Hadrian's Wall (32 page)

“I was on duty when you
were admitted to the hospital. The rescue service brought you here.
Your head was bandaged because of a small cut, but it bled a lot.
The paramedic was afraid that you’d had suffered a powerful blow to
your head. The mouse that I found confirmed his suspicion, so you
were referred to the neurology unit.

“Later...
much
later, I was just taking a break when a girl from the
Resort
called the
hospital wondering what to do with your luggage. According to her,
you’d been staying there. Apparently you had gone for a walk
without telling anyone and as happens to many foolish tourists, you
got lost. Big deal. Every year the rescue people are dispatched to
find explorers. There’s always a wise guy who gets lost during the
hunt for the Polish ghost. You must have been lost in the woods for
two days before they found you. You were unconscious.

“The reception staff at
the hospital contacted me by phone. I went to the
Resort
and brought your
suitcase here, hoping that seeing it might help you to remember
what had happened. Apparently, it didn’t help...and that’s it. If
that’s not enough, what more do you want to know? Can’t you leave
the past behind and look to the future?”

His
questions sounded like lashes. If the idea was to make me
shut up, it worked.

Suddenly his face was filled with an ancient
pain.

“You can have a future
here, Melissa. Why don’t you let good things come to you? What does
matter if you had or hadn’t stayed in South Portland? If it’s so
important to you, I can take you there to see for yourself, but
please, let the good things enter your life!”

There was urgency in his voice...almost
despair. I was horrified to see that Adrian really cared. The
promise to take me to South Portland sounded more like a promise
that he would not get out of my life...at least not any time soon.
That stuck with me more than I cared to admit.

“I’m not a good artist,” I
said.

“I disagree.” His face
brightened. “When I saw your drawings, I was sure that you are
exactly who my father need. I must have been a little excited when
I spoke with my old man...” Adrian raised his eyebrows as if to
say, ‘So what?’ “He trusts my judgment. I can assure you that I
didn’t know about his decision until yesterday when Charity told
me, but I fully agree with the idea. For what he has in mind, you
are the right person.”

“And what does your father
have in mind? Charity said something about giving me a job, but
didn’t give me any details, so...”

Adrian gave me an enigmatic smile.

“Senior is quirky and temperamental.”

“How so?”

“He will get in touch with you...in his own
way,” he said, grinning.

I frowned.

“Scared?” He started laughing.

I shook my head. “I’m not a
coward.”

“No...
just shy
,” he emphasized the last
two words, just to show me that he hadn’t swallowed my excuse
before.

Adrian took a sip of
coffee and made a face.
Was it cold?
I looked down at my milk and I drank a little
bit. At least mine was delicious.

“Changing the subject...” he said in an
intentionally mild tone of voice. “How was your tour around
town?”

I smiled and he smiled too.

“It was wonderful!
Hadrian’s Wall is beautiful! I’ve never seen a town like it. It’s
like being in a fairy tale world.”

His smile widened. His
look was warm. It was obvious to me that he was proud of the town
as much as Charity is.
Which is hardly
surprising!
It was literally built by
their ancestors so he had good reason to be proud of it. Even more
than all of the places he’d seen traveling around the world or
those times when he wanted to flee from his own origins, I’d bet
that Hadrian’s Wall would always be his safe haven.

“Did you like it?”

“I liked it.” I let out a sigh before
drinking another sip of milk.

“Enough to live here?”

I looked up at him.

“Yes.”
I didn’t know exactly what I was agreeing to, but it seemed
like much more than just the view.

As if he were
concentrating, he cradled his coffee cup in his hands and then
placed it on the table.
Before, I’d have
given anything to see his eyes, but now I preferred that they
remain
hidden
. I
still wasn’t prepared to deal with the impact of those green
irises, nor the hallucinating variations that I saw coming from
them.

Suddenly, he became tense.

“What did you mean before
when you said ‘we belong to two very different
worlds’?”

I stared at him sadly. I had been naive to
believe that remark would easily escape the notice of a sharp mind
like his.

“You know perfectly well
what I meant. You’re rich, handsome, you have a bright future
ahead...”

He visibly relaxed with my
answer.
Huh? What response was he
expecting?

“Nonsense,” he muttered.
“I’ll bet Charity annoyed you
talking
about the family saga. The
way she puts things, even I get scared.”

Adrian leaned toward me and whispered in a
conspiratorial way, “We can get out of here together, if you
want.”

Adrian running away from
his own town? I couldn’t help but laugh.

“So it’s much
better...”

He fixed his gaze on my
mouth, like when a man intends to kiss a woman. Was he thinking of
kiss me?
No, impossible!
Given this perspective, even unbelievable. I felt
lost and my spontaneous laughter suddenly sounded nervous.
Shit, be witty! Be witty! Make an intelligent
comment!

As I struggled to keep my eyes relaxed, my
face have given me away. As always, I was an open book.

“I’m not kidding.” He was
serious.

He is trying
to tell me it’s for real, right? If I wanted, he
would run away with me? This is insane!

Charity’s stories didn’t
bother me.” I cleared my throat, opting for a less intense subject.
“She’s just a little overly protective. It’s apparent how much she
loves you.”

He grimaced.

“She is your number one fan!” I was teasing
him. It was great to see him embarrassed for a change.

“Yes, but you shouldn’t be
intimidated by whatever she said or showed to you.”

“She took me to visit the
museum. You really are
mighty in
battle
,” I said derisively.

He narrowed his eyes and shook his head,
laughing.

