Radclyffe - Turn Back Time

"I like your place," Wynter said.

Pearce was busy making space on the sofa, awkwardly stacking textbooks and stapled articles into piles on either side with one hand. "I don't get many visitors."

Wynter wondered whether Pearce brought women here. Dates or...whatever. The thought unsettled her, because it was so unlike her to even go there, let alone to have the quick surge of jealousy that accompanied the visions. "That's okay. Don't fuss."

"I have..." Pearce ran a hand through her hair, looking flummoxed.

"I don't know what I have. Beer for sure. Maybe a bottle of wine somewhere. Hot chocolate?"

"You have hot chocolate?" Wynter asked with pleasure.

Pearce grinned. "Yup. It's a weakness of mine."

"Mine too."

Relieved to have something to do, Pearce indicated the sofa.

"Sit down. I'll have it in a minute. I like mine with warm milk. Is that okay?"

"It's perfect, but let me help. You're one-handed, remember?"

The kitchen, although tiny, was impeccably clean. Probably, Wynter surmised, due to the fact that Pearce obviously didn't cook.

The refrigerator held a container of milk, a pizza box on the bottom shelf, a six-pack of beer, some cheese, and a half dozen eggs. While Pearce got mugs and cocoa, Wynter warmed the milk. "How long have you had this place?"

"Since I was a medical student."

"You didn't live at home?"

Pearce carefully placed the mugs on a metal tray with a Coca Cola sign painted in the center. She didn't look at Wynter when she answered. "No. I haven't lived at home since I was seventeen."

Wynter leaned one shoulder against the refrigerator, watching the shadows flicker over Pearce's face. "Did your father and your grandfather go to Penn too?"

"Yup. And my great grandfather, and my great great grandfather."

"Did you ever think about going somewhere else?"

"No."

"It must've been tough."

Pearce pointed to the refrigerator. "I should make another ice pack."

"I'll get it." Wynter opened the freezer door and jiggled the ice tray to free it from the accumulated frost. Pearce was very adept at deflecting the conversation away from the personal. At least her personal life. Wynter realized she'd shared more with Pearce in a few brief conversations than with anyone other than Mina. Pearce had a way of listening that made her feel heard. "That's quite a legacy to live up to. Did it bother you?"

"I always knew what I would be. I always knew where I would end up." Pearce spoke quietly as she searched in a cabinet for a dish towel. "It never occurred to me that there was any other choice."

Wynter turned with the ice cube tray between her fingers, trying not to freeze her hands. She held it out. "Are you happy with the way things turned out?"

Pearce settled the tray onto the palm of her uninjured hand, studying the orderly alignment of the rectangular cubes. "I don't know.

I've never stopped long enough to think about it." She looked into Wynter's eyes. "How about you?"

"I'm pretty happy with where things are right at this minute."

Wynter smiled. Standing in Pearce's kitchen with the smell of cocoa in the air, she realized just exactly how much she meant that.

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

"Oh, God," Wynter murmured, stretching her stocking feet toward the fireplace. "If I stay a minute longer, I'm not going to be able to get up and go home."

Pearce turned her head lazily on the sofa, her heavy white mug of hot chocolate balanced on her knee. She had forgotten to drink it as they had talked about medical school and Wynter's residency at Yale, sharing the many experiences they had in common. They had not mentioned Wynter's ex-husband again, although Wynter spoke often and freely about Ronnie. Pearce found she could easily discount the shadow of a husband if she didn't think about it too hard. She could sometimes even forget that Wynter was very likely to have another husband before very long. She was too beautiful and bright and dynamic to be without a partner. But those were thoughts for lonely nights when she stared into the fireplace and saw only dying embers, not the promise of light and warmth. Tonight, Wynter was beside her, and nothing had ever felt quite so right. "I'll walk you home."

"I believe I see a pattern forming here." Wynter tipped her cup and drank the last of the bittersweet chocolate. "No. We already established that you shouldn't be wandering around by yourself."

"I'm fine now. The Valium has worn off, and"--she held up her hand--"this feels a lot better."

"What are you going to do if you have to operate tomorrow?"

Wynter tucked her feet up under her on the sofa and studied Pearce, who lounged a foot away on the opposite end, her head tipped back against the sofa, her back relaxed into the curve of the cushions, her legs splayed. So comfortable in her own body. So apparently unaware of how beautiful she was.

"I'm backup call. Hopefully it will be quiet. If not, I'll get a glove on somehow and fake it with my good hand. I'd only need to scrub to second assist anyhow."

"Pearce," Wynter said with real worry. "It will kill you to scrub with those open wounds. Your hand will be a bloody mess before you're done."

"I'll use one of the scrubless chemical disinfectants." She grinned at Wynter's groan. "Okay, so it'll still sting like a mother, but I won't tear anything open with a brush. I'll survive. Besides, chances are I'll get a few phone calls during the day and nothing else, so I won't even need to go in. How 'bout you? What are your plans for tomorrow?"

"You know that you're an expert at changing the subject?"

Pearce frowned in confusion. "What do you mean?"

Wynter leaned toward her and rested her fingertips on Pearce's knee. She tapped for emphasis as she spoke. "Whenever we talk about you, if it gets the least bit confrontational, you change the subject. Or if we're sharing secrets, you manage to turn everything back on me. You know more about me than my mother at this point. And I don't know anything about you."

"Okay," Pearce said with a hint of challenge in her voice. "Ask me something."

"It doesn't work that way," Wynter said in exasperation. "It's not about twenty questions. It's about...it's about..." She stopped, uncertain what it was about. She'd never been bothered when her other friends had been overly private. She'd never wanted to know everything about one of them. What made them happy. What made them sad. What they dreamed about. She had no idea why it annoyed her that Pearce would not easily disclose those things to her. "Never mind."

"You know things about me too," Pearce said quietly. "Secret things."

"Really? What?"

Pearce tapped the back of Wynter's hand where it now rested on her thigh. "You know about my secret room. You know about the hot chocolate. You know about..." She searched her mind frantically and then looked into Wynter's inquisitive eyes, knowing that she had told Wynter her story in fragments over dinner the night Wynter had arrived, in the abandoned residents' lounge, in the operating room as they teased and bantered, and this evening, as they talked in desultory tones about growing up with the knowledge they would always be doctors, and nothing else. "You know that I am everything my family expected me to be...except a son."

Wynter's lips parted in stunned surprise. "You can't mean that."

"You've seen him with me. I'm the only heir." She tried to put words to what she had always known but never wanted to face. From the time he had first taken her with him on rounds, she had understood that that place--those buildings, those people, that world--was her destiny. She would be what he expected, because that's why she had been born. "I'm his legacy. That's what he sees when he looks at me."

"Are you doing what you want to do with your life?"