Shay - Delphine AU | Part 11* (Rough Draft)
Could Shay and Delphine have been a thing in a different universe?
Prev: 1-5 (edited), 6-8, 9*, 10*, 11*
Perched on the edge of the examination table, possibly attempting to hypnotize herself with the sway of her dangling feet, Jennifer raised her head when the door opened. It took a second for recognition to set in. "Dr. Cormier. The nurse hasn't been in to see me yet."
Delphine smiled on her way to the sink. "Actually, you get only me today." She cast an eye about the room. "Did Greg step out?"
Jennifer smiled. "You only get me today." Her eyes studied Delphine. "Is there something special on the agenda?"
Delphine shook her head as she washed her hands. "No. Unless you count that we are unexpectedly understaffed today. Someone called out sick, someone else is dealing with car trouble, and there's work enough to stretch everyone thin. So I said I would be glad to step in."
Jennifer's expression took on a shade of skeptical with a cast of wariness.
"I am trained," Delphine assured her.
"But are you practiced?" Jennifer asked, sitting back and folding her hands in her lap. Her tone was neutral enough to give Delphine pause.
Delphine appraised Jennifer, gauging. She'd watched this woman interact with staff at myriad levels, even while contact between themselves had remained limited. Strict professionalism was always an option in any given situation.
But how often did one interact with a clone?
"There's no time like the present to start practicing," Delphine said lightly. "Don't they say that practice makes perfect?"
Jennifer tilted her head back and groaned theatrically. "Uuuuuuugh. The worst part is that I've said that all the time."
Delphine indulged in a little chuckle as she stepped close and tugged up Jennifer's sleeve. "As a . . . coach, correct?"
Jennifer nodded. "I coach--I coached swim."
"And you are a teacher, as well?" Delphine asked as she wound the blood pressure cuff around Jennifer's bicep.
"Yeah. Social studies. History."
Delphine smiled through the pleasant surprise. "Not my best subjects."
Jennifer grinned. "No? Was it all the dates?"
"No, actually," Delphine said as she grasped the stethoscope from around her neck and fit the eartips into her ears. "It turns out I have no trouble retaining medical history, but the rise and fall of nations held little interest for me."
"'Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it,'" Jennifer murmured.
Delphine's eyebrows rose, but together they fell into silence as Delphine inflated the cuff and concentrated on taking measurements. Afterward she ran through a battery of quick diagnostics, pulse and temperature, a check of Jennifer's lymph nodes (inflamed) and her respiration (restricted breaths, aqueous rattling, possibly mucous).
Delphine tucked her dismay behind a wall of stoniness.
Swabbing Jennifer's arm and readying the needle, Delphine asked softly, "How did you and Greg meet?"
"At a--" Jennifer sucked in a breath as the needle slid in and blew it out slowly. "At a swim meet." Jennifer glanced down at Delphine's handiwork. "That wasn't . . . so bad."
Delphine smiled to herself. "At a swim meet? Were you and he competing?"
"Oh, no, no." Jennifer laughed. "This was a high school meet. Greg's a conditioning coach. He works mainly at the collegiate level, so he happened to be there with a scout looking for potential recruits."
"And . . . ?" Delphine prompted as she swapped out vials.
"They were interested in one of my kids. They approached us and," Jennifer drawled, "somehow he and I got to talking . . ."
Delphine nodded. "And the rest is . . . history?"
Jennifer smiled, all canines, eyes twinkling at Delphine in acknowledgment of her shameless pun. "Yeah." She breathed out in a rush. "He's been great. About all of this. He was the one who found you guys."
Delphine nodded. "You mentioned." Delphine paused, then asked, "How did he find us?"
Jennifer shook her head. "I don't know. Maybe my doctor suggested it? Maybe he found you through Google? I didn't really ask him." A frown marred Jennifer's features. "Is it weird that I didn't ask? Should I have asked? It's like it didn't even cross my mind. I guess at the time I was just so--grateful that someone--someone might be able to help."
A stone lodged in Delphine's chest.
Were they helping Jennifer? Did they want to help?
They were all in this for the long haul, of that Delphine was now certain, but while a part of her believed that, yes, DYAD wanted to help Jennifer, the part that had reviewed a bulk of medical profiles, that was still trying to deduce the system implemented to surveil them, that knew how easily and concisely these women could be reduced to sequences of numbers, recognized how any "help" could be incidental to a general study.
