That Thing Between Eli and Gwen (7 page)

 Once I understood how it all worked, I went on. It felt like the space was sucking me in, and I was too curious to stop myself. I wasn’t sure how long I spent on each photo or painting. I couldn’t deny that each made me feel something, even when I didn’t want to. She was able to capture human emotion on extreme levels. One moment you were in pain, and the next you were laughing—all in the span of one footstep.

By the time we reached the end, not only had we spent two hours there, I was emotionally drained…something I hadn’t been since my wedding day.

“Well?” she asked me, taking off the headphones. “Am I still a con artist?”

She was something, I just didn’t have a name for it yet. “It was…better than I expected, I guess. You're no Jackson Pollock, but it’s decent.”

I only knew that artist's name because I had seen it in an old textbook. I wasn’t sure what else to say though, without giving her a big head. She was hard enough to deal with as it was.

She grinned, giving herself a pat on the back.

I fought the urge to roll my eyes.

“Two compliments in one day from Dr. Davenport. I can die happy—”

“When else did I compliment you?” I tried to remember.

She twirled around, her heels now in her hand. “You said I looked nice.”

“Obviously I’m sleep deprived,” I muttered under my breath. I didn't like that smile on her face.

“Okay,
sure
… Anyway, thank you for viewing the whole thing.”

“He enjoyed it?” the old man asked, his cane clicking against the ground as he approached.

“He did, but his pride won’t let him admit I’m amazing,” she answered.

Oh god.
“Aren’t you supposed to be humble?”

“I’ll work on it.”

“If you don’t mind, can I steal her away now?” Mr. D’Amour cut in.

I nodded. “Please do, I need a break. I’ll see you.” I waved, heading toward the exit. Only when the summer breeze hit my face did I think back on what I'd just done.

I’ll see you?
Waving?
When had we advanced to doing that? I could hardly believe I had spent two hours alone with her, on top of the time we had already spent together.

 Apparently we were friends now.

Guinevere

Waving back as Eli left, Mr. D’Amour wrapped his hand around mine, walking slowly with me through the rest of the gallery that had not yet been set up.

“This is your best work yet, Lady Guinevere.” He stopped in front of the blank wall, watching as his crew lifted my painting gently, almost like it was a child. He looked grateful for the amount of care they took with it.

“You always say that, Mr. D’Amour.” I smiled.

“Of course. If I didn’t say it, that would mean you are getting worse. That is one of the goals for an artist, to make each work better than the last.”

“I’m not sure if I try to make each work better.” Some days it all looked like an absolute mess with no rhyme or reason behind it.

“Are you all right?”

“Huh?” I glanced back down at him. “I’m sorry. What did you say?”

He frowned, stroking his beard. “I said, are you all right? I heard about the end of your engagement, Guinevere, and have not seen you since then. So once again, my dear, are you all right?”

How many people have heard about it?
I tried to smile, but for some reason I couldn’t fake it with him, and I couldn’t handle looking at his face either. I just stared at the wall as I made us keep walking. “I’m sorry for disappearing while you were setting all of this up. I…I forgot. The only reason I came to the city was my art. When I first got here, it was all I cared about, all I wanted. And now I’m opening another gallery, and it’s so beautiful. I feel I’ve come so far, and yet for some reason, I can’t feel the way I dreamt I would. I want to be completely over everything that happened and never think about it again. I don’t want it to affect me. When do you think that will happen?”

“Your heart broke, Guinevere. There is no way to fast-forward or avoid the pain. You must accept that first before you can heal. You and your art will be better for it. If you don’t believe me, there are a billion songs all about it.”

I laughed. He was right, because the more I thought about the last few weeks, the more I realized I was able to laugh.

I had forgotten that just because your heart breaks doesn’t mean the world comes to an end. I wasn’t better. I didn’t think I would be better for a while, but I wasn’t horrible either, which made me sort of proud.

Chapter Six

Baptism By Fire

Eli

“Look to your right,” I told the little girl with a bright pink bow tied in her hair as she sat in front of me. She wasn’t sure which way I meant, so I nodded my head to her right.

