Fractured Love

  “How do you know?”

  “She saw you in a Hopkins T-shirt. I don’t think she knew then that you went to school there.”

  I nod once.

  “It was?”

  I nod.

  “What were you doing down in Asheville?”

  “What do you think, Evie?”

  Her face softens.

  “I thought about going by to see you.” Instead I told myself she wouldn’t want to hear from me, and focused on the other purpose of my trip south: to try to find some information on my birth mother.

  “Why didn’t you,” she breathes.

  I shrug.

  “Too chicken?”

  “Yeah.” I look down at my lap. I’d saved up what little money I had, and hired a PI to find my Ashe Ville. I thought if I found her, maybe then I’d go to Evie. As if knowing my birth mother’s name would make me braver. I didn’t, and it probably wouldn’t have. “I was worried it would do more harm than good.”

  “Seeing me,” she whispers.

  “Yeah.”

  Her foot moves over mine, and after that, she gets into the booth beside me, her cheek resting on my shoulder. “Tell me more,” she says.

  I tell her everything I can afford to: all about my schooling, undergrad and med school. About all my jobs, my roommates, how I came to Denver. “I applied for you, and because the program is so involved. When I got accepted, it was one of three.”

  She gapes. “Three?”

  “I took this one the first day.”

  She grins, and I feel like my lungs have finally returned to max capacity. Ten years after I left her, I can breathe again.

  We finish dinner and go back outside. We walk back to my car and Evie holds my hand as I steer back onto the road.

  “I want to talk all night,” she says.

  “But you should sleep.”

  “I can’t. Landon…”

  “’Fraid you’ll miss me?” I wink.

  “Yes.” Her eyes glitter with tears, and I bring her hand to my mouth and kiss the back of it. “Ah, Evie. Don’t worry. We’re both on tomorrow, right?”

  She nods.

  “We’ll find a second here and there… I want to touch you.” Not her pussy—though I want that, too—but just…her hand or cheek or neck or hair. Now that I’ve found her, I can’t get enough of Evie.

  “Is this okay?” I hear myself ask as I head toward her place.

  “What?” she whispers.

  “This.” I inhale deeply, blow the breath out. “If this bothers you, Evie, I hope you’d tell me.”

  “This, as in hanging out again?” she asks.

  I nod. The word choice “hanging out” makes me feel slightly ill—as if we’re just acquaintances.

  “Landon, of course not. Don’t you know me?” She brings my hand to her mouth and kisses it. “I’m proud of this hand.” She smiles broadly. “I hear people talk about you sometimes, saying that you’re really great.”

  “I’m only kind of great.” I smirk, and Evie leans to rest her forehead on my shoulder.

  “Can we see each other again?” she asks me softly.

  For a long moment, I can’t even answer her. I nod, then find my voice. “Of course we can.”

  Eight

  Evie

  Even against the frenzied backdrop of a neurosurgery residency, what I have with Landon feels intense. We leave work in separate cars the next four nights, then go to Landon’s place and fall into his bed.

  The first three nights, I go home after, under the guise of needing to get clothes for the next day. All three times, I would have stayed if not for my awful lie.

  While I’m in his personal space, I learn things that make me love Landon even more…like he was a Big Brother with Big Brothers Big Sisters of America throughout both undergrad and med school. His brother, a cute kid named Reece, is scheduled to visit over Thanksgiving.

  I learn things I could have guessed, like he subscribes to three different newspapers and has a huge bookshelf. His place is bare bones, not much frill, but tasteful in a basic sort of way. In the years he’s lived alone, he’s learned how to cook. He makes omelets one night before I go, and smoothies the next. I find a cabinet stocked with vitamins—it screams doctor—and in his bathroom, a stack of magazines, including one about triathlons, one about paragliding, and several trade journals and research mags. He keeps his TV on the science or history channel, programmed AFarewellToLeisureTime as his WiFi password, uses his second bedroom as an at-home gym, and, in contrast to the “typical” doctor, doesn’t have a wall devoted to his scholarships and awards—of which I know there are many.