It didn't have to be just one or the other, Delphine knew.
Her lack of reply prompted Jennifer to say, lightly, "I kinda wish he could have found some place closer to home."
Delphine raised her eyes to catch wistfulness sweep across Jennifer's expression.
"It was hard to have to leave so--abruptly," Jennifer said, gaze directed at the floor.
"Your students must miss you," Delphine said softly.
"I miss them," Jennifer said plainly, but she smiled. "They're so sweet. They send me letters and cards. My old class put together a care package--with all this candy I can't eat. Greg seems to appreciate it, though. There's another teacher who keeps me posted and I get updates and news from the swim team captain, so I know how they're all doing. Everyone tells me that they can't wait for me to come back . . ." She breathed out, cleared her throat against a cough. "I can't wait, either."
Delphine nodded. But she said nothing.
There were no promises anyone could make that Jennifer would ever return home.
*
"Do you think of this place as your home?"
"You mean Toronto?" Shay asked.
Delphine nodded.
"Do you?" Shay flipped the interrogation.
Delphine tapped the tabletop absently, thinking face donned. At last she shook her head. "No."
"Feeling homesick?" Shay prodded gently.
Delphine shook her head. "No." She turned her focus on Shay. "Do you get homesick?"
"For the prairies?" Shay sighed. "Not really. The things I miss about it have more to do with family or friends, not really the place. This may sound weird, but if there's a place I miss, it's Barcelona."
Delphine crossed her arms atop the table. "What is it about you and Barcelona? Did you live there?"
Shay shook her head. "Only visited."
Delphine weighed her answer. "That must have been some visit."
Shay smiled.
"Why didn't you stay?" Delphine asked. "Or move to Barcelona instead of Toronto?"
Shay blended a pout and a smile. "Sometimes I ask myself the same thing. But the timing was all off. And when I left Barcelona, I was ready to get away from it. It took some time to feel like I wanted to go back."
Delphine put her in the crosshairs of a squint. "What?"
Shay spread her hands.
"No, no," Delphine said, holding up a hand. "That--that doesn't make sense. Something is missing."
Shay mimed a gasp, eyes wide. "You mean you know I'm not telling you the whole story?" She grinned. "It's shocking, isn't it?"
Delphine curled her fingers so that only her index finger remained extended to admonish Shay. "That's not fair. There are things I cannot tell you, by law, according to a binding contract. This--what you're doing--is deliberately doling out crumbs and withholding the rest of the story."
"Your English is so good," Shay remarked.
"You're not even giving me the courtesy of denying my accusations."
"Because you're right," Shay said breezily. "Like your contract, there's nothing to deny."
Delphine's features cycled through surprise, incredulity, and then something bordering affront. Before Shay could parse it, Delphine whipped her head to the side, putting herself in profile. Her jaw flexed. "That is annoying."
Shay giggled. "That's it?"
Delphine clamped down on a knuckle with her teeth, released it. "It wouldn't be fair to ask for more. Right?"
Shay smiled. By way of confirmation, Shay asked, "Do you miss France?"
Delphine breathed out into a rueful smile. Posture relaxing, she nodded. "Sometimes. I miss French. The language. I miss hearing it."
"And the bread," suggested Shay.
"Always," agreed Delphine.
"Do you plan to go back?"
"You mean relocate?"
Shay nodded.
Delphine shrugged. "I always knew I was willing to go wherever my work took me. With the possible exception of China. That was the one prospect that scared me."
Shay's eyebrows inquired for more. "Why would China scare you?"
"I don't have much confidence in my ability to learn Mandarin."
Shay laughed.
"Whereas my English," Delphine continued, "which some inform me is so good, would serve me well in most other places at the cutting edge of research."
"Like Toronto."
Delphine nodded. "Like Toronto."
Shay played back her words. "Toronto's at the cutting edge of research?"
"You think it shouldn't be?"
"I have no idea," Shay said. "I'm genuinely asking."
"Where I am, yes," Delphine said.
"So," Shay considered slowly, "home is where the science is."
Delphine laughed. "Yes. I guess so." She eyed Shay. "Where is home for you?" Her gaze turned light with teasing. "Barcelona?"
