The Awakening of Dr. Brown Page 8

  “Oh, wow,” breathed Ruthie.

  Her brother glanced at her and said soberly, “Well, I guess it’s better than nothing. Sure do wish we could get her to come down here, though. She doesn’t have any idea what kind of conditions those people are living in. I don’t think we’d have any trouble getting her to do what we want, if she could just…see it. She needs to see it with her own eyes.”

  “Yeah,” said Ethan, “so do I.” His old friend gave him a startled look. “Well, what did you think?” Ethan shot back angrily. “You think I have any clue how those people live? She asked me, you know-what they wanted from her. I didn’t even know what to tell her. Hey-I didn’t exactly go into that meeting prepared to act as spokesman for a whole neighborhood, you know. I was completely unprepared and unqualified-” A small shushing noise from Mrs. Schmidt warned him just a heartbeat before he heard it-the careful and polite clearing of a throat.

  Then a voice-rich and liquid, with traces of the South-a vaguely familiar voice. “Excuse me-are you the doctor?”

  A few feet away a woman was standing-a young woman, buxom rather than plump, dressed in a faded T-shirt and too-tight shorts and balancing a chubby baby on one hip. Her dull black hair wasn’t any particular style, just pulled back in clumps and fastened with various rubber bands and clips, in the manner of frazzled mothers with no time to spare for primping. Her skin was the color of coffee with cream, and her dark eyes-her best feature-were almond-shaped and set at an exotic tilt.

  When he saw those eyes Ethan felt a jolt like a punch to the gut, even before he recognized the child standing beside her in baggy pants, an oversized shirt and a baseball cap turned backward. A small child with arms folded defiantly across his chest, an angry tilt to his chin and a wounded look in his proud amber eyes.

  Chapter 5

  Michael Parker. Ethan had forgotten all about the otitus and the follow-up visit he’d asked for. Now, he didn’t know what to say in the face of those accusing eyes. Guilt was heavy in his chest, helplessness a burning in his belly.

  “My sister said he was supposed to come back here in three days to get his ears checked. It’s been three days, so I brought him.” When Ethan didn’t respond the woman added with a touch of impatience, “My name’s Tamara? And this here is Michael. My sister is-was Louise Parker, she the one got-”

  “Yes- Hello, Michael, how’re you doing today? Those ears feeling any better?” His voice was too loud, too jovial. The amber eyes regarded him in sullen silence.

  “I been seein’ he takes his medicine,” Tamara said. Her voice had that strange liquid quality that sounds like tears, so he was surprised, when he was finally able to take his eyes from the boy at her side and give his attention to her once more, to find her gaze steady and her face impassive. “My sister said it was important, so that’s what I done.”

  He nodded at Ruthie, who normally would have seen the patient to an exam room and taken care of the preliminaries, to let her know he had this one under control.

  “It’s good you did that,” he said as he touched Tamara’s shoulder and gestured with the other hand that she and Michael were to come with him. The tired way she gave the baby a hitch as she fell into step beside him made him wonder if she’d walked all the way from The Gardens carrying the child on her hip like that. “Listen, if you’d like, I can get the nurse or Mrs. Schmidt to take the baby-”

  “Oh, no, that’s okay. She ain’t heavy.” But she shifted the burden again, this time to her other hip.

  Ethan pulled back the exam room curtain and ushered the three inside. “Okay, Michael, you want to hop up here and let me take a look at those ears?” But when he held out his hands to offer the boy a lift up onto the table, he jerked angrily away.

  “Michael, mind your manners,” his aunt hissed, reminding Ethan poignantly of her sister.

  “It’s okay,” he hastily assured her, and selecting a scope, squatted on his heels in front of the child. “I can look at him from here just as well. How ’bout it, buddy, you going to let me see what those bad bugs are doing in there?”

  For his answer, Michael struck out with one wiry arm and sent the scope flying. It landed with a clatter and slithered across the tile floor.

  His Aunt Tamara screeched, “Michael! What you doin’?”

  The amber eyes regarded Ethan unflinchingly, searing their grief and anger into his soul.

