Part 7: The carrot dangle
She heard the click clack of the heel reverberate against the walls, the white expanse of it making it more hollow and ominous as Giovanna came towards the table. The pill hadn't yet made her drowsy, but for reasons she couldn't tell her head felt heavy as she raised it to see Giovanna walk down the room with a fresh glass of water in her hand.
"Geet...we need your help. There is an agent I want you to take a look at?"
"Is everything alright?" She got off the chair and found herself clutching the ends of the table as a sudden panic gripped her. What agent? Why now? she found herself asking and yet her words fell on her lips, just as mute as every other feeling inside her.
"No..." Giovanna spoke, her tone mellowed to assure her of her worry, "I meant professionally...as a doctor. There was a situation here a few minutes ago and one of our agents is hurt"
"Oh!" she managed and her gaze followed Giovanna's when she turned back to the door to find a man in a grey hooded t-shirt there clutch his left arm and enter the room.
A moment passed and there was that deja vu sense picking up moss like a stone beginning to roll off a cliff.
But ever since her memory loss every person, place and thing did that to her and she felt like she was playing that flash card game from her school days; the kind that had the question in the form of a picture or a description printed at front and the answer at the back of the same flash card. Only now they were all white flash cards with no print on it for her to figure out the puzzle and there were no answers too, except her weakening instinct that told her she had to be taking a guess that instant, supposedly at whatever it is she was looking at.
She let her scruples pass and remembered having taken the pill. "I'm sorry...I can't" She said, taking all of Giovanna's attention and his too as he made his way towards them, "I took the pill you gave me and it might have me under the influence anytime now..."
She saw him glower at Giovanna and for the first time, Giovanna showed some unease visibly and her lashes covered her eyes quickly as she looked down.
However, she recovered in no time and Giovanna was looking up at her once again; this time she
addressed her with an unwarranted authority.
"Not really Geet...I know what I have administered to you and when it will kick in. Just finish up here and we will take care of the rest"
Giovanna cast one last glance back at the man and turned back to leave them in the observation room.
The man nodded at her, a curt one she could tell, hinting that he was here for no nonsense. She got the silent serious ones all the time in her ER, but the hard look he gave her slightly discomfited her more so than if she had been handling the disoriented homeless or thrashing drunks. The fact that he seemed to be of Indian origin in a government agency in Rome, didn't surprise her in the least, however, that didn't stop her from assuming he could be just as badass as those Italian sweet talkers she had met there. Didn't men and even women do just as romans did, when they were in Rome?
"Why don't you have a seat here?" She lightly patted at the table and he did just as she asked him without a word. Well, that didn't add up for her counting him to be a snowing Italian and instead, she decided he was more the sullen indian than anything else.
Even before she could get a good look at him, she once again heard footsteps and twisted her head back to find the same man who had interrupted her conversation with Giovanna come in. He precariously carried loose medical supplies on one hand and a bunch of papers on the other. It gave her the creeps then, the way he openly looked at her, but failed to acknowledge that he was infact staring at her.
"Here..." He handed the papers to the agent sitting on the desk and dropped a few bandages, Band-Aids and some strips of pills on the desk. "This is all we have. I don't have access to the medical kit. We are restricted to this floor" He said to no one particular, ignoring all of five feet six inches of her. Her nose wrinkled lightly even as the sandy-haired man looked at her head-on and turned away announcing to the agent on the table, "If you need anything, I'm on the other side..."
Whatever that meant, as if he literally expected her to pounce on the man and eat him like the big bad wolf that she wasn't by any degree of her being.
Her fingers shifted through the scraps on the table and she made a list of everything else she needed but didn't have access to: her steth, a flash light, not even a otoscope or a rubber hammer. Well, it surely felt like the time she'd flown with Doctors without borders and ended up in an isolated place in Ethiopia without her medical kit and had instead resorted to her hands and medical instincts to make an average diagnosis. Not that she foresaw him question her methods - he didn't seem like he needed any emergency care in the first place - but by some weird calling, she already knew, he would be that much more difficult if she would have to touch him.
