“He was SO out!” Elizabeth screams at the television. She turns to me, a bit of soy sauce dotted on her chin. “Did you see that? He was out. Blue better have his eyes checked.”
Before I even realize I’ve done it, I’ve reached over and used my thumb to wipe the brown sauce from her face.
She picks up a napkin to finish the job I started. “Is something on my face?” she asks, wiping it.
“It’s gone now,” I tell her. I nod to the TV. “I thought he was out, too.”
“Stupid ump,” she says, pouting.
“You seem to know an awful lot about baseball. Did you grow up around it? You said you played softball, is that what got you interested?”
She looks up at the TV sadly and nods. “I’ve always loved softball, so I guess watching baseball just seems natural.”
“Did you grow up in New York?” I ask, thinking this is a good opportunity to discover more about her.
She shakes her head then conveniently takes a bite of food to keep from answering.
“But you love the Nighthawks,” I say.
“Who doesn’t love the Hawks?” she asks.
I laugh, but on the inside, I’m upset that she keeps deflecting personal questions. “My friend, Griffin, actually. He’s an Indians fan. He got me watching baseball. Even took me to a few games.”
She looks up at me like I said I walked on the moon. “You’ve been to some games? Hawks games?”
“Yeah, last spring. One of their first games of the season I think.”
“Who won?”
“Not the Indians. Boy was Griffin pissed. He doesn’t get to go to many Cleveland games so he really wanted them to win.”
“Was it . . . was it amazing? Seeing it in person?” she asks, longingly.
I furrow my brows. For someone who loves baseball and seems to know the game so well, you’d think she’d have been to at least one game. They practically give away tickets from time to time.
“You’ve never been?” I ask.
She shakes her head.
“Well, you have to go,” I say. “There is nothing more American than baseball. The whole experience from the funnel cakes to the hot dogs and beer. The fights over the foul balls and home run hits. The seventh-inning stretch. We should go sometime—”
I shut up when I realize what I said. When I realize she looks downright fearful, and I curse myself.
This is not a date, Kyle. She’s not your girlfriend. She doesn’t want to be your girlfriend. She’s here to have a baby and you’re here to make sure she has a healthy one.
“Uh, what I mean is, you should go. You and the baby.”
She nods, rubbing her belly. “Maybe we will one day.”
When we’ve eaten all we can, I pull a handful of fortune cookies out of the bag. Elizabeth eyes them and smiles. I put them on her tray and pick one for myself.
“You can only have one,” she says, choosing hers carefully among the three others that remain.
“Why?” I ask.
“Because only the first one you pick will be your fortune. The others don’t count.”
I feel my face break into a boyish grin. “I didn’t know there were rules.”
“Oh, yes. Just ask Sal,” she says. “You can’t trade fortunes with someone else. You have to eat the entire cookie before reading the fortune. And if your cookie is empty, that’s a sign of good luck.”
We both open our cookies, taking great care not to peek at our fortunes while we eat them. “You first,” I say, nodding to her hand.
She opens her slip of paper. “Your smile will tell you what makes you feel good,” she reads.
She looks up at me and smiles. Then she realizes what she did and she blushes.
I read mine next. “Love is like war, easy to begin, but very hard to stop.”
“Huh,” she says, musing over the saying. “Did you ever wonder who makes these up? Probably some guy who lives in Boston.”
I laugh as I pick up her fortune to toss it in the trash.
She reaches out and grabs my hand, forcibly taking it back from me. “I want to save it.”
I raise my brows at her. “Another one of Sal’s rules?” I ask.
“No. It’s my rule,” she says. “I only throw out the bad ones.”
I watch as she puts the piece of paper on the side table next to her bed. Then I tuck my fortune into my front pocket.
I clean up her tray and box up the leftovers. There are a lot of leftovers. Maybe I can give them to someone on the street later. I put the food by the door so I don’t forget to take it when I leave.
“Yes! Go, go, go, go, go!”
