Mister Fixit

  If someone were sitting there being helped, I might have been more intimidated by her attitude. But she’s eating a sandwich and texting someone. I can see the beginning of a message on her screen and her thumb hovering over the buttons.

  I put the phone to my ear and talk to my brother a little louder than normal. “Did you get that, Doctor Oliver?”

  Her head comes up and her expression changes just the slightest bit. “You have your physician on the line?”

  “Actually, I have my brother on the line. James Oliver. Do you know him?”

  She smiles and reaches for the phone. “Of course I know James. Everyone knows James.” She takes my cell and pinches it between her face and her shoulder as she grabs a clipboard and starts attaching papers to it from a stack in some paper trays on her desk. “Doctor O! How are you? It’s Sally down here in the ER.”

  She nods and uh-huhs, and umm-hmmm a few times and then she smiles. “Okay. I’ll tell her. See you soon. Don’t forget to drop by and say hi.” She hangs up the call and hands the phone back to me, her face completely transformed by her smile. “Doctor Oliver said to let you go on in. If you’ll step around to that door over there, I’ll show you to your husband’s bed.”

  I can’t believe it was that easy. I feel guilty my connections are getting me into the inner sanctum but not guilty enough to say no thanks to her invitation. Thankfully, the door she points me to isn’t near the other people waiting to fill out their paperwork.

  When I get to the double doors the nurse gestured to, I’m tempted to hold them open and yell, ‘Run everyone! Find your loved ones while you can!’ But of course I don’t. I do what I’m told and find myself led around a very busy-looking nurse’s station to a curtained-off cubicle that has a bed and my brother’s former college roommate lying in it.

  His eyes are closed and there are wires coming out from under the blanket covering him. His complexion looks horrible, more gray than anything else.

  “Oh my god,” I whisper, my hand going to my mouth. “What did I do?”

  Rob’s eyes open and he looks right at me, but I see no recognition there. Then, slowly he smiles and his skin doesn’t look quite so terrible. “Hey there.”

  “Hey.” I walk closer, stopping at the side of his bed. “How are you feeling?”

  “I’ve felt better.” He looks me up and down. “What’s a nice girl like you doing in a place like this?”

  “Shut up or I’ll pinch off your air hose.” I point to the tube going into his nose, connected to a plug on the wall.

  “Nice.” He smiles and nods. “I’m glad to see my near-death experience hasn’t changed your opinion of me.”

  Tears spring to my eyes and I reach my hand out.

  He cringes, waiting for me to smack him, but instead I wipe the hair from his eyes.

  His gaze follows my fingers and then moves to my face. When he begins to talk, his voice catches, so he clears his throat and starts over. “So, did you have a hard time getting past the guards out front?”

  “Not once I got the nurse on the phone with James I didn’t.”

  “You called James?” He looks off to the side. “Dammit.”

  I stop playing with his hair and rest my hand on his arm. “Why dammit?”

  He sighs. “No reason in particular.”

  Just then the curtain twitches to the side and James himself walks in. He’s followed by a younger guy in a white coat holding a clipboard. I get the distinct impression he’s an intern or resident or something. I remember my brother going through the rigorous medical training, and he looked just like this guy does: young, a little scared, and like he hasn’t slept in a week.

  “Robinson,” he says, coming over to stand next to me.

  Relief finally starts flowing when my brother’s arm goes around me and he squeezes me up against him. “How are you feeling?”

  “I’m fine,” Rob and I say at the same time.

  James glares at Rob. “I wasn’t talking to you.”

  Rob waves his hand weakly up from the bed. “My bad. Sorry. Thought you were talking to the guy who had a heart attack.”

  James looks over at the stranger in the cubicle. “Tell him your diagnosis, would you? So we can stop listening to him whine.”

  The intern clears his throat. “Based on the blood test we had analyzed in the lab, it doesn’t appear as if you had any cardiac event.”

  Rob frowns. “But my chest … the pain was terrible.”

