Standin' on the Edge (1/6)
RJ Ferrance, DC, MD (rferrance@VCU.ORG)
Tue, 6 Feb 2001 12:32:14 -0500
I'm so tired but I can't sleep
Standin' on the edge of something much too deep
It's funny how we feel so much but we cannot say a word
We are screaming inside, but we can't be heard
-I Will Remember You,
Copyright: Sarah McLachlan
She was crying as she left Delaware.
It wasn't Delaware's fault, of course. Hell, she'd been crying for hours at
that point. Hot, bitter tears that tore down over her cheeks. Her chest
ached with the racking sobs she was trying to deny.
The tears had started even before she'd watched New York City's remarkable
skyline fade into nothingness in her rear-view mirror. She'd liked New
York. Sort of. Well, all except for that swordfight thing.
Michelle Webster pulled up to the toll booth - the one with the longest
line, of course, since she didn't have exact change. For once, the toll
booth operator wasn't trying to stare down her shirt through the open top of
the Mercedes convertible. He was, instead, staring at the tears running
down her cheeks. He kept his silence, however, making her wonder if she
should be grateful for his reserve or offended by his lack of compassion.
She decided on both.
She slammed the Mercedes into first gear and pulled away from the offending
civil servant with just a hint of squealing tire.
The email directions from Dr. Brennan on the seat beside her wouldn't matter
for another couple of hours. No, make that another day. North Carolina was
still... far away, and she had to have these stupid tears under control
before she got there. D.C. was still up ahead. And Richmond, too. And
lots of small towns in between, though Michelle really didn't have much use
for small towns. And the weather forecaster had said it was storming along
coastal Virginia and North Carolina. No sense in driving a convertible if
you had to keep the top up.
She'd give herself another night to remember New York City's raging
nightlife, the parties, the celebrities, the chance to visit all those
ancient landmarks she'd previously only heard about like the Empire State
Building, and the Statue of Liberty. She'd seen her first Broadway show, on
Broadway. She'd had her first Nathan's hotdog from a vendor cart.
She'd taken her first Quickening.
One hand came away from the steering wheel so that she could roughly shove
the tears from her eyes. That hand then spent a full five seconds pounding
the living hell out of the steering wheel before latching back on. "That
bastard!" she screamed into the wind, hating him with all that she had, and
now hating him for the tears she couldn't seem to stop. Those tears were
his fault.
She should have been relieved: Taking the Quickening meant she had won the
fight. She had lived, she had survived. It wasn't as if she'd liked the
guy. She'd damned near stumbled upon him while walking back to her hotel
after Les Miz, and the fact that they had happened close enough together to
set off each others' radar was apparently all the reason he'd needed to
challenge her. Michelle had tried to beg off. She just wasn't into the
whole swordfighting thing. Part of the Game, he'd said, without even
sounding apologetic. Fight, or fall to your knees and offer up your head.
When he said it like that....
She'd been no match for him. Amanda had taught her well, but Michelle had
only a couple of years of experience. The guy had moved like he wasn't
bound by that law of gravity thing. She'd not even nicked him and there
she'd been, bleeding like stink from wounds all up and down her arms. That
two hundred dollar dress had been shredded and bloodstained and -
He'd tripped, over something stupid in the alley. Fallen flat on his face
like some kind of clumsy geek, and before he'd even put out his hands to
push himself up again she'd run him through from behind.
Okay, so it hadn't been very sporting. But how sporting had he been,
challenging her when he had to have known he had much more experience than
she did?
It had taken five whacks with her blade to chop off his head. It might have
gone quicker if she hadn't had to pause after the third one to puke.
Bastard. Why had he done that to her? Made her ruin her dress, made her
cut off his head, made her puke....
And worse than all those crimes, he had shown her that she couldn't just be
some kind of sideline observer in The Game.
Like it or not (definitely not), she was a player.
And then there was that damned Quickening.
She'd seen them before, but his had been her first. The mist rising from
the bastard's body, then drifting in waves, rolling toward her, then the
lightning coming at her from all sides. The dumpster behind her had
exploded, showering her with all sorts of stuff she didn't want to identify.
