A Seahorse in the Thames (2 page)

I’d made my way to the reception desk, passing only two other people in the waiting area: a man with an arm in a homemade sling and a whimpering little boy on his mother’s lap with an ice pack over one side of his face.

The nurse at the desk looked up at me and smiled. “Can I help you?”

“I am Alexa Poole and a… my friend Stephen Moran was brought here by ambulance. He fell off my roof while replacing shingles. I think he has a broken arm. I mean, I am not sure… I didn’t actually see him fall…” I was babbling. I sounded like I was trying to assure an angry judge that I hadn’t pushed Stephen off the roof myself. I stopped mid-sentence and just stared at her.

“It’s okay,” the nurse had said gently. “The ER is kind of a scary place, but your friend is in good hands, all right?”

I nodded like a three-year-old.

“Do you know how we can reach Mr. Moran’s family? Someone who can give us some information so we can better care for him? Getting his signature on the release form was about all he could manage.”

“So he’s awake?” I’d said, feeling strangely giddy.

“Kind of in and out,” the nurse said. “So do you know anyone in Mr. Moran’s family?”

I’d completely forgotten about trying to reach his mother. I had been so engrossed with nasty emergency room memories, I hadn’t even tried to see if her phone number was stored on his cell phone.

“Oh! I… I’ll try and call his mother,” I stammered, fumbling in my purse for Stephen’s cell phone. My hands brushed across his wallet. I lifted it out, slipped the insurance card into my free hand and handed it to her.

“Here’s his insurance card,” I said.

“Thanks. Do you think you could fill any of this out for us?”

She handed me a clipboard with an admittance form attached.

“Maybe just his address and his age,” I said.

“Well, that’s a start.”

I took the clipboard and walked over to a row of chairs by a window. I withdrew Stephen’s cell phone and fumbled through the menu, looking for his stored numbers. I found “Mom” under the “M’s.” I waited as somewhere in Riverside a phone rang. She picked it up on the fourth ring.

“Mrs. Moran?”

“Yes?”

“Um, my name is Alexa Poole and your son Stephen is working at my apartment building doing some repair work.”

I paused for just a second.

He hadn’t called her. She had said nothing when she heard my name.

“And, well, while he was on the roof today, he fell. I am with him at Sharp Hospital in San Diego.”

“Oh! He is okay? Is he hurt?” I could hear the tension and panic in her voice. I recognized it. I’d heard it before, seventeen years before, actually, when my mother received a call somewhat like this one.

“I think he broke his arm, and maybe his leg or ankle. He has some scratches. He fell onto a hedge outside my kitchen window, but he wasn’t exactly conscious when the ambulance came and took him, so I don’t know what else may be wrong.”

“Dear Jesus!”

“Mrs. Moran, I’m at the emergency room with him, they need some information from you.”

“Oh, of course.”

“Okay.”

I’d handed Stephen’s cell phone to the smiling nurse and she motioned for me to hand her the clipboard as well. The nurse began to ask Mrs. Moran questions and I stood there, unashamedly watching her fill in the blanks. Blood type B positive. Tonsils out when he was eight. Father deceased. Doesn’t smoke. No childhood illnesses. No prior broken bones. Has mentioned headaches the last few weeks. Exercises regularly. No known allergies.

Is kind to strangers and little kids,
I wanted to add.

When she was done, the nurse smiled at me and handed me the phone.

“Your friend’s mother is on her way. She should be here in an hour or so.”

I slipped the phone back into my purse. I had no idea what to do next.

“Would you like me to ask when you can see him?” she said.

Her question took me a little by surprise. She said it like she assumed I would want to.

In the seconds before I answered her, I thought of the way Stephen had carried me into my house two days ago when I fainted, how he gently laid me on the couch and brushed away my hair from my face as I came out of the fog of semi-consciousness. How he looked away when I tried to sit up and my robe fell partly open. How he got me a glass of water. How he stayed with me, listened to me spontaneously tell him what I had told no one else. That for several long weeks I didn’t know if the tumor was benign. That I couldn’t tell my mother I had a tumor under my arm. Not her. I told him about Rebecca, my thirty-seven-year-old sister who still plays Candy Land. I told him about her accident. and how my parents had once lost another child, this one for real. There had been a brother, Julian, who died within hours of his birth of a congenital heart defect, four years before Priscilla and I were born. I told him Priscilla hasn’t been home in four years, that she escaped to London eight years ago and has only made one trip home since. That my dad has a new wife, a new home, a new son, a new life.

“There was no one I could tell how scared I was,” I’d said, a little weepy.