  I ask him one night if he feels different than he did when we were younger. “More secure, you know?”

  “Because of this job?” he asks, his eyebrows narrowed.

  I nod.

  He stretches out with his arms behind his head and gives a shake of his head. “No. Of course not. Think of all the debt.”

  “Yeah, okay, but I’m saying like…do you feel…more?”

  “More what? Important?”

  I shrug. “Accomplished? Proud?”

  “Because of how I started out?”

  I’m starting to feel like an ass for asking the question when he smiles slightly and pulls my body up against his. “No, Evie. I barely made it here, and a lot of it was luck. I didn’t earn my brain, or my mentors, or the fact that I was born here and not Aleppo. I’m never going to feel important because I’m a surgeon. It’s an interesting job, maybe even an important one, but that’s it.”

  I shimmy closer to him, shut my eyes.

  “What about you? Does it make you feel important?” he asks, running his hand along my bare back. “Do you feel like you’ve arrived or something?”

  “Kind of,” I admit. I kiss his pec as I struggle to explain it. “I guess I feel like it gives me credibility. Like, okay, I can’t parallel park to save your life or your cat’s, but I’m a brain surgeon.” I giggle.

  He chuckles and kisses my hair. “You should learn to park, Evie. You live in Denver.”

  The third night, as we cuddle on the couch, I tell him everything I’ve learned of Colorado in the years I’ve been here: all about the funky weather, my favorite aspens-season mountain train, my favorite ski spots, the national parks, and all the hacks that go along with being single, unattached, and in med school in Denver.

  When I finish, he grins.

  “What?”

  “Nothing.”

  “What?” I swat him.

  He grins, which turns into a laugh. “You’re grown up, Evie.”

  “What?” I shove him. “That sounds patronizing.”

  “No—I love it. I love seeing you in your element. How’d you end up out in Denver anyway? Did you always like the mountains? I think you did…”

  I would have stayed that night, had he not asked that question. Had I not lied again. I wonder what is wrong with me, but I know, don’t I? I need Landon. I can’t bear to end this yet. Every day, I tell myself just one more day.

  The fourth night, I’m back at his place, and in the darkness, I hear Landon murmur awful things, and when he wakes up and I ask him, he tells me without reserve. I find out why he left the group home, and it makes me so damn sad. I feel helpless as I stroke his spine and he falls back asleep. So helpless, I have to wander out onto his balcony and just be mad a bit before I join him back in bed.

  When I wake up, at 3:30 a.m., for work, it’s with his tongue between my legs. I come, but I want him, so we make love—in missionary position, with Landon’s cheek against mine—before I shower. I emerge to fresh coffee and orange cinnamon rolls—a favorite of mine, which he must have bought between the first night we came back here and last night.

  He helps me with my bracelet clasp and holds the door for me as we both step into the hallway with our briefcases. On the elevator down, my chest feels tight. In the car, as Landon tells me all about his plans to learn to paraglide, I develop Landon’s old problem
: feeling like I can’t breathe. Every moment I’m with him, my secret strangles me.

  Still, I stay with him a fifth night, going home the sixth because it’s my night off but not his, and then returning to his apartment for a seventh night. Despite my growing guilt, I can’t get enough of him: his smile, his jokes, his thoughts, and of course, the way our bodies come together.

  The next morning, as I get out of my car at work and walk toward Landon, who parked a row away, I try to tell myself to calm down. Whoever said I have to tell him right away? When things are meant to be, they work themselves out, I think as we walk into the hospital lobby.

  In the stairwell, Landon throws me over his shoulder at floor two, poking his head into the hall to check for bystanders before he spirits me into our favorite storage room. He makes me come, and then, as I go at his pants, he bends me over the stretcher, pulls my pants back down, and pushes the tip of his cock between my legs. I spread my thighs, and he drags his long cock in between my slick lips.

  I swallow back a groan, and Landon chuckles. Then he grabs my hips, aligns the two of us, and thrust. I grunt as he fills me, and I can feel him shudder.

