Summer in Tuscany (2 page)

I don’t quite know why, but what I’m remembering right now is the time we were in his car, the two of us, taking a quick vacation together. I was at the wheel and Cash was beside me, map reading. We were lost and I was annoyed. I said it was his fault and he laughed and said he was sorry and how about we stop and have lunch somewhere. And just like magic, which was the way it always seemed to happen when I was with Cash, we practically tripped over this sweet little country inn. We drove past, screeched to a halt, backed down the winding lane to check it out, and saw the sign RESTAURANT.

We piled out of the car, a little old red sports model (what else would Cash have had?), and walked hand in hand into a New England wonderland of dark-paneled walls and braided rugs and potpourri. There were antlers and wall sconces, throw pillows, flowered chintz and rickety side tables full of bric-a-brac, and a grizzled, sleepy Labrador who opened one eye to check us out and then went back to his snooze.

A kindly blue-haired lady behind the desk smiled at us over her bifocals. “Lunch?” she asked.

Cash squeezed my hand tightly. “Actually, we were wondering if you had a room.”

He caught my surprised gasp, and so, I know, did the woman. “Of course,” she said. “Let me show you.”

I clutched Cash’s hand as we headed up the stairs. “I thought we were lost and just coming here for lunch,” I whispered.

He threw me a look over his shoulder, already two steps in front of me—as he somehow always was—and I felt myself melt. Did I mention that he was blond and handsome in that strong-jawed all-American, or should I say all-
Texan,
way? Sort of cowboy crossed with Malibu surfer? And I had seen that look before and knew what it meant. In fact, that’s the way our relationship had started.

Actually, it started with a pickup in a Starbucks where I was sipping an illicit frappuccino (illicit because, though I know how much sugar there is in those things, I still can’t resist). He gave me a smiling glance in passing, and our eyes locked. Then he said in an exaggerated Texas drawl, “Hi, how’re y’doin’, ma’am?” and I giggled because nobody had ever called me “ma’am” before.

“Actually, it’s Doctor,” I said primly, because I don’t usually go around talking to complete strangers except at the hospital, of course, and then they’re on a gurney, and the dialogue is hardly racy.

“How’re you, Doc?” He hitched himself onto the stool next to me. I nodded okay, staring out the window, anything to stop looking at him, because they just didn’t grow them like this in New York City. His long shaggy blond hair gleamed with lights my own did not possess, his tanned skin glowed with health, and his blue eyes were ten shades lighter than mine and looked surprisingly world-weary.

This guy is no hick from Hicksville, I warned myself. He knows where he’s at, all right. All muscular six-four of him, with shoulders whose breadth owed nothing to the old suede shirt he was wearing. I sneaked a glance at his feet. Thank God he was not wearing cowboy boots; that would have been just too much.

“Come here often?” he said.

I glanced skeptically at him out of the corner of my eye and took another sip.

“Okay, then, how d’you like those frappuccinos?”

I stared out the window at a dog-walker with a tangle of leads and what looked to be about sixteen Chihuahuas.

“Just got in from Dallas,” he drawled, as though I were even listening. “Don’t know too many folks here in the Big Apple.”

Oh,
puh-lease
…I rolled my eyes. Did he really think I was going to fall for that one? And then he started to laugh, a rich, rolling laugh, natural as spring water and just as refreshing. And I found myself laughing too.

“I’m Cash Drummond.” He held out a sun-kissed hand dusted with tiny blond hairs, and so help me, I took it.

“Cash?”
I couldn’t believe it.

He lifted an amused eyebrow. “It could have been worse. I was called after my grandfather, Wilbur Cash.”

I laughed then. “Your mother was a wise woman.”

My frappuccino was almost gone, and I was due back at the hospital in ten minutes. “Gotta go,” I said, hitching my oversized black tote onto my shoulder.

“That bag looks mighty heavy for a little lady like you,” Cash Drummond drawled.

Now, this bag contained my
entire
life: my wallet, credit cards, driver’s license, Social Security card, and hospital ID, plus a collection of pictures of Livvie from babyhood to the previous week (she’d turned nine that very October). There were my checkbook and the latest dismal bank statement; my mother’s recipe for braised lamb shanks, which I had meant to give to my friend Patty; a clean pair of underwear, in case I had to work late and needed a shower and a change and not for any other reason you might have imagined; and a lipstick that was too pink for my pale autumnal face, plus a comb, rarely used.

“Let me help you,” Cash said, reaching for this bag. And this is how moonstruck I suddenly was.
I just handed it to him. Me. A New Yorker
. I
trusted
him!

