In Her Eyes (7 page)

“I just need to focus on other things right now,” Casey said.

“Please tell me you’re not holding back because of Emma.”

“I’m not,” Casey lied.

Nikki put her hand on her hip and raised her eyebrows.

“I promise,” Casey lied again.

“I swear you must be the only girl I know who doesn’t want to have a fling with a college athlete.”

Casey grabbed her phone and headed for the door. She turned around towards Nikki, still standing by the kitchen table. “I don’t want a fling,” she said.

“Then what do you want?”

“I don’t know,” she said as she stepped out the door. But she did know, even after just one night with him. She wanted more.

19

Not Ready

April 6, 2015

It was a few minutes after five o’clock when Casey walked past a nurse’s desk painted to look like a child snorkeling with Manatees. She had just spoken with the attending physician, who confirmed she could head out for the night. When she stepped outside the frigid hospital she could feel the heat of the sun like it were hanging just above the trees, but there was nothing but scattered shadows at the bottom of the steps where Candy was sitting.

“Girl, you got problems,” Candy said, picking up their conversation where they had left off about an hour ago. Candy was pretty much the only person besides Nikki that Casey felt comfortable talking to. She was about twenty years older than Casey, which made for a great friendship because she had such a drastically different perspective on life.

Casey leaned against the railing a step below her. “You sound just like Nikki.”

“I don’t know Miss Nikki, but she sounds like an intelligent lady.”

“She is…I think,” Casey said, laughing.

“And yet you still look confused.”

“I just don’t know what to do,” Casey said.

The door opened behind her and one of fourth-year residents walked outside, eyes glued to the phone in his hands.

“I’m starting to think this whole doctor school thing didn’t really teach you all that much,” Candy said.

“So, I should call him back? What if he knows I’ve been ignoring his calls? What do I even say?”

“You hand Miss Candy the phone and I’ll take care of all that,” Candy said, with a smile.

I wish I had her confidence,
Casey thought. “What if I’m not ready? I haven’t even gone on a real date since I left California.”

“Were you ready for him to kiss you?”

“Well, no.”

“But you liked it?”

Casey blushed lightly, “Yes.”

Candy pursed her bright pink lips. “Okay, okay, I get it. But there’s something else.”

Candy was pointing at Casey and bouncing her hand up and down like she was ringing up someone on a cash register. “Oh, no. I know that look. This is where you explain some crazy white girl stuff you into. Like you own a baby alligator or something.”

Casey hadn’t laughed this hard in a long time. Wait no, that’s not true. This is about how hard she laughed last week at lunch when she caught Candy teaching a room full of residents how to twerk. And it wasn’t just the female residents.

Casey ran her fingers over the rough surface of the railing where several paint chips were peeling off. She thought about Emma and her expression changed to a more serious one. Casey took a deep breath. “I have a daughter.”

All of her classmates at UC Berkeley had known about Emma. They were surprisingly supportive, especially after the surgery. But when Casey got to Shands last summer, everything just felt different. She didn’t have the comfort of her tight-knit group of med students. So, other than Nikki, her attending, and the chief resident, Candy was the first person she’d told.

“Wait, you a baby momma?” Candy looked Casey up and down. “With that body?” She took a sip of her peach tea. “I need to start that Weight Watchers again. Mhmm.”

Casey laughed again. She was so glad she had met Candy in the past couple months. It was so easy talking to her.

“What’s her name?” Candy asked.

“Emma Mae,” Casey said. “She just turned five.”

“Now
that
is a precious name.”

Casey pulled the small black neck wallet from under her scrubs. The pocket was large enough for a little bit of cash, a credit card, her hospital ID, and a picture of Emma. “This is her,” she said, handing the picture to Candy.

In the picture Emma was leaning against their new house in Gainesville. Her long brown hair had a slightly auburn tint and was half pulled back with lightly twisted bangs. Her lips were pouty and the color of fresh cranberries.