  “Ev… fuck…you feel so fucking good.” His words are low—emotional.

  I love nothing more than Landon in my pussy, his hard, fast thrusts making my legs quiver, his arm reaching around my hip so that his fingers stroke my swollen clit. I come so hard I cry out. Landon clamps his hand over my mouth, and when we finish, we’re both laughing.

  That afternoon, we scrub into surgery together for the first time—on a routine endovascular coiling. It’s a pleasure watching him cut: one I never dreamed I’d get to see.

  After, as we scrub out, he murmurs, “Nice job, Rutherford.” We step into the hall together, and before we part ways, chasing pages, he smirks. “You know what they say about a woman who’s skilled with her hands.”

  “What?”

  He laughs, looking unusually buoyant. “I have no idea—but I fucking love your hands. You were great in there.”

  We round a corner, and he kisses my forehead, just as he gets paged down to ER.

  Landon

  Surgery with Evie was incredible. I’m still smiling as I head downstairs. How lucky are we? That this shit worked out the way it did. Thank fuck for Pfizer that one summer, so we’d be in the same class. Thank fuck we met in 2007 and not 1987—so I could keep track of her online. I’m so glad I didn’t let her slip away, that I kept tabs on her, even when I felt like a pathetic fuck for it.

  I’m feeling so damn chipper, Eilert frowns the second she approaches me outside bay one in the ER.

  “What are you grinning about?” She puts her hands on her hips and gives me a sassy look that makes me laugh.

  “C’mon, chief. Can’t a guy have a good day?”

  “I don’t know.” Her brown eyes narrow, and I chuckle.

  “All right, jolly Jones. We’ve got a ten year old female. Fell from a tree house four hours ago. Family deemed her okay, no signs of concussion, no mobility issues, then her hand got numb and tingly, then just numb. She’s at X-ray now. If there’s a need, we’ll move to CT with her. I don’t think we use the portable for this, though. As far as diagnosis, I’m thinking maybe bronchial plexus. I know you’ve got a soft spot for peds.” She winks. “You’re welcome.”

  “Thanks, Doc E. I’ll get her worked up.”

  “First, you’ve gotta come and sign off on this admit. It’s my lunchtime. I’m craving some of that pasta with the marinara sauce.”

  She shows me to a morose man who’s been admitted for an aneurism.

  “You got any family with you, sir?”

  He tells me he doesn’t. I find out his wife died just two months ago—right here on the eighth floor: oncology. Before I send him upstairs, we go over various counseling services the hospital offers for bereaved spouses. Then he’s off, whisked away by transport, and it’s time to take a glance at my peds case.

  A quick peek through the curtain reveals she’s back from X-ray. Someone’s sitting with her, maybe more than one someone. I linger outside the curtain as I glance over her scans. X-rays look normal, vitals also normal, so I guess it’s off to CT with her.

  The second I pull the curtain back, my stomach bottoms out. For the first few blinks, my brain sees Evie—Evie’s face and hair and posture. Little Evie. The resemblance is so stark, I take a step back, the air pushed from my lungs by shock.

  I blink at the girl, searching for some crack in my perception—but the more I blink, the more I just see Evie.

  Someone cloned her.

  I blink a few more times as my head buzzes.

  “Doc…” A burly man stands from his plastic chair, stepping toward me with his hand extended. “Hey there.” He clasps my hand. “I hope you’re here to fix my daughter.”

  As his hand clasps mine, my gaze slides to the patient. And that’s when she looks at me with my eyes.

  Fucking shitfuck, those are my eyes. Evie’s face, and my eyes. It’s unmistakable. I start to sweat as I look at her.

  The girl frowns with Evie’s lips. “Are you a doctor?”

  Fucking shit, she even sounds like Evie. I look down at my shoes on an inhale, then back up at her.

  “I am.” I step closer to the bed. “So…I hear you’re having…problems with your hand?” My voice sounds froggy. My legs feel strange, so I reach out for the bed’s rail as I squat beside her. “Did I hear you fell from a tree house?”

  She nods, looking matter-of-fact. “I fell off the ladder.”

