Blackjack and Moonlight: A Contemporary Romance (28 page)

A small cadre of doctors trooped in to stand close to her mother’s bed on the side with most of the equipment. The cardiothoracic attending, Dr. Rahman, looked to be in her forties. Behind her was the senior cardiothoracic resident, a guy in his thirties, still youthful-looking despite a thinning hairline. Then a junior resident, and last in line was someone who looked like she should be in high school. Could be a med student. They ignored Elise.

“Hi, there, Peggy,” Dr. Rahman said.

Elise had spoken with the surgeon several times, not counting the nightmare phone call on Sunday. Had it really been only two days?

“Peggy? Can you open your eyes for me?”

Peggy opened her eyes slowly, looking at each of the doctors and then around the room.

“I’m here, Mom,” Elise said, standing and moving closer so Peggy could see her. Her mother blinked slowly and deliberately.

Dr. Rahman went over the operation again, this time with more details than Heather had provided. She explained that they were going to get Peggy off the ventilator next. While Dr. Rahman was talking, Peggy kept squeezing Elise’s hand, not hard but over and over, as though Elise were a talisman.

Eventually Dr. Rahman stepped aside to let the other doctors deal with the ventilator. She walked over to Elise. “Your mother’s very lucky. We were putting in a stent when her artery dissected. That was the worst bit, but we managed to patch that up and get another stent in place.”

“Is her heart damaged?” Elise had been reading up on heart attacks.

Dr. Rahman shook her head. “We don’t think so, but we’ll keep a close eye on her going forward.”

There was a noise halfway between coughing and retching. When Elise looked over her shoulder, her mother’s lips were moving, although she wasn’t making any noise.

“Ellie?” Peggy whispered.

“Hi,” Elise said softly.

“You came.”

“Of course I did. Dr. Rahman called me on Sunday and I flew out.”

“Thanks,” Peggy breathed. She closed her eyes. Elise waited but it seemed her mother preferred to sleep.

After a settlement conference yielded a surprisingly quick agreement between the parties, Jack felt he could declare the end of his official workday. He checked his watch. He’d already started subtracting three hours from every timepiece he saw, imagining where Elise was and what she was doing. As he sat at his desk, flipping through bench memos, correspondence and phone messages, he resisted the urge to call her. He’d told her she could call any time—that Brenda would get him off the bench if necessary—but none of the pink phone message slips had her name on them.

He was glad she’d called on Monday morning. She’d seemed happier than on Sunday and more relaxed at the end of the conversation than at the beginning. As she promised, she also called him close to bedtime. Unfortunately, that phone call hadn’t been quite what he’d hoped. She dodged all his efforts to talk about how she was doing and instead went into seductive mode.

Phone sex, he discovered, was a profoundly unsexy activity when what he really wanted to do was wrap his arms around his woman and take all her troubles away. He’d sensed, though, that Elise wanted to think about anything other than hospitals and operations. His choices had been phone sex or talk about some dreary litigation Elise was working on. Discussing Delaware case law on piercing the corporate veil had lost to talking dirty, although it was a close call.

He looked at his watch again. Three twenty in Eugene. Elise would be at the hospital but working on papers her secretary was sending by FedEx. A slave to billable hours was how Elise described herself. Her mother’s condition seemed stable, from everything she had told him. He worried about what she hadn’t told him.

Elise didn’t seem to want to talk about her mother. He’d learned that Peggy was an accounts manager for a large regional market research firm, that she’d never remarried, lived alone and had two cats who were currently staying with a neighbor. His prosecutorial interrogations of stone-cold criminals had yielded more information than his conventionally polite questions about Elise’s mom.

As for Elise’s childhood, Jack didn’t think he’d gotten more than a “fine” out of her. Oh, he knew that she went to high school in Ohio with her dad’s second family, and when Jack asked if she got along with her half-brothers, Elise seemed genuinely proud of them. She talked about her dad with a cool admiration, and had only nice things to say about her stepmother. Maybe it was a pack of lies, covering up some dark horror, but that wasn’t the impression Jack got.

Which left her childhood with her mother. He had no sense of what led to the decision to move Elise permanently from Oregon to Ohio for high school. Maybe her mother had health problems? A drug addiction? Conviction and incarceration? A stint in a mental hospital? Jack’s imagination ran to even more far-fetched scenarios—
the CIA! Witness Protection! exotic dancing!
—but he knew they weren’t the answer. Elise would have talked about stuff like that. At the very least, she’d have explained why she couldn’t talk about them.

Funny how the heart attack was forcing him to face facts. Elise loved him in bed and she loved his hair. That might be the sum total of her feelings for him. She didn’t trust him with the truth about her childhood or her mother’s situation or even why she’d cried at Libby’s law school graduation.

He leaned into the palm of his hand, staring at the papers on his desk without seeing them. Without trust, what did they have? Sex. And his love for her. Which wasn’t enough. He’d thought it would work out. He’d thought there had to be a connection, some bond between them that—when given room to grow—would make it clear how good they were together, how much in love they both were.

Instead, he was just forcing himself on her. Demanding something from her she didn’t have to give. He was good at working out the facts of a case, and he rarely made a wrong assumption. The facts here suggested that he’d gotten it wrong for once. She didn’t love him and wouldn’t love him. He’d be guilty of selfishness if he pushed for a commitment she didn’t feel. Selfishness was the one character trait he couldn’t abide.