“Bullshit.”

His eyes sparkled and he held my hand,
sending small shockwaves through my nerves from my wrist to my
shoulder, but they were nice.

“Close your eyes, Melissa,” he
whispered.

I didn’t dare challenge
him. His voice ruled my senses in a incomprehensible
way.

“Imagine that I’m not a
rich person, nor do I have a ‘bright future ahead.’ Imagine that
I’m not
a
Cahill.
I’m just a guy and you’re just a girl. Forget that I am the son of
a king, that I am someone ‘
mighty in
battle
’
and
you
are the daughter of an enemy
commander.”

Is this to be a euphemism?

“Imagine that I am a simple soldier and you
are a girl who gathers flowers.”

Suddenly, I could see the walls in the
background, the carpet of wildflowers extending to the distant
cliffs. Unexpectedly, the scenario changed. I was in the grove, the
shadows mingled with the last sun rays, diffusely distributed among
the tree trunks as if they were part of a watercolor. The faceless
man of my dreams was there. I opened my eyes, shocked. I gasped. I
had forgotten to breathe.

Adrian kept looking at me gently.

“Let’s be friends,” he
suggested, playing with the fingers of my hand.

“Why?”

“Because there’s something
special here that deserves to be explored, don’t you think?” He
moved and turned to look at me with that peculiar way of his—a
slight tilt of his head.

“Can you discard this special thing? Do you
ever...have you ever discarded your friendships without giving them
at least a chance to succeed?”

That was low blow. I’d
never had
a true friend to stand by me.
I’d give anything to have a true friendship. I didn’t realize the
pain that appeared on my face until I felt his hand tighten around
mine. He knew exactly what he was doing to me. Machiavelli was a
humble apprentice compared to him.

“Of course not,” I finally replied. “How
about you?”

He stared at me in surprise.

“Would you be willing to have a friendship
with an unimportant person with dubious past, who is completely
insane?”

Adrian frowned.

“Do you know what I was hallucinating
today?” I leaned toward him, retrieving my hand from his grasp.

At that point, I could no longer contain
myself. Normally I would have hidden my anguish in the deepest part
of the drawer. Instead, I dumped everything right in front of him.
Maybe it would be a good test for our “friendship-to-be.”

“An old
woman
was washing clothes
in a creek that did not exist...and that was only the latest of my
hallucinations. I usually see flying monsters, giant panthers, eyes
that change color...”

He kept staring at me, expressionless.

“So what?”

“What do you mean, ‘So
what’?”

To my amazement, he rolled his eyes.

“People say ‘from Jekyll to
Hyde’—everybody has something of both personalities.”

“I’ve heard this
before,”
I replied. This time it was me who
rolled my eyes. “Let me understand, you’re the doctor and I’m the
crazy?”

Adrian laughed and nodded.

“Exactly,” he confirmed when he could
breathe.

He reached out and took my hand again,
staring at me with disconcerting seriousness.

“Friends?”

I couldn’t say no. I didn’t
want to say no. He had me completely captivated.

“Friends
,” I repeated.
Heaven help me if my decision hurts me in the
future
.

Satisfied, he pointed to my milk, which had
also turned cold.

I raised an eyebrow.
“You’re my friend, not my father!”

We both laughed and cold or not, I drank
another sip.

As he watched me, his eyes lit up and
started to change color. I was paralyzed, halting my cup before it
reached my lips.

“Are you ready to ask
me?”
he whispered in an ambiguous
tone.

Ask him...
Why his eyes were yellow? Why his skin was cold?
Why his cologne seemed so familiar? Madness!

“How old are you?”
I decided not to ask what I want to know.
Okay, I’m a coward.

I noticed the deception pass quickly across
his face, but the yellow eyes suddenly became shrewd.

“Twenty-two...” he said. “I mean,
twenty-three last week.”

My eyes opened. He looked
so much younger than the age he just told me, but his attitude,
particularly his eyes, belonged to a man much older and much more
experienced. He was a strange combination of youth and maturity
—like everything else in Hadrian’s Wall.

“Congratulations! If I had known...”

He nodded, as if to say it
didn’t matter and then he gave me another dazzling
smile.

“How could you know?”

Silence fell upon us and I
tried desperately to think of something clever to say. As always, I
couldn’t think of a thing, except for my damn, impulsive
curiosity...

“And you’re already a
resident physician? So young...”

He absently rubbed his chin.

“It is not so
unusual...I’m starting rotation this semester. I was doing the last
stage of medical school in Germany, but then I decided that I
should come back here as soon as possible and complete the course
at UWall. I had some early electives...” He spoke in a way that
made me suspect that he was being modest when he said “some”
and
I have participated in a kind of
acceleration process
.

“So the university here is
doing a review of my curriculum to see if I am able to follow the
post-graduation, while I finish college. They’re testing me...” He
pursed his lips and gave notice that it was an exciting challenge
for him. “...to define what stage of PGY-1 where I could fit,
considering all my background.” He chuckled. “I believe that
I
lived up to their
expectations
...on the PGY-2. I mean, if my
future post-graduation colleagues don’t feel threatened by
me.”

Adrian was thoughtful.

“I think the biggest problem so far has
been...my indecision.”

It was clear to me that he
was editing much of the story, perhaps with the intention to
simplify all it.
Mmmm
...
maybe!

“Now I’m really convinced
that I wish to keep on with neurology, but I made a point of
continuing my studies about the human blood. I took part in several
research projects in this area and I’m close to developing my own
project...”