ADRIANA

 

Saturdays were always busy at the hospital, and today is no exception.

 

“Is it gonna leave a scar?” The kid is only twelve, but he barely flinches while Adriana sews up the impressive cut on his knee. She doesn’t usually treat kids in the ER, but they’ve been run off of their feet and need the extra pair of hands.

 

“Probably a small one.” Adriana has never understood the point of lying to children or giving them false hope. She remembers what that feels like all too well. “But you’ll have a great story to tell the other kids at school. Besides, girls dig boys with scars.” She flashes David a smile that lights up her whole face.

 

“Scars are cool.” It’s an affirmation rather than a question, as he inspects the neat job that Adriana has done on him. “But girls are whack.”

 

“Oh really?” Adriana arches an eyebrow at him, her green eyes sparkling with amusement. She wonders if his assessment of the female species includes the girl whom he had, no doubt, been showing off in front of when he fell and sliced his leg open.

 

“Well maybe not all girls,” he grudgingly admits. “So…do you have a boyfriend?” He asks the question casually, looking down at his knee rather than at her.

 

Adriana half-wonders if Willow has put the kid up to this to drive home the sad state of affairs of her relationship with the opposite sex. “No, not at the moment, David. But I think I’m a little old for you.”

 

He blushes to the tips of his ears and starts trying to dig out of the hole he’s just landed himself in. “No, I mean, I know. I was just asking for a…a friend, yeah. My friend who came in here with me. He said you were really pretty.”

 

Adriana bites her lip to stop herself from smiling at the sweetness of this tough city kid. “Well, you can tell your friend thank you, from me, but I don’t date people I meet through work, no matter how charming.”

 

“Another admirer, Adriana? We’re going to have to start selling tickets to see you. You could single-handedly raise enough money to open a new wing at the hospital!” Dr. Jameson looks David’s chart over and gives him a conspiratorial wink. With his bushy eyebrows and gray hair, he looks like everyone’s favorite granddaddy, but he also happens to be head of the emergency room and is smarter than anyone has the right to be.

 

David’s blush remains firmly in place, and Adriana joins him in her embarrassment. She’s never been very good at taking a compliment. She’s been told that she is pretty, beautiful, hot, sexy by men—if she is being honest a lot of men—but she never knows how to respond. She’s never really believed it, so it is easy just to bat the attention away on the assumption that they are just trying to be kind or, in some instances, trying to get into her pants.

 

“Nice work.” Jameson nods approvingly at the stitch-work on her patient’s knee. “We’re lucky to have you, Adriana.” With that he was gone, sweeping through the curtain and on to the next patient.

 

“You’re good to go, David. So, now that you’re all patched up, do I get to know how you managed to cut yourself right down to the bone?” Adriana busies herself with clearing up the stitching kit as her patient hops down from the bed. When he stands up he’s almost the same height as her, making her feel even shorter than her five foot three inches.

 

He blushes again, looking sheepish. She fixes him with an understanding look. “I promise not to tell anyone.”

 

He smiles then, and his face lights up the room. “I was just trying to get this move down. I’ve seen ‘The Punisher’ do it a bunch of times, but it turns out it’s harder than it looks!” He scratches his head, as he looks down at his knee ruefully.

 

“‘The Punisher?’” Adriana looks at the boy as if he were speaking a foreign language.

 

He looks right back at her as if his estimation of her in his eyes has just plummeted about ten points. “The MMA fighter? He’s like totally the one to watch.” He nods meaningfully, clearly repeating something he’s heard someone else say. “My dad says he’s going to be the next big thing.”

 

“MMA? Like cage fighting?” Adriana tries to make sense of what she’s being told. Cage fighting belongs in a world different to the one that she lives in. She’s never really been a fan of contact sports anyway. Her dad used to box and made sure to teach her what he knew so that she could defend herself in the big city, but she would never sit down to watch a match. She can already feel the lump start to form in her throat as she thinks of her dad, and she doesn’t have any plans to turn into a crying wreck in front of one of her patients.

 

“Cage fighting, yeah, but totally professional.” The kid nods wisely. “It’s like, the best sport there is.”

 

“Walk around, see how the knee feels,” Adriana instructs the boy, as she leans against the bed, suddenly feeling dog tired and wishing that she hadn’t agreed to go out with Willow. “So, why is this ‘Punisher’ the one to watch?”

 

“He’s the best fighter there is out there, and my dad says he gets some seriously top shelf pussy!” David suddenly seems to realize that he’s not in the presence of one of his buddies and clamps his mouth shut, turning beetroot red. “Please don’t tell my dad I said that!”