  James turns to the intern again. The young guy pushes his glasses up and continues. “Based on your symptoms and the presence of a higher than normal blood alcohol level, my professional opinion is that you’re suffering from a peptic ulcer.”

  “That sounds bad,” Rob says in hushed tones.

  “It’s not,” James says. “Stop drinking, stop smoking, and take some antibiotics. You’ll be fine.”

  Everyone looks at James, I’m sure all of us thinking the same thing: what in the heck happened to his bedside manner?

  “Does this mean I can leave?” Rob asks.

  All three of us answer at the exact same time. “No!”

  I look at the doctors. “You can’t let him leave. He’s sick! He practically died on my living room floor.”

  “I wasn’t dying,” Rob says, sounding embarrassed.

  “My question is, what was he doing on your living room floor?” James asks. He glares first at Rob and then at me.

  The intern slowly backs out of the room, letting the curtain fall into place after he’s clear of it.

  “Why are you mad at me?” I ask, stunned at his attitude. “I didn’t do anything wrong?”

  “Are you sure about that?” he asks.

  My jaw drops open. I’m so frigging confused, I don’t know what to say.

  “It’s not her fault, it’s mine.” Rob sighs. “I went over there after I left the bar. She felt bad for me. She offered me a cup of coffee to sober me up.”

  James turns his attention to Rob. “I told you to stay away from her.”

  I slap James on the arm with the back of my hand. “Hey! Who says you get to decide what Rob does?”

  James glares at me for a second before going back to staring Rob down. “Rob can do whatever the hell he wants, just not with my sister.”

  The entire ER goes silent, except for the beeping of machines and hissing of air hoses.

  “Oh my god,” I whisper, pinching him. “Could you be any louder?” My face is burning with embarrassment. I can’t even look at Rob.

  “I know you told me to leave her alone, but I couldn’t. I had to get her to just listen to me.”

  “I told you before, and now I’m going to tell you again with Jana here listening … Jana doesn’t want to hear what you have to say. She wants you to leave her alone, and I want you to do the same. You did what you had to do, and we appreciate it, but now you just need to give us some space.”

  I sneak a glance at Rob and my heart nearly breaks at the pain I see there. But he presses his lips together and nods. “No problem.”

  “Rob…” I reach out to him, but James takes me by the arm and pulls me back. Rob just keeps staring at James, giving me the impression that I don’t even exist anymore.

  “Leave him be,” James says, pulling me out of the curtained cubicle. We’re standing in the aisle next to the nurse’s station where everyone’s acting like they didn’t just hear everything that was said.

  “Get off me,” I hiss, yanking my arm out of his grasp.

  “Listen,” James says, his voice low but angry. “You need to stop leading him on.”

  “What?!” I cannot believe he just said that.

  “Stop calling him, stop trying to see him, stop thinking about him that way.”

  “What?!” I thought my face was red before, but it can’t have been even close to what it is now. I feel like I’m about to spontaneously combust. What I want to do is scream at my brother at the top of my lungs and tell him that he’s not the boss of me and that he has
this whole situation very, very wrong. But I can’t, because there’s an audience watching and I can’t trust myself to stay reasonably calm. I’m liable to start throwing stethoscopes and computers around the room if I get started telling James what I think about him trying to tell me what to do with my life.

  I settle for one statement before making my exit. Leaning in, I poke him in the center of the chest, and growl my words out. “You don’t get to decide what I do with my life, so back the fuck off.”

  I spin around and walk to the nearest door, angry when I open it and find a bunch of blankets stacked up inside a closet. I leave that door open and continue down the hall, opening door after door until I finally get to a large set of double ones that open when someone walks up on the other side.

  Fifteen minutes later, I finally find my way out to the street and take a cab home. It’s four in the morning before I can finally stop fuming enough to go to bed. Just before I climb between the sheets, I send off a text. I think it’s the magic trick that helps my brain to finally stop racing and relax.

  Hi, Rob. It’s me. We need to talk. Text me to tell me where and when, and I’ll be there.