Her chest had been blown wide open, then everything stuffed back inside
haphazardly - or so it had seemed.
The ground had left her feet and then oh-so-many moments later it had
slammed back into her and she'd fallen to her knees, her bloody triumphant
sword still, somehow, clutched tightly in her right hand.
Afterwards, she'd taken a bath that had lasted for three hours and two
bottles of champagne, and then she'd slept for a day and a half. Amanda's
phone call had come at the perfect time.
"I have a little errand for you, hon. Something you'd be perfect at."
If Michelle had been smarter, those words would have served as a warning.
As it was, Michelle had been looking for an excuse to get the hell out of
town anyway. Amanda's "errand" was as good an excuse as any.
Less than an hour after hanging up the phone she'd been turning onto I-95
South, watching that fading skyline in her rear-view mirror.
^--*-*-*--^
It was a dark and stormy night.
Heavy rain plummeted from the pitch black sky in sheets, dramatically
backlit by strobelike flashes of lightning, all set to the score of rolling
thunder. Outside the floor to ceiling windows, the Atlantic Ocean reeled,
with angry breakers chopping in rapid succession against the sandy shore,
bullying the forty foot boat lashed to the pier. A relentless wind blew in
off the water, driving the rain hard against the glass in front of him.
Safe and dry on the leeward side of those windows, chronic pediatrician
Matthew T. Brennan, now pretending to be eccentric and reclusive writer
Michael O'Leary, stared out over the darkness of the rolling Atlantic. The
only light in the house came in the form of the eerie glow from his laptop
computer, patiently waiting on the table behind him. Sarah McLachlan
serenaded him gently from speakers placed strategically throughout the room,
while his inner critic found bitter irony in the weather's cliché.
It was almost as if the weather was mocking him and the mostly finished, yet
minimally edited, manuscript currently displayed on the laptop computer.
The email he'd received from his editor, agent and friend had been short and
direct:
De-cliche Chapter Three.
Love ya,
Christine.
He sipped at his rapidly cooling coffee and contemplated what game lay
behind the other e-mail he'd received. AmandaD820@excite.com had written to
confirm that her young friend would, in fact, be passing through Matt's
area, and if he was still willing, Michelle really could use a place to rest
her head where she wouldn't have to worry about losing it. Amanda had known
that he would be happy to oblige. Coming to the aid of damsels in distress,
after all, was his forte.
"Yeah," he thought bitterly, "white knight on a fiery steed."
After all, it fit the cliché theme.
^--*-*-*--^
After her weeks in the Big Apple, Duck was apparently gonna take a little
getting used to.
Michelle's midnight blue Mercedes cruised along the two-lane highway at
nearly exactly the speed limit. This had the feel of a place where the
local police would take their jobs way too seriously, especially when
dealing with a European convertible with out-of-state license plates.
The salt air blowing in off the ocean mixed with the more earthy scents of
land freshly scrubbed by a cleansing rain. Her eyes continually scanned the
roadside, taking in everything she could about the unfamiliar territory
while she searched for the landmarks listed in the e-mail on the seat beside
her.
The directions were surprisingly good for having been written by a man.
Another turn, and she suddenly found herself on the losing end of what
seemed to be a very long argument with a gravel road. And then, almost
without warning, the road ended, just like the e-mail said it would.
The Mercedes reluctantly allowed her to shift into neutral and apply the
parking brake, almost as if the car wasn't sold on the isolated place as a
destination. The motor quieted without argument, however, and she swung the
door open to unfold her long legs in a well-deserved stretch.
Pebbles crunched quietly beneath her feet as she shifted to push the door
closed. She refused to think about what those pebbles would be doing to the
leather of her new pumps - Bruno Magli's at that. There was no welcome mat
to give her the usual shallow offering of hospitality. There was a number
but no name on the doorframe, and no doorbell to politely announce her
arrival. And even though she was concentrating on it, the annoying buzz of
a fellow Immortal was barely registering in her head.
