Steven James - The Knight

She knew how to identify a few kinds of flowers, but mostly just the ones everyone knew-lilies and daisies and roses. She didn’t have a clue what kind of flowers these were.

But she was more curious about who might have sent them than what kind they were. “Was there a note?”

The secretary with the all-too-forgettable name fished out a small envelope from where it had fallen behind some leaves.

The envelope was eggshell white and had only four words handwritten on the front: “To Amy Lynn Greer.”

She immediately realized that it wasn’t her husband’s handwriting and that if he’d sent her the flowers he wouldn’t have included her last name.

But if not Reggie, who? She had a few sources who were male, and a few friends who were a little more than friends-but none of them would have been brash enough to send her flowers. At least she didn’t think so.

The secretary lurked. “I didn’t open it.” She pointed to the envelope.

“Thank you… um, wait, I’m sorry. What’s your name again?”

The woman looked hurt by the question. “Brett Neilson. I’ve been working here for-”

“Thank you, Brett, yes. I’m sorry. I’m not so good with names.”

“It’s OK,” Brett said, but she didn’t leave, just stared longingly at the flowers. “My husband never sends me flowers.”

Amy Lynn didn’t know what to say to that. Finally, she just mumbled, “Well, men. You know.” It sounded pathetic when she said it, but it somehow seemed to satisfy Brett Neilson, who gave her a parting half-smile and backed out of the room, pulling the door closed behind her.

After Brett was gone, Amy Lynn studied the flowers again. They had a formal, functional quality about them rather than a flirty, romantic one. And that scent. Was it a spice?

And who sent them?

She had no idea.

The note.

Ripping open the envelope, she found a small slip of card stock paper with a short, cryptic, handwritten message:

Must needs we tell of others’ tears? Please, Mrs. Greer, have a heart. -John

John?

John who?

She didn’t recognize the handwriting.

Amy Lynn considered all the Johns she knew and almost immediately eliminated all of them from her list of people who might possibly send her flowers, especially ones with an enigmatic note like this.

Maybe a reference to a story she’d done? Something about grief? Tragedy? Someone’s death?

Amy Lynn turned to her computer and felt excitement stir inside of her for the first time that morning.

Figuring out who sent the flowers was much more interesting than analyzing local politics or writing about the families of drug-abusing baseball players. Her editor would just have to wait.

She shoved her other notes aside, tapped at her keyboard, and began to search through the articles she’d written, looking for references to anyone named John.

Cheyenne and I arrived at Baptist Memorial Hospital, one of the oldest and most respected hospitals in the state of Colorado, at 9:46 a.m.

The hospital administration had been renovating the eastern wing for the last six months, and I could see that they still had a long way to go. Local press coverage had emphasized how “patient care had not been compromised in the least” during the current renovations, but over the years I’ve seen how much spin finds its way into press releases, so I hadn’t been completely convinced by the hospital administrator’s carefully worded PR statements.

I was stepping out of the car when my cell rang.

“What did we do before cell phones?” Cheyenne said good-naturedly.

“Got into fewer car accidents.” I looked at the caller ID picture on the screen.

Lien-hua Jiang.

OK, this was inconvenient. Cheyenne glanced at me. “Excuse me for a minute,” I said.

“Sure.” She started across the parking lot, and I waited until she was out of earshot.

“Hey,” I said to Lien-hua.

“Hello, Pat. How are you?”

“Good. Things are good, pretty good.” A stiff and meaningless response. I began to follow Cheyenne but made sure I stayed far enough back so she wouldn’t hear my conversation. “How are you?”

“I’m OK. Thanks for asking.”

“Well, that’s good.”

“Yeah.” A pause that spoke volumes. “Pat, you know why I’m calling, I think.”

Wow. Well, she’s not wasting any time, is she?

“I’m thinking maybe I can guess.” The words had a bite to them, and I knew it, but I let them stand.

“Please, it’s hard enough doing this over the phone. You don’t have to make it worse.”

“I’m not trying to-” I really did not want to be doing this. Not here, not now. Twenty meters in front of me Cheyenne was entering the hospital. “Look, can we talk about this later, maybe later today?”

“I’m going on assignment to Boston and I don’t want to have this hanging over my head. It’s nothing against you, Pat. You know that.” I could hear pain in her voice but no condemnation. She still cared about me, wasn’t blaming me. And that just made this harder.

“It’s just…” she said. “Things haven’t been… It’s not working.”

For more than a month now things had been deteriorating, and we’d both been dancing around the issue, avoiding saying what we both knew we needed to. “Really, Lien-hua, this isn’t a good-”

“It’s over, Pat.”

I felt a sting, a deep sense of finality and regret. “No, we’ll talk about it later. Maybe when I get to DC later this week we can-”

“No. Please. It would be too hard for me.” Her voice wasn’t harsh, but it was firm.

A long pause followed her words. I had no idea what to say.

I tried to formulate the right words, but they escaped me, “So then…”

“Yes.”

I arrived at the hospital’s automatic sliding doors, and they whisked open. I was barely aware of myself stepping inside.

On a better day, either Lien-hua or I might have found something helpful or healing to say before we ended the call, but on this day, neither of us did. A few thick moments of silence fell between us until at last she said good-bye and I said good-bye, and then the conversation was over. Long before I was ready for it to be.

The sliding doors closed behind me, and I stood staring blankly at the phone until I felt Cheyenne’s presence beside me.

“Everything all right?”

“Yes,” I lied.

I slipped the phone into my pocket, and it felt unusually awkward and uncomfortable. I pulled it out and jammed it back in, harder.

She looked at me with understanding and concern. “No, it’s not.”

“I’m all right,” I said, but I didn’t look her in the eye. “Let’s go.”

A few minutes later we were being escorted down the hall by Lance Rietlin, a fidgety man in his late twenties who spent the walk telling Cheyenne how much he appreciated being able to work under someone as experienced and respected as Dr. Bender, but I wasn’t really listening. Instead, I was trying to convince myself that Lien-hua and I could still be friends, that we would be able to put aside the deep feelings we’d had for each other and move back to the way things were before we started going out-because that’s what you tell yourself at times like this.

You tell yourself those things, you hide inside naivety, because the truth is too painful to admit.

And the truth was: from now on it would be difficult to work with Lien-hua; I would be jealous of the attention she gave to other men and I would always wonder if we-I-could have done more to salvage our relationship.

Lance led us down a set of stairs and into the hospital’s lower level past a series of custodial supply closets and the physical therapy room. “They’re doing some kind of maintenance on the elevators,” he explained as we passed the “out of order” signs taped across the doors. “They’re supposed to have ’em up and running in an hour or so. But I wouldn’t hold my breath.”