Radclyffe - Turn Back Time

Pearce looked down at her hand. It was discolored and raw, the knuckles crusted where the skin had been crushed between the desk and the banister. Just remembering it made her queasy. "You don't think this will scare her, do you?"

"Ronnie understands about owies, she just doesn't appreciate that some could be much worse than others. She won't be frightened because she's used to bumps and bruises."

"Some fucking owie," Pearce muttered.

"Come on, Chief," Wynter said, squeezing Pearce's good hand.

"Let me take you over to meet my little angel."

v The little angel, looking cuddly and sweet in soft flannel jammies covered with Scooby-Doo and friends, was in the midst of demolishing a fort, which she and Mina's son Winston had built out of blocks, by crashing a red fire truck into it and screaming boom each time more blocks scattered across the floor. Plastic action figures that had been perched atop the blocks flew willy-nilly through the air. Winston, his face set in studied concentration, carefully picked up each fallen body and placed it into a white plastic ambulance.

Pearce stood in a doorway observing the carnage, thinking that the beautiful child with the red-blond hair might very well be angelic under other circumstances. At the moment she looked like a little terror. "They make a good pair," she whispered to Wynter, who stood beside her looking amused. "Ronnie runs them down and he resuscitates them."

Laughing, Wynter picked her way across the toy-littered floor and squatted down by the absorbed children. After a few whispered words to her daughter, she stood, Ronnie in her arms, and crossed back to Pearce. "Honey, this is my friend Pearce. We work together at the hospital."

Ronnie studied Pearce solemnly, her enormous blue eyes the exact color of Wynter's. Then with a squeak, she buried her face in her mother's neck.

"Oops," Pearce said.

Wynter rubbed Ronnie's back and rocked from side to side in a motion that was second nature to her. She shook her head. "It's just the age. Nothing personal."

"If you say so."

"Let me get her settled and then we can go."

"You sure? Because I can--"

"Stop," Wynter said firmly and returned Ronnie to the play area.

Within seconds, the two children were once more absorbed in their demolition activities.

As they walked outside, Pearce said, "She's gorgeous. She looks just like you."

"Thank you." The sidewalks were dry, but snow banks lined the walkways, remnants of the last storm. In the dark, with only the street lights for illumination, everything looked clean and oddly peaceful.

Wynter took a deep breath of the cold night air and felt good all over.

She did not have to work the next day, her child seemed to be settling into their new living circumstances well with the help of Ken and Mina's extended family support structure, and she was walking with a person whose company she enjoyed. An attractive, intriguing person.

A woman. A woman who occupied far more of her thoughts than any person in recent memory. She was going to have to think about that soon, but right now, she just wanted to be happy. "She's a really solid little kid."

"Uh...what about her father?"

Wynter looked straight ahead, her expression remote. "What about him?"

"Does he...you know...get to have her part of the time?" Pearce unzipped her army jacket halfway and slid her left hand inside against her body, letting the material form a makeshift sling. The cold was making her hand ache.

"Is your hand okay?"

"I know it's there."

"I want to take another look at it when we get to your place."

"It's just around the corner." Pearce recognized evasion. She was an expert at it. "Ronnie's father?"

"I have primary custody. He gets unlimited visitation--which he apparently has no desire for." Wynter pushed her gloved hands into the pockets of her coat. "He also has a new wife and an infant. He started that family before our divorce. I haven't seen or heard from him in six months."

"Fucker," Pearce said vehemently.

"Yes."

"I can't imagine anyone looking at another woman when they had you."

Wynter blinked, speechless, and tried to remember when anyone had ever said anything as nice to her before. And the funny thing was, Pearce hadn't said it to get anything from her. Not a date, not a kiss, not a promise of anything at all. In fact, she'd said it in an angry tone as if deeply affronted by the very thought. "Thank you."

Pearce whipped her head around and frowned at Wynter. "He was obviously a jerk."

"He was," Wynter agreed. "I feel stupid for not realizing it sooner.

He wanted a stay-at-home wife, but I never saw that, even when he tried to talk me out of surgery."

"But you were married when you were a medical student. He must've realized you weren't going to be that kind of wife." Pearce stopped in front of what had once been a huge single-family home.

It was set back from the street with a slate sidewalk that bisected the front lawn. Four mailboxes were lined up on the wall next to the double wooden front doors. "I'm in here."

"We met when we were freshmen in the combined BS/MD program. I don't think either one of us realized what medicine was going to be like--we were only eighteen years old. We got married in med school before I'd even had a surgery rotation. My choosing surgery was our first big issue, because he wanted a family right away and my residency was going to be a problem. My hours weren't conducive to easy child care."

"And what about him? Couldn't he have helped out there?"

"He's an orthopedic surgery resident at Yale. That's why I ranked Yale surgery first--he already had a promise of a spot outside the match, and obviously, I had to go where he was going." She tried to keep the bitterness from her voice. She'd followed him to Yale, even though it wasn't where she wanted to train. Her fault. She'd ignored all the signs that they were a bad match until it was far too late.

"You should have dumped him then."

Wynter smiled wryly. "Probably. But I was pregnant. I didn't mean to be--but the Pill never agreed with me and he hated condoms and sometimes--" She colored and looked away, realizing how pathetic she must sound to Pearce. "I made some stupid choices."

"Maybe, maybe not. But you have the little angel to show for it,"

Pearce said quietly, gratified to see Wynter's smile deepen to one of pleasure. "Look, do you want to come in for a minute?"

"I'd like to see your hand again."

"Come on, then." Pearce led the way up the sidewalk and unlocked the front door. She stepped into a small granite-tiled foyer with beaten tin wainscoting painted eggshell white. When Wynter followed her in, she felt the press of Wynter's body close against her side. She never wanted to move. She wanted to stay in that warm secluded space where they had nowhere to go except up against one another. She wanted Wynter to hold her injured hand again, to cradle it against her breast, to ease the pain with the force of her caring. She couldn't think of anything except Wynter and the smell of her hair and the soothing tones of her voice, and she fumbled for the doorknob on the interior door with its leaded glass windows. Her voice sounded hoarse to her own ears.

"One flight up."

"Okay," Wynter said softly.

Pearce led the way up the wide curved wooden staircase to the central hallway on the second floor. She unlocked a door on the right side that opened into what once had been a formal sitting room. It was now her bedroom, living room, and study all rolled into one. A dark burgundy sofa bed sat in front of the bay windows, facing into the room.

A stone fireplace was centered on the opposite wall, a desk next to it, and an archway beyond that led into a small kitchen. A dresser stood in the far corner of the room next to another door that undoubtedly led to the bathroom. There were books and journals everywhere, and the room reminded Wynter of the abandoned residents' lounge in the hospital. It was definitely Pearce.