Scot on the Rocks (24 page)

“Ladies,” the cab driver said, “we’re going to compromise and take you to Weil-Cornell New York Presb on Sixty-eighth Street, okay?”

“Thank you,” we called out in unison.

Our cabbie ripped across town to York Avenue and I was hopping into the emergency room in two minutes flat.

“Maybe your friend can help you to a seat so that you can fill out these forms,” the admitting nurse said to me with a smile as she handed me a clipboard filled with papers.

“I’m here alone,” I said to the admitting nurse as I steadied myself on a wall. “My best friend has absolutely no regard for my health whatsoever.”

“She tripped on a hot dog in the park,” Vanessa said, ignoring me completely. “And now she has blinding pain in her ankle.”

“Can you walk on it?” the nurse asked me, silencing a laugh.

“It’s not funny,” I said to the nurse.

“She can’t walk on it,” Vanessa said.

“I’ll take care of these two, Nurse Carlson,” an English accent from behind us announced. “Are they checked in?”

“Yes, they are, Dr. Locke,” the nurse said, smiling coyly at the doctor.

I turned around and recognized a set of immaculately groomed dreadlocks. They were held back by that same chocolate-colored bandanna he’d worn when we’d first met him at Millie’s art gallery.

“Christian?” Vanessa said. “Brooke, you remember Christian from my mom’s art gallery, don’t you?”

“It was a week ago,” I said, still clutching the wall, “so, yes.”

Christian helped me into a wheelchair and walked us back to the examining area. He and Vanessa then carefully got me up onto a hospital bed where Christian pulled back the curtain to examine my ankle in private. Which was good since I hadn’t shaved my legs since the wedding.

Oh, please. As if you shave your legs when no one’s going to see them.

“So, how was your ex-boyfriend’s wedding?” Christian asked as he poked and prodded my ankle.

“Fine,” I said. “Ouch!”

“Okay,” he said, “I’m going to put a little pressure on it. Tell me if this hurts.”

“Ouch.”

“So, everything worked out at the wedding?” he asked, still looking down at my ankle. “Are you and Douglas back together?”

“It didn’t exactly work out the way I had planned,” I said. “Ouch.”

“Most things never do,” he said. “But that’s what makes life exciting, right?” Vanessa and I both stared back at him blankly. It was still before eight o’clock in the morning — my usual wake-up time — and I could do without my current “excitement.”

“So, whatever happened with that other guy,” Christian asked, now moving my leg around in circles, “the one who was at the opening with you two? He seemed very interested in you, Brooke.”

“Oh, that didn’t work out, either,” I said as Vanessa grabbed my hand and smiled at me. Christian turned my ankle in a slow circle. “Ouch.”

“I see,” Christian said, looking up at me as he stopped poking and prodding my ankle. “Okay, Brooke, the good news is that it’s not broken.”

“Thank you,” Vanessa said, taking on the maternal role, her hands clutching the metal bar of the hospital bed.

“You do have a nasty sprain here, though,” he said. “I’m going to put you on crutches for a while.”

“I can’t be on crutches!” I said. “I live in New York City! How will I get around? I walk everywhere — how will I walk? Or the subway — how will I get down the stairs to the subway?”

“Think of it as a good excuse to take cabs everywhere,” Vanessa said, and then added under her breath: “Which you sort of do anyway.”

“Staying positive,” Christian said. “That’s good, Vanessa. I’m glad to see that. I hear from your mom that you’re not having the best time of things lately.”

“I’ll be okay,” Vanessa said. “At least I’m not on crutches.”

“Ha ha,” I said.

“Well, if you ever need to talk about it,” Christian said, “you know where to find me.” Is this man flirting with Vanessa while he’s examining my ankle? The nerve! How is he going to give my ankle a proper analysis? This is why people are always complaining about the state of health care in the United States.

“I don’t need to talk about it,” Vanessa said, smoothing back her hair.

Even though the pain was maddening, all I could think was if Vanessa marries yet another doctor before I’ve had a chance to marry even
one,
my mother will die. I can just hear her now: “Your friend married
two
doctors and you can’t even get a date!”

“So, I can’t go to work today, right?” I asked Christian.

“No, you can go to work,” he said, still preening in Vanessa’s general direction.

“Are you absolutely positively sure?” I asked.

“Yes,” he said, eyes still glued on Vanessa.

“Because I don’t have to go to work,” I said, ever the trooper.

“Brooke, you can go,” he said.

“Can you check again?” I asked. He shook his head
no
to me without even looking my way. “Do I at least get some painkillers?”

