Chapter 2

"You take all the time you need," my boss declared. "Just make sure you stay in touch with HR. You need to recover, but we have to follow the Disability Plan rules. I have Meredith covering your classes."

"Thanks, Jim. I'll call you soon," I replied as I stared emotionally at the gift basket delivered on behalf of colleagues and students.

I admit it was pleasant to disconnect from the world as a whole while I recuperated physically and mentally, but I also admit it was equally pleasant to be reminded that someone cared enough to remember me. Out of sight, out of mind never applies when you care.

But the daylight hours ticked by dully and seemingly at a languished halt with phone conversations delaying the passing of another hour. Divorce, courts and lawyers and doctors, friends' concerns and students' emails all kept the trials of the month entrenched in my forehead so that it seemed almost visible in the mirror though the faded bruising departed like a lover waving goodbye and the stitches from the incision to mend internal bleeding dissolving like an itchy snail.

Though the sun crawled across the heavens, the moon sprinted with an insensitivity I hated. Evenings welcomed Damian with a meal and a smile and slipped into memory with my tiny frame curled into his arms, but I feared the emotions.

"I need to go home, Damian," I whispered to his chest, my eyes afraid of his sparkling orbs and refusing to connect with them.

"You don't have to," he responded while instinct strengthened his hold on my heart by strengthening his hold on my petite body with a squeeze that nearly melted the resolve to separate independence from tempting and intimidating dependence.

He paused then with prudent resignation, "I understand."

"You don't, but I know you're trying. You know so little about me, and I really need to deal with some things before I lose myself in ... this," I sighed, my lips caressing his chest unintentionally, but not unnoticed, as I mumbled my fears into the midnight of his bare torso. "Damian, I'm afraid of you. I'm afraid of how easily I feel things I've never felt, things I thought I knew and thought I've felt before. But this is different. Better, but different and terrifying. I need to be me before we can be us, and I don't know who 'me' is. I told Detective Rodgers that Mrs. Carlson was murdered recently, that Mia is all that remains. I don't know who Mia is. All I know is Mrs. Carlson."

"I don't know this dark and dismal Mrs. Carlson. All I know is the vibrantly sincere woman I've seen in passing with a smile that brightens the summer days, the woman I had a chance to call my friend from the first," he murmured to my scalp.

"I hope Mia is that woman. I want to be that woman. Tonight I'm just the hollow shell of everything I was before, and if you hold me to your ear all you'll hear is the nightmares of a girl, not the ocean," I moaned, my fists clenching between our tense embrace. "I'm tainted and cracked, and I never knew how badly until tonight."

"Mia, if you need time I'll keep my distance," he said, his grip on me slackening, and the disappointed heart of a diffident woman missed a beat.

From victimization in childhood to gluttonous teenage sexuality to chaotically confused adulthood, I never enjoyed cuddling. The intimacy of the act, the weakness of it, contradicted the puissance I valued. I strolled through Hell when barely nine years young; miraculously I lived to see twenty-eight. Not once with hundreds of exploited lovers did I – in search of obscurity, the need to mercilessly desensitize myself irresistible – ever cuddle.

Cuddling, snuggling, the act of melding into a single being to bask in the afterglow of amorous affection before, after or wholly independent of sexual contact, the intimacy of losing myself in the warmth of a lover, I had no need for it. It frightened me; I ran from it. I reserved affection of that nature for my sister alone; my need to validate love centralized around her only. When she left us at the hands of an inebriated driver, the ability to sink into the powerless beauty of a cuddle died with Annie. Damian rekindled the spark I dreaded. Who could ever imagine that cuddling could fix the world, my world?

But it did slowly. A darkened soul ignited in his arms that night, the night I ran from him. I regretted the decision to lay rest to Mrs. Carlson and define Mia from the confines of loneliness even before I vocalized the intent to do so in solitude, but the resolve, the pride of it, held fast.

Headshrinker doctors would have disagreed had I bothered to involve any. Weakness is what threatened me, partnership and codependence implanting resistance under layers of flesh until my skin crawled with it, and my capacity to resist the resistance diminished. I succumbed to it, and I vowed that I needed no man, that any man with as much power over my heart would inevitably end me. But it felt so good. Betsy comforted my anxiety while Bill Withers reminded the world that I could lean on Damian to support the heavy load of Mrs. Carlson's corpse and Mia's cocoon, though Betsy nor I knew where the semiprecious cargo belonged, where we were headed or what turns would get us there.

"Mia?" he asked, the dialed call barely finishing the initial ring before the joy in his tone sculpted a smile on my lips, unpainted and cracked from the splits.

"Um, hi," I hesitated.

"Are you okay?" he inquired, his joyous tone fading.

"No," I sighed. "Do you have some time? For coffee or something?"

"I'll make time. When and where?" he asked, the question delivered in an unquestioning, commanding timbre.

"I can come to you. Are you at work?" I sniffled.

"I am. Meet me in the lobby café in fifteen," he directed.

"Okay," I nodded.

