He Left Me Broken, Now He Wants Me Back novel · Chapter 3 of 24

Chapter 3: Her Own Door

Jo, Bea and Arthur plan Saturday's gala. At midnight Graham finds the studio, checks her cast and says her lie hurt him, and for the first time he turns his phone face down when Daphne calls.

"Table One," Arthur said, and slid a seating chart across my coffee table.

Bea leaned over my shoulder to read it, with a slice of pizza in her hand.

"Who's Table One?"

"The people who matter to the evening," Arthur said. "The chief of surgery, two donors and a seat for Jo."

"Why would I sit at Table One?" I asked.

"Because I asked for it. Because you are my guest, and I am very old, and nobody argues with me at galas."

I put the chart back in his folder.

"I'm going to look at his face, Arthur. That's all."

"Then look at it from the best seat in the room."

Bea pointed her crust at him. "I like this man."

"I'm told it's common," Arthur said.

We ate pizza off paper towels on my floor, because my table was covered in boxes and my leg was propped on the couch.

Arthur told us about a will he'd once drafted for a woman who left her cat the house and her sister the cat.

Bea laughed until she had to put her plate down.

I laughed too, and it was the first time in a week that it didn't hurt anywhere.

At ten, Arthur's driver came for him.

Bea stayed until eleven, hung two of my sweaters in the narrow closet, and kissed the top of my head at the door.

"Call me if he shows up," she said.

"He doesn't know where I live."

"Jo. He's a surgeon. He finds things."

Then I was alone in a room that smelled of dust and cheese, with the radiator ticking.

At midnight someone knocked on the street door at the bottom of the stairs.

I knew the knock. It was two raps and a pause.

I got up on my crutches, and I almost didn't open it.

Graham stood on the landing in a dark coat with snow on his shoulders.

"Your business card," he said. "The address is on it. I looked at it for two years and never read it."

"It's midnight."

"I know. I couldn't sleep."

He looked tired, truly tired, with grey under his eyes that I hadn't seen since his residency.

I stepped back.

He came in and stood in the middle of my floor, looking at the boxes and the narrow bed and the single lamp.

"You kept this place," he said.

"I did."

"The whole time?"

"The whole time."

I watched him decide not to ask why. He put his bag on a chair.

"Sit," he said. "Let me see the leg."

"You're not my doctor."

"I'm the one who's allowed to look at you after you walked up two flights on a fresh fracture."

He knelt in front of the couch before I'd said yes.

His hands were warm from the street. He pressed the skin above my cast and checked each toe, then the swelling at the top of my shin, the way he checked everything, with his head slightly turned.

"Any numbness?"

"No."

"Color's fine. You're swollen. Keep it up tonight."

His thumb stopped on the inside of my knee, just above the edge of the cast, and stayed there.

Neither of us moved.

My leg was a patient's leg to him a second ago. Now it wasn't.

I felt it travel up me from that one spot, and I hated how quickly.

"Graham."

"I know." He didn't take his hand away. "I wanted to say something and I don't have it right."

"Then say it wrong."

He sat back on his heels.

"You lied to me. You were in a hospital for a week and you gave me a client's name. I found out from a man I have to buy lunch for."

"You left me at Aldine with the bread."

"I told you why."

"You told me a name," I said. "Her name. In a voice I'd have to be an idiot not to hear."

His jaw worked.

"She was in pain."

"She is always in pain at exactly the right time."

The silence went on long enough for the radiator to tick four times.

"That's not fair," he said. "You don't know what I owe her."

"No. I don't. Because in two years you never once said."

His phone rang.

It was on the arm of the couch beside him, and the screen lit with a photograph of Daphne at some gala, laughing.

I watched him look at it. I watched his thumb move to answer, the way it had moved a hundred times before.

The phone kept ringing.

He picked it up, and he looked at me.

Then he turned it face down on the cushion, and let it ring out.

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