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  KEEPING BUSY WITH HOME RENOVATIONS isn’t keeping my mind occupied enough. I check my phone all day long and into the night, waiting for a response from Rob, but nothing comes. Not the next day, or the next, or the next week even. Now I feel like I’m the one having a heart attack. A slow, painful ache settles deep into my chest and won’t go away, no matter what I do. Leah’s assurances that he’s fine and that his ulcer is under control are nice to have, but they do nothing for the other issue between us. Not that there’s an Us or anything, thanks to my stupid brother.

  Rob has obviously decided to cut me off. I guess James is the boss of him. The only one who cares if I’m still alive is Leah, but I’ve put off her invitations to lunch and dinner every time she calls. I just can’t work up the energy to be social. My life feels like it’s in limbo right now, and limbo is a very lonely place.

  I hate James. I hate having two older brothers. All they do is screw things up and break me into pieces. I feel bad for my subcontractors. Before I was letting little things slide, like when the grout between the bathroom tiles wasn’t exactly the color I wanted or when the gutters around the new roof were a little slanted. But not anymore. I’m paying top dollar for this work, and I expect to get top-dollar quality out of it, dammit. The only guy who is getting a break from me is Jake the plumber, but he’s the only one who doesn’t need a break. He’s more demanding of his work than I am.

  “It’s fine,” I say for the third time, staring at the plumbing fixture in the bathroom with him.

  “I don’t like it,” he responds. It’s not in keeping with the style in here.”

  “I can get another one later. Just leave it like this.”

  “No. I’ll get a new one tonight on my way home. It’ll be installed no later than Friday.”

  It’s been two weeks since our date, and I was expecting to have an awful time working with him so closely after, but he’s been acting like it’s no big deal. Making it easier is probably the fact that he hasn’t been here as much the last few days, what with his part of the job winding down. I’ll be a little sad to see him go, actually. Not only is he way cuter than any of the other subs running around, showing their hairy butt cracks off whenever they bend over, but he has a good heart; every time I look at him I think about what he said, about his pastor friend Carlos and what he taught him.

  “How’s your dog?” I ask as he’s about to walk away.

  Jake stops and turns around, smiling. “He’s good. Working on his midair catches. Improving.”

  “Really? I’d like to see that sometime.” I realize as I speak my mind that what I said could be construed as a request for another date. And since I don’t want to lead him on with one of those, I try to fix it. “I mean, I’ve always been fascinated by canine athletes.”

  He laughs. “Really.”

  I throw a rag he left behind at him. “Shush.”

  He catches the rag and sticks it in his back pocket. “You’re welcome to join us anytime. Just shoot me a text over the weekend, and I’ll let you know the next time we’re going to be out.”

  “Okay.”

  He’s about to leave again, but something makes me stop him. “Hey.”

  When he turns, I feel uncomfortable, but I continue because I feel like I owe it to him. “You know that night you came over and Rob showed up?”

  He nods, his expression back to serious. “Yep.”

  “I just … wanted to explain.”

  “You don’t need to.”

  “No, I know. But I want to.” I stare at the ground, trying to work up the courage to say what needs to be said. “He’s not my boyfriend.”

  “Okay.”

  “He never was, actually.” I look up and laugh bitterly. “I wanted him to be, for a really long time. Like, since before I was a teenager.” How silly I was. “He was my brother’s college roommate, and then after he went to law school, he became our attorney for family matters and other things that came up.”

  Jake leans on the doorframe listening.

  “When my brother Jeremy came back after his period of mourning or whatever, my other brother James said that Rob should decide if Jeremy was ready to be a father to Cassie. At the time, I kind of saw it as Rob making the decision personally, but I came to realize later that it was Rob just giving us a legal opinion about what the court would think.” I realize as I explain this to Jake that somewhere along the way, I took his advice and started looking at what happened from a different perspective. I made a different choice. It’s kind of empowering when I realize it.