“Let’s start with an ice pack and some ibuprofen. I’ll go get you a soft ice pack that you can use for the next forty-eight hours,” Christian said as he pulled back the curtain and walked off to get me an ice pack, but not before he patted Vanessa on the hand before he did so.

“Don’t worry, Brooke,” Vanessa said. “Everything will work out.”

“It’s badly sprained, Vanessa,” I said. “It’s done. It’s over. There’s nothing to work out.”

“I was talking about Jack,” she said.

“Oh,” I said. “I guess I feel the same way about Jack. I screwed up. It’s done. It’s over.”

“No, it’s not. With Jack, it is in no way done or over. With the ankle thing, you’re just screwed.”

“Thank you for that sensitive commentary,” I said, grabbing at my ankle.

“I’m kidding!” she said. “It’s going to be fine! It’s not broken, and you’ll be back on your feet within weeks. In the meantime, you have an excuse to not exercise and take cabs everywhere! I would think that that would be your secret fantasy or something.”

“It would have been my fantasy if I also got a note saying that I couldn’t go to work.”

“I’ll work on it when he gets back,” Vanessa said, looking out past the curtain for Christian to return.

“Are you going to flirt with him some more?” I asked.

“I wasn’t flirting with him,” Vanessa said, toying with the zipper on her sweatshirt.

“Yes, you were,” I said. “You know, it’s okay if you were.”

“I know,” she said. “It just still feels like cheating somehow. I’m not ready to flirt with strangers just yet.”

“You don’t have to be ready yet,” I said. “Just take your time. Everything is going to work out the way it’s meant to.”

“I was just about to say the same thing to you.”

T
he following Monday, I marched right into Jack’s office and brought him the research I’d done for him over the weekend. Well, more like
fell
right into Jack’s office. I was still figuring out how to negotiate the crutches and the plastic boot I was condemned to wear on my ankle. (“Oh, my God, that thing is hideous, are you really going to wear that out of the house?” was Vanessa’s reaction.) I wore my hair down for our big meeting and I kept catching pieces of it against the crutches underneath my armpit. Not the image I was going for.

“Thanks,” he said, barely looking up from his computer. I’d worked hard on the research — I didn’t want to give Jack any more reason to hate me than he already had — and I’d also drafted a comprehensive memorandum outlining the case law for him and highlighting future points for argument, which he hadn’t even asked me to do. I was hoping to get more mileage out of my weekend’s work than a mere “thanks.”

“Is there anything else you need me to do?” I asked, hoping he would say yes and extend the conversation a bit further.

“Nope,” Jack said, eyes still locked on the computer, “you’re all set. Thanks.”

“Tell me the truth,” I said, trying to be cute, “is that really your fantasy football league that you’re working so hard on?”

“No,” he said, turning his screen to face me, “it’s the survey for the Healthy Foods case.”

“Oh,” I said, still standing in front of his desk. In a false-advertising lawsuit like the Healthy Foods case, what must be proven is actual confusion — that consumers were actually confused into buying your product because of your false advertising. Jack was crafting a survey that would then be conducted out in the public to prove that consumers weren’t actually confused into buying Healthy Foods coffee because they thought it was healthy. A case can be won or lost on a survey, a fact I knew acutely since Jack and I had drafted the winning survey on the last false advertising case we’d been on together. I couldn’t help but feel a slight pang of disappointment that he hadn’t wanted to work with me on the Healthy Foods survey.

“Don’t you have other work to do?” he said, turning his screen back to face him and beginning to type.

You’re losing him,
I thought.
Get his interest back.

“Yes,” I said, hopping over to his visitor’s chair and plopping myself down, crutches strategically placed against his desk for maximum sympathy, “but I think I’d rather consult the Magic 8-Ball to find out if we’re going to win our case. Magic 8-Ball,” I said, shaking it slowly in a manner that I was hoping would look seductive, “are we going to win the Healthy Foods case?”

Jack grabbed the Magic 8-Ball from my hands and threw it into his garbage can. I felt my body involuntarily jerk back into my chair from the sheer force that he had used to throw it down. I was certain that its contents were in the bottom of his garbage can, blue liquid oozing out everywhere.

“Stop,” he said. “Enough. If you want me to find you some work to do, I can find you some work to do.”

“For you?” I said, perking up. “Okay.”

“No,” he said, looking me dead in the eye. “Not for me.”

“But we always work together,” I said.

“Well, Tina and I worked really well together at the client’s office last Friday, so I think I’ll be working with her a lot more on a forward-going basis. You’re getting too senior to be doing all of your work for me anyway.”

“Oh,” I said, immediately feeling the urge to cry. “Of course.” I grabbed for my crutches and tried to steady myself as I stood. I pushed back the visitor’s chair with one crutch and hopped around to face Jack’s door. Jack sat at his desk staring at me.

