Love Gone Mad (3 page)

Ring, no ring, married, living together, looking, hooking up, lost and found … it’s all complicated. Jesus, man … what’re you, Sherlock Holmes? Looking for clues, bits and pieces … trying to dope out this puzzle?

Adrian waits for his soup to cool. He wonders if Megan Haggarty could possibly make him feel something—anything—because since the divorce from Peggy, he’s felt forever soured, emotionally mutilated, as though indifference runs thickly through him, slows his blood, and chills his heart. He knows he’s too young to feel this way; there’s too much to look forward to, yet life’s vividness seems drained, washed out.

It occurs to Adrian that there could be something chemical in one’s attraction to another. It could be inborn, something beyond control, hormonal—maybe pheromones, some elemental attractant—that draws a man to a woman and makes someone irresistible. And he suddenly realizes he’s nearly leaning across the table, even trying to get a whiff of Megan Haggarty’s hair or her milky skin. And he’s aware at that moment that approaching women was always emotionally charged with some nascent fear he’d be spurned, or worse, he’d be laughed at.

Megan Haggarty picks up her sandwich and bites into it, eyes still fixed on the page. He recalls first seeing Peggy devour a sandwich. He’d thought back then—nothing original, for sure—the heartier a woman’s appetite, the more robust her sexual hunger.

It’s kid stuff, pure fantasy
.

She sets her sandwich back on the paper plate. A perfect half circle is gone. There’s scalloping where her teeth severed the bread. Her throat moves up and then down as she swallows. Adrian notices that she’s tall, maybe five ten, though he can’t tell for certain. Peggy was tall, too, as have been all the women he’s desired.

“Your soup’s getting cold,” she says, her eyes still riveted on the book.

His throat closes; it feels like a thicket of thorns forms deep inside.

She looks up now, directly at him. Those eyes—emerald-green rings around hazel irises—are simply gorgeous. Be careful, Adrian tells himself. He grins—caught looking—and he sees a smile form on her bow-shaped lips. Her teeth are perfect, and dimples form on her cheeks as she smiles.

And she closes
In Cold Blood
.

He’s trumped Capote. Adrian wonders if it’s possible a connection is forming. Or will she simply toy with him because now she thinks he was copping glances like a teenager? Maybe she thinks he’s a flirt, a third-rate Casanova trying to score.

“Are you new here?” he asks.

“I’ve been here for two years.” Her head tilts.

“Funny, I haven’t seen you around.”

How lame. What a contrived opener …
Adrian tells himself.

“Well, Dr. Douglas,” she says, a smile filling her voice, “the neonatal ICU’s very far from the cardiac surgery center.”

So she’s read his name tag. Small triumph, he thinks, but he’ll take it.

“And I rarely come down to the cafeteria.”

“How come?”

“Oh, we’re very busy with the newbies. But we get a little time off.”

And of all things, he finds himself wondering what she does with her time off. It could be spent with her husband and kids, he thinks. Or, if she’s single—which seems unlikely—she could hit the local bars with her girlfriends, go clubbing, drinking, and dancing, or maybe troll the Post Road gin mills, where lonely singles guzzle their nights away, often looking to hook up.

Alone and single? Megan Haggarty? Not a chance
.

“I grew up on long shifts, too,” he says.

“You must keep very busy fixing God’s mistakes.”

He laughs, suddenly aware that she’s wise to the swaggering bravado of chest-cracking surgeons. “So, you’ve met cardiac surgeons,” he says, grinning self-consciously.

“Oh, yes, but you don’t seem to be like the rest of them.”

“You mean grandiose?”

She nods and smiles with her eyes.

“Just filled with themselves? Real gunslingers?”

She laughs; her mouth opens. God, those perfect teeth.

“Where were you before Eastport?” he asks.

“At Yale-New Haven.”

“
Me
too.”

“Our six degrees of separation,” she says, canting her head. Her earrings tilt.

“It’s a small world.”

“When did you come here?” she asks.

“Two years ago. Same time you did.”

There’s a brief pause. The cafeteria noise hits a crescendo.

“What made you leave the center of the medical universe?” he asks, hoping he doesn’t sound too cynical, even bitter about Yale.

“Oh, lots of things …,” she says, her voice trailing off.

She won’t talk about it; he’s certain of that.

