Utopian Day (18 page)

Nick had been watching the whole time with great
amusement. Mia quietly walked over and said to him, “Let’s leave
before the cops get here.” They left the bar and Mia took Nick
home, making sure he made it inside to his bed before he passed
out. That was what had happened the last time she had seen him look
this way.

She went to the kitchen to make some tea and brought
it back in on a tray with two cups and some sugar, setting it down
on the coffee table in front of the couch. She poured herself a cup
and began drinking it as she waited. After another fifteen minutes
or so, Nick spoke.

“
Mia….”

She waited for a few seconds, expecting him to
finish his sentence. When he didn’t, she replied.

“
Yes?”

“
Mia…I…I have cancer….”

The next six months were very difficult. The
treatment plan the oncologist suggested for Nick involved a surgery
to remove a mass of cancer, followed by chemotherapy. Mia’s role
began to change. She was still protecting Nick’s interests, but now
that included driving him to and from doctor’s appointments.
Helping walk him to the car when he was dizzy, and helping him make
some of the common business decisions that he had trouble making
because he couldn’t think clearly due to the drugs he was
taking.

Nick had asked Mia to arrange for a nurse to be
around during the day to help him through the recovery process. The
nurse was to help bring him pain medication, help him up and down
the stairs when he was dizzy, or help clean up when he vomited. One
day, Nick called her on the phone.

“
Mia….”

Nick’s voice was strained.

“
Yes, what is it?” Mia
asked.

“
I’ve fallen down the stairs and I
need your help.”

“
I’ll be right there,” she
replied.

She depressed the accelerator and sped towards the
house. When she came inside, she found Nick sitting in a chair,
with his leg propped up on a foot stool with a pillow under it.
Marcus, the security man whom Nick usually kept at the house, was
bringing a glass of water over to Nick when Mia arrived.

“
Are you o.k.?” she asked
Nick.

“
I’m not sure,” Nick
replied.

“
What happened?”

“
The nurse didn’t show up today. I
thought I could make it downstairs to get myself some breakfast
before starting to work, but I began feeling dizzy towards the
bottom, and fell down the last four steps. Marcus helped me up and
over here to the chair.”

He took the offered glass of water from Marcus. But
before Marcus could turn and leave, Mia’s gaze fell upon him, her
eyes burning a hole right through him. He had seen that stare fall
upon others and he immediately felt a knot in the pit of his
stomach, unsure of what would happen next.

“
Why didn’t you help him down the
stairs?” she asked him, her eyes staying focused on him like
lasers.

“
I…I didn’t know he wanted my
help,” Marcus replied weakly.

“
You should not wait for him to
ask. If the nurse is not here, you help him.
Understand?”

“
Ye.. yes… ma’am. Understood,” he
replied, unsure whether he was dismissed and should leave the room,
or if he should be still.

“
Go!” Mia commanded as she pointed
out of the room. Marcus retreated hastily into the
foyer.

“
Don’t be too hard on him, Mia,”
Nick encouraged her. “After all, if it wasn’t for him, I’d still be
on the floor.”

“
Not good enough,” Mia replied. In
Mia’s line of work, it was handy to have a doctor on the payroll to
patch up any employees who had been recently injured. This
frequently happened while rendering some of the more dangerous
services required in their business. She scrolled through the
contacts in her phone, selecting one and hitting the call icon. In
two rings, a doctor answered personally on the other end. Mia did
not bother with introductions. “Come to the house; Nick has fallen
down. His leg is injured. Hurry.” She disconnected the
call.

The doctor arrived and, after a thorough
examination, concluded that Nick had only sprained his ankle in the
fall. He suggested that Nick use crutches until the leg healed up a
bit, and that he have someone assist him when he went up or down
the stairs. He told Nick that he would come back by in a few days
to check up on him and see how the healing process was going. Mia
fired the nurse that afternoon and selected a different company.
She began a routine of calling Marcus each morning to confirm that
the nurse had arrived before she headed to the house herself.

Nick lost all of his hair and so much weight during
the chemotherapy that he had Mia buy him a new wardrobe of clothes
that fit him more snugly. He said that he refused to look like a
scarecrow wearing his old clothes that were now far too big.
Eventually, the chemotherapy ended and his hair began to grow back.
The side effects of the drugs began to disappear and his sprained
ankle healed up so that he no longer needed crutches. Finally, the
day came when the doctors declared Nick to be cancer-free.

One day afterward, Mia was heading home after the
last business errand of the day when Nick called her on her cell
phone.

“
Yes,” she said.

“
Mia, can you come by the house, I
have one more thing I need you to take care of before you go
home.”

“
O.k., I’ll be right there,” she
replied.

She pulled up to the house and went up the steps,
entering the security code to let herself into the house. She’d
started to head upstairs to Nick’s office when she saw Nick come
out of the den.

“
Thanks for coming back,” he
said.

Mia was still not used to Nick saying ‘thank you’.
Before his illness, he would ask people to do things and expect it
to be done, but rarely did he ever say thank you. While he’d been
sick and had needed people to do so many things for him, he had
begun to say ‘thank you’ far more frequently. The illness had
definitely changed him.

“
Would you come into the dining
room, please?” Nick said.

Mia dutifully followed him into the dining room,
where she saw the table set for two. Nick walked over to one of the
chairs and pulled it out for her.

“
I have some business to discuss
with you and I haven’t eaten yet; would you mind if we had dinner
while we talk?”

“
O.k.,” Mia responded as she sat
down at the table. It was a bit awkward as Nick pushed in the chair
for her – something he had never done before.