She knocked, three times, her frown deepening a touch with each try. Amanda
had told him she was coming, so where the hell was he?
She tried the knob, and it turned easily. "Okay, so we're not in New York
City anymore," she muttered. There was an implied element of trust here
which she didn't quite know how to interpret. Or maybe it wasn't trust.
Maybe it was carelessness, or - no wait - maybe arrogance. She let herself
in and silently closed the door behind her, all the while automatically
assessing her new environment just the way Amanda had taught her.
The furnishings were simple, though elegant, speaking to a level of
affluence that was neither limitless, nor so new as to not be trusted. The
person that had decorated the home had access to money - but not so much
that they threw it around. Furniture like the solid cherry end tables and
the deep comfortable couch promised a take worthy of a professional thief's
time.
On Amanda's behalf, Michelle approved of Matthew Brennan's new home.
The place had distinctively feminine touches to it as well. The artwork and
the coloring of the house was mostly of subtle pastels, and the underlying
fragrance - a suggestion of a woman's perfume - was one of the finer
domestic brands, though the trade name was escaping Michelle.
And then there was the view.
Fifty or so meters beyond the glass that made up the far wall, the sea
shimmered and danced off the playful, roiling Atlantic Ocean. If she
strained really hard, she could catch a glimpse of something that was
probably the neighbor's house a couple hundred meters up the beach in one
direction. In the other direction... well, there seemed to be no other
direction.
So where was her host?
She stepped closer to the large scented candle, burning quietly within its
holder, framed by one of the large glass panels. A short pier broke the
lazy shoreline, serving as a home for the boat tied there.
The boat?
Her pumps were not optimal for walking on the beach, so she slid out of
them, leaving them on the back deck beside the Jacuzzi as she headed for the
pier. The growing hum in her head told her she'd found Dr. Brennan.
It took her a few more moments to actually see him, stopped over something
big and mechanical at the back of the boat. He had to feel her; why didn't
he say something to acknowledge her? Arrogance, again? Or just plain rude?
"You made good time." His greeting words to her were colored with little
more than a hint of an Irish brogue. The greeting was not quite what she
had expected after hearing from Amanda what a gifted charmer he could be.
And her skirt was short enough to invite at least a remark. Maybe if he had
bothered to look up first....
Michelle leaned over the pier's edge a bit to be able to see down into where
Matt was standing. He had several of the deck plates up and was down with
the engines, using something that was probably a wrench.
"I left New York a little ahead of plan," she said distantly. She puzzled
over the fact that although he was apparently doing some type of mechanical
work on one of the boat's two engines, neither his polo shirt nor his khaki
shorts were stained. His hands were dirty, but not grease encrusted. But
then, the engine seemed spotless. New, she wondered? Or polished
compulsively? This, she decided, was a guy that took a little too much
pride in his cleanliness.
"I never seem to stay in New York as long as I expect to, either," he told
her, adding a grunt to the final hard pull of the wrench and then wiping it
with a rag before settling it back into its tool box. He finally turned to
her and, she noted, took a moment to allow his eyes to linger on her calves.
Then a skip straight to her eyes. "Matt Brennan," he said, offering his
hand. "Though, I suspect that was already obvious."
She laughed disarmingly, accepting his warm handshake. "Michelle Webster,"
she offered in return. "Ummm, permission to come aboard?"
He hadn't released her hand, so he used it to help her across. "Granted,"
he said. Once she'd gotten her legs in tune with the gentle pitch of the
boat, he let her go and began replacing deck plates. "I was hoping you'd be
here early," he told her, easily working the plates back into position. "I
was planning on heading out for dinner soon."
"Kind of early for dinner, isn't it?" she asked him.
"Won't be," he told her, "by the time we make Hatteras."
^--*-*-*--^
****************************************************
RJ Ferrance, DC, MD
Combined Internal Med/Pediatrics Resident
Medical College of Virginia Hospitals
Richmond, VA 23298
rferrance@vcu.org
http://views.vcu.edu/~medtoast/anvil.html