Forever Love, Inc. - 4/12
4/LUKE
Luke stepped into the front lobby of Forever Love, Inc., and closed the door behind him with a tired sigh.
“Good morning!” Katie sang merrily from her seat at the front desk; then, catching her first good glance at Luke’s wan face and dark-circled eyes, she gasped, “Omigosh, Luke! Are you okay? You look terrible.”
“Thanks, Katie,” Luke replied, giving her a wry grimace. “I’m fine. Nothing a few cups of coffee won’t cure,” he amended, already making a beeline for the small kitchen area to the right of the lobby. “I just didn’t get a whole lot of sleep last night.”
“Really?” the blond woman grinned, as she grabbed her own mug and followed him over to the coffee pot. She gave Luke a conspiratorial nudge with her elbow. “Does that mean things with you and Noah are finally back on track?”
The snort of disagreement slipped from Luke almost without conscious thought.
“Uh-oh,” Katie said, eyeing Luke carefully as he lifted the carafe to fill first her coffee mug and then his. “What does that mean? Don’t tell me you two had another fight?”
“What? No!” Luke said quickly, dismissing the question with a firm shake of his head. “Not at all. We’re fine… good! Everything’s great.”
Even if Luke hadn’t realized he’d overplayed his hand by protesting too much, the look of disbelief on Katie’s face would have made it obvious. “Look, never mind me,” he said, letting his shoulders droop and the mask of determined good cheer fall from his face. “It’s nothing. It’s just… I just…” Luke trailed off uncertainly, burying his frown in his steaming cup.
Katie stared thoughtfully at Luke for a moment, then set her mug on the kitchen counter and clapped her hands together determinedly. “All right, Mr. Snyder,” she said, laying both hands on Luke’s shoulders to steer him back through the lobby and over to the thick couch provided for visiting clients. “Sit down and tell your Big Cousin Katie what’s the matter.”
Luke smiled at the diminutive blonde’s description of herself, but he obediently sat down beside her and began to speak, struggling a bit with the effort of articulating his thoughts in a cohesive form.
“I guess it’s just… You know how hard it’s been to find time with Noah since he started this film project, right?” he asked, waiting for Katie’s nod before proceeding. “So, when Noah told me he’d be home early last night, I figured we could forget all the stuff we’ve been fighting about and just have a nice evening together.”
Luke shrugged. “Anyway, so I bought some stuff to make dinner-nothing fancy, just spaghetti and salad with the homemade garlic bread Noah likes.” No wine for Noah, because I didn’t want him making a big deal about having alcohol in the house. No romantic music or lighting, because he’d think I was trying to pressure him, when he’s been so drained from all the long hours he’s been working. Not even a fresh-baked pie from the bakery, because every time Noah thinks I’ve been extravagant, he starts after me about living on dirty Grimaldi money.
“And when Noah came home, we had dinner, and he told me about his day-what they’re filming, how he’s struggling with edits, and how they’re trying to fast track the project because they can’t afford extra studio time.” And I didn’t say I thought Mason was supposed to be helping with post-production, or ask if this was Noah’s way of telling me he’s not going to take time off for Abigail’s wedding-and I *certainly* didn’t remind him that I could solve all his budget problems if he’d just let me help for a change.
“And then, I thought we’d watch this movie I rented, but Noah had some work to do on his laptop,”-so much for finishing work early-“so I just read a book for a while, and then he was tired, so I told him to get to sleep while I finished cleaning up downstairs.”
Luke gave a rueful shake of his head. “And so I’m standing there, doing the dishes, and I’m feeling pretty good about how the evening went,”-no arguments, no harsh words, not even one of his hurtful veiled criticisms-“but at the same time I’m just so exhausted, like… like I just ran a marathon, or sat through a board meeting at Grimaldi. And all of a sudden it just hit me, you know? I mean, when did spending a nice evening with Noah get to be so much work?”
Luke sat silently for a moment, lost in his thoughts, before turning to search for answers in his companion’s soft, caring eyes. “Katie, do you think there’s something wrong with me?” he asked worriedly. “It can’t be normal to feel that way about being with someone you love, can it? Sometimes it seems like I have everything I ever wanted with Noah, and it’s still not enough.”