  “Hey,” he said quietly, “I thought we were getting along better than that. I’m the one that’s trying to make your ears feel better, remember? You want to tell me why you’re mad at me?” But he knew. He could still feel those small fists pounding him, right over his heart.

  “My momma’s dead.” Michael said the last word the Southern way, drawing it out, almost making it two syllables.

  Ethan took a deep breath. “I know. I’m sorry.”

  Again the hard little fists thumped his chest, just once, the way they’d done that night, the night Louise Parker died. “You didn’t fix her. You was s’posed to fix my momma up. An’ you didn’t, an’ now she dead.”

  A hard knot of pain formed in Ethan’s chest, just where the blow had landed. “I couldn’t fix your momma, son, I’m sorry. I wanted to. I tried very hard to fix her, but…I couldn’t.”

  He put his hands on the boy’s thin shoulders, then slid them down to his arms. Michael squirmed, but this time didn’t pull away. “Did you ever want to do something so bad, but you weren’t big enough, or strong enough, and no matter how hard you tried, you just couldn’t do it?”

  Michael’s gaze wavered. Then, unwillingly, he nodded. When he finally spoke, it was so softly Ethan had to lean close in order to hear. “Can’t…reach the basket. Can’t throw the ball high enough. Can’t throw hoops like Michael Jordan.” His lower lip quivered. The amber eyes shimmered for an instant like guttering candle flames, then spilled over.

  Wordlessly, Ethan gathered the little boy into his arms. As he held the trembling body close he looked up and saw Tamara standing there, the round-eyed baby astride a canted hip and a tear rolling silently down her cheek. He watched her, still not speaking, his hands gently circling the knobs of the boy’s shoulders, until she brushed the moisture roughly away with her fingers. This time when she spoke, oddly enough, now that there were tears, her voice didn’t sound liquid anymore. Instead it was a whisper, dry as sand.

  “I wanted to say thank you for what you done-what you tried to do for my sister. I know there wasn’t nothin’ you could do. They told us at the hospital. And…I wanted to thank you, too, for what you’re doing for us-all of us-talkin’ to that woman, getting her to fix up our building. Mr. Wilkins, he lives on the floor below me, he was there and he told me how you was the one gonna be talkin’ to her, seein’ we get done what needs to be done. I can’t thank you enough, Dr. Brown. I just wish…” Her voice trailed off and she looked away, brushing again at her cheek.

  Ethan didn’t know what to say to her; once again he felt frustrated, fraudulant, unworthy…and trapped. He cleared his throat as he rose to his feet, with Michael still clinging fast to his neck. Inside the fragile chest pressed against his he could feel the heart beating, quick tap-tap-taps that made him think of a bird, some small frightened animal.

  Muttering something vague to fill the silence, he set the boy on the exam table and peeled the scrawny arms from around his neck. Clearly humiliated by his lapse into babyhood, Michael sat staring dumbly into a distant corner of the exam room while Ethan busied himself finding another scope, and a wad of tissues with which to mop up tears and a runny nose. For several interminable minutes, the only sound was the rustle of fabric, a muffled sniff.

  Then Tamara spoke in her normal liquid voice, but pitched a little too loudly and too high. “Dr. Brown, could I ask you a question?”

  Still bent over Michael and intent on his examination, Ethan shot her a glance. “Sure.”

  “I heard this rumor? Somebody said you was the president’s kid. That true?”

  He straightened
up slowly and looked at her, seeing the defensive cant of her head, the way her body was turned half away from him, as if to shield herself. Oh, Lord, he thought, what do I say? He knew if he denied it, it would cause this already grief-stricken woman considerable embarrassment. But there was nothing he dreaded so much as watching people’s faces change when he said yes.

  It was instinct-and an overwhelming wave of compassion-that made him speak to her first only with his eyes…silently imparting secrets, imploring trust. He breathed a small sigh and muttered, “Rumors…” as he bent once more toward his patient. Then quickly, before Tamara’s face had time to register even a flicker of disappointment, he glanced back at her…and winked.

  He heard the sharp sound of her indrawn breath and the beginnings of an excited, “Hot damn, so it’s-” before he silenced her with a finger touched to his lips and a whispered, “Shh…” His reward was the warmth of her full-blown smile.

