Standin' On the Edge (4/6)
RJ Ferrance, DC, MD (rferrance@VCU.ORG)
Tue, 6 Feb 2001 12:35:58 -0500
Michelle met the next day with considerably more energy. She had a job to
do after all, and she needed to get it done.
By the time the sun had cleared the horizon, she was on the beach, in
running shorts, a T-shirt, and a thin windbreaker which gave more cover to
her sword than it did protection from the wind. It was a gentle, steady
breeze that toyed with the long strands of hair held back from her face by
an old familiar scrunchie. She'd forced herself out of bed extra early to
be sure she caught Matt for his morning run.
Problem was, she'd overestimated his 'early-to-risedness'. By nearly a half
hour. While she waited for Matt, she killed time impatiently combing the
surf for interesting shells. After yesterday's little square off over
breakfast, they'd managed to pretty much avoid each other until dinner time.
She'd cooked, just to show she could. Pizza, and not frozen, either. She'd
picked up a mix at the local grocery store.
The entire concept seemed somehow funny to Matt, but he'd managed to
restrain himself enough to keep from commenting upon it.
At least in her presence.
And then after dinner he'd gone back to his laptop computer - mostly playing
Quake, from the sounds of it - and she'd curled up on the couch with a book
while his CD player cycled through a vast selection of mostly female rock
and folk music.
Yeah, she could see him as one of the handful of guys at an Indigo Girls
concert. No, wait. He would be a Sensitive New-Aged Guy. Forget the
Indigo Girls. He'd be at Lillith Fair. She smirked at the mental image of
Matt waving a lighter back and forth, caught in a trance of rapt attention,
singing along with the rest of the audience to Ani DiFranco.
Just after midnight he'd tired of dusting homicidal Aliens and had gone to
bed. She'd waited a good half hour to be sure he was out for the night, and
then entered into a two-and-a-half-hour dance with his computer's damned
Password Protection Program, typing in any word she could think of that
might have some meaning to him.
She'd come out with her fingers badly bruised. The password protection
program was one sorry dance partner.
Thoughts of that disappointing date with the computer were interrupted,
however, when the sliding door opened and her host stepped out into early
morning mist. He looked more than just a little surprised to find her
there. "Lock yourself out of the house?" he teased her. "It seems much
more likely that you're still awake than already awake."
"I know you're so not dipping back into those youth stereotypes again," she
shot back.
"I am so not," he agreed.
She could see him mentally trying to figure out where the 'so' went on the
sentence diagram.
"Ten K sound fair enough to you?" he asked, beginning his stretches. "The
dog hardly feels it worth her time to come out for less."
Ten K? "Ummmm, sure," she said. Ten K. Ick. Amanda had pushed her hard,
making her run sprints and even long laps, while Amanda had watched from the
comfort of stadium bleachers. Ten K would be no problem. She'd just hate
it, that was all.
She moved to fall into step with him, but he wasn't running yet. He was
stretching.
Of course he would stretch. The man was anal personified.
For five minutes she copied what he did, willing to assume that since the
guy had been a doctor, he might know a little about stretching. She'd just
never seen the need before. Whatever she hurt simply healed, and usually in
less time than it would have taken to bother stretching in the first place.
Finally, they set off up the beach at an easy pace, close to the water where
the sand was more firmly packed, which Michelle appreciated. What she
didn't much appreciate was the already steamy temperature of the early
morning air. It was heavy with the sea's salty dampness and had clung to
her skin almost from the moment she'd stepped out of the house.
With the two of them running side by side, she had to work to keep images of
Rocky-style training montages out of her head. She and Matt running on the
beach together.... It wasn't exactly the type of exercise Amanda had hinted
she'd end up engaged in.
"Amanda said that last time she visited you, you were a pediatrician at some
hospital in Richmond," she said, testing her ability to talk and run at the
same time. It didn't kill her. "The Medical College of Virginia, I take
it?" she asked, remembering the group portrait from the wall.
"I left MCV in January," Brennan told her. "It's been almost a year now
since Amanda visited."
"And you're not playing doctor at all anymore?"
"I still have my licenses," he said evasively.
"But you're not practicing."
"I'm not practicing," he agreed.
She let a few moments go by in silence. "Is it fun?" she asked. "Being a
doctor?"
"It can be. You considering it?"
She shrugged. "I'm considering lots of things."
"You're... what, twenty-two?" he asked.
Michelle lifted an eyebrow. Dangerously personal territory, asking a woman
her age. Especially an Immortal woman. But she'd allow it.
"Twenty-three."
He nodded, and Michelle suppressed a grimace. What could he think he
understood about someone her age?
"So, all your former high school friends are out there in the real world
now," he said. "Finishing up college, going to grad school, becoming
productive citizens...."
"I'm a productive citizen," she argued defensively. His tone had been
neutral, but she didn't like the implication he was making.