Thank God she enjoyed sleeping with him.

Jack swiveled around to look out over the Constitution Center, lit up already for some evening event. He checked his watch again, pulled out his phone and hit the speed dial. It was pathetic, but hearing her recorded voice asking him to leave a message was better than nothing.

Elise called him back at bedtime again, but this time Jack had stayed up late watching the Phils in St. Louis. No matter what devious come-on she employed, he was determined to have a regular conversation that did not require a nearby supply of tissues.

“So, how’s your mother doing?”

Elise paused before answering. “She woke up and they removed the ventilator. She can talk now.”

He could hear hesitation in her voice. He tested the waters gingerly. “Has she said much yet?”

“Not really. She’s still pretty dopey, and they threw me out not long after she woke up. Or maybe I thought they threw me out. I don’t know.”

Time for the cautious approach. “Got tired of seeing a lawyer working in their hospital?”

Elise laughed. “That could be it. By five o’clock I’d pretty well papered the floor with transcripts and notes.”

“They must worry that you’re preparing a malpractice suit against the surgeon.”

“That’s me—a scum-sucking ambulance chaser.”

When the laughs died away, he tried another tack. “How are you holding up?” He expected one of her usual breezy denials but when the silence spread, he was afraid he’d lost her.

“Elise?”

“I’m here.” Her voice was quiet.

“Sweetheart, are you okay?”

Another tunnel of nothing.

“Yeah, I’m—I’m fine. I think I’m more nervous as she gets better. You know?”

He had no clue but he was hardly going to admit that. He took a wild stab. “Hard to talk to her, huh?”

“Yes,” she exhaled in relief. “We’re not strangers, exactly, and I do love her, but we’ve spent a lot of time apart. I haven’t kept—I’m not sure I know that much about her life now.”

He propped his feet up on the coffee table. He watched Rollins get thrown out at second. “Well, that solves one problem.”

“What problem?”

“What to talk about. Ask her about her life.”

“I’m supposed to know all about her life. She’s my mother.”

“Does she know all about your life? Does she know you’re dating a judge?”

“Of course not!”

“So why are you so certain that you’re supposed to know everything about her life? Just make conversation.”

After a moment, Elise said in a tight voice, “Being right is not your best look.”

He laughed. “You’ve told me that before, you know.”

There was a huffy breath, then she laughed too. “I’ve hated you for so many reasons, and now I’ll have to add that you can make me laugh.”

“What are the other reasons?”

“All those good looks, to start with. Your killer smile, and that spicy scent you have which I’m convinced should be banned by the FDA, and your great cooking and…and there’s more,” she trailed off.

Jack bit his lip to keep the smile from his voice. “I can see how truly aggravating all of that must be.”

“Infuriating,” she confirmed.

The game ended, so Jack flipped over to the weather channel. Apparently it was raining in Oregon. “What’s on your agenda for tomorrow?”

“Same as today, I guess. Go to the hospital, sit quietly while my mother sleeps some more, get an update from the doctors, chat with her nurse, and eventually come back to her condo.”

“What’s the condo like?”

“Really, Jack? You want
Architectural Digest
to do a full-color spread on the place?”

“Just tell me if she’s even bothered to paint the walls any color other than builders’ beige.”

“Her bedroom is a soft yellow. The guest room is a very pale blue. And for some reason, one wall in the living room is rust-colored.”

“An accent wall. I’m starting to like your mother.”

“Fine. You come and talk to her then.”

Jack was about to respond when he thought of a good reason not to.

A moment later, Elise said plaintively, “We’re not going to get naked and talk dirty to each other, are we?”

“I would prefer not to, no.”

“Why not?”

“Because I want to be with you more than I want to uh, find some transitory satisfaction.”

“Oh.”

“Not that you aren’t very sexy over the phone,” he assured her, this time letting his smile infiltrate his answer.

“I’ll bet.” She sounded sulky and unsure of herself.

“No, really—wait a minute. I know this tactic. You were going to get me to soothe your bruised feelings so energetically that the next thing I knew I’d be seducing
you
over the phone. Very sneaky, Ms. Carroll.”

“Like I said, Judge, being right makes you look ugly. I swear it even adds ten years to your face.”

“I love you too, Elise.” He was still chuckling when she hung up.

By the end of the week, Elise’s mother looked more alive. They’d moved her to a regular hospital room and were already getting her up and walking around the unit, holding on to the IV pole for support.

Peggy was intent on getting home as soon as possible. “As far as I’m concerned,” she informed Elise, “hospitals are the worst place to be sick.”

Elise changed the subject before she got a lecture on the risks of iatrogenic diseases. “At this rate, you’ll be home next week.”

“Thank God for that,” Peggy sat in the other armchair. She’d managed to get her favorite seersucker robe on one arm—the one without the IV line—and belted at the waist.

Elise eyed it with affection. The robe looked odd, like a matador’s cape tied across her chest, but the blue-and-white stripes were so classic, so reminiscent of Elise’s childhood, that her throat ached when she looked at it. She could remember getting up on Saturday mornings so that Peggy could make breakfast. Elise pictured her standing at the stove, wearing an identical robe and flipping pancakes onto a plate.