  “Did you?”

  “Yeah.”

  I look down at my tablet, back up at her. “So…your name is?”

  “Ash,” she says, her gray gaze blinking up at me.

  I inhale slowly. “How old are you, Ash?”

  “I’m ten years old.” She gives me a frustrated look: all crinkled brows and pinched lips. “My hand is numb and tingly. I don’t like it.”

  “Let me take a look.” I stand and lean down over her so I can examine her arm, and right up by her, I can really see her round, gray eyes. They blink, and the room tilts slightly.

  “You look funny. Are you funny?” She tilts her head, and…fuck, it’s Evie. My body flushes and I stand up, feeling dizzy. Wasn’t there a movie or a book about…some kind of time traveler? I swallow as I wonder if this girl is some kind of multi-dimensional Evie. Then I realize that her name is Ash, and I feel like I might be sick.

  “So, Ash…you…do you guys live around here?”

  “Kind of.”

  “And you have a tree house?”

  “My dad built it.”

  I swallow. I look to her parents almost reflexively. They’re both frowning at me.

  “Sorry,” I say, rubbing my forehead. “Got a little headache,” I try.

  “Are you hurt like me?” the girl asks.

  “Nahh, I’m fine.” I take a deep breath, look down at my tablet, and try again. The tablet’s off. I turn it on with shaking fingers.

  “You sound Southern,” I say, looking to the girl’s father.

  “We’re from South Carolina, that’s right. Transferred out here seven years ago. I work with the railroad.”

  I nod. Then I try to think of what I need to do next. This girl needs a CT scan. Maybe an MRI, too.

  “What did you say your name was?” I ask. My head feels a little hollow.

  “Ash.”

  “I know that,” I say in a teasing tone. “But Ash what?”

  “You said what’s your name, and I said that my name is Ash! There is no what.” She makes a silly face.

  “Is there some kind of problem?” asks the mother. “You’re the doctor?”

  “I’m a surgeon.”

  The girl wails. “I don’t want surgery! What’s the matter with my arm? I have gymnastics camp tomorrow!”

  “Ash, honey, try to calm down so this nice doctor— What’s your name?” the woman asks.

  “Is Ash a family name?” I ask.

&nbsp
; “Excuse me?”

  My grip on the bed’s footboard tightens as another sick feeling comes over me. “I said is it a family name,” I rasp.

  “I’m not sure that’s really your business.”

  I look at the girl, who’s looking at me with my eyes. She looks sad. Uneasy. I blink a few times, wondering if I am going to pass out and will happen if I do. Eilert will be so confused.

  “Do you need to sit down?” The woman frowns. “You look very pale.”

  “No. No. I’ll get your…get this girl here taken care of. She’s your daughter?”

  “Yes.”

  I look down at my tablet, still not booted up, as the top of my head starts buzzing. “When was her birthday? What did you say?”

  “It should be there,” the mom snaps. “They asked for all this in the intake room.”

  “Was it December?” No… “Where was she born?”

  “That doesn’t matter for her arm, but she was born in North Carolina.”

  Oh fuck. I feel bile in my throat. “Where? I need to know. It’s…for a study.”

  “I was born in Asheville.” The girl looks annoyed with us. “Will you fix my arm? Please?”

  I try to inhale, but I can’t. I try explaining. “You’re right, I’m…a little off.” I wave in the direction of my head, which now feels like an over-filled balloon. “Before I go—” I look again at her, then at her mother— “can you please step out into the hall with me?”

  “Into the hall?” she asks.

  “I’ll go with you,” the man says.

  We step out, and I scroll through my tablet, my hand shaking so much I nearly drop it as I look for her chart. Birthday… What’s the birthday?

  I see September 5 and feel relief so overwhelming I have to reach my hand out and make contact with the wall.

  But NO.

  My brain lurches.

  If I left Evie in December, it would be September that she would have…

  I blink at the father, noticing the dark pores on his nose and how his bushy eyebrows trail back toward his temples, just a few hairs here and there.

  “I think you need to sit down, son.”