My eyes locked with his, and I could feel the sap rising in me, so to speak. “Where are you heading?” he said.

“All the way downtown,” I replied, “to Bellevue.”

“Then let me give you a lift.” He slung my bag onto his shoulder and held the door open for me. “By the way,” he added, “you didn’t tell me your name.”

“It’s Gemma,” I said, my eyes still locked with his as we stood in that drafty doorway at Starbucks. “Gemma Jericho.”

And that was the way it started—with lust and love and romance, leading up to the minivacation I was telling you about, actually no more than a long weekend, when we got lost and stumbled across that old inn.

The attic room the blue-haired lady showed us had a steeply sloped roof, a dormer window with a flowered curtain, and a view onto a spring meadow dotted with sleepy-looking horses. The bed was a double with a Victorian iron frame painted white, a multihued patchwork quilt, and half a dozen rag dolls propped against banks of pillows.

We bent our heads and leaned on the window ledge looking out at that meadow for a full thirty seconds before the brass rings of the flowered curtains rattled on their metal pole, the six Raggedy Anns hit the floor, and we were wallowing in that feather bed the way only true lovers do. Hot and ready for each other the way we always were. Then.

I pushed away that forbidden past and came back to the present with a thud. I had told myself I was never going to think about Cash Drummond, never talk about him; but every now and then he just popped into my head, unbidden. I’d swear I’d put it all—
him
, I mean—behind me. I had built this blockade against him, against any feeling. But sometimes I thought he would never let me go.

The dream was over. All that remained was a secret guilt, to be hidden forever, even from myself, because I know I can never face the truth. It’s over, that’s all there is to it. And now I am a dedicated ER physician, a single mom. And a woman with ice around my heart that no man will ever be allowed to melt.

In my job, I’m sort of like the captain of the ship—everyone looks to me to lead them. Tonight, as usual, the ER phones are ringing off the hook, my pager is beeping, and the wounded, moaning and wailing, are lined up on hard gray plastic chairs and gurneys. My aim is to get them out of here, on their feet, walking, talking, living.

It’s a stormy night and the rain is bouncing down hard as rivets. We all know what that means: more road accidents. And right now I have the sad duty of “calling it” on the first one: a young male victim of a motorcycle accident whose eyes have closed for the final time.

My team had worked on him for almost an hour. We had given it our all, and now I just stood there, defeated, amid the discarded plastic tubes, the drips, the bloody debris of our battle for his life. I felt myself spiraling emotionally downward as I looked at him: so young, so cute with his spiked blond hair. He had everything to live for…he must have a mother…a lover…

I told myself I was cool, I was a physician, I could handle this…then suddenly I turned and bolted down the long tiled corridor, through the automatic glass doors, out into the night. The rain bounced down, turning the roads into flowing streams. I was shivering, gasping what passed for fresh air in Manhattan, pacing to the place where the hospital lights didn’t reach, to the edge of darkness, and back again. Pacing, thinking. Telling myself
not
to think.

Eventually my heart quit doing a nervous salsa and slunk back into neutral. And as if on cue, my pager beeped and I was running back inside, back to the trauma room.

“You okay?” The charge nurse glanced anxiously at me.

“Sure, I’m okay. I just can’t stand the sight of blood, that’s all,” I said, and we both laughed. It was a way of coping, the laughter. Except now I was the one who had to tell his family. It’s the worst job of all.

So. I had been on duty for ten hours already. It had been a long night, and it wasn’t over yet. My pager beeped again. This time it was Livvie, who had a couple of friends sleeping over. I’m always worried knowing she’s at home without me. Right now our Filipina housekeeper was in charge. She’s not much older than Livvie, and she’s surely not the world’s greatest cleaner, but she is reliable and responsible and she laughs a lot and she keeps an eagle eye on my daughter, so what do I care about a few dust bunnies under the beds?

I called Livvie back, flinching as my eardrums were assaulted by hip-hop at full volume with heavy bass.

“Livvie, turn the sound down,” I yelled over the phone. “What are you girls up to?” I was anxiously eyeing a passing gurney bringing in a shooting victim, a female, screaming her lungs out, cursing, thrashing in pain…I was already running.

“Mom, I can’t go to Nonna’s tomorrow,” Livvie yelled over the bass boom. “I have a date.”

“What
date
? You know you’re not allowed out on dates alone. Besides, we
always
go to Nonna’s on Sunday.”

Livvie’s voice was one big groan as she gave me her
omigodmom
reply, but I held my ground, said a quick good-bye and love you, and raced after that gurney. It was just another chaotic Saturday night at Bellevue.