I think somehow he knew it wasn’t that I don’t have friends I could’ve told my fears to. I do have friends. I have friends at work, and the joggers I share my favorite beach with, and I have Serafina. I have some kind acquaintances at the church I sometimes attend. I think he somehow knew this was just one of those private, personal things I’d wanted to share only with someone who truly loves me, someone who would’ve worried with me, been scared for me that I might’ve had cancer, who would’ve fought with me if I did, and who would’ve wept for me if it killed me.

He sat there and listened to it all.

“You are very brave,” he said, when I was finished.

“No, I’m not…” I started to say.

“Yes, you are. Look at how you suffered to spare your mother pain. She’s the reason you said nothing to anyone about your fears, isn’t it? Because of what happened to your sister? And your baby brother? You didn’t want her to think for a moment that she might lose you, too. You are very brave. And unselfish.”

I could think of nothing to say.

Stephen rose from where he had been sitting—on the couch next to me. He handed me the newspaper that I had gone outside for in the first place.

“I better get back to work,” he had said. “If you’re sure you will be okay?”

I’d nodded and then watched him walk out onto the porch where new planks of wood waited to be nailed into place.

The nurse waited for my answer.

“Yes, please. I’d like to see him.”

I have been in Stephen’s room now for twenty minutes. He has been moved to a regular ward while we wait for Ivy Moran to arrive from Riverside. The operating room has been prepared. Stephen will need two pins in his arm to hold his broken elbow in place while it heals and a steel plate in his shattered ankle. Doctors are guessing Stephen was standing on the ridgeline of my roof when he fell, landing on his elbow upon his first contact with the roof and his ankle on the second. One of the doctors is concerned about why Stephen fell. He keeps talking about the headaches Stephen seems to have been having. He has asked me twice if I saw Stephen fall.

Stephen stirs again, licks his lips and his eyes flutter open.

He sees me.

“Alexa?” he whispers.

I move toward him. Instinctively, I reach for the hand that is not wounded.

“Yes, it’s me.”

“
What
was in the lemonade?” A faint smile breaking across his face.

“You fell, silly,” I reply. “Onto my hawthorn bushes.”

“Am I still in one piece?”

“Broken arm, broken ankle, lots of cuts and scratches. But I think you’ll still be able to play the violin.”

He grins, but it turns quickly into a grimace. He is in pain.

“I should call my mother,” he whispers.

“She’s already on her way.” I squeeze his hand. “I filched your cell phone and found her number. She’ll be here soon. Then you will go in for surgery for your arm and ankle.”

He nodded.

“What hit me in the head?” Stephen mumbles a moment later.

“What?” I ask.

“What hit me in the head?”

“I don’t know.” Serafina didn’t mention anything about seeing something hit Stephen in the head. A second of silence passes between us.

Then I ask what I feel I must.

“Is there anyone else you want me to call?”

I wonder if he knows what I mean. I don’t mean should I call my landlady Rose and tell her she will need to find someone else to finish the repairs. I don’t mean does he have a pet and do I need to call a neighbor to ask them to take care of it. I mean is there
someone
else. Someone he loves. Someone he at least cares about.

He opens one eye, and I feel his hand move under mine.

“No,” he says and his pinky touches mine.

He drifts off again.

I am falling.

I do not let go of his hand.

I
vy Moran arrives in a flowing caftan that billows past her as she makes her way down the hall. I hear her footsteps at first, flip-flops slapping the shiny floor, and I poke my head out of Stephen’s door. I see her moving toward me, her long gray hair moves across her shoulders like wheat in wind. I know she is Stephen’s mother; I can see his features in her tanned face. Ivy is wearing a collection of Native American jewelry. She looks like she spends a lot of time in the sun.

“Oh, you must be Alexa!” When she reaches Stephen’s door she embraces me like I am a long-lost relative. “Thank you for everything you’ve done today. How can I ever thank you?” She says this as she pulls me back into Stephen’s room. anxious to see him.

“I was happy to do it.”

But now she has eyes only for her son.

“Stephen, I am here.” She is at his side in an instant, stroking the hand that I’d been holding.

Stephen opens his eyes and smiles as best he can. “But it’s Thursday afternoon. You will miss Bunco.”

“It’s okay. I never win anyway.”

“Guess I really did it this time,” he continues.

“You’ll mend,” she says, but her smile disappears a little.

“I can barely keep my eyes open. They gave me something…” Stephen does not finish his sentence. His pre-op sedative is starting to take effect.

At that moment, a bed on wheels arrives, pushed by two nurses in pastel scrubs.

“Who would like to go for a little ride?” one of the nurses says cheerfully. She pushes the bed inside, parallel to Stephen’s bed.

Getting Stephen, groggy and with broken limbs wrapped in splints, onto the bed is going to be tricky. And he is wearing nothing but a pale blue hospital gown. I excuse myself while the nurses and his mother help Stephen make the transition. I step out into the hall.