Shay's chin dimpled with thought. "There was a very short window of time I thought maybe it could have been."
Delphine let her curiosity show. But she didn't ask. Not yet.
*
"What kind of injury was it?"
Alone with Jennifer on one of the random days she'd coopted nurse duty--"For practice," she told Jennifer--and poised to shine a light in her patient's eyes, Delphine lowered the penlight with puzzlement. "Excuse me?"
"I noticed that you, um," Jennifer faltered, clearing her throat. "You limp. A little. It's your left side?"
Delphine stood straighter. After a moment, she said, "Is it obvious?"
"I don't know if it's obvious," Jennifer said quickly, "but I watch you walk across the room a lot." Jennifer made a face. "Sorry. That sounds kind of creepy."
Delphine smiled, raising the penlight to eye-line height. "No more creepy than 'I'm here for your blood.'"
Jennifer almost laughed, but flinched and squinted under the beam.
"You know," Jennifer said, "water exercises are a great low-impact way to rebuild muscle and range of motion. I don't mean swimming--though you could do that, too--but doing exercises like walking or jumping jacks in an environment like a pool. I didn't teach those types of classes, but sometimes I'd see groups at community pools. You could probably find something like that around here."
Listening, even as she concentrated on the feel of lymph nodes beneath her fingertips, Delphine smiled, the expression feeling almost manic stretched across her face by the time Jennifer finished her pitch. Studying Delphine in close proximity, Jennifer added lamely, "Just a suggestion."
"I'm sorry," Delphine said in a rush of reassurance as she withdrew. "I'm not--it's a good suggestion, thank you. It's just that hearing you say that reminded me of . . . a friend. She tells me to do yoga."
"Yoga's great, too," Jennifer added her endorsement, ebullience returning. "Doing it regularly will keep your muscles warm, loose, and flexible."
"Forgive me," Delphine replied lightly, "but I have to pretend you didn't tell me that. I believe you, it's just that I don't know if I can give in now that I've held out for so long."
Jennifer smiled, but uncertainly in confusion. "So you're gonna let your ego get in the way of your health and fitness? As a doctor, I would have thought you would be open to advice like that."
"I'm going to tell you a secret," Delphine said in a low, conspiratorial tone. "Doctors are very stubborn and are possibly the hardest to convince."
Jennifer's eyes narrowed in speculation. "I don't know if that's a secret you should share with your patients if you want them to obey your orders."
"See, that's good advice," Delphine agreed brightly. "But now you have to help me by keeping this between you and me."
"I guess I could do that," Jennifer conceded, but chidingly, as if Delphine were a student who'd wrangled her teacher's confidence to hide a negligible misdeed. "But yoga really is a great option. I swim--I swam a lot and frequently had shoulder problems--you know, with my rotator cuff. Adding yoga to my routine actually really helped."
"I have to ask: When did you do yoga?"
"Like when did I start or like at what time of day?"
"What time of day."
"In the morning."
"Daily?"
"Yes."
"What time did classes start?"
"Well, first bell is at seven forty-five."
Delphine did some quick calculations with estimated average preparation times. She shook her head. "Ah. No. That's not for me."
"You don't have to do it in the morning if you're not a morning person. As long as you can set aside some time each day, you can do it."
Delphine nodded along, but said, "You and my friend must definitely never meet."
"Aw," whined Jennifer, "why not? She sounds wonderful."
"Exactly," Delphine said. "She sounds wonderful to you because the two of you probably think alike. Where would that leave me?"
"Doing yoga," Jennifer deadpanned.
Delphine chuckled. "Yes. You, me, Greg, and my friend--we would all be doing yoga together."
"Patch me up and it's a deal," Jennifer said.
Delphine's jaw locked and she kept her gaze cast down. After a time she nodded. "Okay. Deal."
Jennifer smirked. It suffered only a little from the gauntness of her cheeks and the tremble of weakness plaguing her muscles. "You better start shopping for a yoga mat and some yoga pants. This chemotherapy is gonna do it, right?"
Delphine hesitated before squarely meeting Jennifer's eyes. "I hope so."
She did.
Jennifer looked right through her.
For the first time Delphine recognized that both of them harbored doubts far greater than their hopes--and in that moment Delphine let Jennifer know it.