Nick opened the door to the kitchen and told the
chef that they were ready to eat – another oddity, as Nick usually
only had a chef when company was coming over. The chef brought out
the food and set it on the table. They began eating in silence.
After a few minutes, Nick stopped eating and took a sizable drink
from his wine glass. Mia could tell that he was nervous – and Nick
was never nervous. She was immediately on edge. She wondered if the
cancer had returned.

“
Mia,” Nick began, “this recent
illness brought about many changes in my life. I had to rely on
many other people to help me in ways I’ve never had to have help
before. You were chief among those helpers, and I wanted to think
of an appropriate way to say thank you.” He slid a black box across
the table before continuing. “Thank you.”

Mia looked down at the box, stunned. Nick had never
given her so much as a birthday card before. Their relationship had
always been solely professional. He paid her well and treated her
with respect, but the business line had never been crossed. She
slowly reached forth her hand and took the box.

“
Thank you,” she said, almost as a
question.

“
Well, go ahead and open it,” Nick
prodded.

Mia timidly opened the box to reveal a ruby and
diamond choker necklace. She stared at it, speechless for several
seconds before looking up at Nick with a confused expression on her
face.

“
Put it on,” Nick encouraged
her.

Mia picked up the necklace and held it up. It was
beautiful. She just stared at it.

“
Here, let me help you,” Nick
said. Nick stood up and came around behind her chair, and took the
necklace from her hands. He put it around her neck and secured the
clasp for her.

“
Why don’t you stand up and take a
look at it in the mirror?”

Mia stood up and turned around to the large mirror
hanging on the wall behind them. The necklace looked even more
beautiful around her neck, she thought to herself.

“
Do you like it?” Nick asked as he
stood beside her and watched her in the mirror.

“
Yes,” Mia said as she reached her
hand up and ran it along the stones, “I like it very
much.”

“
Good,” Nick replied, satisfied.
“Shall we finish our dinner?” he said as he pulled out her chair
for her once more.

They finished eating dinner and Nick did most of the
talking. Mia had never been one for chatting, but she liked
listening to Nick as he talked about his recovery and how he
planned to start keeping a better eye on his health. He paused here
and there to ask her questions, to which her replies were
predictably short and to the point, but he didn’t seem to mind. In
fact, he seemed positively giddy – like a schoolboy just let out on
summer break. She wondered what was happening. It was confusing to
her, but she liked this new side of Nick.

Nick saw Mia to the door and out to the car after
they had finished their dessert. He said goodnight to her –
something he also had never done before, and went back into the
house. Mia drove home thinking about the evening. At one point, she
glanced into the rearview mirror to check the traffic behind her
and caught a glimpse of her own face. She was smiling. It was
something she had not expected to see. Mia did not smile very
often. In fact, she couldn’t remember the last time she had smiled
at all.

Chapter Twenty-Nine

Mia Chen had come to the United States with her
immigrant parents. She was an only child whose parents had
desperately wanted a boy. Her father opened up a martial arts
school in New York City. He pushed Mia to learn the trade just as
hard as if she were the son he’d always wanted but never had. He
was cruel to her and would hit her if she failed to meet his
expectations. Her mother would do nothing to stop him. So Mia
determined at an early age that she would not fail to meet those
high expectations.

By the time Mia was fifteen, she was able to beat
anyone in their studio in the school fighting competitions. She won
regional competition trophies and even went to a state-wide
championship competition when she was eighteen. She caught the flu
the day before the state competition, but her father forced her to
compete anyway. She lost. He was irate, berating her and shouting
at her all the way home. Once they were home, he hit her in the
stomach and she threw up. He was good at hitting her just hard
enough so as not to break any bones or cause any lasting physical
damage, but the bruises and psychological damage were bad enough.
That night, Mia made up her mind to run away.

After she ran away, she began picking up odd jobs
where she could. She got a job teaching martial arts at another
studio, but her father found out about it and came to take her
home. He almost caught her, but she saw his car pull up and ran
away through Central Park before he could catch her. After that,
she stopped teaching martial arts, afraid he would track her down
again.

She saw an advertisement on a local college bulletin
board. The ad stated that one of the sororities was looking for a
security guard for an upcoming party. When she showed up in front
of the sorority house and met the head of the sorority for her
interview, the girl almost laughed when she saw this thin Chinese
girl was applying for the position.

“
I’m sorry, miss,” her interviewer
began, “but I’m not sure you’re…big enough for this
job.”

Mia looked around and saw a male college student
about to enter the sorority house to visit his girlfriend. He was
six-foot three and built like a tank. Mia ran up to him.

“
Excuse me,” she said, “can you
help me one moment?”

He looked a bit surprised.

“
I need you to come over here,”
Mia motioned to where her interviewer was seated behind a table
with a smirk on her face. The man reluctantly came over to where
Mia was motioning, not sure what he was getting into.

“
Is this man big enough?” Mia
asked the lady.

“
Well, yes, he is, but he isn’t
applying for the job; you are,” the lady contended.

Mia ignored her and turned to the man. “Stand here,”
she said as she positioned him several feet in front of the table
at which her interviewer was seated. She held up a twenty dollar
bill so that he could see it and placed it on the table,
positioning herself between him and the money. It was the last
twenty dollars she had to her name.

“
If you can pick up the money, you
can have it,” she said.

The student chuckled, walking forward and reaching
his hand out as if he was going to move her aside and pick up the
money. Mia grabbed his wrist and twisted it while applying upward
pressure with her other hand to the underside of his elbow, putting
him in a submission hold that easily deflected him away from the
table.