His Borrowed Wife

Chapter 3 — Learning Him

Kia

The second day was supposed to be easier.

I had rules. I had a plan. I was going to bring him his meals, check the wound, swap the dressing, and leave. Five minutes maximum. Fifteen if the wound needed extra attention. I was a doctor. I knew how to be clinical. I knew how to keep the professional distance between myself and a situation that had no business becoming personal.

I lasted about forty minutes on day two before I was sitting in that chair again talking to a man I should not have been talking to.

It started because he asked me a question.

I had come in with breakfast, set it down, pulled on my gloves, and started unwrapping the dressing with the focused efficiency I used to use on rounds. The wound was looking better than I expected. Less inflammation, no smell, no discharge. Clean. I allowed myself a small private relief about that.

"Did you always want to be a doctor?" he asked.

I didn't look up. "Hold still."

"I am holding still," he said. "I can talk and hold still at the same time."

"Most people can't," I said.

"I'm not most people."

I pressed gently around the entry wound and he didn't flinch and I believed him.

"Yes," I said, because the question was still hanging there and it was easier to answer than to explain why I wasn't going to. "Since I was nine. My grandmother got sick and I used to sit with her in the hospital and watch the doctors and think that they were the most important people in the room."

"Were they?" he asked.

"Sometimes," I said. "Depends on the doctor."

He was quiet for a moment while I applied the antiseptic. Then, "What kind of doctor were you?"

"Emergency medicine," I said.

"You liked it?"

"I loved it," I said, and the honesty of it surprised me a little. I hadn't said that out loud in a long time. Evan didn't ask about it and so I had stopped thinking about it in those terms. Like and dislike. Love. Those felt like luxuries for a life I used to have.

I finished the dressing and pulled off my gloves and started packing up the kit and I could feel him watching me the whole time.

"Why did you stop?" he asked.

I looked up then. He was watching me with a directness that was different from how Evan looked at me. Evan looked at me like I was something that belonged to him. Nigel looked at me like he was genuinely trying to understand something.

"Evan preferred it," I said simply.

He didn't say anything to that. He didn't make a face or offer an opinion and somehow that was more respectful than if he had.

I should have left then. I had what I came for. The wound was clean, the dressing was changed, breakfast was on the tray.

"How long have you been with him?" he asked.

I sat back down in the chair. I don't know why. My body just did it before my brain had signed off on the decision.

"Two years," I said.

"And before that?"

"Residency," I said. "I had long hours, bad coffee, no sleep. Not a lot of time for much else."

"So Evan came after," he said, like he was working something out.

"Yes," I said.

"How did that happen?" he asked. "A man like that and a woman like you."

I looked at him. "What does that mean, a woman like me?"

He didn't look away. "It means you're clearly smart. Clearly capable. Clearly not someone who needs anybody to take care of her."

Something moved through my chest. Something scalding and uncomfortable.

"He was charming at first," I said, which was true and felt too simple at the same time. "He paid attention. He made me feel like the most important person in the room." I paused. "I didn't know what kind of room it was until later."

Nigel nodded slowly. He wasn't offering sympathy and I was glad because I didn't want it. He was actually listening.

Evan had never once asked me about my residency.

"What about you?" I asked, because sitting here answering questions while he offered nothing felt unbalanced and I didn't like feeling unbalanced. "How does someone end up doing what you do?"

"Born into it mostly," he said. "Father ran things before me. I grew up thinking it was normal."

"Did you?" I asked.

He almost smiled. "For a while. Then I got old enough to know better and by then it was too late to know anything else."

"That's a sad answer," I said.

"It's an honest one," he said.

I looked at him sitting there with the morning light coming through the gap in the curtains and catching the angles of his face and the dark lines of the tattoos on his arm and I thought that he looked like someone who had made peace with the things he couldn't change and I understood that feeling more than I wanted to.

"You should eat," I said, nodding at the tray.

He reached for the fork without breaking eye contact and the corner of his mouth lifted just slightly. "You going to sit there and watch me?"

"I'm monitoring my patient," I said.

"Is that what this is?" he said.

"That's what this is," I replied.

He picked up the fork and started eating and I sat in the chair and did not leave and we talked for another forty minutes about things that had nothing to do with Evan or wounds or the very complicated situation we were both sitting inside of. He asked me about medical school and I told him about the worst night of my residency and he listened without interrupting. I asked him about the city and he talked about it like someone who knew every back street and broken corner of it by heart.

At some point I noticed that I was leaning forward in the chair with my elbow on my knee and my chin in my hand and that I had not sat like that, relaxed like that, easy like that, in longer than I could remember.

He noticed too. I could tell by the way he looked at me. Not obvious about it. Just a flicker of something quiet in his eyes that he didn't try to hide but didn't push either.

I sat up straight and checked my watch.

"I'll come back at dinner," I said, standing.

"I'll be here," he said, and the simplicity of it, the slight dry warmth underneath it, made me press my lips together to keep from smiling as I walked out.

I was halfway down the hall when my phone rang.

Evan's name on the screen.

I stopped walking and made my face neutral even though there was no one to see it. Force of habit.

"Hey," I said, answering.

"Hey baby," he said, warm and easy in the way he was when things were going well for him. "How are you?"

"Fine," I said. "Quiet here."

"Good, good," he said, and I could hear background noise, voices, the particular hum of wherever he was. Then, "Listen, I'm wrapping things up faster than expected. I'm thinking I head back tomorrow morning instead of the day after."

The hallway felt very narrow suddenly.

"Oh," I said, and I said it in the light easy way I had practiced for two years. "That's great. I'll have the kitchen get something ready."

"That's my girl," he said, and hung up.

I stood in the hallway with my phone in my hand and did the math with the calm focused part of my brain that I used to use in the emergency room when things were going sideways fast.

Tomorrow morning.

Nigel could barely sit up without wincing. He couldn't walk the length of the hall without holding the wall. He was not ready to go anywhere and I had less than twenty four hours to figure out how to make that work before Evan walked through the front door.

I turned around and walked back to the east wing.

I knocked once and opened the door and he looked up from the tray and read my face immediately.

"What happened?" he asked.

"Evan is coming home tomorrow," I said.

The easy quiet of the last hour evaporated completely.

"How long do we have?" he asked.

And just like that it was we.

I noticed it. I didn't say anything about it.

"Twenty four hours," I said. "Maybe less."