Triggers

And, although Eric had thought this before about some babies or toddlers, this wasn’t a reference to a tyke with a teddy bear. It was about a man, a grown man. And yet Eric was, as he himself liked to say, flamingly heterosexual. But this thought was about an adult man with a bald pate and a graying beard, and—

Oh!

It was a thought about himself.

Yes, he kept his beard neat with a barber’s electric razor, and, sure, he did try to hit the gym a couple of times a week, buthe was no narcissist; he didn’t think of himself as cute. In fact, if anything, he thought he was kind of funny-looking with beady eyes and a nose so short it might fairly be called “pug.”

And, hey, he’s checking me out.

Eric was so discombobulated that he was about to turn on his heel and head back the other way when Janis looked up and smiled a huge, radiant smile at him, and—

It’s her, he realized. It’s what she thought about me, back on that August day, but—

But how?

The pain of the tattoo.

A house—small, cramped.

A dachshund waddling along.

Pink cross-country skis.

He continued walking toward her, drawn to her.

He knew how much she made. Knew her birth date. Knew all kinds of things.

“Hello, Jan…iss.” He paused, having to force the second syllable out, it coming to him in a flash that only people at work ever called her “Janis.” Everyone else in her life called her just “Jan.”

“Dr. Redekop,” she said. “Good to see you.”

His eyes dropped—not to her breasts, although they were certainly noteworthy, but to her shoulder; he was thinking of the tattoo, and—

And the bruise…

Not bruising from having the tattoo made, but—

My God!

But bruising from…from yesterday.

She saw where his gaze had gone, and she turned a little, as if to hide her upper arm from his sight, but then she must have realized that her nurse’s smock covered it completely, and yet, when she turned back to him, it was a long moment before she met his eyes again.

“Um,” he said, “you look well.” And as soon as the words were out, he realized it was an odd thing to say, but—

But his mind was filling now with thoughts that—God!—that must be hers.

He’d never believed in telepathy, or mind reading, or any of that garbage. Jesus!

But, no, wait. It wasn’t that; not quite. She was looking at him quizzically now, and he had no idea what she was currently thinking. But as soon as he thought about the day he’d run into her in the tank top, memories of that came to him—from her point of view.

And other things kept coming to him, too—information about patients in this wing; details about some online game called EVE; a bit from The Colbert Report, which he never watched; and—yes, yes—more thoughts, more memories, about him. About the first time they’d met. He didn’t remember the specific day, but she did; it was her first day on the new job here, nine months ago. It had been—ah, yes, now that he thought about it, he did remember…or she did. All the decorations: it had been Valentine’s Day.

And she’d thought, after meeting him, of this bald, thin man, “Slap a British accent on him, and he’s everything I’ve been fantasizing about since I was fifteen.” She liked older men. She liked Patrick Stewart and Sean Connery and—

And Eric Redekop.

He’d always liked Janis, but he’d had no idea—none!—that she felt that way about him, and…

And she was speaking, he realized, and he’d been so lost in thought he hadn’t heard what she’d said. “Sorry. Um, could you repeat that?”

She gave him another quizzical look, then: “I said, that was quite a surprise when the power went off, wasn’t it? I didn’t think that could happen here.”

“Oh, yeah. Yes, it was.” He was only about three feet away from her now, and he could see that her makeup was perfect—a little eyeliner, a little blue eye shadow—and her eyebrows had been recently and expertly plucked; in fact, he had a flash of seeing herself as she’d leaned toward a bathroom mirror, and he recalled a constellation of pain-points as she’d done the deed.

But thinking about her eyes brought forth other memories—memories of her crying—crying as someone screamed profanity at her. It was so shocking, so wrong, that Eric instinctively stepped backward.

“Janis,” he said, this time getting the full name out without hesitation—although he realized at once that it wasn’t the full name; her full name actually was Janis Louise Falconi, and Falconi was her married name; her maiden name was Amundsen, and—

And he had to finish the sentence he’d begun! “Janis, um, are you okay?”

“As well as can be expected,” she said. “Why do you ask?”

“No reason,” he replied, but he found himself backing further away.

Chapter 9