Sheepishly and like the prodigal daughter returning home, a safe harbor for a girl long since misplaced, I once again lost myself in his embrace, my arms clinging to the tall man's waist as if I were drowning. I sobbed quietly while his long fingers combed the chestnut locks draped over drooped shoulders. Vaguely I sensed trepidation in the glances from colleagues and patients, and my soggy spheres wandered the lobby.

"I'm sorry," I breathed, certain that embarrassment diluted his eyes, the eyes I avoided, but he would have none of it as his fingertip pulled my chin. Waterlogged orbs, twinkling and green, abided by his wish to see them, and they were greeted with a kindhearted grin.

"For what?" he asked, the dark orbs I feared calming my turbulent emeralds even as spongy pads of oversized thumbs brushed away the remnants of streaky tears.

"For doing this here," I snorted guiltily, transposing my insecurity onto him foolishly.

"You're sorry for coming to a hospital to ask a doctor for help. Come on," he chuckled while enveloping a shaking hand in his secure grasp to lead a horse to coffee.

Coffee – warm and dark, aromatic and refreshing both in the Styrofoam cupped between shaking hands and in his handsome complexion – settled buzzing nerves. I could not decide which was more powerful between the liquid or the dark almonds of his eyes, but I thanked him first before sipping the French Roast.

"I'm glad you called," he smiled, his gaze gentle and unwavering.

"Me too. I'm sorry I left like that, but I needed to know that you're not just a fantasy," I replied, cheeks and neck flushing as I voiced my timid desire.

"You mean to know that you weren't recklessly jumping into another mistake," he clarified.

"I don't believe in mistakes. Ted was a wrong turn, and God blessed the broken road, I guess," I said, flushing deeper from pink to scarlet at the cliché reference.

"Mia," he began, but a robotic announcement interrupted the thought.

"Dr. Roosevelt, you're needed in the lab," it called, and his eyes pled for permission to ignore the page.

"Go. I'll be here when you're done. I'm not running today," I smiled, knowing I would not leave the orange plastic chair until the man accompanied me.

"Ten minutes," he sighed while a soft thumb grazed a pale cheek before leaving me to enjoy the memory of his gaze.

"Mia, hi there," a voice called from behind.

"Oh, hello, Doctor Franks," I beamed at the trauma surgeon credited with the continued beating of a healthily mending heart. "Please."

"Thank you," he smiled, accepting the gesture of a wave to join me. "How are you? You look well, mostly healed."

"I'm good, thanks. It's been rough, but I'm coping," I replied, head nodding in the way people do.

"Listen, I don't have much time before rounds, but I wanted to – if you don't mind, that is – well, Damian's a good man. I've known him since our first day in medical school. He's not like the man that put you on my table," Dr. Franks offered with hesitant, cautious deliberation.

"I know, sir," I nodded again.

"I'm sorry. I probably shouldn't have said anything. He's a good friend. I worry," he sighed.

"No, it's okay," I affirmed. "I'm just not sure what to say. I'm pretty new at this, too. May I ask why you worry enough to mention it to a virtual stranger?"

"Well, Damian's been hurt badly," he began but arose gladly from a blue plastic chair opposite me, his embarrassment waning in the serene presence of a friend. "Damian, I'm in your seat."

"No worries, George. Up to the matchmaking again?" Damian laughed.

"Something like that," I grinned.

"Well, then, I think I'll get back to work and leave you two to, uh, right," he stuttered cutely before shuffling away.

"That was odd," I giggled with raised eyebrows.

"He's an odd man – amazing surgeon, but not a socialite by any means. I couldn't ask for a better friend," Damian replied. "I know he was attempting to warn you about the fragility of my heart."

"He was," I agreed. "Tell me what happened?"

"How about tonight over dinner? I have to get back to my patients, but we need to talk," he asked, the apology in his eyes evident. "How about I pick you up at seven?"

"I'll be waiting," I nodded while folding tiny hands over his. The moment lingered until he relented and walked away.

Bad Company called to me through Betsy's sound system to inject images of a brighter future into a gloomy present; the sun vividly illuminated her dash, and the cool winter air gusted through her cab like a wind tunnel – the man's air conditioner as my grand-dad used to say.

The energy of music swayed me that afternoon in such a way that, for the first time in years, I slid back the walnut cover to reveal a row of ivory begging to be tickled. A withdrawn passion advanced until unsteady digits remembered a graceful pattern in their movements; scales rolled through them. Within minutes, nearly a decade's forgotten talent resurfaced and "Come Thou Fount of Every Blessing" resonated throughout the recessed den of my home until the final note – a concert B flat, the center of the musical universe – faded into quiet.

"God, I miss you, Annie," I whispered to the departed center of my universe. Many years past when the Tennessee nights were thick with humidity, when my baby sister needed a lullaby, the composition of God's praise and the desire to sing it to the world would soothe my angel into restful slumber; when she was sad, the hymn offered cheerfulness, and when she was angry, it doused her fires. It was her song; her big sister's gift to her. Why after so many years a snuffed out talent reemerged I had difficulty understanding.