  “Michael’s doing fine,” he said gruffly, giving the baseball cap a tug. “His ears look a lot better. Make sure he keeps taking the medicine, though. He needs to take it until it’s all gone. And keep his ears dry-don’t want any water in there.”

  Tamara was nodding, bobbing from one foot to the other in barely contained excitement. “I will-I been tryin’ to do right by him. He’s my sister’s kid, I don’t want him goin’ to no foster home. But it’s hard sometimes, you know? I got the baby, I can’t take him places like his momma did. She used to take him like, to the park and stuff on weekends-you know, to watch the ball games?” Her exuberance died like a ball running out of bounce, and she finished wanly, “I think he been missin’ his momma some.”

  Some… Ethan thought, then, of the black-haired woman with magical eyes, flirting with him around a thin cigar, fencing verbally across plates of spaghetti…toying with him, he now realized. He thought of how he’d wanted to kiss her, lust ripening like summer fruit in the heat of an idling engine…and a little worm of shame coiled and curled inside his belly. This boy’s mother, the anchor of his existence, was dead. This child would never know the warmth of her love, feel her arms around him, ever again. How could Ethan have let himself forget that, even for a moment? She was a witch, that woman, a spellbinder by any name, be it Phoenix or Joanna Dunn.

  He made a vow, then, that hereafter whenever he was with her he would be on his guard and no matter how she turned on the charisma, he’d think first and always of this child, Michael Parker, and his mother, Louise.

  Something else came to him then, too: he realized that above all else, he wanted Joanna Dunn-Phoenix-to think of her, too.

  If asked, Ethan would have denied having an impulsive bone in his body. How was it, then, that he heard himself offering to take a motherless boy to the park?

  Tamara gave a little gasp. “You mean it? You’d do that?”

  “Sure.” Shaken himself, Ethan shrugged and tugged on Michael’s cap. “How ’bout it, guy? You want to go to the park with me?” Michael swiped a hand across his nose and grudgingly nodded. “All right, then.” He scooped the boy up before he could object and set his feet on the tile floor, then turned back to his aunt. “Is Saturday okay?”

  Tamara nodded slowly, still looking stunned. Then, recovering her senses, asked quickly in a high, disbelieving voice, “You sure you wanna do this?”

  Ethan didn’t dare answer that. To be honest, his only experience with children was a pediatrics rotation during his internship, and he was scared to death by the idea. Instead he said staunchly, “How about if I pick him up, say, about ten o’clock Saturday morning?”

  “You wanna come down to my place? The Gardens?” In addition to disbelief, Tamara’s face now registered panic.

  “Sure,” said Ethan with what he hoped was a reassuring smile.

  “Uh-huh, okay, I guess that be all right…” She was still muttering dazedly as Ethan escorted them out of the exam room. The last thing he heard as they parted company was a whispered, “Oh, man, I don’t believe this. The president’s kid comin’ to my house.”

  “Hey, Michael, I’ll see you on Saturday, okay?”

  Michael didn’t reply or look back.

  When Ethan rejoined Father Frank and Mrs. Schmidt at the reception desk-Ruthie was in another exam room seeing to a patient-Mrs. Schmidt’s eyebrows were already raised. “Since when do you work Saturdays?”

  “I don’t,” said Ethan, scowling at the chart in his hands. “I’m, ah…hmm. I’m picking Michael up. Thought I’d take him to the park…you know. Play catch, or something.”

  “Ah-hah.” Mrs. Schmidt gave him a droll look and turned back to her books.

  Grinning, Father Frank gripped Ethan’s arm briefly by way of a farewell. “Hey, that’s great.”

  “What?” Ethan demanded; he knew that look well.

  The priest paused and looked back at him, no longer smiling. “You said you had no clue how those people live? Looks to me like you’re on your way to finding out now.”

  “Entrances are hard, hard, hard…

  Full of butterflies and-”

  With a hiss of frustration, Phoenix broke off in midphrase and twirled half around on her stool.

  “You ain’t concentratin’, girl,” Doveman scolded, vamping softly, fingers tickling idly across the keys. “Somethin’ on your mind?”

