Prescription For Seduction. Darlene Scalera

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      “Eden’s a good girl, isn’t she?” Martha asked. He stepped back from the window, but it was too late. His study of the store hadn’t gone unnoticed by the old woman.

      He carefully composed his reply. “She seems like a nice person.”

      Martha’s eyes narrowed. “You know her, don’t you?”

      “Sure, everybody knows Eden.”

      Martha tilted her head back, her gaze gaining new power. “She could be easy to overlook. She’s not flashy and noisy like some I’ve seen. She’s the kind of girl that lets a man hear the sound of his own breath.”

      “Mom,” Anna interrupted, “we’re keeping the good doctor from his work.” She again smiled apologetically at Brady.

      Martha’s gaze never left Brady. “I think I’ll keep an eye on you, Doc.”

      Brady knew the elderly woman’s sharp tongue protected a soft heart. He knew because it was a tactic he himself had mastered. “If somebody’s got to, Martha, I’m glad it’s you.” He leaned over and kissed the woman’s cheek, felt the precarious thinness of flesh.

      He stepped back, concealing his own surprise at his behavior. Martha touched her cheek, but snorted with indignation. “It should be someone with a lot fewer years and a lot more agreeable. Someone like—”

      “C’mon, Mom.” Anna hooked her arm through her mother’s. “If we don’t get you back by bingo, the home will be calling in Deputy Cooper. Nice seeing you, Brady.”

      “You too, Anna. Tell Johnny I said hello.”

      “Can I tell him you said he should go easy on those onion rings when the Dairy King opens for the season next month?”

      With relief, Brady returned to his professional role. “With his hiatal hernia, the chili dogs, too.”

      Anna glanced at Martha. “And maybe egg substitutes and a little less bacon for Mom at those Sunday breakfasts at the diner? Her last blood workup showed her cholesterol was high.”

      “Couldn’t hurt.” He looked at Martha. “No sense courting heart disease.”

      “If you’re in such a big hurry to get me home, why are we still standing around here flapping our jaws?” Martha snapped at her daughter.

      “No wonder he’s not settled down yet,” the old woman was still grumbling as she and Anna crossed to the square. “He’s too busy making sure the good citizens of Tyler live long, unhappy lives.”

      Brady watched the women walk away. Even after they disappeared behind the oak trees, he stood, trying to figure out what had prompted his sudden show of affection. He wasn’t one given to spontaneous gestures…until lately. He shook his head. At times he didn’t understand himself anymore.

      He looked up. The windows above the flower shop were covered with lace, the light past them tinted pearl-pink. He took a deep breath, swore he smelled heaven once more before he started toward the hospital.

      The security guard glanced up as the double glass doors to the hospital’s main lobby slid open. The regular entrance to the brick annex where most of the doctors had their offices was locked after hours to save on security costs. The guard nodded at Brady. “Thought your day was done, Doc.”

      Brady only had to say one word. “Paperwork.”

      The guard nodded again. “The modern man’s burden.”

      “You have a good evening now.” Brady headed down the corridor. His encounter with Martha had scared him off small talk for the night.

      The hall was windowless, lit by fluorescent tubes in the ceiling that made shadows seem to disappear and turned faces hard. He said hello as he passed a cleaning lady. The floor was bland asphalt tiles. The walls were a faded mauve.

      He turned into another, shorter hall that led to a tunnel connecting the smaller professional center to the hospital. At the tunnel’s end, he took the stairs to the second floor. He inserted his key card into the door and went into the empty waiting room. He passed reception, the records room, examining rooms, the offices of the other doctors in the practice before coming to his own. He unlocked the door, seeing the charts piled on top of the corner file cabinet. Several white lab jackets on wire hangers hung from the coatrack next to the cabinet. The blinds were drawn. Beneath the room’s only window was a sofa he’d never rested on.

      He set down his briefcase and grabbed a handful of charts. Sitting at his desk, he took a microcassette recorder and some pens and pencils out of the top drawer.

      He looked at the charts before him and heaved a deep breath. Heaven was gone. Here, even behind the office’s closed door, he could only smell the bitter scent of sickness, the false lemon of antiseptic.

      He’d thought he would get used to it. He never had. Each time, whether in his office or the operating room, it was still a shock—the compressed smells, the soundless slice into skin, the easy break of bone. It scared the hell out of him. But what had scared him the most was his own fear—the feeling of being vulnerable, not in control. And so, he’d had no choice but to specialize in surgery.

      He opened a chart but didn’t look at it. The walls of his office were the same nonthreatening color as throughout the hospital. The lighting was surreal. The linens in the exam rooms and everywhere else were an innocuous white. The beds were metal. The gowns were thin and fashioned to expose.

      He thought of the flower shop with its color, its life, and suddenly he longed for its quiet. It wasn’t the eerie quiet of the hospital but a calm, content silence. A quiet one would imagine to be in the paradise The Garden was named after.

      He’d gone there on a whim. That had been the beginning, the first spontaneous act in an otherwise orderly life. It had been the soulless month of February. He’d been walking home, tired, frustrated, wondering if there was a world where there were no Februarys. He’d been thinking of a patient, a woman all alone, old, frail, arthritis ballooning her fingers, curving them at odd angles so that even holding a cup became a feat.

      She’d come in with a hip fracture and her whole life in a worn black leather pocketbook. Her history showed several ministrokes. She’d be transferred to a nursing home as soon as a bed opened up. All day, through rounds, meetings, consultations, Brady had thought of that woman, sitting alone in her thin-mattressed bed, staring, her mauve walls bare as she moved more toward death than life. They’d done all they could for her medically. Still he’d wanted to do more. Some would say he did enough every day with his prescriptions and sutures and killer smile. For him, it wasn’t enough any longer.

      That evening he’d walked the few blocks from the hospital to home, passing The Garden of Eden. In the front windows there’d been flowers from winter-whites and palest pastels to summer brights and heady deep tones the color of ecstasy. He’d stopped. He wasn’t sure why. Maybe it was the lipstick-red so startling at the ends of the tulips’ yellow petals. Maybe it was the spray of baby’s breath like the first snow. Maybe it was nothing more than to stand somewhere and see only color and life. He had no reason, but he went to the door. Just to look around inside a few minutes, he had told himself as he’d turned the knob. It had been locked, but as he turned to go, the door had opened. Eden had seen him at the windows and had unlocked the door. Finally he was inside, his steps too quick, the charcoal-gray of his СКАЧАТЬ