*
"Are your patients--your clients--faceless to you?" Delphine asked into her hand. Her palm lay over her mouth, even as it served to prop up her head.
She and Shay were meeting more sporadically. Delphine was busy. And more troubled. Enough that Delphine had reached out to Shay on a Wednesday.
"What do you mean? I meet my clients face-to-face all the time," Shay said, infusing a jocular note into her voice. "It kinda makes the touching part easier for everyone."
Delphine frowned behind her hand. Shay could discern it from the way her eyebrows dipped. So jokes weren't the order of the evening.
"Do you get to know all your clients?" asked Delphine. "That is, using myself as an example, we talked quite a bit before we--before we became friends."
"Not all of my clients," Shay said. "Probably not even most of them. Some don't like to talk. Some fall asleep. Some only come in once or twice." She considered. "I get to know their injuries. Their discomforts. Where they hold tension in their bodies. Stuff like that."
Delphine nodded, eyes unfocused on some indeterminate distance. "Yes. That's how it is."
Shay wanted to ask--to pry--but she knew that whatever was bothering Delphine would be better volunteered. Delphine's gaze darted over and found Shay's eyes. Picking out the colors in Delphine's irises, Shay felt perched on a bubble threatening to burst.
Delphine smiled, eyes crinkling at the corners. "So I am an exception, rather than a rule?"
Shay laughed. "Don't even try to say that like you didn't already know it."
Delphine rolled her head to rest at an angle, eyes leisurely picking over Shay's features. "But I didn't know. Not expressly."
"Yeah, well," Shay muttered, sipping at her drink, skirting Delphine's eyes, "don't let it go to your head."
Delphine freed her mouth from the prison of her hand and breathed in deeply, mouth briefly bowing thoughtfully. "I'm glad I was."
Shay fended off an incipient smile with a shake of her head.
She was glad, too.
Most of the time.
"You wanna talk about it?" Shay offered, unable to resist the prick of her curiosity.
Delphine breathed out heavily and glanced away. "Do you ever feel like you're not given a choice? That whether you want to or not, a situation is pulling you in one direction?"
Shay frowned. "To do what?"
"Like getting to know someone."
One specific, immediate person leapt to mind. But Delphine was the result of Shay's own prerogative. Shay had let her attraction lead and though she'd tried to backpedal and maintain distance, she was no match for the honed inquisitiveness of a trained scientist.
"Do you not want to get to know them?" Shay asked.
Silence buffered Delphine's slow-coming reply. "I think it might be . . . better? If we didn't get to know each other. Easier, maybe? But I think we are gaining glimpses, whether we want to or not."
"You don't want to?"
Conflict pulled at Delphine's features. "I don't know."
"Do you not get along?"
"That's not it."
Hesitation momentarily checked Shay's next question. "Are you . . . attracted to this person?"
Delphine turned to stare at her fully. Then she loosed a bark of laughter. "No! That's not--no." She smiled to herself, then smothered a round of after-giggles. "No. No."
"Okay," Shay amended with a hint of apology, "so in-office, doctor-patient romance is not the issue."
Her words seemed to strike a deeper chord of amusement, stretching Delphine's smile wider. Delphine eyed her speculatively. "Would you pursue someone in those circumstances?"
"I . . . have not," Shay said diplomatically. "I mean in the past, a workplace romance meant fraternization, and I certainly would not have engaged in anything that so clearly violated regulations." She punctuated her flippancy with upturned palms. "Just as I technically wasn't gay any of those years."
Delphine nodded along gamely but said, "Explain that last part?"
"Don't Ask, Don't Tell?"
"Ah, yes." Delphine raised an eyebrow. "And now?"
"Do you think I'd be using Sapphire if I was hooking up through my job?"
Delphine smiled. "That wasn't my question."
Shay sighed. "If only I were so lucky that I had a parade of cute, available lesbians waltzing through my door." She met Delphine's eyes. "Then we'd see."
"And if I were in a position to refer available women to you, I would," Delphine said.
"So you could see what I would do?"
"To make life easier for you," Delphine declared, putting on injury. "But, since you mentioned it, that would be interesting to see as well."
"See, I'm learning," Shay said. "Experiments make everything more interesting and worthwhile."