  She shook her head-in perplexity, not denial-and after a moment rose and walked to the windows. Part way there she lifted her hands to her hair, still in its businesswoman’s knot after her lunch with Dr. Ethan Brown, and with one deft twist and a shake of her head, set it free to tumble warm and heavy down her back.

  “Your meeting today with those people-how’d that go?” Doveman’s casual tone fooled nobody.

  Phoenix snorted. “Well, I know one thing. They don’t want my money. They want my blood.”

  Beyond the window the city was a jeweled tapestry laid out beneath a milky canopy-a night sky turned upside-down. I wonder where he goes at night, she thought with sudden irrelevance. Does he have a warm lady waiting for him? Someone to hold him when the sirens wail…to laugh with him in a tumbled bed…

  “Can’t really blame ’em,” said Doveman. The music stopped and he turned on the bench to look at her. “So, where do you go from here?”

  “I don’t much like being outnumbered a dozen to one,” Phoenix said dryly. She whirled away from the windows and paced back toward the piano, stopped halfway there and flopped down on the couch instead. “So, I picked a spokesman. From now on we do this one on one.”

  Doveman cackled. “Lemme guess…a guy, right? Young…good-lookin’…”

  She smiled, but for some reason didn’t feel at all amused. “Well,” she murmured, “he is that.”

  “But?” And there was something…an alertness in the piano man’s voice. “Somethin’ you ain’t tellin’ me.”

  “He’s a doctor-his name’s Ethan Brown.” She paused, watching his face. It took him less time than it had her-all of four beats.

  “What-you don’t mean-you’re not tellin’ me, the Ethan Brown? President Rhett Brown Junior?”

  Phoenix nodded, smiling, feeling better about it herself, now, enjoying his reaction. “Nothing junior about him, though. Seems like the real deal-his own man, I mean. Different from his father as night from day.”

  Shaking his head, Doveman muttered, “You don’t say…Rhett Brown’s boy…” And then, pointing a bent brown finger at her, “You met the president and the First Lady, didn’t you? At that hunger gig down in Texas. You meet the boy then, too?”

  “Uh-uh-he says he was in school out in California. Met his sister, though.”

  Doveman snorted. “Must be pretty young, if he was still in school five years ago.”

  “He said med school-I think that’s later.” Phoenix frowned. She didn’t like to think about how young he was.

  “Well-he’s a doctor now, you say. Can’t be too young if he’s a doctor,” said Doveman, as if he’d heard her thought. “So-” he rubbed a hand over his fr
osting of beard stubble, making a sandpapery sound “-what you plannin’ on doin’ with this young good-lookin’ doctor? Plannin’ on havin’ things your own way with him, I expect?” Phoenix smiled and didn’t answer. The piano man leaned his hands on his knees and leveled a look at her. “Girl, I wouldn’t get too cocky, if I was you. If that boy’s anything like his daddy, he might not be so easy to get around.”

  “Well,” said Phoenix carelessly, “I invited him here tomorrow, so you’ll get a chance to see for yourself. Then you can tell me what you think.” She sat up abruptly. “What are you doing?”

  Still bent almost double, Doveman paused in the painful process of getting up from the piano bench to give her a look. “I’m callin’ it a night, that’s what I’m doing. You ain’t in the mood, that’s for sure. Girl, all you got on your mind right now is that young Dr. Brown, and how you’re gonna get him into your bed and wrapped around your little finger-among other things. I’ll be talkin’ to you again when you get y’head on straight.”

  Phoenix said nothing, but from under her lashes watched him make his slow, stiff way to the iron and chain-link cage that connected the loft to the studio below.

  Into my bed? Sure, why not?

  She’d thought about it-so what? The passion was there-she’d felt it, like some powerful force rumbling deep below the surface. All she had to do was tap it. She felt a shiver of excitement, now, remembering the rasp of his skin against her fingers…the heat and vitality radiating from his body in waves as she’d stood next to him there in the garage. The strange force she’d felt then, like a powerful magnet, or a vortex, pulling her closer, pulling her…

  “Doveman-” He stopped just inside the cage and turned to look at her, one hand on the lever, waiting. She drew a breath and said it. “I told him my name.”