“Anyway,” he said once I’d almost made it to the door. “I’m sure you’ll be too busy planning your wedding to Douglas to work on my cases anyway.”

“My wedding? I’m not marrying Douglas,” I said, turning to him quickly on my good leg and almost losing my footing. I hadn’t heard Douglas’s name in a week. He hadn’t even contacted me in as long despite his declaration of love and marriage proposal at Trip’s wedding, and I had a visceral reaction to hearing it spoken. “Where did you hear that?”

“Vanessa told me that he proposed to you in L.A. after I left the wedding,” he said.

“But did she also tell you that I said
no?
That I stormed out on him?”

“Yeah, she told me that part,” he said, looking me dead in the eye. “But I know you, Brooke, and you’ll be back for him. I know what you like. What’s important to you. You’ll be planning that wedding to Douglas in no time.”

“No, I won’t,” I said. “I won’t, Jack.”

“You know what, Brooke,” Jack said, shaking his head, “it doesn’t even matter anymore.”

“But I love you,” I blurted out. I didn’t mean to say it — and certainly not like that — but the words just fell out of my mouth.

Jack stared at me in silence for a moment before looking back to his computer. “I wish I could believe you,” he said as he began to type. Partners sometimes did this charming little trick when you were excused from their offices. They would bark out their orders to you, and before you could say a word, they would then pick up the telephone or begin to type or start reviewing a file without even telling you the meeting was over. Jack and I used to joke around about how unbelievably rude this practice was and report back to each other whenever a partner did it to us, putting them on a mental list of people we never wanted to work for again. I stood in Jack’s doorway for a moment, staring at him, certain he would look back up at me and want to talk, but he kept on typing furiously.

“It’s true,” I said. Jack still didn’t look up from his computer. I continued to ramble on anyway. “When you rejected me after that South Carolina trip, I couldn’t stand it. I made up all of these excuses about why you weren’t right for me, and it kept me away from you for all of these years. But now —”

“
I
rejected
you?
” Jack said. “
You
were the one who rejected
me.
I was ready to leave the firm for you — something I’d worked my ass off for — and you barely gave it a day’s thought.”

“I did give it a day’s thought,” I said. “In fact, it was the
only
thing I thought about until Danielle Lewis took me for lunch and threatened me with my job. I got scared and I ran away from you. I was wrong. I should have fought for you. But all of that doesn’t matter anymore. What matters is now. What about now? Isn’t now what’s important?”

“There is no now,” he said. “You’re going to get back with Douglas.”

“I’m not back with Douglas. I
will never
get back together with Douglas. I’m sorry about everything that’s happened. I want to make everything all right now. I want to be with
you.
I love
you.
” I began to hop back into his office, certain that he would jump up from his desk and hold me to him and tell me that he loved me, too, but he didn’t even get up from his chair.

“Really?” he asked.

“Really,” I said, my voice almost a whisper.

“See, Brooke,” Jack said, pointing to his computer, “that’s why I’m so good at crafting surveys. I’m very good at knowing that just because a product’s label says one thing to you with a big beautiful smile, you’d have to be a fool to believe it.”

I stood there frozen. I couldn’t believe that Jack didn’t believe me, didn’t forgive me, didn’t want to be with me. There was nothing left to say. As I turned around and hobbled out of his office, I could feel his eyes burning into my back.

I hopped back to my office, slammed the door shut and slumped down into my chair. I set my crutches down, leaning them on my desk next to me, but before I could stop them, they slid down and fell to the ground. I considered picking them back up for a moment, but the thought of reaching over and then getting back up exhausted me.

I was right. Vanessa was wrong and I was right. It was done. It was over. Jack and I were over. Before we’d even had a chance to really begin. Whatever Jack and I had built, I had broken. And it couldn’t be fixed. Jack didn’t want it to be fixed.

As I swiveled around to my computer, certain that work would take my mind off Jack, the telephone rang. I didn’t recognize the number on caller ID, but I picked it up anyway.

“Hello?” I said into the phone, completely forgetting to be professional and answer the phone with a crisp “Brooke Miller.”

“Hi, is this Brooke Miller?” a voice asked.

“Yes,” I said, sitting up in my chair.

“My name is Michelle Berger and I do attorney placement. Do you have some time now to talk?”

I laughed to myself.
A litigator never has time to talk.
I looked at my computer, with the Healthy Foods memo I’d written for Jack still open in Word, and the assorted other case law and documents I still had to organize for the Healthy Foods case.

“As a matter of fact, Michelle,” I said, clicking the Healthy Foods memo off my computer, “I do.”