Delphine reacted with less enthusiasm than Shay predicted. "In some cases, yes."
//
Next
Prev: 1-5 (edited), 6-8, 9*, 10*, 11*
Perched on the edge of the examination table, possibly attempting to hypnotize herself with the sway of her dangling feet, Jennifer raised her head when the door opened. It took a second for recognition to set in. "Dr. Cormier. The nurse hasn't been in to see me yet."
Delphine smiled on her way to the sink. "Actually, you get only me today." She cast an eye about the room. "Did Greg step out?"
Jennifer smiled. "You only get me today." Her eyes studied Delphine. "Is there something special on the agenda?"
Delphine shook her head as she washed her hands. "No. Unless you count that we are unexpectedly understaffed today. Someone called out sick, someone else is dealing with car trouble, and there's work enough to stretch everyone thin. So I said I would be glad to step in."
Jennifer's expression took on a shade of skeptical with a cast of wariness.
"I am trained," Delphine assured her.
"But are you practiced?" Jennifer asked, sitting back and folding her hands in her lap. Her tone was neutral enough to give Delphine pause.
Delphine appraised Jennifer, gauging. She'd watched this woman interact with staff at myriad levels, even while contact between themselves had remained limited. Strict professionalism was always an option in any given situation.
But how often did one interact with a clone?
"There's no time like the present to start practicing," Delphine said lightly. "Don't they say that practice makes perfect?"
Jennifer tilted her head back and groaned theatrically. "Uuuuuuugh. The worst part is that I've said that all the time."
Delphine indulged in a little chuckle as she stepped close and tugged up Jennifer's sleeve. "As a . . . coach, correct?"
Jennifer nodded. "I coach--I coached swim."
"And you are a teacher, as well?" Delphine asked as she wound the blood pressure cuff around Jennifer's bicep.
"Yeah. Social studies. History."
Delphine smiled through the pleasant surprise. "Not my best subjects."
Jennifer grinned. "No? Was it all the dates?"
"No, actually," Delphine said as she grasped the stethoscope from around her neck and fit the eartips into her ears. "It turns out I have no trouble retaining medical history, but the rise and fall of nations held little interest for me."
"'Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it,'" Jennifer murmured.
Delphine's eyebrows rose, but together they fell into silence as Delphine inflated the cuff and concentrated on taking measurements. Afterward she ran through a battery of quick diagnostics, pulse and temperature, a check of Jennifer's lymph nodes (inflamed) and her respiration (restricted breaths, aqueous rattling, possibly mucous).
Delphine tucked her dismay behind a wall of stoniness.
Swabbing Jennifer's arm and readying the needle, Delphine asked softly, "How did you and Greg meet?"
"At a--" Jennifer sucked in a breath as the needle slid in and blew it out slowly. "At a swim meet." Jennifer glanced down at Delphine's handiwork. "That wasn't . . . so bad."
Delphine smiled to herself. "At a swim meet? Were you and he competing?"
"Oh, no, no." Jennifer laughed. "This was a high school meet. Greg's a conditioning coach. He works mainly at the collegiate level, so he happened to be there with a scout looking for potential recruits."
"And . . . ?" Delphine prompted as she swapped out vials.
"They were interested in one of my kids. They approached us and," Jennifer drawled, "somehow he and I got to talking . . ."
Delphine nodded. "And the rest is . . . history?"
Jennifer smiled, all canines, eyes twinkling at Delphine in acknowledgment of her shameless pun. "Yeah." She breathed out in a rush. "He's been great. About all of this. He was the one who found you guys."
Delphine nodded. "You mentioned." Delphine paused, then asked, "How did he find us?"
Jennifer shook her head. "I don't know. Maybe my doctor suggested it? Maybe he found you through Google? I didn't really ask him." A frown marred Jennifer's features. "Is it weird that I didn't ask? Should I have asked? It's like it didn't even cross my mind. I guess at the time I was just so--grateful that someone--someone might be able to help."
A stone lodged in Delphine's chest.
Were they helping Jennifer? Did they want to help?
They were all in this for the long haul, of that Delphine was now certain, but while a part of her believed that, yes, DYAD wanted to help Jennifer, the part that had reviewed a bulk of medical profiles, that was still trying to deduce the system implemented to surveil them, that knew how easily and concisely these women could be reduced to sequences of numbers, recognized how any "help" could be incidental to a general study.