She must be very smart, Adrian decides. Yale—it’s the core processer of the nursing profession. And neonatal nursing—top-shelf credentials, right up there with OR and ICU work. It’s the most technical and demanding nursing work around.

His stomach grumbles; he realizes he’s starved.

“It’s much better in this little pond than the ocean at Yale,” she says.

“Yes,” he says, wondering if some upheaval drove her from Yale. Something personal, meaning marital trouble—separation or divorce.

Like what happened to half the people in this cafeteria, a congregation of troubled souls, each with a personal tragedy
.

“You live here in Eastport?” he asks.

“Yes. I’ve rented a condo.”

Near the hospital. And she used “I,” not “we
.”

Adrian realizes he’s sifting through her every word, each nuance, making inferences. It’s fucking Sherlockian.

“And you?” she asks, those hazel eyes questioning him. God, how he could stare at them forever and how he wishes time could slow so this conversation could last longer.

“I have a rental too … in Simpson.”

“Simpson?”

“Yes.”

Adrian’s certain she knows Simpson’s a bedroom community; so, maybe she thinks he’s married, just game-playing. She may feel he’s doing the big flirt, that he’s ready for a casual fling, a fuck-buddy thing, nothing more.

“The rental market in Eastport’s impossible,” he adds quickly. “I took a place in Simpson so I didn’t have to buy a condo.” He purposely used “I,” hinting at his single status.

She nods, and he wonders what she’s thinking.

The conversation shifts—comfortably for Adrian—to their work. She loves the neonatal ICU and working with newborns. The only shame is when a crack baby is born. The nurses know its mothering will be awful. “It’s terrible when a mother doesn’t want a child,” she says, a tinge of sadness in her voice.

Staring into those eyes, Adrian knows he can’t get enough of her.

“But then a fragile little preemie comes along. If we save the baby, it’s great, because we know the parents want this child more than anything else.”

“So it’s more than just a job?”

“Yes,
much
more. And I imagine it’s the same feeling for you with surgery.”

“Absolutely. It makes my day.”

There’s a pause in the conversation. The cafeteria hum seems louder in his ears.

Then she says with a smile, “Now your soup’s
really
cold.”

“And you’ve taken only one bite of your sandwich.”

They laugh. He notices how her lips spread into a smile and the way her eyes brighten and become lively. The sadness he saw is gone, evaporated. He feels somehow they’ve shared something as inconsequential as a brief, self-conscious laugh amid the din of this cafeteria, and he feels close to her in a way he doesn’t quite understand. It’s very strange, and Adrian wonders if she can possibly know he’s insanely glad he couldn’t find a seat and finally plopped down at this table.

He wonders, too, if Megan Haggarty has
any
idea—even a seminal notion—of the effect she has on him. Can she tell that he’s hanging over the table, edging closer to her? He realizes he’s engrossed by her. He’s looking into her luminous eyes, making intimate and earnest contact, and it feels so terribly comfortable. It occurs to Adrian that if another surgeon could take over his afternoon surgeries, he’d stay right here with Megan Haggarty.

He asks himself if she can even imagine—with the tumult of sound and patina of lights—that years from now he’ll try desperately to recapture the memory of the moment he first saw her, surrounded by an ocean of doctors and nurses and aides and hospital workers and porters and cafeteria workers, amid hospital greens and white coats and hairnets and name tags and stethoscopes and the smells and sights and sounds of this stadium-sized cafeteria in Eastport Hospital, and all the while, she was completely oblivious to his existence.

Adrian thinks there’s something unadorned, even earthy about Megan Haggarty. He’s quite certain she’s very different from Peggy, who thought nothing of buying herself a $100,000 Mercedes SL roadster, who shopped tirelessly at Betteridge Jewelers in Greenwich for Van Cleef & Arpels bracelets or Paolo Costagli earrings, or rummaged through the Ralph Lauren Collection at the store, and pushed relentlessly for them to buy a Manhattan pied-à-terre (which he resisted, much to her chagrin) so on weekends they could eat Kobe beef or world-class sushi at Nobu or the latest culinary constructions at Daniel and then take a taxi back to the apartment rather than drive back to Connecticut.

