Off Duty (Off #7) (7 page)

“That kid is
pretty amazing,” Denise says as she stands from the table to
clear the plates. I pull my own back closer to me, intent on
finishing my breakfast.

“Pretty close
to perfect,” I agree.

Denise scrapes the
remaining amount of food from the plates into the garbage can and
starts to rinse them. I watch her silently, a thought bubbling in my
head. We had always been close growing up—even closer when our
parents died. Even though she’s only two years old than me, and
we were both adults when our parents died, she couldn’t help
but take on sort of a mothering role with me.

“Let me ask
you something,” I say after I chew a bite of eggs.

“What’s
that?” she asks without turning to look around at me, and
instead opening the dishwasher.

“Do you think
this is all too sudden? With Holly?”

“I don’t,”
she says firmly. “You two were practically babies when you fell
in love, and some would scoff that those feelings could carry over,
but I disagree.”

Placing the last
plate, she leaves the dishwasher open until I can finish my food but
turns to face me, leaning back against the sink counter. Taking a
towel, she wipes her hands. “I think young love… first
love… it’s the truest form there is. It’s pure and
uncorrupted by all the dark things we learn about later in life. I
think it would only be perfectly natural for both of you to remember
those feelings and fall to them pretty quickly. It was good stuff,
right?”

Images of Holly and
me together in high school flash before me. Holding hands while we
walked, her laying her head in my lap while we studied on the Quad
outside, long conversations on the phone late into the night, warmth
and security from the way she would look at me, the sweet way we
would make out, and the even sweeter way we had sex when we finally
got up the mutual nerve to go all the way.

No… it wasn’t
good. It was fucking amazing.

Those memories…
feelings… experiences. They are all still there. They’ve
been revived… bolstered by our new experiences this week.

“It feels
right to you, doesn’t it?” Denise asks.

I give her a wide
smile as I stand from the table, taking my plate over to the sink.
“Yeah… it feels unbelievably right. I actually feel
complete.”

Denise intercepts
me, takes the plate from my hand. “Then I expect we will be
having a wedding before too long.”

“Whoa…
wait a minute,” I say quickly as I hold my hands up with a
laugh. “Who said anything about marriage?”

“I did, you
fool,” she says as she puts my plate in the dishwasher and
closes it.

“Just because
you think—”

“Tim…
baby bro… you are built for marriage. You are the type of man
that will love unconditionally and with his entire being once you
find that one person who’s worthy of it. Bonnie, while I adore
her, wasn’t the woman for you. Holly is. I know this, and you
know this. I will lay money on it that you two will be married before
the year is out.”

I just stare at her
with my mouth hanging open, and yet… I can’t find
anything within myself that wants to argue with her. The image of
Holly in a wedding dress… Holly pregnant… Holly holding
our baby.

Fuck, I want that.

And I want it bad.

Holly

I flip off the
mini-recorder and set the last medical chart beside me on my couch.
When I finished my shift this afternoon, I tiredly realized I had
been so busy that I had not finished dictating all of my notes for
the cases I had handled in the emergency room, which meant a shit pot
full of work for me this evening.

But it’s okay.
It’s something that goes along with the territory of being a
doctor. Your work is seemingly never done, and it’s not all
adrenaline-filled cases. Some of it is just plain old, boring
paperwork that I’ve come to accept is the trade-off for being
able to have a career that I adore.

What would make this
evening nicer, even with having to work, is if there was a certain
hot firefighter who could sit on the couch with me. Maybe he would be
watching sports while I quietly worked, and when I was finished, he
would pounce on me. This is a nice dream, and one that I hope will be
true one day.

I miss Tim badly.
He’s only been gone for two weeks. I foolishly thought for a
few days that the ache would subside, but it hasn’t. If
anything, it’s grown worse as we bravely find ways to stay
connected so that our bond continues to grow stronger. We talk on the
phone every day. It depends on when he’s working and when I’m
working, but we make it work. We’ve been able to Skype a few
times, and I even spent the majority of one of those sessions talking
to Sam about how badly he wants a dog but his mom and dad won’t
let him.