She raised her head to him and found him engrossed in the papers he'd been handed only moments ago. Drawing in a full breath of air, her fingers held onto the top edges of the papers. "Let me first finish up with your pupils" He looked up, his gaze unmoving and absolute in how he took notice of her when she spoke to him, "That way you get to read when I check for internal bleeding elsewhere" She had a small smile then, keeping with the usual courtesy she extended to all her patients and by no means was he an exception.
He didn't respond, but looked away to a far corner and gave her that same brief nod before putting away the papers to his side. "I don't have my kit and so you might find it unconventional, but just hang in there and we will make it as less uncomfortable as it can get" Her smile grew a bit wider, unbidden and she leaned in rising a tad bit on her tip toe to peer into his eyes as she gently pushed apart his eyelids.
By the time, she was over to the other eye, she'd read his hard set of his jaw, the small pulse that was beating steady there and that he was a natural at staying expressionless, making it difficult for her to get any read off of him. It made her curious and her face surely showed some strain in wanting to remain oblivious to it all, to that sudden buzz she felt in the air while he remained perfectly stolid in her presence. This bothered her, this partial affectation, however small a stir it was.
Once when she was done with his two ears that didn't show any possible internal damage, she went around to his back and ran the flat of her hand over his shoulders. For a second, there was something faintly familiar about that arrangement, in how she was placed behind him. But soon she ignored that feeling, the immense awareness that came with it and was now beginning to drain her nowadays and she went ahead doing his physical. When her palm pressed over the slope of his left shoulder, he hissed, drawing her focus there when he moved his left shoulder up a little bit in reaction to her touch and that prompted her to come around to face him again.
"Can you take off your t-shirt please? I can help you..."
"What?" It was the first time she'd heard his voice and it came out as a deep rumble telling her he hadn't quite expected to speak then. She held his gaze for a full second feeling the choate intensity of it on her and answered in brief short sentences, "Your t-shirt"
"I need to check for bleeds" Her hand reached to the edge of his t-shirt just as he was about the grab the seam and he clasped it with his fingers molding over the back of her hand. Her eyes flickered up to him for a beat and no doubt, he still had that impenetrable veil there, his brow arched ever so slightly into a question as if having expected her to look back to him. Her lashes fluttered feeling the need to shield herself and sensed that lump of uncertainty - she couldn't yet tell over what - descend lower and permeate deep inside her.
His ribbed torso came into her view, taking her out of that troubling preoccupation as they both raised his t-shirt off his body bit by bit and off of one shoulder first, so that she could remove it with care over his head and down the other hurt shoulder without having to move it much. She blinked, breaking that second long stare when she saw his defined V inguinal ligament squarely disappear into the band of his jean that so loosely hung off his waist she didn't regret that such men showed up in her ER in grave, dire states that it never allowed her to notice until then what a dousing turn-on it was. But soon her eyes caught other irregular fading grooves on his skin that weren't the natural lines he must work so hard to show off the bands on his stomach or the mound of pecs on his chest. And she spared a brief thought that those scars made his body look all the more beautiful, more distinctly male than all those she'd laid eyes on.
"Are any of these recent ones that might not have healed internally?" She asked catching his eyes and again he preferred not giving away much detail, speaking to her in a rude manner that didn't seem so uncharacteristic for him.
"Don't know" He shook his head, his neck crooked so as not to jerk his shoulder with that move, "Don't remember" he added.
Her knuckles tapped around gently at a few of his joints, gauging his instantaneous reflex and switched to examine the parts of his body with the flat of her fingers, all the while keeping her eyes on him as she stayed prepared to record his pain response in case he'd been bruised internally.
When she was down to the side of his abs he winced a bit, making her test around that region more attentively. Her brows knotted from her keen listening as her hand continued to rest there and she certainly surprised him when she pressed her ear to his chest. For he'd tucked his chin to look down what he had suddenly felt there, when he'd hit himself on the top of her head and jerked back, shocked with her unorthodox ways.