It didn't have to be just one or the other, Delphine knew.
Her lack of reply prompted Jennifer to say, lightly, "I kinda wish he could have found some place closer to home."
Delphine raised her eyes to catch wistfulness sweep across Jennifer's expression.
"It was hard to have to leave so--abruptly," Jennifer said, gaze directed at the floor.
"Your students must miss you," Delphine said softly.
"I miss them," Jennifer said plainly, but she smiled. "They're so sweet. They send me letters and cards. My old class put together a care package--with all this candy I can't eat. Greg seems to appreciate it, though. There's another teacher who keeps me posted and I get updates and news from the swim team captain, so I know how they're all doing. Everyone tells me that they can't wait for me to come back . . ." She breathed out, cleared her throat against a cough. "I can't wait, either."
Delphine nodded. But she said nothing.
There were no promises anyone could make that Jennifer would ever return home.
*
"Do you think of this place as your home?"
"You mean Toronto?" Shay asked.
Delphine nodded.
"Do you?" Shay flipped the interrogation.
Delphine tapped the tabletop absently, thinking face donned. At last she shook her head. "No."
"Feeling homesick?" Shay prodded gently.
Delphine shook her head. "No." She turned her focus on Shay. "Do you get homesick?"
"For the prairies?" Shay sighed. "Not really. The things I miss about it have more to do with family or friends, not really the place. This may sound weird, but if there's a place I miss, it's Barcelona."
Delphine crossed her arms atop the table. "What is it about you and Barcelona? Did you live there?"
Shay shook her head. "Only visited."
Delphine weighed her answer. "That must have been some visit."
Shay smiled.
"Why didn't you stay?" Delphine asked. "Or move to Barcelona instead of Toronto?"
Shay blended a pout and a smile. "Sometimes I ask myself the same thing. But the timing was all off. And when I left Barcelona, I was ready to get away from it. It took some time to feel like I wanted to go back."
Delphine put her in the crosshairs of a squint. "What?"
Shay spread her hands.
"No, no," Delphine said, holding up a hand. "That--that doesn't make sense. Something is missing."
Shay mimed a gasp, eyes wide. "You mean you know I'm not telling you the whole story?" She grinned. "It's shocking, isn't it?"
Delphine curled her fingers so that only her index finger remained extended to admonish Shay. "That's not fair. There are things I cannot tell you, by law, according to a binding contract. This--what you're doing--is deliberately doling out crumbs and withholding the rest of the story."
"Your English is so good," Shay remarked.
"You're not even giving me the courtesy of denying my accusations."
"Because you're right," Shay said breezily. "Like your contract, there's nothing to deny."
Delphine's features cycled through surprise, incredulity, and then something bordering affront. Before Shay could parse it, Delphine whipped her head to the side, putting herself in profile. Her jaw flexed. "That is annoying."
Shay giggled. "That's it?"
Delphine clamped down on a knuckle with her teeth, released it. "It wouldn't be fair to ask for more. Right?"
Shay smiled. By way of confirmation, Shay asked, "Do you miss France?"
Delphine breathed out into a rueful smile. Posture relaxing, she nodded. "Sometimes. I miss French. The language. I miss hearing it."
"And the bread," suggested Shay.
"Always," agreed Delphine.
"Do you plan to go back?"
"You mean relocate?"
Shay nodded.
Delphine shrugged. "I always knew I was willing to go wherever my work took me. With the possible exception of China. That was the one prospect that scared me."
Shay's eyebrows inquired for more. "Why would China scare you?"
"I don't have much confidence in my ability to learn Mandarin."
Shay laughed.
"Whereas my English," Delphine continued, "which some inform me is so good, would serve me well in most other places at the cutting edge of research."
"Like Toronto."
Delphine nodded. "Like Toronto."
Shay played back her words. "Toronto's at the cutting edge of research?"
"You think it shouldn't be?"
"I have no idea," Shay said. "I'm genuinely asking."
"Where I am, yes," Delphine said.
"So," Shay considered slowly, "home is where the science is."
Delphine laughed. "Yes. I guess so." She eyed Shay. "Where is home for you?" Her gaze turned light with teasing. "Barcelona?"
