Fire & Water (5 page)

Mary K’s lips pressed together and her eyes narrowed. “Get that shit out of here.”

The young volunteer blinked in confusion. “But they’re for you, and balloons are okay in ICU. No flowers because of allergies, but—”

“Get—Them—Out.”

Balloons bobbing behind her, the volunteer made a hasty exit. Just as I was about to tell her what an ass she was, I spied tears spilling down Mary K’s cheeks. She quickly wiped them away with the shoulder of her hospital gown.

It was the first time I’d ever seen her cry. I wanted to hold her, tell her it would all be okay. We’d talk about things—think through all of her options. Make a new plan.

“Out,” she whispered, before she resumed staring toward the window.

I began to object, but I knew I had to leave her alone for a while. In the mood she was in, I could see her jumping out of the bed and slapping me senseless.

Unlikely Pairings

I first saw his name on a chart in the spring of 1988: Jacob Bloom. Healthy, thirty-six, and in the ER because a shard of flagstone had hit him in the face and the lens of his glasses had shattered into his eye.

My patient lay flat on an exam table, a bloodstained towel and icepack over his right eye, his other eye closed. A small radio rested on his chest; the wires went to his ears, and his paint-dappled Topsiders swayed with a rhythm I could hear only as a pulsing buzz. His left hand fingered the neck of an air guitar.

I cleared my throat. He looked up at me, his one-eyed gaze lingering somewhere near my lips. He tugged at the cords of his headphones. His mouth widened into a soft grin.

“So, Mr. Bloom, I see you’ve injured your eye,” I said, lowering the bloody towel.

“Wow, Doc, you’re really good.”

“As a matter of fact, I am,” I said, examining the deep gouge under his thick, dark brow. I dismissed his mild flirtation and maintained my focus, trying to ignore his beguiling smile. His eye was filled with blood, and the socket was bruised, not broken. I applied anesthetic drops and removed a sliver of glass lodged in the corner of his eyelid, then stitched his brow. The glass had nicked his eyeball just millimeters from his cornea.

“See, I’m an artist,” he explained with a note of silliness. “And I was a little short on red paint. Inspiration was with me, and well—”

Flirtation felt uncomfortable, like a stiff new pair of jeans. “Human blood, particularly your own, seems a poor paint substitute, Mr. Bloom, if only because of its limited quantity and the obvious outcome of over-use.”

“Ah yes, but it causes you to meet such interesting people.”

* * *

Two days later, well after dark, I was heading home after a grueling shift in the ER. These were my last days as an intern, and I was distracted with thoughts about what would come next. I stuffed my stethoscope into my lab coat pocket and fumbled for my keys. My Beetle sat like a chariot, waiting for me in the amber glow of the parking garage lights. Icy wind sliced through the garage. I pulled my mother’s Irish wool, cable-knit sweater up around my neck. On her it had hung so loosely she’d rolled the sleeves. On me the fit was snug, and the sleeves barely made it to my wrists. Though it had grown tattered with the years, wearing it made me feel close to her, and I couldn’t let it go. Cold bit through the thinning yarn.

“Ahoy, Matey,” a voice came from behind me.

His wiry silhouette and the dark shadow of his eye patch were all I could see, but I knew instantly that it was Jake Bloom.

“Mr. Bloom, you’re looking better than the last time I saw you.”

He continued in his pirate voice. “This here ship’s got a mighty fine sawbones.”

“I hope you’ve seen your doctor for a follow-up, Mr. Bloom.”

“Doctuhs…” he said, now in a comical Yiddish accent. “Have I seen
doctuhs
? I’m filthy with
doctuhs
.”

After an especially rugged day in the ER, his playfulness was a balm. “No infection? No problems?”

“Nah, you did a great job,” he said, sincerity returning to his natural voice. “Vision’s fine—as good as it was before, anyway. I’ll come out of this with just a small, manly scar adding character to an otherwise boring face.”