But that was then and this is now, and Adrian wonders if there’s a remote possibility this chance encounter with Megan Haggarty could lead to something exciting—a relationship with substance, one that might endure—even though he barely knows her. He questions why he’s suddenly thinking this way because until twenty minutes ago, he thought he was limping through his life—steeped in a sour marinade of pessimism—forever brooding, feeling emotionally crippled because of what Peggy did.

M
egan thinks Adrian Douglas is quite a physical specimen. He has a great body—wide, powerful-looking shoulders, a narrow waist, athletic-looking from stem to stern. She noticed it as he was ambling toward the table. She’d long ago learned to recognize a man’s athleticism from Conrad, her ex—a superb athlete and winner of the Colorado State high school heavyweight wrestling championship. He was also a cross-country skier and a superb mountain climber.

The thought of Conrad sends a galvanic charge through her; and at that moment, Megan wonders if Conrad will always haunt her life.
He’s part of your past life, girl, so just live in the present … Forget back then
. Without seeming obvious, she focuses on the man sitting across the table.

Adrian Douglas is probably about six one. His hair is light brown and closely cropped. He has cornflower-blue eyes, a strong jaw, and good, manly features. Yes, Adrian Douglas is handsome, but not in a pretty-boy way; he has what she would call rugged good looks. But unlike Conrad, there’s a gentleness glimmering through, and Adrian Douglas has kindly looking eyes, so different from Conrad’s, which could sear you like a scalpel.

Please, Conrad, go away. Just go and be gone forever
.

Adrian
… It’s an unusual handle for a man, but in its own way, quite masculine.
Douglas
. It’s likely of English, or maybe Scottish origin—probably a mixture. It’s kind of rare in this part of America—the border between Fairfield and New Haven Counties, Connecticut. Actually, if Megan thinks about it, Adrian Douglas is—what’s the old-time expression?—a bona fide hunk; but she senses he doesn’t realize how good-looking he is. He exudes a sort of calmness she sees too little of in the hard-bitten, life-and-death world of doctors and nurses. That’s especially true with surgeons. And he has a soft voice, not brash sounding like so many of the galloping surgical cowboys she’s run into. Probably has a great bedside manner. She nearly laughs to herself. Is this high school back in White Plains? Is there a girlfriend to whom she can give a slight elbow nudge?
Bedside manner …
It’s been ages since she’s had a bed partner.

She peers at Adrian’s baby blues. God, his eyes are so different from Conrad’s.

But remember how charmed you were by Conrad when you first met him
.

So
, Megan thinks,
Adrian Douglas lives in Simpson—really, a bedroom community
. When she heard that, she was certain he’d be married, but he’s a renter, not a homeowner. Renters can be transient. But he’s around forty, not a kid.
So where is he in his life?
Megan wonders.

God, she’s been talking her head off about the newbies and her hectic schedule. In the middle of their conversation, she finds herself wondering if Adrian Douglas is simply toying with her because she’s just
here
. The hospital’s a player’s paradise.

He’s glanced at her ring finger—twice. He tried to be subtle, but she spotted the furtive looks. There are always messages … unsung songs wafting through the air. It’s a virtual chorus in this hospital with its singles—divorced and separated doctors and nurses. Megan wonders if he assumes she’s married but doesn’t wear her ring, or assumes that she’s divorced. Does he assume
anything at all
?

Still overthinking it, Megan, like you always do … But then, you didn’t overthink things when it came to Conrad
.

She asks herself why Adrian Douglas should be more than an afterthought to an egg salad sandwich and coffee in a crammed cafeteria in Eastport General.

“How come Simpson?” she asks.

“Well, after my divorce, I wanted to get away from New Haven. Eastport had begun a new heart surgery program. I had to decide about living arrangements, and the housing market in this town is abysmal.”

She nods. “So is it Wednesday nights at Applebee’s with the kids?” she asks, imagining a dad—guilt-ridden as hell—doting on his spoiled-rotten kids.

“No kids,” he replies. The corners of his mouth seem to droop. He blinks.

“I guess I made a silly assumption,” she says, shrugging, trying to appear casual but feeling she made a cringe-worthy comment.

“Most people do.”

Megan feels exquisitely embarrassed by her supposition. But he’s not defensive; in fact, he’s smiling, and those eyes of his—indulgent, but not patronizing. And besides, doesn’t everyone assume things at some point in life? “Yes, having kids is a big deal and they’re complicated,” she says.