Candy held the picture arm’s length away from her so she could see Casey next to Emma. “She’s got her momma’s look. But those eyes…” Candy’s voice trailed off. Casey knew exactly what she was seeing because she had seen it so many times herself since the surgery. Unlike her Cerulean blue eyes, Emma’s were a rare mixture of stark blue and subtle green aquamarine, like the color of the ocean along the coast.

Candy handed the picture back to Casey. “She is just beautiful.”

“She is. But, you understand now?”

“Understand what?”

“Why I don’t think I can go out with him.”

“The only reason you can’t go out with him is because you left it up to Siri to call him back instead of doing it yourself.”

Casey shook her head. “You don’t understand, it’s just not that easy.”

“Girl, don’t you be givin’ me this single mama stuff now. I got two little girls of my own with no daddy, and while I am very protective of who is around them, I don’t let that stop me from finding my soulmate.”

“I just don’t think I can, though.”

“Look at me.” Casey looked up to find Candy’s hard brown eyes drilling into hers. “No one thinks they can, until they do.”

“What if he finds out about Emma and doesn’t like her. Or doesn’t like me because I have her…” Casey said.

“First off, he’s not going to
find out
about her because you’re going to
tell him
about her. Secondly, if he doesn’t like you because you have a little girl, then you don’t want him anyways. That is not a man. That is a boy. And you don’t have time for boys.”

She’s right,
Casey thought. I can’t go through life thinking like this. “So, what do I do now?”

20

Patience

April 6, 2015

“Any bright ideas?” Ben said.

Parker looked up from several sheets of paper spread out across the table. He was rubbing his hands over his eyes.

“About?”

“Finding Casey…,” Ben said.

“I don’t know, man, but I think my eyeballs are going to actually fall out of my head. This whole school thing makes zero sense. Think about it, if a single teacher can’t teach us every subject, then how can they expect us to learn them all?”

Ben thought about it, and actually, it was a decent point.

“Luckily they got brownies today, man, or I honestly wouldn’t still be here.” Parker scarfed down his third brownie and chased it with a glass of milk.

Ben just watched as more brownie crumbs joined several that were already scattered across the papers and his lap. He couldn’t even drink the milk without several drops running down the glass and onto his shirt.

“What?” Parker said, looking up at Ben staring at him.

Ben just shook his head. “Nothin’, man.”

“You know, if you would have just gotten Nikki’s number like a normal guy then we wouldn’t have this problem,” Ben said

Parker looked at Ben confused.

“Because you could call Nikki and find out why Casey isn’t calling me back…”

“Oh, well some warning before you decked the guy and ran would have been nice.”

“I didn’t run…I got pulled away by Casey.”

“Whatever, man, why are you still even talking about this? I thought we agreed on Mission Benpossible.”

“Sometimes I wonder if you ever listen to the words that come out of my mouth.”

Parker looked over to the pizza bar where the chef had just placed a fresh tray of something. “I’m gonna grab some food, you want anything?”

Ben didn’t bother responding because Parker was already walking away. He just sat there, still staring at the pile of papers that Parker called notes. He thought about going to the hospital again, but that wasn’t exactly a surefire solution. He could sit outside the hospital, perhaps even around lunch time at the same bench, but there were so many problems with that. For starters, he knew it was likely she didn’t get a lunch break at the same time every day. Second, the chance that she was still even at the Children’s Hospital was slim, since she was a first-year resident, and they probably got transferred all over the place. And lastly there would be no guarantee she would even be working whichever day he sat there.

Parker walked back up to the table with a plate full of pizza. “Dude, you need to try some of this.”

It looked absolutely disgusting. “What the heck is that?”

“Breakfast pizza,” Parker said with a mouth full of pizza and a grin. “Eggs, bacon, onions, cheddar cheese, salsa, and pizza.”

“It’s not even breakfast time though.”

“It’s like a fluffy bite of heaven,” Parker said between bites.

“You have problems.”

Parker looked down at the scattered mess of papers in front of him. “Don’t even get me started on problems.” He took another bite of that disgusting pizza and then asked, “So what are you going to do now?”