Katie gave a scolding shake of her head. “First of all, there’s nothing wrong with you at all, Luke Snyder,” she said firmly. “You and Noah have had some tough times lately; you can’t be too hard on yourself if you’re still feeling the strain. And what does normal have to do with anything?” she scoffed. “It doesn’t matter what works for other people, it’s what works for you-and if something isn’t working, you need to figure out what it is and do something about it.”
With a burst of motion, Luke shifted on the couch to face Katie and reached out to take her hand in an urgent grip. “Katie, what happened with you and Chris?” he asked intently. “I know I shouldn’t ask, and you can tell me it’s none of my business, but it seemed like one minute you were so in love with him, and the next…”
“I’m lighting a pile of his clothes on fire on the hood of his stupid, over-priced sports car?”
Luke smiled. “Lucky your sister is Chief of Police.”
Katie gave an unrepentant grin at the memory, before growing serious again. She gave a long, slow exhale of air. “When I was with Brad,” she reflected wistfully, “I felt like I had everything-perfect husband, perfect home, perfect baby on the way. And when he died, it was like all my dreams came crashing down around me. Everything was just so hard without him-missing him, and being alone in that big apartment with a newborn baby, and watching everyone around me get on with their lives while I was stuck going nowhere. But then Chris came back from Africa, and he said the right things, and he was always just there when I needed someone… and I guess I thought he was my chance to get back that perfect life I lost.”
She frowned. “But even from the start, there were things that didn’t quite measure up for me. First, it was the way he kept pushing me to get rid of Brad’s things, like he thought he could just erase Brad from my memory. Then it was all the secrecy about his heart condition. Then it was the way he never wanted to spend time with Jacob. And for a long time I thought, it’s just a learning curve-we’re still new to each other, we’ll work it out soon enough. But one day, I finally realized it wasn’t Chris I was in love with at all, it was my dream of him. I wanted so much to find someone to be everything Brad was to me, I ignored all the signs that it wasn’t Chris, and couldn’t ever be Chris. I was trying to force together a puzzle piece that just didn’t fit.” Katie sighed. “And even when I was finally honest with myself about my feelings, it still took a lot of time and heartache before I could convince myself to let go of that dream.”
Luke sat considering her words for a long moment, until a snort from Katie drew him from his thoughts. “And then, of course, I found out he’d been sleeping with Dusty Donovan’s wife, and that’s when things started to get ugly.”
Luke’s eyes nearly popped from his head at the surprising revelation. Oakdale wasn’t exactly a one-horse town, but people still traveled in fairly small circles, and it wasn’t often that news like that stayed a secret for long. He opened his mouth to stammer some kind of reply-did Dusty know about his wife’s affair? Wait, hadn’t she just had another baby?-but he was saved from that particular moment of awkwardness by the welcome ring of the office telephone. Katie hopped up from the couch to answer the call.
“You’ve found Forever Love; how can I help you? Uh, yes; he’s right here. One moment, please.” Katie lowered the phone receiver from her ear and pointed it at Luke. “It’s Mitchell Grant, for you.”
Luke rose from the couch as well. “I’ll take it in my office; thanks, Katie.”
Stepping into his office with a sigh of relief, Luke picked up his extension and pressed the button to bring in the call. “Mitchell, hello!” he said pleasantly. “How was your date with Dr. Ol-?“
The shout of sheer anger from the other end of the telephone line drowned out the rest of Luke’s sentence.
==========
By the time Luke Snyder marched through the glass doors leading to Memorial’s award-winning neurological department, nearly eleven hours later, irritation had given way to outright fury. He scanned the quiet but active hospital corridors with all the deadly intensity of a sniper scope, before landing upon the target of his fury, who was calmly stepping out of a patient room to Luke’s right.
“Dr. Oliver!” Luke snapped. “I’ve been trying to get hold of you all day!”
At the sound of Luke’s voice, the ginger-headed neurosurgeon raised his head from the clipboard in his hands, and his face darkened with impatience. “And I’ve been trying to avoid you,” he shot back. “Looks like neither of us got what we wanted.” With that, he turned away and began walking down the corridor.
Almost choking at the gall of the man’s behavior, Luke hastened to give chase. “You’re avoiding me because you know you screwed up again!” he called after him. “You told me you’d try harder this time!”