  Jake nods. “Makes sense.”

  “Does it?” I search his face for answers. He seems so… wise. The expression never to judge a book by its cover dances in my brain. A hot plumber dispensing excellent life advice; who would’ve thought?

  “Based on what you’ve said and what I saw that night, he doesn’t strike me as the kind of guy who would do something to deliberately hurt you.”

  “He’s not. He’s definitely not.”

  Jake shrugs. First he looks at the ground and then he looks up at me. “I know it’s none of my business, but for what it’s worth, I don’t think you’re the only one who’s been thinking about you two being together. You and Rob, I mean.”

  “What?” I’m confused.

  “That guy. Rob. I saw him that night and how he was looking at you. He thought we’d slept together. He wasn’t happy.”

  I shake my head. “He’s just protective. Like an older brother.”

  “No older brother looks at a sister like that. Trust me.”

  My heart starts racing over the idea. Now I have two people saying the same thing about Rob. Could it be true? “He came up to my apartment that night after you left and then ended up having some sort of ulcer attack and had to leave in an ambulance.”

  Jake’s eyes bug out. “Seriously?”

  I laugh. “Yes. Seriously.” It does sound even crazier saying it out loud to someone. “When he was lying on the floor thinking he was dying, he said stuff. Like about what you said.” I’m too embarrassed to say it. Rob kind of did declare some feelings for me. I’m still not sure what they were, though. Not that it matters now since he’s not speaking to me anymore.

  Jake nods. “Lucky guy.”

  I shake my head. “No. He’s not even talking to me now.”

  Jake stands, no longer leaning on the doorframe. “Why not?”

  I shrug, falling into the memory of my brother in the ER cubicle. “James. My brother. He told him to back off, and Rob said he would. James told me to back off too.”

  “And you just agreed to do it? After dreaming about the guy for twenty years?”

  “Yeah. Pretty much. That’s what the big boss of the whole world told me to do, and I did it.” I’m acting like I’m twelve again, but James makes me feel
that way often. He’s always been able to become my parent when the mood struck him, and I’ve always just let it happen.

  Jake comes into the bathroom and takes me by the hands, forcing me to look up at him. “Choices,” he says. “Life’s all about the choices you make.”

  “So you said before.” I’m not mocking him; I’m more making fun of myself. Turns out, he’s kind of right. I shouldn’t have been so quick to dismiss his friend’s wisdom before.

  “You’re choosing to let your brother make decisions for the both of you. Is that what you really want?”

  “No.” Looking into Jake’s pretty eyes, I almost feel like I’m being mesmerized. “But I texted Rob and he didn’t answer.”

  “What did your text say?”

  “I said I wanted to talk.”

  Jake’s mouth goes up in a half smile. “Not very bold, was it?”

  I have to laugh. “No. Maybe not.”

  “Is this the same girl who threatened to knock my eye out with a samosa?”

  My face goes pink. “I don’t know.”

  He squeezes my hands and winks. “It is. I see her in there. She just needs to wake up and grow a pair.”

  I look down at my crotch. “I’m not sure I’d be able to fit a pair into these skinny jeans.”

  He leans back and laughs really loud. When he recovers, he pulls me into a hug. “You’re killing me.” He rubs my back and then leans to the side a little to look at me. “If I can’t have you, then I need to hope at least this guy Rob can have a fair chance. Seems like he deserves you after being the object of your twenty-year crush. Otherwise, I’m going to start thinking there’s no hope left in the world for guys like me.”

  I lose my smile as we step away from each other. “I’m sorry, Jake. I don’t know what my problem is.” He’s such a great guy. Why couldn’t I fall for someone like him?

  “You don’t have a problem.”

  I throw my arms up at him. “Of course I do! Look at you! You’re perfect.”

  Now he looks like he’s going red in the face. “Perfect? Hardly.”

  I punch him in the shoulder. “Come on. You know you are. You’re smart, funny, gorgeous…” I pause, waiting to see if what I’m saying is penetrating.