“Mom and Dad
are mean and won’t let me have a dog,” he’d whined
to me. I could see Tim sitting behind him, and he rolled his eyes.

“Awww…
they’re not being mean, Sam,” I told him empathetically.
“It’s just a really hard time now with your dad living in
an apartment.”

“But I could
walk him every day,” he says desperately.

“But you’re
not there every day,” I point out to him. “However, I bet
there will come a day when you will be able to get a dog. You just
have to be patient about it, buddy.”

It was a fine line
to walk—commiserating with him without undermining his
parents—but I think I managed well, and his big grin into the
camera before he said goodbye to me told me that he really did like
me. When he told me he couldn’t wait to see me again, well…
that was just the best ever.

And I really enjoyed
my Skype sessions with Tim on the nights that Sam stayed with his
mom. We had inadvertently ventured into interesting territory.

“I miss you so
much,” I whined to him one night. “My poor vibrator is on
its last leg.”

Tim groaned, and his
eyes were tortured. “Damn baby… you’re killing me
here just imagining that.”

“Hmmm,”
I mused. “I bet we can do better than just ‘imagining’
that.”

I then proceeded to
show him how much I missed him. He, in turn, reciprocated, so I was
well aware of how much he missed me.

I contacted a
headhunter that specializes in medical placements in New York but so
far, there’s been nothing available in a hospital setting. Tim
has told me to take my time with my search, but it’s
discouraging and I’m lonely, and I really don’t want to
wait. I’ve even considered not only private practice, but also
perhaps contract work or a teaching post. Anything, really, that will
get me back to New York and Tim.

I’ve let the
hospital administration at Tulane know of my plans because I don’t
want them to be caught shorthanded. I’ve even encouraged them
to start looking for a replacement, knowing that I might short change
myself on a job here until I can find something in New York. But deep
down…there’s a tiny part of me that kind of hopes they
do find someone quickly so that I’m forced out. That would mean
an immediate move to New York, which is doable for me. I’ve got
a healthy savings account, and I could live cheaply there while I
continue to look for something. It’s not the ideal situation,
but at this point, I’m letting my heart start to direct my
moves, which I know isn’t the soundest way to let a major life
change take place.

There is one other
possibility though.

It’s something
I’ve toyed with, but keep rejecting time and time again.
However, every day that passes with no job prospects, the idea starts
to look more appealing. It would mean reaching past my walls that I
erected long ago. It would mean opening myself up to my father.

I could ask for his
help in finding me something. He has many prominent contacts in the
medical community throughout the city. He has pull and leverage. I
could swallow the acid that churns in my stomach over asking for his
help, and just bite the bullet to do it.

In fact, I reason to
myself, I could even justify it by the mere fact that he owes me. He
owes me for all the wretched things he did to Tim and me so long ago,
and it would almost be poetic justice if I used him to help me get
back to Tim.

Yeah… justice
would be served.

Without another
moment’s hesitation, I pick up my phone and dial my parents’
number. My mom answers on the second ring. “Hello.”

“Hi Mom,”
I say casually, which is sort of hard to pull off. I almost never
call them, mainly because my mom still calls me at least once a week,
and it lets me feed into the carefully constructed cool relationship
I’ve nurtured over the years. This extended naturally to my
mother, who not only supported my father when he threw Tim out of our
house, but who fought against me tooth and nail right alongside my
father when I wanted to leave Columbia. She picked which corner she
wanted to do battle in, and it wasn’t mine.

I do believe this
may be something she’s regretted to some extent over the years,
as she’s watched us all drift further and further apart, but I
don’t think she knows how to fix the problem. Hell, I don’t
know that it can be fixed, but still… she calls me routinely
and I will have to say it’s because of her efforts that I
haven’t completely cut ties.

“Holly,”
she exclaims happily. “What a pleasant surprise. How are you?”