His face, dark and expressive, was anything but boring. It was a face that seemed somehow to have more moving parts than most, with twitches and grimaces that formed expressions, instantly animating his every thought.

“Good to hear it, Mr. Bloom. You got lucky.” I found my key and readied it for the car door.

“I don’t believe in luck. And it’s Jake. Mr. Bloom is my father.” He feigned a shiver. His unpatched eye found my nametag and he squinted. “K. Murphy, M.D. K? Hmm?”

“Katherine,” I surrendered.

“I might’ve known. Katherine, Kate, Katie. Anything but Kathy.” He studied my face. “Fair skin. Dark hair. Irish surname. No, you’ve never been a Kathy. I’ll have to decide what to call you after I know you better.”

My face betrayed me again, smiling against my will. Those stiff jeans were beginning to feel more comfortable.

“So, Katherine, Katie, Kate. What are the chances of the beautiful doctor accompanying a one-eyed idiot for some midnight pizza and beer?”

“Really, you shouldn’t drink with the medication—”

“I’ve been off the meds since day one. Brought me down.” His face was gentle and inviting. “Besides, nothing says thanks to the doctor who saved your vision like brewed hops and processed carbohydrates topped with animal byproducts.” His eyebrows twitched and his smile gave him a hopeful, eager expression.

A part of me felt cautious—was he just a flirt? A player? There were plenty of those among the doctors and interns. But this felt different, like it wasn’t rehearsed or something he did with any woman he met. I was flattered. “Sure,” I surrendered. “I didn’t get dinner. Pizza would be great.”

The Front Room was the hangout for UC med students, not because the food was especially good, but because it was nearby and open late and the beer was cheap. Red and white plastic tablecloths and Chianti bottles cloaked in wax drippings donned each table. Kitschy rubber grapes dangled from the ceiling, and Frank Sinatra posters hung from imitation wood paneling.

After nine on a Sunday night, the place still housed clusters of med students, all wearing scrubs; their way of telling the world they were on the way to becoming “M-Deities,”
as Mary K called them. We sat in a windowed booth. Mario Lanza sang in the background.

“So, I could ask all the usual stuff,” Jake said. “But then you’d have a boring story to tell our grandchildren.”

His presumptuousness both irritated me and made my body hum.

When the menu came, Jake pulled a mangled pair of wire-rimmed glasses from his shirt pocket that had an empty lens on the side that covered his patched eye. “First confession of my many flaws,” he said. “I’m blind as a bat. Now I’m blind as a one-eyed bat.” He looked up at the waiter. “You know what to do.”

The waiter nodded and stepped away.

“You’re trusting the waiter in this place?” I whispered. “They’re used to groups of drunk med students in here.”

“It’s all taken care of.” He grinned. “It seems you’re not used to being pampered.” I couldn’t decide if he was suave or just arrogant.

I picked wax off the Chianti bottle. “This is pampering?”

“A little faith, Dr. Murphy.”

“So, what do you do?” I asked. “Are you really an artist, or is that just another of your multiple personalities?”

“All right,” he said and leaned back in his chair. “I guess we’re going to do the boring first-date stuff after all.”

“Who said this was a date?”

“You knew it was a date or you wouldn’t be here.”

It happened again, that feeling of being caught. He was arrogant, but also self-effacing; cocky, yet wholly vulnerable.

Just then, two plates arrived. In front of me was a delicately thin mini pizza topped with butter-browned scallops, goat cheese, pine nuts, and fresh basil, with a bright yellow nasturtium blossom in the center. Jake’s pizza was equally beautiful, with curled pink shrimp sitting atop a spiral of ruby red, roasted tomatoes. The waiter uncorked a bottle of Pinot Grigio and poured two glasses.

I stared at Jake, who wore a smirk. “This is not standard Front Room fare. What, did you hire a chef?”

“In a manner of speaking. Taste it.”

I bit into a slice and the rich flavors filled my mouth; the scent of basil was hypnotic.