Grinning, she nodded, her brown eyes shifting.

“Now look to your left. Okay, thank you Molly. You have pretty eyes.”

“I get them from my mommy,” she replied happily.

I would have called her father a lucky man, but he only seemed more depressed at her words. “My interns here will draw some blood from you while I talk to your dad, okay? If it hurts, tell me, and I’ll make sure they go back to school.”

“Wait, what?” one of the interns whispered behind me.

I nodded to her father to follow me outside.

“Is she all right?” he asked as soon as I closed the door.

“Mr. Wesley, how long has Molly’s eye been twitching like that?”

“I’m not sure. I might have noticed it a week or two ago? It was only after she rubbed it, and not often, so I just thought it was an infection or something.”

“Has she been sick? Vomiting at all, or complaining about headaches?”

He nodded. “She just got over the flu last week. Dr. Davenport, what is it? We only came in for her shots.”

 “I’m not sure, and I don’t want to make you panic before I know anything concrete. We will do a full workup, and the second I know for sure what’s going on with her, I will let you know. And I’ll make sure to rush it—no kid should spend their birthday surrounded by doctors.” I tried to smile for his sake.

“Dr. Davenport, we’re done,” said one of my interns.

Dr…oh whatever, like I was going to remember who the intern was. I just knew him as Four Eyes; the glasses he wore made his eyes look almost cartoonish. “They’re done, all right?” I said, walking to where the child waited. “Molly, did it hurt? Point at which one has to go back to school.”

She shook her head so hard her bow almost fell off. “Nope, it didn’t hurt. They gave me candy.”

I glanced up at the three
doctors
who had to bribe a child while taking blood.

They all turned away from me.

“Well, make sure to get more from them; they are going to take you to get your pictures taken,” I said, more to them than to her.

“Pictures, then we leave, Daddy? You promised we could go to the aquarium. I wanna see where Ariel lives!” She pointed to her shirt.

“Pictures, then we leave.” He laughed, kneeling in front of her.

“Get a full scan for me. If there is a line, tell them Dr. Davenport sent you,” I whispered to my interns at the door.

“What if that doesn’t do anything?” the intern with a bun on the top of her head said, which got her an elbow from both the tall and skinny Dr. Stretch, as I liked to call him, and Dr. Four Eyes.

“If it doesn’t do anything, then you’re off my service and in the pit for not thinking of another option,” I replied, stepping out toward the nurses’ station in the middle of the pale blue and beige hall. Sighing, I dropped my tablet on the counter.

“Was I right?” Dr. Handler, Molly’s pediatrician, asked as she came to stand beside me. Her eyes focused on Molly through the panels of the window.

When I didn’t respond, I saw her turn to face me, swinging her dark brown curls, cropped right under her chin. Dr. Handler had been at the hospital for more than twenty years. She was one of the best pediatricians, if not the best, we had. She had known the answer before paging me down there.

“Dr. Davenport—”

“I won’t know the extent of it until I see her scans, but yes, she has a brain tumor. I don’t know what stage yet, but she had trouble following both my finger and the light, not to mention her twitching.” She had just turned seven. Sometimes I really hated my job.

“Her mother died last year, Eli. She was six months pregnant. Please, for me, do everything you can for her, all right? She's been a patient of mine since she was three months old.”

We weren’t supposed to get attached for exactly this reason. I could feel her putting the hope of God on my shoulders. She knew better, and so did I.

“We’ll start tomorrow. Let her at least have her birthday,” I muttered, walking toward the elevators.

Just as the doors opened, I heard a laugh…
her
laugh, to the right of me. There, walking down the stairs, her blonde ponytail swinging back and forth, was Hannah…my Hannah. She tucked a strand of hair behind her ear as her head turned toward me.

I ran into the elevator, pressing the close button as fast as possible.

Why was she here? Why the hell was she still here?

The only person who could answer that was on the very top floor. With each level I went up, I could feel my blood pressure rising. My fingertips twitched, my vision became tunneled, even the box I was in felt like it was closing in on me.