"Almost done now..." Straightening herself she went around and felt her way to the side of his lower back, nearly the spot right behind from the front of his stomach which had incited that initial hiss.
"Yes..." She heard him speak and that jolt of unexpectedness paused her for a moment, before she went on with her examination, "it's about time we be done with it. This physical is perhaps the longest one you have ever taken, don't you think?"
His innuendo wasn't lost on her and she removed her fingers off his body and stood there for a moment taking in a deep breath waiting for that instant surge of anger to recede. A second later, she came around and refused to look at him when he'd clearly offended her.
"You can go now..." She said, looking down at her nails, when from the corner of her eyes she could still catch his indifferent smirk show up in one corner of his mouth.
"So...what's your observation, doctor?" All his taunting was communicated in the one glottal stop he gave as he pronounced doctor and she thought he was behaving as a silly teenager, which in-turn gave her the only comeback she could think of then.
"Why don't you send your mommy in? I don't discuss my reports with jumpy men who think they are too good even to sit long enough for a thorough physical"
He nodded smiling with an open contempt as he got off the desk and threw his t-shirt over one shoulder while he made his way to the exit. Whatever it was that caught her eyes, in that brief smile of his, she couldn't understand it all when a dozen feelings eddied in the small lurch of her heart then.
"I don't consult for your agency" Her words had him stop just before he was about to leave the room and he turned around, "I will have to charge you for this time, you know? I don't believe in giving away my services for free, when it isn't deserved or required..."
"Aren't you still meeting with my mommy to discuss how jumpy I was..." His forehead scrunched at that mocking question, "I'm sure she will compensate for your time..a..n..d" He was drawling, drawing emphasis with the tilt of his head, "more..." He was walking backwards now as he took the last step out of the room and left her there feeling burnt and charged with a conspicuously new dislike for him, despite everything else new that she was feeling inside.
Ok...she might have lingered a bit around, but it had not been anything inappropriate to qualify it as even remotely unprofessional. She didn't like it when he behaved like a know-it-all from that brief encounter. What did he really know about how far she would go for her patients? But then, he wasn't really her patient then, was he? She'd only been helping out with an emergency, sort of a volunteer and perhaps she might have lost herself in a few weak moments when it hadn't been life threatening by any measure. He'd seen through her, through the cool pretense of professionalism she'd wanted to convey at best.
Her eyes still stayed on the door, as she thought he'd seen much more than she'd liked him to see. More than the things she could take inventory of in those instances she'd felt the heat of his gaze on her. A lot more than what she understood in those seconds and infinitely more than what she was ready to accept then.
So...he'd seen through to the rampant pulse that she'd labored to keep it stable, to her wandering eyes that had wanted to catch up with his, that perceived silence she'd wanted him to puncture with anything he could have said and to the one painful desire that had gleaned in her eyes in the little time he'd been around - to have him watch her with the same fullness of his gaze as he did in those times she caught him see as he did.
So...he'd seen through her, to know she hadn't been herself all that while.
***
It was beyond him to know what had made him take Giovanna's bait then, but now he reckoned perhaps he had wanted her to bait him. To show himself that he could still walk out of the room without giving into that temptation to turn around and take her with him.
In that brief time of having been in the same room with her, he had learnt a lifetime of will power that had only forged his strength to go on as he had ever since he had left her behind. But despite having stood by his convictions, to keep her far removed from him as possible, he'd wished as normal as another man would have...
Sometimes he'd wanted to get past those moments without giving himself away.
Sometimes he'd only wished for her to look past his facade without having to give himself away.
At times he'd wanted to kiss her smack on her lips just one more time before he could disappear again.
And then there were others when he'd wished for the minute to never tick away to the next.
And those when he'd prayed he could cease to exist for all the other times he would have to live without her...
Edited by 6th.Element - 13 years ago
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