Asking for Trouble (7 page)

“Nope.” She was confused by his reaction. “It can’t be all that bad. You already know that I have one of the world’s most boring jobs, and if yours is to remain calm while everyone else gets crazy, there must be some excitement to it.”

He hesitated, and then asked, “If your job’s boring, why do you stay with it? You’re bright and intelligent. You could do anything.”

“I am pretty smart,” she said, glad that he’d noticed. “And I have an aptitude for numbers. Economics and commerce make sense to me. I read tax codes the way most people read newspapers. It isn’t exciting, but I do enjoy the problem solving it involves. Finding the errors, manipulating funds for tax breaks ... things like that. I’m good at it. That’s why I stay with it.” She paused to make eye contact with him. “Now it’s your turn. What do you do and why do you do it?”

He looked away and took a deep breath. When he returned his gaze to hers, he seemed to have distanced himself somehow, protected himself with a hidden shield.

“The worst part of my job is the reaction it gets from people outside the profession,” he said, his voice quiet. There was a plea for understanding in his expression and something else she couldn’t decipher. Her heart went out to him, though she couldn’t help but wonder what could possibly be so horrible. Was he the state executioner?

“I never know if women are interested in me or the mysticism associated with what I do.” He shook his head in confusion and laughed. “Frankly, I’ve never been able to get into the mystical end of it. I’m more concerned with the here and now. But I guess I can see where it might have an appeal to certain types of women. My ex-wife for one.”

Sydney was beginning to get the creeps. His words weren’t making sense. What was he? A psychic? An American guru? Voodoo priest?

“I really tried to understand that part of her, but it was just too weird,” he said, his thoughts in the past. “I didn’t even know about it until after the wedding, and then it just got worse and worse.”

“What got worse and worse? What did she do? What do you do?”

“Ma’am?” They both jumped, surprised by the police officer standing over them. “The driver says you were injured. Do you need an ambulance?”

“Yes.”

“No,” Sydney said. “My arm was hurt, but I don’t think it’s broken. See, I can move it and everything.”

“She needs to go to a hospital,” Tom said firmly, scowling at her. “She can’t lift it over her head.”

“Well, if it’s not serious, we can drop you off at Mercy when we’re finished here,” the officer said kindly, eyeing Tom’s facial laceration. “You might want the gash on your head looked at, too, sir.”

Tom touched his forehead gingerly, as if he’d forgotten all about the previous incident. He chuckled. “This didn’t happen in the accident. We’ve ...” He looked at Sydney. “We’re having one hell of a night.”

Against her will and for no clear reason, his comment struck her as ridiculously funny. Sydney began to laugh, and it felt wonderful. It wasn’t a wild hysterical laugh. It was a good, sane laugh that came straight from her heart. It released the despair and the sense of danger and helped her give up her worries.

She laughed until there were tears in her eyes, and through the blur she looked at Tom and felt friendship and camaraderie. She sensed she could trust him, depend on him to bring light into the darkness and make the unbearable tolerable. She was drawn to his optimism and easy, lighthearted nature.

He was a stabilizing force in her life. And she wasn’t so ignorant or infatuated with the man that she didn’t know his actions were quite deliberate. She’d heard the panic and fear in his voice after the accident, when he thought she’d been injured. She’d felt the gentleness in his touch. She’d seen his strength and his capacity for anger and rage in dealing with abuse and cruelty. In his eyes she’d seen intimacy, warmth, and a giving nature.

No, the man was no fool, she decided, watching him talk with the policeman. He’d felt everything she had felt. The shock, the fear, the pain. But he’d put it aside to meet
her
needs.

“Did you see what happened?” the officer asked, the question addressed to either one or both of them.

Tom’s eyes twinkled merrily, his lips twitching with restrained mirth. She frowned until she recalled what they’d been doing at the time the accident occurred. She burst into giggles once more.

“It happened very quickly,” Tom told the man with a straight face, not unaware of or ungrateful for the timely delay in having to tell Sydney what he did for a living. He wasn’t ashamed of what he did, mind you. But it was a delicate subject, and he preferred to explain it in his own way, in his own time. “We didn’t see anything.”

“Do you know if your driver turned to look behind him before attempting to merge with the traffic? Or did he just pull out?”