 

Adriana makes a mental note to have a chat with David’s noticeably absent father. He’d been curiously unconcerned when she’d called to let him know his son had been admitted into the ER. Between letting David watch a sport as violent as cage fighting and using that kind of language around a kid that hasn’t even reached puberty, it isn’t likely he’s going to be winning any awards for father of the year.

 

But before she can say anything to that effect, David is pulling a flyer out of his backpack and stuffing it in her hand. “He’s totally awesome. You should check out his big fight; it’s next week.”

 

Adriana looks down at the flyer in her hand and suddenly feels her stomach drop into her feet. It’s a publicity shot, so the lighting is a little dramatic. Plus, his face is partly in shadow, giving him an air of mystery. However, ‘The Punisher’ looks a whole lot like someone she used to know, someone she had fallen head over heels for—only to be left with nothing.

 

“You alright?” David gives her a concerned look, as if he’s worried she might be having some kind of female moment his father has undoubtedly told him to avoid like the plague.

 

Adriana nods her head slowly, like she’s trying to convince herself. It can’t be the same guy she knew. That was back in Philly, more than a lifetime ago. “Yes, just a little tired.” She smiles weakly at her young patient. “Take care of yourself and stop trying to imitate a professional fighter or you’ll end up with more than just a skinned knee! You’ve got a great personality. Girls go for that sort of thing.”

 

The boy smiles at her sheepishly and hikes his backpack over his shoulder. “Stay cool, Nurse Garza and check out ‘The Punisher!’”

 

As soon as he’s walked out the door, Adriana’s attention goes right back to the flyer. For once, she actually lets her mind drift back to a time ten years ago. She thinks about the boy that she has measured every guy since against. 

 

Grayson Fletcher, he’d been a troublemaker at school, kind of a rebel, but not one without cause. He had that injured look that Adriana recognizes now in some of the kids whom she sees who come in for recurring injuries consistent with abuse. His dad had beaten him and his mom up until Grayson had gotten too big to be pushed around anymore.

 

Grayson had told her that story the first night they went out—if that’s what it could be called. They never really dated, not in the strict sense of the word; he helped her out once when some guys were trying to give her a hard time at school. She still remembers the insults they hurled at her just because she’d said no to dating one of them. Slut. Frigid bitch. Cock-tease. She’d wanted to point out to them that their insults were pretty much contradictory, but she’d been scared, scared in a way that she hadn’t experienced before, scared of what these three guys might do to her out of sight, in a dark alley where no one could hear or see them.

 

Grayson had charged in like a white knight, and the boys had scattered without even thinking twice. He’d been tall and broad, commanding attention, and he’d had a reputation for being a bad boy.

 

“Are you alright?” She can still remember the heat of his hand against her skin, as he touched her shoulder, bringing her back to the present. He’d walked her home that night, and that one night had become every night.

 

He was two years older than her. He should already have been at college, but he’d been held back a year because he hardly ever turned up to class. He’d explained to her that school wasn’t really his thing; it was only his mom who insisted he graduate, which he was about to do. Every night during the walk home they would talk and talk, and Adriana would wish that the walk would never end. For weeks, nothing happened between them. He never touched her other than to steer her around a lamppost that she would probably have walked straight into if it weren’t for him, so blinded was she by the way he made her feel. But Adriana didn’t need him to touch her, she already knew that she was in love with him; there was no question in her mind.

 

He’d been the first boy to tell her that she was beautiful and that she could do anything, be anyone. He was the one who had planted the seed in her mind to get out of Philly, to leave the old neighborhood and pursue her dreams, whatever they might be. In the short time they spent together, he had gotten to know her more than anyone. It was a feeling that she missed, that feeling of being totally and completely on the same page. She’d dated men since and no one compared, no one made her feel anything even close to the way that he had, and she’d grown to hate him for it. She hated him for ruining her for anyone else and for leaving her wanting, needing him.

 

They’d shared exactly one kiss, and now, ten years later, it was still burned into her memory. He had held her face between his hands and kissed her so tenderly that she felt like she might cry. It was the best kiss she’d ever had before or since. When they’d finally said goodnight, he had looked at her as if he were desperate to say something more, but he held back, afraid of something. She had the feeling that something wasn’t quite right, that something had changed, but her knees were so weak from the kiss that she wasn’t really thinking straight. She should have asked him how he felt about her, if he was alright, if there was something he wanted to tell her. But the only thing that came to her mind was her own desperate need to see him again, to be near him again, to kiss him again.

 

“I’ll see you tomorrow?” Months later she would obsess over the desperate way she had asked the question, wondering if that was the reason things had gone so wrong. She had overanalyzed that night so many times, it was hard to remember what was real and what she had just wanted to believe. But there was one thing that she was sure of…he hadn’t answered her question. He’d just smiled at her, a little sadly, and walked away from her. She hadn’t seen him again. He hadn’t even turned up to his own graduation.