The Awakening of Dr. Brown

“Father Frank’s sister-helps out at the clinic. She’s a nurse here. Do you think you’ll need any help putting them on?”

Deep inside the frozen crust that encased her, she felt prickles and stirrings of…could it be jealousy? Sexual possessiveness…territorial pride? To her it was like sensation returning to numbed limbs, reassuring her that she was alive…that she would feel again.

“I can manage,” she said, when what she really meant was, I need you…please help me…don’t go away and leave me again…

Ethan nodded. “I’ll be right outside here.”

He went out and quietly shut the door behind him, then leaned against it, breathing carefully, almost guiltily, as if he feared she might hear the ragged stutter of it…the runaway stampeding of his heart. He hadn’t known how much it was going to hurt, seeing her like this. He hadn’t known what it was going to be like, hurting for someone. These were new feelings, and he hadn’t learned what to do with them yet. He wondered, as he had before, if this was what it was like to love someone. And what on earth he was going to do if he’d fallen in love with Phoenix.

Then the door opened and she stood there, shapeless in green surgical scrubs, with her signature hair hidden under a cap and her perfect oval face pale with exhaustion and smudged with smoke and grief. And he knew it wasn’t a question of if.

“Ready,” she said breathlessly. “Which way to the gauntlet?”

“Uh-uh-I have a secret exit,” he said, and smiled, wondering if she’d remember. But if she did, she was too preoccupied to smile back.

As he led her down through the bowels of the hospital, through echoing concrete stairwells and corridors where pipes ran along the ceiling and the air was thick with formaldehyde, he thought about that time, the first day he’d met her. Thought about what a short time ago it had been, and how much things had changed since then. One thing, though, remained the same-he still felt completely out of his league…in over his head. What, he wondered, does a man do when the woman he loves has been dealt a killing blow?

In the basement, in the secret place where the coroner’s vans parked when they came to pick up bodies, the dark sedan waited, quietly idling. Tom Applegate held the door for them, then got into the front seat. Carl Friedenburg’s eyes met Ethan’s in the rearview mirror.

“Where to, sir?”

Before he could say anything, Joanna’s hand clutched at his arm, desperation in her grip. “Take me home with you,” she said in a raspy, panicky undertone. “I can’t go back there-to the loft-not tonight. I don’t want to be alone…”

He nodded. There was a vast lump in his throat. To Carl he said quietly, “Just take us home.”

Phoenix sat hunched and withdrawn as the car rolled through silent early morning streets, still glistening from the previous evening’s rain. Ethan didn’t even try to talk to her; he had no idea what to say. He’d never felt more helpless, more frustrated in his life. He felt she needed him-knew that she needed him, and that he was failing her miserably. He was a doctor, for God’s sake. He’d been trained to heal people. But no one had taught him how to heal a broken heart.

Secure inside his own apartment building, he said good-night to Tom and Carl and climbed the stairs with Phoenix beside him. He kept one hand deferentially on her elbow, exactly the same way he’d have touched his sister, or Dixie, if they’d come to pay him a visit. But never for his sister or stepmother would his heart have pounded so, or frustration sizzle like acid below his breastbone. Never for them or anyone else had he felt jangled and jerky like this, as if there were a loose connection somewhere between his nerves and muscles.

He closed and locked his apartment door, shutting them in together, then turned, pulling off his surgical cap. “Are you hungry?” he asked. He could heard his jaws creak with tension.

She shook her head, and he was utterly at a loss-until he saw that she was shivering. This, at last-a physical symptom-was something he knew how to deal with.

“How about a shower?” he suggested gently, and was pleased beyond measure when she whispered, “Thanks…that’d be nice.”

“I’ll see if I can find you something to put on. Would sweats be okay?” He had quite a few of those-probably even some that were clean.

Again he was delighted with her murmured acquiescence. He led her into his bedroom, grateful for the embarrassment he’d suffered the last time he’d brought her here, which had prompted him to tidy up some-he’d even, praise God, made his bed. She stood silently while he collected clean sweats from a drawer and towels from his closet, nodded when he showed her where the shampoo was, if she wanted it. He felt positively masterful when he found her a new, unopened toothbrush. It was a feeling that lasted exactly as long as it took him to say, “Well… if you need anything else, let me know,” and walk out of the bathroom and close the door.

Then he knew with absolute certainty that he hadn’t given her anything even close to what she needed.

He hovered nervously until he heard the water running in the shower, then for something to do, went out to the kitchen and filled a tea kettle with water and put it on the stove. Hot cocoa, he thought-or maybe herbal tea. That would be better this time of night than coffee.

While he waited for the water to boil, he puttered around in the living room…debated putting on music and decided against it. Changed out of his borrowed scrubs and put on sweats and a T-shirt instead. The tea kettle whistle rose to a crescendo and as he went to turn off the stove, he checked the time on the stove top clock. Fifteen minutes. She’d been in there fifteen minutes. And he could still hear the shower running. He wouldn’t have thought he had that much hot water.

Heart pounding, he went into the bedroom. The only sound from the bathroom was the steady shushing of water hitting tile. Leaning close to the door, he called, “Joanna? Everything all right in there?”

There was no answer. But now he could hear something else-a very small sound, like a bird…or a kitten. His heart shot into his throat. He knocked, then called again, “Joanna-you okay?” He pounded on the door. Tried the knob. Found it unlocked. “Joanna? I’m coming in…”

The air in the bathroom was cool and wet, like a jungle in the rain. The fog that had collected on the mirror and shower door was already condensing, beginning to run in little rivers down the glass. Through the dimpled door glass he could see a small shape, darker than the tile…

“Oh, God-” He felt as though the top of his head was coming off. As if he could plunge through walls. Wrenching open the shower door, he fumbled with the faucets, shutting off the water.

She was huddled on the floor in the far corner of the shower, knees pulled up to her chin, hands covering her face, her hair streaming over her and plastered to her body like seaweed…sobbing…brokenly, heartrendingly, like a child.

A strange quietness came over Ethan then…a new kind of quietness that was altogether different from his old retreat to a place of peaceful solitude. There was nothing solitary about this quietness, but there was peace. The sweet and tender peace that comes with confidence…with certainty…with knowing at last exactly what it was she needed. And with knowing at last that, of all the people in the world, he was the one who could give it to her.

He took a towel from the stack he’d given her, shook it out and stepped into the still-dripping shower. Crouching beside her, he wrapped the towel around her. Then he lifted her tenderly into his arms and carried her to his bed. And all the while he was murmuring to her, crooning soft reassurances as if she were a frightened or injured animal.

His gentle voice…words she didn’t really understand…seeped into her tormented mind and spread like oil. His arms felt warm and sturdy around her…she liked the strong, reassuring thump of his heartbeat against her cheek. She liked the way he smelled. And, oh, he felt good…so good. Now, everywhere he touched her, that part of her seemed to hurt a little less.

Sodden on the outside, inside her head-her throat, her eye sockets-felt hot and dry. She was tired of crying. She didn’t want to cry anymore. But every time she thought of anything-anything at all-and even now she could feel fresh shudders building-she started all over again.

“Hold me,” she whispered fiercely, gathering handfuls of his sweatshirt into her fists.

“I will,” he promised, rocking her tenderly. “I am.”

But it wasn’t his gentleness she wanted now. She wanted oblivion, craved it like some powerful, mind-numbing drug. Pulling herself up in his embrace, she pressed her damp face into the curve of his neck, opened her mouth and