The neurosurgeon stopped short and spun to point an accusing finger at Luke. “No, you told me to turn my cell phone off, which I did. It’s not my fault you set me up with a complete moron!”
“Moron?” Luke boggled. “The man is licensed clinical psychologist with a Ph.D. in Mental Health Counseling and a…”
“The man,” Dr. Oliver interrupted testily, “is 38 years old and lives at home with his mother and her three Pomeranians. What does he know about mental health?”
With a roll of his eyes, the doctor again turned to walk away, but Luke matched him stride for stride.
“So the guy loves his mother,” Luke said. “Is that a crime on whatever planet you came from?”
The neurosurgeon gave a sniff of contempt. “I should have known not to expect sympathy from a man who dresses like an eight-year-old boy,” he said, tossing a glare over his shoulder at Luke. “Did your mother pick out the outfit you’re wearing?”
Luke’s step faltered as he looked down at his outfit, a fairly simple pair of Dockers and polo shirt. The latter was a rather muted shade of rose, bisected across the chest by a thick band of white color and several thin blue and tan stripes. The shirt was a recent birthday present from his mother, but what did that have to do with…?
He raised his head again just in time to see Dr. Oliver take a sudden detour to his left and disappear through a small door. Luke hesitated only long enough to see that the lettering on the door read ‘Doctors’ Lounge’ before pushing through the door in pursuit.
Given Luke’s general run of luck, he half expected to find the entire hospital neurology staff waiting on the other side of the door-so it was something of a welcome relief to find Dr. Oliver alone in the break room. The neurosurgeon’s handsome face reflected a myriad of expressions: surprise, anger, offense, with perhaps the slightest hint of grudging admiration for the matchmaker’s audacity. Luke found his chest swelling with a rather unexpected feeling of exhilaration at having confounded the ornery doctor.
The neurosurgeon wasn’t speechless for long. “I realize literacy is a rare virtue in this town, Mr. Snyder, but you may have noticed that this is a private area.”
“Oh, no,” Luke warned, “you’re not going to get away that easily, Dr. Oliver, and I am not going to let you distract me from the issue at hand!”
“Which is what, your failure to find one single gay man in this Podunk town who possesses at least half a brain?” The neurosurgeon turned away to open the refrigerator in the back corner of the lounge, then crouched down to peek his head inside.
“No, it’s your inability to spend five minutes with someone without being completely obnoxious!” Luke shot back, trying to bore through the metal refrigerator door with the heat of his glare. “Maybe you’re the one with the intelligence problem, since you say you want a date for this gala of yours, and yet you keep chasing off every man who comes within speaking range! You know, even in a Podunk town like Oakdale, there are plenty of other fish in the sea, and no one’s going to settle for…”
Luke broke off suddenly, as the distinctive bumps and clanks of shifting containers made it clear that Dr. Oliver’s attention was focused on exploring the contents of the refrigerator. “Are you even listening to me?” he asked impatiently-then, a little louder: “Dr. Oliver?!”
The neurosurgeon straightened, holding a small bottle of water in his hand. “What?”
“Agh, you’re such a jerk!” Luke cried, throwing his hands up with a gesture of hopelessness. “You know, you should be glad all your date did was throw a drink in your face; he could have socked you in the nose.”
The doctor’s face darkened with anger. “And how were you spying on me this time, Mr. Snyder?” he growled. “Hidden camera in the centerpiece?”
Luke let out a burst of enraged laughter. “Who needs hidden cameras when you do such a spectacular job of offending people, they call the next morning just to chew me out for setting them up with you?”
For a moment, the neurosurgeon looked almost abashed-at what? The criticism? The fact that Luke had taken the heat from the doctor’s dating fiascos?-but then his usual demeanor reasserted itself and he gave a contemptuous snort. “Under the circumstances, I thought I showed a lot of restraint.” He twisted the cap off the bottled water and raised it to his lips to take a healthy swig.
"Restr-You called him a leech and a con artist!” Luke exclaimed.