An hour later, the ER was suddenly quiet. The stream of broken people had stopped for a minute. A glance at the wall clock told me it was already tomorrow and that the ritual Italian Sunday lunch was only hours away. Sleep-deprived or not, dates or not, we would go. We always did.

I rested my aching back against the shabby industrial-green wall and took a sip of the boiling brown liquid we all pretended was coffee. Fatigue washed over me like a high tide, and I closed my eyes, hoping for at least a minor caffeine rush.

“Hi there, doll, how’re y’doin’?” someone said. I knew without looking it was Patty Sullivan, my best friend and colleague. I turned and smiled at her.

She was leaning next to me, one foot lifted like a resting horse taking the weight off. Patty is redheaded, Irish, and plumply pretty with pink cheeks and greenish eyes and ginger lashes that always remind me of Sinbad, though of course I would never tell her that. We’ve known each other for fifteen years, been through emergency room training together, through life, loves, deaths, divorces, and, in Patty’s case, remarriage.

“Haggard,” I said to Patty. “That’s how I’m doing. Or at least, it’s the way I look.”

“Haggard?”

“As in
hag
.”

Patty grinned. “After a Saturday night here, you’re entitled.”

“What d’you think, Patty?” I asked, still worried about Livvie. “Am I in the wrong business? Maybe I should get out of here, take up a rural practice somewhere, get Livvie out of the city, make a better life for us.”

But before Patty could reply, I was paged, and I was off at a run again.

“You’re like Pavlov’s dog,” Patty yelled after me. “They call—you run. They hurt—you fix ’em. You can’t get away from it.”

You know what? She’s right. I was just dreaming.

I hurried out of the hospital’s automatic doors at 5
A.M
., yawning as I sat in the subway train, gazing blankly at the early morning darkness outside the window, oblivious to my fellow passengers. It wasn’t just the fatigue that was getting to me, it was the terrible emotional letdown that everyone who works in this job gets. One minute you’re up, working like that fine-honed speed machine I told you about; the next you’re crashing into a black void of what might have been, what could have been, what
was
. And always with that eternal question ringing in your brain: Why?
Why,
oh
why,
did these terrible things happen to people?

I wondered whether I should think seriously about that country practice, get myself and Livvie out of this urban rat race we have come to believe is normal. But the truth is I know I can never do that. I am who I am.
This
is my life. And when I think of moving my street-smart pop-diva daughter to a land of meadows and streams—well, forget about it.

“Home” is a small apartment in one of those flat-fronted, faceless stone buildings, with a doorman, Carlos, who is my saving grace and a friend to all.

He was on the early shift this week and called a cheerful “Hi, Doc, how’re you this fine morning?” as he held the door for me.

“You mean it’s morning?” I gave him a grin as I walked by, and he laughed at my familiar quip. Well, shoot, a girl couldn’t be expected to be original and witty at this ungodly hour, could she?

In the elevator I turned my back to the mirror; looking at myself would have been just too depressing. My cream-painted door on the tenth floor was exactly the same as the six others. I turned the key, stepped inside, closed the door behind me, and threw on the dead bolt.

I leaned against my urban barricade for a moment, listening to the soft dawn silence of my sleeping household, those tenuous peaceful moments when time seems suspended. Then I took a step forward, and of course I tripped over Sinbad, who leaped into the air with a screech that could wake the entire building.

“Jeez, Sinbad, I’m sorry.” I stroked his thick ginger fur, though I knew it was really his ruffled feelings I was soothing. He gave me a reproachful green-eyed glare, then hunkered down again, huge paws tucked under.

I peeked in at Livvie. She was sprawled across the bed, wearing an old ’N Sync T-shirt. Her face was squashed into the pillow, but I could see the still-baby curve of her cheek and the curl of her lashes, her soft mouth. I wondered tenderly why it was that no matter how grown-up they seem when they are awake, when they are sleeping our children always look about three years old.

I checked the two lumps tucked into the other bed, who were Livvie’s sleepover friends, picked up an empty pizza box, and left the door open a crack so that Sinbad could reclaim his place next to Livvie. Then I walked on down the hall to the kitchen that’s like a ship’s galley, long and narrow with a window at the far end through which the gray dawn light was rapidly becoming a lighter gray. I checked the refrigerator but was too tired to decide whether I was hungry or not.

Five minutes later, showered, hair still damp, snug in my Victoria’s Secret flannel pajamas, my head was on the pillow and I was tumbling over that black abyss into sleep. Only to dream of the young motorbike victim, with his spiky blond hair and his smooth unlined face, who’d had a girlfriend somewhere and all his life in front of him.

I grieved for him as I slept.