Shay's chin dimpled with thought. "There was a very short window of time I thought maybe it could have been."
Delphine let her curiosity show. But she didn't ask. Not yet.
*
"What kind of injury was it?"
Alone with Jennifer on one of the random days she'd coopted nurse duty--"For practice," she told Jennifer--and poised to shine a light in her patient's eyes, Delphine lowered the penlight with puzzlement. "Excuse me?"
"I noticed that you, um," Jennifer faltered, clearing her throat. "You limp. A little. It's your left side?"
Delphine stood straighter. After a moment, she said, "Is it obvious?"
"I don't know if it's obvious," Jennifer said quickly, "but I watch you walk across the room a lot." Jennifer made a face. "Sorry. That sounds kind of creepy."
Delphine smiled, raising the penlight to eye-line height. "No more creepy than 'I'm here for your blood.'"
Jennifer almost laughed, but flinched and squinted under the beam.
"You know," Jennifer said, "water exercises are a great low-impact way to rebuild muscle and range of motion. I don't mean swimming--though you could do that, too--but doing exercises like walking or jumping jacks in an environment like a pool. I didn't teach those types of classes, but sometimes I'd see groups at community pools. You could probably find something like that around here."
Listening, even as she concentrated on the feel of lymph nodes beneath her fingertips, Delphine smiled, the expression feeling almost manic stretched across her face by the time Jennifer finished her pitch. Studying Delphine in close proximity, Jennifer added lamely, "Just a suggestion."
"I'm sorry," Delphine said in a rush of reassurance as she withdrew. "I'm not--it's a good suggestion, thank you. It's just that hearing you say that reminded me of . . . a friend. She tells me to do yoga."
"Yoga's great, too," Jennifer added her endorsement, ebullience returning. "Doing it regularly will keep your muscles warm, loose, and flexible."
"Forgive me," Delphine replied lightly, "but I have to pretend you didn't tell me that. I believe you, it's just that I don't know if I can give in now that I've held out for so long."
Jennifer smiled, but uncertainly in confusion. "So you're gonna let your ego get in the way of your health and fitness? As a doctor, I would have thought you would be open to advice like that."
"I'm going to tell you a secret," Delphine said in a low, conspiratorial tone. "Doctors are very stubborn and are possibly the hardest to convince."
Jennifer's eyes narrowed in speculation. "I don't know if that's a secret you should share with your patients if you want them to obey your orders."
"See, that's good advice," Delphine agreed brightly. "But now you have to help me by keeping this between you and me."
"I guess I could do that," Jennifer conceded, but chidingly, as if Delphine were a student who'd wrangled her teacher's confidence to hide a negligible misdeed. "But yoga really is a great option. I swim--I swam a lot and frequently had shoulder problems--you know, with my rotator cuff. Adding yoga to my routine actually really helped."
"I have to ask: When did you do yoga?"
"Like when did I start or like at what time of day?"
"What time of day."
"In the morning."
"Daily?"
"Yes."
"What time did classes start?"
"Well, first bell is at seven forty-five."
Delphine did some quick calculations with estimated average preparation times. She shook her head. "Ah. No. That's not for me."
"You don't have to do it in the morning if you're not a morning person. As long as you can set aside some time each day, you can do it."
Delphine nodded along, but said, "You and my friend must definitely never meet."
"Aw," whined Jennifer, "why not? She sounds wonderful."
"Exactly," Delphine said. "She sounds wonderful to you because the two of you probably think alike. Where would that leave me?"
"Doing yoga," Jennifer deadpanned.
Delphine chuckled. "Yes. You, me, Greg, and my friend--we would all be doing yoga together."
"Patch me up and it's a deal," Jennifer said.
Delphine's jaw locked and she kept her gaze cast down. After a time she nodded. "Okay. Deal."
Jennifer smirked. It suffered only a little from the gauntness of her cheeks and the tremble of weakness plaguing her muscles. "You better start shopping for a yoga mat and some yoga pants. This chemotherapy is gonna do it, right?"
Delphine hesitated before squarely meeting Jennifer's eyes. "I hope so."
She did.
Jennifer looked right through her.
For the first time Delphine recognized that both of them harbored doubts far greater than their hopes--and in that moment Delphine let Jennifer know it.
