraction to a woman
before.
 
He said, “I'll tell you what. If
you can guess what I do for living, I will order some real food for you.”

“You are on
buddy,” she said. She initially thought he was a chiropractor, but after
several wrong guesses, she gave up.

“OK. You
know what?
 
I will still order the food
anyway,” he said.

“From where
are you going to order it?” she asked.

“From the
restaurant, we are going to.
 
You didn’t
think that we were going to eat here, did you?” Phil asked, with a wink.

“You
tricked me. All right, deal.
 
There is
this Japanese place not too far from here. Follow me in your car,” she said.

Phil nodded
and realized he didn't even know her name.

When they
came out of the exhibition, Phil was surprised to see that she was riding a
motorcycle. Phil followed her to the restaurant, which was several blocks from
Ocean Drive, on South Beach. There, she parked the motorcycle in front of the
restaurant.
 
When she took off her helmet,
her long curly hair floated in the wind, as if you were watching the long tails
of a kite flying in the air, in slow motion. Phil stopped breathing for one
single moment at this incredible sight.
 
“She
must be the sexiest woman on this planet,” he said to himself.

The
restaurant was almost empty and barely lit. It didn’t matter, because Phil and
Stacy didn’t really eat. Instead, they spent the whole evening drinking plum
wine, with Stacy telling Phil of funny tales of her failed photo shoots, and
Phil telling Stacy about his travel misadventures. By the time both left the
restaurant that night, they wanted each other badly. From that night on, Phil
and Stacy became inseparable and Phil had fallen deeply for Stacy.