"You are essentially homeless and you get a car and a monthly allowance from
Amanda in exchange for which you occasionally help her steal something
valuable." He turned his head toward her, but his accusing look was wasted
effort. She was pretending to study something out to sea. If he had been
trying to provoke a response, she wasn't about to give him the satisfaction.
"Of course," he admitted, abandoning the look, "my first few years after my
first 'death' weren't all that productive, either." It was a big admission
for him, but she still wasn't forgiving. "But then, you should be worrying
about things like grad school, or getting a good job. You shouldn't have to
be running around taking people's heads."
"Why'd you leave medicine?" she asked him stubbornly, refusing to let this
conversation become about her. He was trying to stir up a topic she
preferred to have left alone.
He must've seen the 'Stop' sign, because he took her detour, and tried a
shrug. It didn't work well while running. "After a couple of hundred years
as a doctor, I got a little tired," he said. "I figured it was time to take
the right side of my brain out for a good long walk before it shriveled up
and died on me."
"And so you came to this perfect little house on the beach." She scooted a
bit sideways to sidestep a particularly aggressive patch of surf.
"Actually, this perfect little house on the beach came to me," he said.
"With a view of the ocean to inspire the muses, a supply of Theresa's
favorite beer to get them drunk and take advantage of them, and a computer,
where her literary works were stored so that I could finish editing them."
"She wrote, too?"
"Yes, she did," he told her. "But you wouldn't like her writing. Too full
of naked pictures. X-rays, mostly."
"Ahhh, so she wrote real stuff."
"Hey, I write real stuff," he objected. "You should read some of my earlier
work. Romeo and Juliet, Paradise Lost...." She turned to him, her face
showing her open disbelief. "The Book of Matthew," he continued.
She blinked. "You're kidding, right?"
His face split into the first genuine smile she'd seen on him. "You need to
go look up the word 'gullible' in the dictionary, Michelle," he told her,
reminding himself to thank Adam Pierson - maybe - for giving him that line.
"It's not in there."
She shook her head and pretended she wasn't embarrassed. Okay, the sand was
no longer all that fun to run in. It felt like her legs weighed a few
hundred pounds apiece. And she was getting damned tired of dancing around
what she was after. "I read that little thing you had in Rolling Stone,"
she said, with what sounded to her like genuine innocence.
"Oh," he said. "That little thing."
A chuckle burst out between gasps. That dog would have to come in and take
over for her pretty soon. "That little thing," she said. "The 'fiction'
piece about a beautiful but cunning jewel thief?"
"Total fiction," he said dismissively. "Written by a Michael O'Leary, I
believe?"
"Uh-huh. Amanda says that's a pen-name you've used before. And she didn't
see it as 'total fiction'." His somewhat embarrassed smile became somewhat
thoughtful. Boy, he sure did have it bad for Amanda.
"How did she see it?" he asked her.
That almost called for an honest answer. "Partly flattering, I think," she
said.
And then the dog was there, running between them, looking like she was out
for a casual stroll. And kicking far more sand up onto Michelle's legs than
Matt was.
"Was she... upset?" he asked.
Uh-huh. Now there was insecurity if she'd ever seen it. Damn, he really
had it bad. So, the question became whether to actually tell him the
truth... or play with him a little.
But if she did that, he'd get that hurt puppy look. And the dog was looking
up at her, too, expectantly awaiting the answer. Or maybe she was just
saying hello in that goofy open-mouthed-tongue-hanging-out dog sort of way.
Either way, Michelle couldn't bring herself to lie to the dog. "Upset? No.
Flattered for sure. Of course, she took some teasing because of it."
"MacLeod." He said it through gritted teeth.
"So you two boy scouts know each other?" She tried to sound surprised
though, of course, she'd known that. Amanda had had great fun comparing and
contrasting the two during her 'briefing' to Michelle.
"Let's not get into that," Matt said. His tone didn't leave her feeling
like she should push it. Probably had something to do with the fact that
when Amanda had last left Matt, she'd ended up in Seacouver.
The next few hundred yards of low-tide beach passed without conversation,
and Michelle began to again believe she could make it through the run. "The
bio at the end of the story in Rolling Stone mentioned a novel that'd be out
for Christmas? Is that what you should have been working on last night,
instead of playing Quake?"
He winced. She didn't actually see it, but she felt it. Direct hit on the
starboard bow. She kept her face forward, watching the sand before them, one
foot in front of the other, trying not to get her feet tangled up with the
dog's.
"Guilty as charged," he admitted. "I can't do that today, though. The
damned muses had better be ready to sing when we get back or my editor is
going to have me on a stick."
"So," she asked, taking a deep cleansing breath and fighting the urge to
cough. That salt air - the complete lack of smog was killing her. "That's
your day, then? A long day spent staring out the windows in between levels
of blowing away aliens on their home planet?"
"Oh, I don't know," he teased her, "somewhere in there you and I could hold
hands and sing 'Kumbayah'."
"As if." He'd expect that kind of dialect from her, wouldn't he? "Too
much bonding in one day, Dr. Brennan. Not at all healthy. For either of
us."
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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