“I’m
good,” I tell her. “Tired… had a forty-eight hour
shift and still doing some work. But good.”

“Life of a
doctor,” she quips. “It’s the price you pay for
being given all that talent and ability.”

“That’s
one way to look at it,” I say with a smile on my face.

And then…
awkward silence, because I’ve actually forgotten how to make
small talk with my mother. At this point, I suppose I could ask her
how she’s doing. I could even extend a feeler out to ask how
Dad is doing, not that I really care all that much. But honestly…
it feels deceptive, so I just decide to go for it.

“Listen…
I’ve decided to move back to New York, and I want to know if
there’s any pull Dad might have with one of the hospitals that
could get me in the door. I don’t care which borough.”

“Oh my God,”
my mother breathes into the phone, pure joy in her voice. “That’s
wonderful. I’m so happy you’re coming back home. Wait a
minute… let me put your father on the phone, and he can—”

“No,” I
say quickly. “No, I don’t want to talk to him. If you
could just pass it along to him and ask if he can check around.”

“But Holly,”
she says admonishingly, “he’s your father. He’ll be
thrilled, and this could be a step toward repairing your relationship
with him.”

“I don’t
want to repair my relationship with him,” I say sternly. “He
ruined it by what he did.”

“Honey…
that was so long ago,” she chides.

“And yet, it
still affects me,” I tell her. “What he did was wrong on
so many levels, and never once has he ever apologized. And you know
why, Mom? Because he’s not sorry. Because he’s a
mean-spirited bully and bigot, and that is not the man I used to look
up to.”

My mom actually
gasps into the phone, but I work up a full head of steam. “He
ruined it, Mom. This is on him, not me. He’s not the type of
man I want in my life, and when I get married and have kids one day,
he’s not the type of man I want my children looking up to.”

“Holly,”
my mom growls into the phone. “That’s enough.”

I take a deep breath
and let it out, my anger spent quickly. I pull myself together…
attempt to be mature. In a gentler voice, I say, “I’m
sorry. Not for the things I said, but that it upsets you. I didn’t
mean to do that. But that’s the way I feel, and it won’t
change.”

My mom is silent for
a moment, and then she says softly, “You might find… if
you just gave him a chance… that your father has done some
changing. Maybe he has regrets over what happened.”

I scoff. “I’ve
not seen that.”

“Because you
never give him a chance. You won’t talk to him.”

Guilt courses
through me, for the first time since I cut ties. I have always been
so adamantly proud of the stance I’ve taken, but is it
possible… just possible… that I’ve erected such a
barrier around me that I’ve left no room for an opening by
which my father could talk to me about this?

The thought makes me
a little sick to my stomach. Sick over the thought of actually
discussing such an unpleasant subject with him, and sick over the
fact that maybe I’ve denied him an opportunity to be forgiven.

Shaking my head, I
buck up my resolve and say, “Look… Mom. Just forget that
I called. Don’t ask Dad to step in and ask around for me. I’ll
figure something out on my own. I need to go.”

“Holly…
no, wait. He’d be glad to do it. Forget the other things I’ve
said. Let him do this for you—”

“I’m
sorry,” I cut in on her. “I really need to go. I’ll
talk to you soon.”

I can hear the
fading voice of my mom calling my name again as I pull the phone away
from my ear and disconnect the call.

For some reason,
tears well up in my eyes. Maybe it’s because I’m now
thinking about a future with Tim, and with that comes thoughts of a
family, and what family really means.

All of my bitter
feelings over the years have been rooted in anger toward my father,
over what he did to Tim and me. But now, for the first time, I’m
feeling melancholy over the fact that I not only lost Tim, but I
really also lost my family as well.

Tim

Fuck, I’m
exhausted. We just got back from a 2
^nd
Alarm Assignment in
a high-rise necessitating five engine companies, two ladder
companies, two battalion chiefs, a rescue battalion chief, a safety
battalion chief, and tactical support units.