A moment later, Ivy joins me and the bed appears at the doorway. Then one of the nurses pushes the bed through and begins to turn it for the push down the hall. He holds up his good arm.

“Just a sec,” he mumbles.

The nurse stops.

“Alexa,” he says.

“I am here,” I say.

“Tell Rafael I will show him the curve ball another time. Told him I’d see him today…”

Rafael. Serafina’s and Jorge’s eight-year-old grandson.

“I’ll tell him.”

He says nothing else, but he waves his hand in my direction. I resist the urge to take it, raise it to my lips and kiss it.

Kiss it.
What in the world am I thinking?

The nurse finishes her turn and the rolling stretcher starts to move down the hall. Ivy turns to me before following it.

“God bless you, Alexa, for everything you have done. I’m in your debt!”

I want to ask her if she needs a place to stay the night or if she wants me to wait with her while Stephen is in surgery but my mouth refuses to produce these questions. I simply nod and she dashes off, the caftan flowing like a sail on a slim boat.

I stand there watching them until the stretcher disappears into an elevator.

My incision is starting to ache.

I don’t know what to do. I want to stay. Should I stay? Maybe I should go. Is Ivy the kind of person who can handle something like this on her own? She seems like she is. She seems calm and self-assured. Maybe that’s just how she appears on the outside. Maybe she needs me to stay.

Who am I kidding?

This is not about staying for Ivy.

This is about wanting to be wherever Stephen is.

This is nuts.

I’ll come see him tomorrow.

I head for the elevator myself. Not to go to the OR, I tell myself when I step inside. “L” for lobby, that’s where I am going. I don’t even know which floor the OR is on. Which is fine. I don’t need to know. I am going home. “L” for lobby. I press it. The doors close. I feel myself descending.

Oh, how I feel myself descending.

Stephen is not the first man I’ve ever fallen for. There have been a few other men in my life who have left me breathless, scatter-brained and captivated by their touch. Okay, two. One in high school. One in college. But this feels different. I’m not sure how to describe it. Everything that comes to mind sounds like syrup oozing from a poorly written greeting card. This attraction I feel for Stephen begins somewhere deeper within my being than the fascination I have felt for other men in the past. I don’t feel the visceral pull of physical attraction, though I am sure it must be there. There is a stronger draw than just the mere appeal of a handsome member of the opposite sex. This deeper draw is all I can sense, making me wonder if this is what people mean when they say “love at first sight.” I’m not drawn to Stephen only by what I see in him. It’s more like I am drawn by what I see in me and other people when I’m with him.

I didn’t feel this way with Greg Oldenburg in high school. And I seriously doubt Greg felt this way about me. Ours was an association of convenience. I think Greg and I both got what we wanted out of our relationship. We both wanted to be paired with someone for our senior year in high school. We both wanted to have someone to go on dates with on Friday nights, someone to hold hands with in the hallways, someone to be seen with, someone to make us feel like we were both worthy of being dated, someone to go to prom with, someone with whom to experiment the art of kissing. Someone to show us how to begin to understand the emotional and mental differences between men and women.

I also wanted to be like Priscilla, who had a dozen high school guys chasing after her. Despite being identical twins, Priscilla was the one that the boys at our high school were attracted to, not me. It didn’t matter that we looked alike, sounded alike and shared each other’s clothes. She was the one who turned heads. I think she liked that, though. And I wouldn’t have wanted that kind of attention. Priscilla liked the thrill of having multiple young men longing for her company and I was happy just to experience the thrill of capturing one boy’s complete attention. It was one of the many ways we were different from each other. And probably still are.

I don’t know where Priscilla drew the line with her dating relationships. We drifted apart along with the rest of the family after Rebecca’s accident. As for me, I know Greg wanted more from me than I was willing to give him. But I couldn’t bring myself to let him have every inch of my body and soul, even though his physical touch was electrifying. I had enough sporadic exposure from our family’s infrequent attendance at church to know that fooling around in bed before you were married cheapened the relationship as well as the very act of love-making. I knew my parents wouldn’t approve. But it wasn’t just because I felt it ethically wrong that I refused Greg’s advances. I was scared to have to sex with him. Scared of being naked with him. Scared that it would hurt. Scared that he would find me repulsive. Scared that I would find
him
repulsive. Scared I would never be able to fully love another man. Scared I would get pregnant. Scared that I wouldn’t find anything pleasurable or good in giving my body away to a man-boy I knew I wouldn’t marry.

I let Greg kiss me, passionately I guess you could say, and he on more than one occasion wove his way through my resistance by touching me in ways that threatened to lead us to the very thing I wanted to avoid. So I broke up with him the week after we graduated. I think he was relieved. Like I said, we had both gotten what we wanted. High school was over. We were both headed to different colleges where no one knew us, and where no one would particularly notice if either one of us had a date or not on Friday nights. And I figured at college he could probably find someone who would give him what he wanted.