*
"Are your patients--your clients--faceless to you?" Delphine asked into her hand. Her palm lay over her mouth, even as it served to prop up her head.
She and Shay were meeting more sporadically. Delphine was busy. And more troubled. Enough that Delphine had reached out to Shay on a Wednesday.
"What do you mean? I meet my clients face-to-face all the time," Shay said, infusing a jocular note into her voice. "It kinda makes the touching part easier for everyone."
Delphine frowned behind her hand. Shay could discern it from the way her eyebrows dipped. So jokes weren't the order of the evening.
"Do you get to know all your clients?" asked Delphine. "That is, using myself as an example, we talked quite a bit before we--before we became friends."
"Not all of my clients," Shay said. "Probably not even most of them. Some don't like to talk. Some fall asleep. Some only come in once or twice." She considered. "I get to know their injuries. Their discomforts. Where they hold tension in their bodies. Stuff like that."
Delphine nodded, eyes unfocused on some indeterminate distance. "Yes. That's how it is."
Shay wanted to ask--to pry--but she knew that whatever was bothering Delphine would be better volunteered. Delphine's gaze darted over and found Shay's eyes. Picking out the colors in Delphine's irises, Shay felt perched on a bubble threatening to burst.
Delphine smiled, eyes crinkling at the corners. "So I am an exception, rather than a rule?"
Shay laughed. "Don't even try to say that like you didn't already know it."
Delphine rolled her head to rest at an angle, eyes leisurely picking over Shay's features. "But I didn't know. Not expressly."
"Yeah, well," Shay muttered, sipping at her drink, skirting Delphine's eyes, "don't let it go to your head."
Delphine freed her mouth from the prison of her hand and breathed in deeply, mouth briefly bowing thoughtfully. "I'm glad I was."
Shay fended off an incipient smile with a shake of her head.
She was glad, too.
Most of the time.
"You wanna talk about it?" Shay offered, unable to resist the prick of her curiosity.
Delphine breathed out heavily and glanced away. "Do you ever feel like you're not given a choice? That whether you want to or not, a situation is pulling you in one direction?"
Shay frowned. "To do what?"
"Like getting to know someone."
One specific, immediate person leapt to mind. But Delphine was the result of Shay's own prerogative. Shay had let her attraction lead and though she'd tried to backpedal and maintain distance, she was no match for the honed inquisitiveness of a trained scientist.
"Do you not want to get to know them?" Shay asked.
Silence buffered Delphine's slow-coming reply. "I think it might be . . . better? If we didn't get to know each other. Easier, maybe? But I think we are gaining glimpses, whether we want to or not."
"You don't want to?"
Conflict pulled at Delphine's features. "I don't know."
"Do you not get along?"
"That's not it."
Hesitation momentarily checked Shay's next question. "Are you . . . attracted to this person?"
Delphine turned to stare at her fully. Then she loosed a bark of laughter. "No! That's not--no." She smiled to herself, then smothered a round of after-giggles. "No. No."
"Okay," Shay amended with a hint of apology, "so in-office, doctor-patient romance is not the issue."
Her words seemed to strike a deeper chord of amusement, stretching Delphine's smile wider. Delphine eyed her speculatively. "Would you pursue someone in those circumstances?"
"I . . . have not," Shay said diplomatically. "I mean in the past, a workplace romance meant fraternization, and I certainly would not have engaged in anything that so clearly violated regulations." She punctuated her flippancy with upturned palms. "Just as I technically wasn't gay any of those years."
Delphine nodded along gamely but said, "Explain that last part?"
"Don't Ask, Don't Tell?"
"Ah, yes." Delphine raised an eyebrow. "And now?"
"Do you think I'd be using Sapphire if I was hooking up through my job?"
Delphine smiled. "That wasn't my question."
Shay sighed. "If only I were so lucky that I had a parade of cute, available lesbians waltzing through my door." She met Delphine's eyes. "Then we'd see."
"And if I were in a position to refer available women to you, I would," Delphine said.
"So you could see what I would do?"
"To make life easier for you," Delphine declared, putting on injury. "But, since you mentioned it, that would be interesting to see as well."
"See, I'm learning," Shay said. "Experiments make everything more interesting and worthwhile."
Delphine reacted with less enthusiasm than Shay predicted. "In some cases, yes."
//
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