“I really couldn’t say,” Tom said, laughter quivering in his voice. “I ... we were preoccupied at the time.”

“Oh” was all the officer said, as his features took on a knowing expression. He glanced from Tom to Sydney and smiled. He cleared his throat loudly. “Well, in that case I guess I can run you two up to Mercy Hospital real quick and come back for my partner. It won’t take two of us to direct traffic till the tow truck comes.”

Sydney caught the word
hospital
and sobered immediately.

“No. That’s not necessary. I don’t need to go to the hospital,” she said, a familiar feeling of panic rising up inside her and sticking in her throat. “Really.”

“Are you nuts? Of course you need to go,” Tom said, frowning at her. “If your arm’s not broken, then your shoulder is. You can’t lift your arm. You need help.”

“I can lift it,” she said unequivocally. She got it as high as her left breast before she whimpered with the pain.

“That’s it. Let’s go,” he said, pulling cautiously but unrelentingly on her right arm. “No. Don’t say another word. You’re going.”

“But, Tom, I—”

“No. You’re going. Ill tell you what,” he said, as he nudged her into the back seat of the patrol car. “If you behave, I’ll have someone put a bandage on my head, so you won’t have to look at it anymore. How’s that?”

He slammed the car door before she could answer, and walked around to get in on the other side. He wedged her weak arm between them, supporting it with one hand while his other arm slipped protectively across her shoulders.

“Comfortable?” he asked.

“No. Well, yes, this is comfortable, but
I’m
not comfortable,” she said, feeling cold suddenly. She shivered, and he inched closer to her to keep her warm. She realized that he didn’t understand, that he was misconstruing everything because she wasn’t making her feelings clear to him. Finally, she blurted, “Tom. I can’t go to the hospital.”

“Why not?”

“I can’t, that’s all. I just can’t.” She was so terrified and embarrassed, she could hardly speak.

There was silence for a few seconds. The officer got into the car, checked to make sure all was well in the back seat, and then started talking into the hand microphone of his radio.

Tom bent his head to look into her face. “If it’s money, don’t worry. I can ... ,” he said in a low voice.

“No. I have money. I ... It’s ...” She just couldn’t say it.

“What? Tell me, Sydney.” His voice was soft and reassuring. “You were gung ho for the hospital when you thought I needed attention. Why won’t you get some for yourself?”

“I can’t,” she whispered. “I wasn’t going in with you. I would have waited outside.”

“Why?” When she couldn’t answer, he guessed. “You don’t like hospitals.”

She shook her head and then nodded. “I send flowers. I don’t go inside.”

“Why, Sydney? Why don’t you like hospitals? Have you ever been inside one?”

“No. Not even when my cousin Francine had her baby. I tried. I stood there and the doors opened and closed and opened and closed, but I couldn’t go in.”

“Is it the smell that bothers you?”

“Somebody told me once that they have a distinct odor, that if you were blindfolded, you’d know where you were by the smell. Is it really awful?”

“No. Not awful, just ... sterile, but distinctively hospitallike,” he said, agreeing with what she’d heard but still eager to pinpoint her fears. “Tell me specifically, what it is that bothers you about hospitals?”

“Everything. Everything about hospitals scares me. I don’t even drive past them. Cemeteries either. If there’s one on the way to wherever I’m going, I drive for blocks to avoid it. I can’t stand the sight of them.”

“Cemeteries? You’re afraid of cemeteries too?”

“You think I’m stupid, don’t you?”

“No. I don’t think you’re stupid. You’re trembling. But let’s deal with one thing at a time here. Why do hospitals scare you?”

Sydney hated this part. Thankfully, she hadn’t had to tell many people about it. It was easy enough to cover with one excuse or another, and she managed to keep it her secret most of the time. She wasn’t proud of it. It was embarrassing and shameful at times. But it was also something she couldn’t explain and couldn’t overcome.

“Why do hospitals scare you?” he asked again, gentle but persistent.

“People die in hospitals,” she muttered in the tiniest of voices.

“I’m sorry. I couldn’t hear you.”

She took a deep breath and said it again in a louder voice.

“What?” He couldn’t believe what he was hearing.

“People die in hospitals.”