“And?” Jake looked at me like a puppy awaiting a well-deserved treat.

I took another bite. All I could do was groan.

“I take it you like?”

I opened my eyes, not even aware that I’d closed them, and wiped my lips. “I want the name of your chef.”

Jake held out his hand. “Jake Bloom. At your pleasure.”

“You?”

“Hey, I brought the good groceries. Tipped the cooks. And
voil
à! They let me play in their sandbox.”

“All assuming that I’d agree to come here with you. And what if I’d declined your invitation?”

“Then I’d be sitting here all alone with this great food, weeping into my wine glass. Here,” he said, holding up a slice of his pizza. “You have to try this one, too.”

I took a scrumptious bite from the slice he held before me. “So?” he asked.

I didn’t want him to know I had become entranced, but, though I tried, I was unable to act nonchalant. Being with Jake was unlike any first date I’d ever had, though confessedly my experience was limited. Jake was relentless with his questions throughout the dinner. He wanted to understand me, my thoughts, my life, to know about everyone in my life who loved me. He reached across the table with ease, helping himself to morsels from my plate like we’d known each other for years. He probed until I told all about growing up in San Francisco in my dad’s pub, and about the motley family that raised me.

“And your mom?” he asked.

The story I usually told about my mother now had an apocryphal addition, as of a few days before. I’d called my dad to tell him that I needed a break from the pub crowd—some time to sort things out—and I hadn’t spoken to him since. “She died when I was little.”

Jake stopped chewing and stared at me. “And?”

“What and? There’s no
and
.”

“Your face says there’s an
and
.” He wiped his lips with his napkin and tilted his head to one side. “Your words are so—careful. But your face, it shows everything. This isn’t old pain. This is a fresher wound.”

Suddenly, I felt like I didn’t have enough clothes on. I pulled my mom’s sweater across my chest.

“We orphans have a way of finding one another, don’t you think?”

I’d never thought of myself as an orphan. With so many surrogates who had stepped in after my mother died, a shortage of parental figures had never been a problem. But when I thought about Mary K—my closest friend—we were orphans of sorts, even though her parents were all alive.

“And you?” I asked diverting his inquiry. “How is it that you are an orphan?”

“Oh, now that’s a tragic tale. Broken home.” He looked up and gave a theatrical sniff and wiped an invisible tear. “Parents divorced when I was three. I grew up with my father. At least, in his custody, accompanied by a parade of stepmothers, each younger than her predecessor. I left home when I was seventeen and the stepmother
du jour
was twenty-three. Figured it was only a matter of time before I passed them up. My mother left when I was small. Died when I was in boarding school. One of my old nannies called to tell me about it. My father… well, now there are not really words to describe him, though many have tried.” Jake looked up at me and shrugged. “I believe more in family of choice than family by blood. My dad and I settled into an acceptable distance after a blow-up of biblical proportions. Family is me and Burt for the last ten years. Burt Swift. Great man. Aussie swagger on the outside, pussycat at heart. Brother by choice and partner in crime.”

“Yeah, Mary K, my housemate, is like that for me, I guess.”

“Is she a doctor, too?”

“Yeah. We’ve been friends since our undergraduate freshman year. She’ll be doing a residency in—” I stopped myself.

Jake stopped eating again and looked into my eyes. “Another fresh wound?”

Before I knew it, I was telling him all about Mary K’s diabetes and her decision to decline her residency in transplant. “She’s home from the hospital now. Like it never happened. Won’t accept any care at all. But that’s Mary K.” I struggled for words to define my prickly, affection-intolerant friend. “She’s sort of a paradox.”

Our conversation drifted, weaving easily between topics of music and art, politics and medicine, and though I was enjoying it, images of one of my ER patients from earlier that day kept popping into my mind.

“What is it?” Jake asked. “Something is troubling you.”

I shrugged, trying to appear casual. “Just a little tired, I guess. I had a patient that really got to me today. It happens.”