“I said that about psychologists in general,” the other man said with a sniff. “He’s the one who chose to take it personally. Anyway, what would you call them? Eight years of school, so they can charge two hundred bucks an hour just to sit in a chair and tell people they’re messed up because of their parents. Come on, everyone’s messed up because of their parents; you really need a doctorate to figure that out?”
Luke was so dumbfounded by the doctor’s argument, he was almost speechless. “That’s…” he sputtered, “you’re… there are any number of psychologists doing amazing work for people with behavioral problems, phobias, addictions…”
“And I’m sure there are warm and fuzzy tax auditors, too,” the surgeon interrupted, “but that doesn’t mean the profession as a whole isn’t a complete menace.”
Luke could feel the dull throb of a headache building behind his temple. “All right,” he said, through gritted teeth, “so you obviously don’t like therapists, and you apparently don’t like doctors or artists or… or auditors, either. Tell me, are there any professionals you actually do respect?”
“I respect the sandwich lady over at the deli on 5th Street,” the other man responded promptly. “That woman knows her way around a slab of baloney.” The doctor barely troubled himself to hide the mocking smile on his face as he took another drink of his water.
“Doctor, if you’re not even going to try to take this seriously, there’s no way I can-!“ Luke snapped, before cutting himself off in mid-shout. He raised a hand to his forehead and struggled with every ounce of his considerable resolve to hold onto his composure. When he thought he could trust himself to speak again in a normal volume, Luke took a deep breath and continued.
“Dr. Oliver,” he said reasonably, “you have to understand that no one is going to be your perfect match in every way. You need to be a bit more receptive to differences, maybe go along with something that you wouldn’t normally find attractive in a mate, just to give yourself more time to find a diamond in the rough, okay? Otherwise, you’re never going to find a companion for your gala, or for anything more.”
The doctor seemed to consider Luke’s words for a moment, absently drinking from his water bottle as his focus turned inward. Finally, he gave a slight nod of his head. “Noted,” he said succinctly.
The word startled Luke more than perhaps anything he’d heard in the duration of his acquaintance with the doctor. “N-noted?” he repeated blankly. “Does that mean you agree?”
Dr. Oliver snorted. “I never said that. But you’ve reminded me that time is of the essence for me, so I’m willing to take extreme measures in order to get what I need.”
“It’s not an extreme measure to be civil…”
A piercing, mechanical beep cut through the air and Luke trailed off in midsentence. The neurosurgeon removed a small plastic beeper from his belt and narrowed his eyes at the tiny display screen.
“Hold that thought, Mr. Snyder,” he said. “I’ve got a 911 page.”
The doctor moved to a phone on the wall of the break room, lifted the receiver and punched in a quick series of numbers. “This is Dr. Oliver; you paged? Uh huh. Uh huh. Twenty minutes away? Have they sent over the films yet? Okay. And what was Donovan’s assessment?”
Luke had known that Reid Oliver was a neurosurgeon, had even spent enough time searching the internet to know that his claims of being the best neurosurgeon might not be an exaggeration, but the actual sight of his argumentative client’s shift into doctor mode was still a complete revelation to him. Energy and vigor almost visibly crackled the air around the doctor’s body; blue eyes that had always seemed bright and analytical now appeared immeasurably sharper. The nod of his head, the tone of his voice, even the rise and fall of his chest seemed to coalesce in a pattern that was almost musical in its focus and precision. It was as if a whole other level of the man’s mind and body had lain dormant until called into action to address a medical need.
Luke felt a stirring of awe in his chest, and something warmer-a tug of admiration, maybe even an inexplicable affection for the multifaceted man. A diamond in the rough, Luke thought, remembering his own words from a moment ago-and he felt a renewal of his dedication to find someone to appreciate the value of this unusual but spectacular gem.
“All right, book an operating suite, and get Harding’s team ready to assist me. I’ll be there in ten.” The doctor hung up the phone and turned back to Luke, who snapped to attention, embarrassed that he’d been caught so openly watching the doctor’s every move.
“I’m afraid the rest of your lecture will have to wait, Mr. Snyder,” the neurosurgeon said, tossing his empty water bottle in a nearby recycling bin. “There’s a cerebellar stroke patient en route from one of our satellite hospitals, and I’m needed in the O.R.”