He moved forward on the seat so quickly that he nudged her shoulder, and she winced in pain. He turned and looked back at her in astonishment and skepticism, braced with one arm on the back of the seat.

“People
die
in hospitals? Is that what you said?” She nodded, watching his reaction from her heart. “People also get well in hospitals and go on to live their lives.”

“I know. But I’m not afraid of living, I’m afraid of dying. It’s called thanatophobia.”

“What?”

“Thana-toe-phobia.”

“Thanatophobia.” He looked as if they’d just finished having sex and she’d told him she had a social disease.

“It’s ... it’s an unexplainable fear of anything that has to do with death. Blood, hospitals, life-threatening situations ... when I think about dying, I get a little crazy or throw up or sometimes my heart beats so fast, I pass out. I don’t know why, I just do. I mean, I’ve never been traumatized or died and come back to life or anything like that. It’s just the way I am.”

“So. Anything that has to do with death ... upsets you?”

“Well, yes, sort of,” she said, wondering what he was thinking, wondering if she should explain it to him, wondering if it would make a difference, wondering ... Suddenly the choice was out of her hands. She’d already started to speak.

“When my mother used to take me to the psychiatrist, when I was little, he said that my case was mild compared to some he’d seen. I guess that’s because I don’t faint when I see dead birds or flowers. I ... I’ve never seen a dead person, but he said that my reaction would be more to the reminder of my own death than to the dead person’s death, that I’m more afraid of dying than I am of death in general. He said it was good that I could talk about it when I had to, and that I could recognize it for what it is—an irrational fear. But ... but he also said that there wasn’t much that could be done about it. A certain amount of fear was natural and normal. I just have a little too much.”

She sighed and went silent, feeling relief at having her secret out in the open between them, but still too unsure of his reaction to look at him, wary of seeing the disbelief and displeasure in his face.

He groaned and fell back into a sitting position beside her. His head came to rest on the back of the seat; his eyes were closed. One arm came up to cover his face, and he started to chuckle. He should have known that Sydney was too good to be true, that there’d be a monkey wrench in the works somewhere. Love at first sight and happily-ever-after rarely worked as smoothly as they did in the movies. He knew that. But thanatophobia?

“Are you laughing at me?” she asked, feeling tears of humiliation welling in her eyes. It hurt to think that he might not be able to understand, that he might reject her for something she couldn’t control. She’d thought better of him. She’d thought
much
better of him.

“No. I’d never laugh at you,” he said. “I’m trying not to cry. I don’t know how much more of this night I can take.”

There was weary disappointment in his voice and manner, despite his words of reassurance. His disillusionment hurt too. She’d wanted him to like her.

“I won’t say I’m sorry for something I can’t control,” she said, swallowing the lump in her throat as she wiped a stray tear from her cheek. Perhaps she should have warned him. Maybe part of his frustration was her fault. “But I am sorry I didn’t tell you earlier. I didn’t think ...” The tears came unchecked.

“Whoa,” he said, turning to her quickly. “You don’t have one damn thing to apologize for, Sydney. Really. I wish I’d known sooner. I had no idea what you were going through, but you don’t have to feel bad about any of it.”

“You don’t think it’s disgusting, that I have an obsessive fear of dying? You don’t think I’m weird or strange or being a baby about it?” she asked, grasping the lapel of his suit and blubbering against the front of his shirt. “Some people do, you know. And I wouldn’t blame you if you did. I’m analytical and systematic. I’m too ...” She searched her memory for Judy’s word. “... linear to be irrational.”

She felt his chest vibrate and heard the laughter in his voice when he said, “Well, I don’t know that I’d describe you as linear, but I also wouldn’t call you disgusting, weird, strange, or babylike—although I do enjoy holding you as if you were one.”

With a light touch to her chin he tenderly raised her face to his. He took the shirttail from her fingers and dabbed at the tears on her cheeks before he pressed a soft, caring kiss to her lips.

Sydney inspired a protective instinct in him that was gentle, warm, and fierce, and unlike anything he’d ever felt before. It wasn’t chivalry or valor or as macho as the strong protecting the weak. It was more like what an animal would feel protecting its mate or its young. An innate reaction to anything threatening something vital to its own well-being. It was a new feeling for him, and he liked it.