I wish I could say I was as smart about my next relationship. I got through my freshman year at San Jose State without any romantic entanglements. I was too thrilled to be on my own—out of my mother’s lonely house where there was no dad and no telephone. And since Priscilla had opted to go to Berkeley, there was no one to compare me to. I was just
me
.

But I met Rick Fortrell my sophomore year. And I fell for him as quick and as hard as Stephen fell off my roof. And I ended up with injuries just like Stephen did, albeit emotional ones. Rick was handsome, intelligent, motivated and a smooth-talker. Greg had no idea how to talk me out of my fears about being intimate with a man. But Rick had already mastered this form of communication, though I did not know this at first. I ended up giving myself, every part of myself—including my soul it seemed—to Rick because I thought he was going to ask me to marry him. He didn’t. In fact, after six months of living in as complete a relationship as I have ever known, Rick became bored.

When he decided we were through, I was already imagining what my wedding dress would look like. I still shudder at how his departure from my life surprised me. It was what I least expected would happen.

Wounded, angry and feeling very foolish, I crept into the biggest downtown church I could find on the day he left me; one where I could just melt into an empty pew and stay anonymous. Easy to do on a Thursday. The sanctuary of the Presbyterian church I happened upon was open and empty. I went in because I didn’t know where else to go. I didn’t know whom to turn to but God.

I appealed to the heavens.

I let Rick have everything! Every part of me, God! My very soul!

I don’t know if I whispered this or cried it aloud or screamed it within my head. But I did hear something back. It is the only time I can ever recall feeling like God had specifically spoken to me, perhaps that is because it was one of the few times I had specifically spoken to
him
.

Not every part
, the holy voice said.
Not your very soul. That is still yours to give to whom you will.

Stunned into silence, I said nothing else. And neither did the Voice.

But I left the church that day feeling I had been given something back. It got me through the rest of the school year.

I didn’t date for a long time after that. When I graduated a couple years later, I was still unattached and I felt strangely unnecessary. The same month I graduated, Priscilla abruptly moved to London without so much as a phone call to let me know. Then my father’s new wife had a baby. To top off the month, my mother took her inheritance from her parents, sold my childhood home, bought a condo on Coronado Island and started raising pugs.

And there I was with a college degree but no job. And no significant other. I desperately needed to feel useful.

The only person who I knew who really needed me was Rebecca. She was living in a group home—and still does, actually—near Balboa Park. Her material and physical needs were being met, and she had been given a job of sorts to help her feel like she has a purpose for her life, but I knew my mother’s visits to her were usually stress-filled—for both of them. When I graduated from college, it had been ten years since Rebecca’s accident but I think my mother still expected her to “get better.” Mom was still in the mode of impatient expectation. Rebecca had relearned how to walk, how to write, how to do math, how to understand a joke; it seemed reasonable to think she would relearn who she had been before the accident changed her: a promising scholar, a driven perfectionist, an independent thinker. But that’s not what happened. My sister’s injuries left her with low to average intelligence, frequent bouts of short-term memory loss and a childlike wonder that I confess I found enchanting. Mom was visiting Rebecca once or twice a month back then. It is even less now. My father didn’t visit Rebecca much back then either, even though after the divorce he moved only an hour and a half away. I’m sure he thought—and still thinks—“Well, how often do parents need to visit their adult children?” After all, when I graduated from college at twenty-two Rebecca was twenty-nine. She had been living at the group home for nine years. She had a life of her own, right? And Priscilla? Priscilla never came back to San Diego after she left for Berkeley. Not once. She fled to Europe with her college degree. She boarded a plane to London, landed, and then just stayed there. She has a flat overlooking the Thames and she works as a translator for an import company. That’s her life. It doesn’t really include the remnants of her family. Rebecca has seen her once in the last eight years.

Rebecca and I, on the other hand, get a long great. I have never told anyone this, but I like who she became after her accident. I would never have wished it on her, but it wasn’t the worst possible thing that could have happened to her. The worst possible thing would have been to end up like Leanne.

So I was pretty sure Rebecca would be thrilled if I could spend more time with her, see her regularly, take her places for lunch. And being needed by Rebecca, my brain-damaged sister, was better than being needed by no one.

I applied to all the San Diego hospitals, hoping to get a job close to Rebecca’s group home. I moved back to San Diego, found the triplex after a chance meeting with Rose, the owner and landlady, in a parking lot, and hoped for the right job offer to come my way. It finally came at just about the time my meager funds were about to run out. I got a job at Mercy Hospital, just a few minutes away from Rebecca’s group home.

So the job worked out, I found a wonderful place to live near the beach and I was and still am able to see Rebecca every week.