Elizabeth is screaming at the television, practically standing on her knees on the bed, having dislodged the fetal monitor as she cheers on a player. It’s the same player who had that crazy double-play the other day. His name comes up on the screen as they show the replay of his triple that just landed him on third base, resulting in an RBI. His name is Caden Kessler. I recall the name. There was some press coverage about him early in the season as he changed his number, something that rarely happens in the majors.
“You seem kind of obsessed with number eight,” I say, teasingly. “But seriously, you should calm down, you don’t want to start bleeding.”
She sits back down, looking embarrassed as I walk around the bed to readjust the monitor.
“It’s not just him,” she says. “I like all of them. They’re a great team.”
As I fix the strap around her belly, the door opens and Gina walks in. Her eyes quickly shift around the room, first looking at me, then the television, then the bag of Chinese food.
“I was walking by the nurses’ station when I heard her monitor alarm,” she says. “But it looks like you have it all under control, Dr. Stone.”
I finish adjusting the strap as Gina’s eyes burn into me. I can tell she’s taking in my appearance. My street clothes. My clean-shaven face. My extreme guilt that I wouldn’t be feeling if I wasn’t doing anything wrong.
“Elizabeth, have you met Dr. Lawson yet?”
She holds out her hand to Gina. “No, it’s really nice to meet you.”
Gina walks over next to the bed and shakes Elizabeth’s hand, finally tearing her eyes away from me. “You, too.”
I resume my spot in the chair next to the bed and pretend like me being here is a perfectly normal thing. “Gina and I are doing our residencies together,” I tell Elizabeth. “She’s also in emergency medicine.”
“That’s nice,” she says. “Did you get assigned a babysitting duty as well?”
Gina steps behind me and puts a hand on my shoulder. Then she rubs it around to my back. “No, Dr. Stone was the only lucky one. We’ve had some good times in the program, haven’t we, Kyle?”
My head is so messed up right now. Gina is touching me inappropriately in front of a patient. And she used my first name. Is she trying to stake her claim on me? Or is she simply reacting to the already inappropriate situation I’ve put us all in?
Elizabeth is staring at Gina’s hand on my shoulder. She doesn’t seem upset about it. Doesn’t seem happy either. She just seems . . . pensive. Then she turns back to the television.
“Do you like baseball?” she asks Gina after an awkward few moments of silence.
“Sports aren’t really my thing,” Gina says.
“That’s too bad,” she says. “I was going to ask you to join us. We have a ton of food leftover.”
Elizabeth doesn’t seem nearly as uncomfortable as I am. Maybe I was reading this wrong all along. She hasn’t given me any indication that she sees me as anything more than her doctor. I’m overworked. I’m tired. I’m taking pity on a girl who has nothing and no one and it’s clouded my judgment.
They warned us about this in medical school. Getting too involved with our patients. Making things personal. Damn Dr. Redman for putting me in this position.
“I can see that,” Gina says, eyeing the mostly-full food containers. “Dr. Stone is always doing such nice things for his patients.”
“I’ll bet he is,” Elizabeth says, eyeing me with a bit of a smart-ass smirk. “Do you take them all Jell-O?”
I can’t help my laugh as I shake my head at the private joke.
Gina’s pager goes off and I’ve never been so relieved to be saved by the proverbial bell. She bids goodbye to Elizabeth and then leans down to whisper something in my ear. “I know something we can do with Jell-O later. You can eat it off me. Or maybe out of me.”
For the second time tonight, my dick twitches. And I watch her leave the room, wondering why I would ever dream of messing up the good thing I have going with her for a crapload of complication.
“She seems nice,” Elizabeth says. “And she’s pretty. Is she your girlfriend?”
My eyes snap to hers at the unexpectedly personal question. She doesn’t ask personal questions. Not even when we play ‘Never have I ever.’
“Girlfriend? No. Gina is . . . to be honest, I don’t know what she is.” I sigh.
“From the looks of it, I’d say she wants to be.”
I nod hesitantly. I know. I’ve known for a while now. But for the life of me, I just can’t figure out if it’s the relationship I don’t want, or the woman.