“I don’t…”

Parker interrupted, “Why don’t you just go to the hospital again?”

“I thought about that. The chances of that working are about as good as you passing this chem test,” he said, pointing back to sheets of paper spilling from a notebook in front of him.

Parker swallowed another bite of pizza and looked at Ben. “Dude, look around you. There are like twenty hot girls in this room alone. I don’t know how many times I can keep saying this. We can go talk to each and every one of them right now and I guarantee you’ll get at least one number.” He paused and then winked, “A real number this time.”

Ben stared blankly at him.

“You know, because she probably gave you a fake number.”

“Yes, I got the joke dumbass. But I also got her voicemail. It’s her number.”

Parker took another bite of pizza. “Seriously, look around you.”

Ben did look around him. There were two unbelievable blondes sitting in a booth together. Both of them wearing teal shirts with the sorority insignia for Delta Gamma, or “dirty girls” as Parker referred to them. A few tables away from them was a beautiful brunette sitting with two guys. Ben turned back the other way, and across from them was a cute red head sitting alone, doing what looked like a crossword puzzle.

The truth was Parker was right. Ben pulled his backpack on and pushed his stool in at the high-top table.

“Where are you going?” Parker asked.

Ben stood up from the table, “I don’t know man. Need to clear my head.”

“And what about the girl?”

Ben looked back at Parker, but didn’t say anything. Instead he walked out of the cafeteria with more than one girl on his mind.

* * *

Ben tried to focus on his breathing pattern as he moved across the empty track. He inhaled through his nose for three steps.
Nnihhhhh.
And exhaled through his mouth for two steps.
Sshhhhhoooo.
He picked up the pace changing his pattern to a two-one: breathing in for two steps, and out for one. His body temperature rising with each stride until he could feel the sweat on his skin evaporate trying to cool him down.

But no matter how hard he tried to focus, the silence of the vacant track began to crowd in on his thoughts. Parker’s words resonated within him.
What about the girl?

He stopped running in front of the east bleachers, bent over and rested his hands on his knees. His chest and back rose and fell as his lungs expanded and contracted to pull in more oxygen.

The fence across from him rattled from the wind and Ben looked up. The wind pushed the gate open until it clanged against the fence, and for a moment he saw her just as he first saw her six years ago…

Ben was a senior in high school and she was a new transfer whose name he didn’t even know. She was tall and slender with long brunette hair that curled just slightly at the ends. Her lips were full and there were subtle dimple like creases at the edges of her mouth when she smiled.

It was only by pure chance that she was meeting a friend at the track that day. Ben didn’t believe in love at first sight, but he could still remember the moment when their eyes met. It was in that moment he knew this girl mattered to him. And he hadn’t had another moment like that until he met Casey Taylor.

He closed his eyes and she was gone once again. It had been five years since he lost Amanda. He could be patient.

21

Risk Everything

April 9, 2015

A few days later, Casey made her way through campus for the first time since her orientation at the beginning of the year. As a resident, there weren’t many reasons for her to be on campus outside of the hospital.

It was unbelievably crowded for a Thursday afternoon. But she’d been the type of student who scheduled her classes at seven or eight in the morning, so what did she know? Maybe this was a typical Thursday afternoon.

She could have taken the bus. It went literally everywhere on campus, even a stop just in front of the track. But for some reason she’d convinced herself walking would give her more time to think.

She took a left off the crowded sidewalk and cut across the north lawn just in front of Reitz Union.

Most of the campus was to the east of her, and she was now walking west. So, the farther she walked, the less crowded it got, until she was finally walking by herself.

She passed by Ben Hill Griffith Stadium on her right, where the football team played. Then the O’Connell Center, where the basketball team played. A few minutes later she walked by the blue-screened outfield fence of McKethan Stadium, where the baseball team played. Nikki had dragged her to all these places the second she arrived at UF. All the games were fun the first time, but it wasn’t the same as undergrad at California.