“Take the next one!” I yelled when the doors opened. I pressed the close button again, shutting out the group of doctors trying to go up as well.

I couldn’t deal with them right now. It felt like forever until I finally reached her floor and the offices above. Marching across the carpeted floors, I walked toward the wooden doors.

“Dr. Davenport, she’s on a conference —”

I didn’t pay any attention to her secretary, letting myself into her office. “Why is she here?” I snapped so loudly she jumped slightly in her chair, the phone almost slipping out of her hands.

“Ben, I’m going to have to call you back. Sorry,” my mother said, hanging up with a smile before glaring at me. “Eli Philip Davenport, have you lost your mind?”

“No, but I’m about to. How can she still be employed?”

“Who are you talking about, and stop yelling!” she yelled ironically.

Taking a deep breath, I pinched the bridge of my nose. “Hannah. Hannah Sophia Harper. I hope she is not still working at this hospital.”

“Why wouldn't she be?” She calmly placed her hands in the middle of the table. “She’s a good doctor.”

“Mother!”
Do not yell. Do not yell.
Again, I took a deep breath. “Mother, she can’t work here. She—”

“Why, because she left you? She broke your heart? All of those are personal reasons, Eli. I can’t have her fired for that, and you know it.”

You’ve got to be kidding me
. “Mom.”

“Sweetheart, as your mother, every time I see her, I want to wring her skinny little neck ’til her head pops off. But as the chairwoman of this hospital, I can’t get involved with personal matters between doctors. That is the risk you took when you chose to see each other. Dr. Harper is a good doctor, and this hospital employs good doctors.”

“When did she come back?” I whispered.

“A week ago—”

“A week!”

She folded her arms over her chest.

“A week ago I was here, why didn’t I see her?” Not that I wanted to.

“Because she asked to be put on a different floor and a different rotation than you. Why were you on peds anyway?”

“I was called in for a consult by Dr. Handler.” Pinching the bridge of my nose again, I tried not to think that her request meant she didn’t want to see me, either.

“Sweetheart, just avoid her until…until looking at her doesn’t hurt anymore.”

I couldn’t deal with this. Why had I gotten involved with someone I worked with? Never. Again. With nothing left to say, I just moved to the door.

“Eli,” she called.

I had to stop. Not looking back at her, I said, “Yes?”

“Believe me when I say, the moment she slips up in any way, the moment I can say she isn’t good enough to be at this hospital, I will have her out of here as quickly as possible.”

She was trying to comfort me, but it wouldn’t work. I knew Hannah wouldn’t screw up, at least not big enough to get her fired…

Well, I thought I knew her.

“Sorry for bothering you, chairwoman. I’ll come over for dinner later in the week.” I tried to give her a smile before closing the door behind me.

I hated this. I hated how I was torn between never wanting to see her again and hoping to run into her one more time.

Why was I like this?

Guinevere

“You can do this,”
I said softly to myself, staring at the five-star restaurant in front of me. I gripped the present in one hand, smoothing down my dress with the other before taking a deep breath and stepping into what I knew would be the mouth of hell itself. Reason told me I should avoid this place at all costs, yet I knew I couldn’t.

You’re going to be fine.

When I walked in, I noticed the place looked like an 18
^th
century palace. Everything was either gold, white, or beige, with the exception of the blue sky painted on the ceiling, where fat angel babies danced on clouds, with harps…yes, the baby angels were playing harps.

This is so like her.

“Gwen!” She stood and waved from the table filled with other women covered in pearls and diamonds on their wrists, necks, and ears.

I almost felt the need to take the cuff earring off the top of my ear before I moved forward.

At the table, she pulled me closer to her, kissing both of my cheeks. “Gwen, you look so artistic! Guys, this is my friend,
Guinevere Poe
, she’s a
famous
painter.”

 Stevie, what happened to you?
I smiled at the people she was trying to show off for before sitting down.

“Guinevere Poe?” A woman with long, styled brown hair raised a cosmopolitan to her pink lips. “I’ve heard of you. Stephanie, I didn’t know you were so big into the art scene.”