“Cerebellar… that’s bad, right?” Almost as soon as the words left his mouth, Luke was cursing himself for the stupid question. He waited, mentally cringing, for the lash of Dr. Oliver’s characteristically barbed tongue.
Instead, the neurosurgeon replied with a shrug of his shoulder. “It ain’t good,” he answered simply. “But he’s got one thing going for him that a lot of folks don’t, and that’s me as his doctor.”
The neurosurgeon picked up his clipboard from the break room table and, with a nod of farewell, exited the doctors’ lounge. Luke followed after him somewhat aimlessly as Dr. Oliver retraced his steps back to the patient rooms, jotting notes all the while on the chart in his hands. When he reached the nurse’s duty station, he handed the clipboard to the slim grey-haired women behind the desk. Luke wandered just close enough to catch their conversation.
“Nurse… uh…” The doctor squinted down at the woman’s scrubs in a somewhat obvious search for a helpful name badge, but then he seemed to shrug off the missing information as unnecessary. “You’re the senior RN in this unit, right? What time does your shift end?”
“Yes, Dr. Oliver. It’s Nurse Webb, and I’m here till 6 am.”
The doctor nodded. “Okay, then listen closely. I don’t like what I’m seeing with the patient in 3B, but it looks like I won’t be able to stay here in person to monitor him. That means it’s going to be up to you. I want you in that room every twenty minutes-you, not anyone else on your staff-check his vitals, his pupils, his reaction to stimuli. You see anything you don’t like, anything at all, even if something just feels off to you, you page Dr. Najimi and you get him in here immediately. I don’t care where he is, I don’t care what he says; anything he can threaten you with, I will do ten times worse if this patient takes a bad turn and you don’t get Najimi here. Do you follow me?”
“Yes, doctor,” the woman nodded solemnly.
“All right, good. I’ll check in with you as soon as I can.”
It was only when the neurosurgeon turned around again and a look of faint surprise crossed his face that Luke realized he’d been caught staring again. He felt a flush of heat stain his cheeks as the doctor approached him.
“Are you planning to wait here for me, Mr. Snyder?” the man asked wryly. “I realize that persistence is one of your most annoyingly basic character traits, but I’m gonna be a while.”
“No, I… I just...” Luke stammered, fumbling awkwardly for an explanation, “I guess because of who you are, and the way you present yourself as this… unfeeling jerk, I almost forgot what it is you do. But you… you see people every day who are sick or hurt beyond imagining, and you help them. That’s… I guess what I mean is, thank you. And… I’m sorry.”
“Look, don’t get all weepy on me,” the doctor responded, shrugging his shoulders as if to physically shake off Luke’s words. “Every patient I save’s just another feather in my cap. It’s all about ego to me.”
“Oh, I don’t buy that for a minute,” Luke objected. “Yes, you’ve got an ego. But you could have been just as successful in some other field, without working nearly as hard. You said it yourself that first day-you save lives. That’s… you’re amazing.”
Dr. Oliver lowered his gaze to the floor, appearing strangely discomfited by the unexpected praise. “Well, what about you?” he said, clearing his throat uncomfortably. “You see people who are lonely or sad, and you help them. And I don’t mean just sitting in a chair and letting them spill their guts at you, I mean actively out there working for them. I fix brains, you fix hearts. You’re not so different from me.”
Luke blinked once, then again, several times. “Dr. Oliver,” he said finally, “I think that’s the nicest thing anyone’s ever said to me.”
The neurosurgeon looked up again, and his face lightened with a small, slightly crooked, but genuine smile. Luke felt his own face crease into a wide grin at the rare sight. His eyes met the doctor’s and lingered there, loving the flecks of warmth and light that the smile gave to the man’s cool blue eyes.
The doctor gave a sudden start of recollection. “Shit! I need to go!” he said abruptly. He turned away with a brisk motion to head in the direction of the stairwell. “Three’s a charm, Mr. Snyder!” he called out over his shoulder. “I’ll expect someone fantastic the next time!”
For a long moment, Luke stood there in the hospital corridor, feeling as if the doctor’s departure had deflated a bubble in his chest, and pondering the strange sense of longing he felt to wait for the man’s return, no matter how long it took-just for a chance to catch that smile again. Then he shook his head at his own foolishness, and headed home for the night.
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