Chapter Ten: Crossfire
Lucinda
Munching on cut-up apples before my shift was a habit I’d at the Holbeck hospital. I loved enjoying food again – it was such an improvement over where I used to be. I hoped I would never take that feeling for granted again.
Visitors, young and old, were sitting at the various tables, eating, talking, and drinking.
Then of course, the last person I wanted to see showed up in the hospital cafeteria as I blissfully sipped on my cup of coffee. The supermodel-investigative reporter that Chalk claimed he wasn’t involved with. In the pit of my stomach I felt a stab, because I didn’t believe him fully when he told me. I had no right to feel anything about it, but I did.
Look at her with all that long blonde hair and those green eyes. Who wouldn’t be attracted to her? I did look down into my coffee cup as if I would find some magical gold in the bottom of it.
“Hi, Lucinda. Nice to see you again. Looks like you’re about to start your shift,” she greeted me cheerfully.
She irked me in a few different ways and I wanted to know more, especially if she had access to my daughter and was to be around her often. “Hi, yeah, I’m having my wake-up juice before I get started.” I kept it short and not so sweet, creating some frost in the air between us.
“Am I sensing hostility from you? I wanna clear the air because that’s not what I want,” she said carefully as she leaned her hands forward over the plastic chair.
“Oh?” I looked down at my coffee and sipped. What did this woman want? This wasn’t what I had in mind to start my day.
“Do you mind if I sit down here?” she asked.
The chair started to scrape, and regardless of what I said, she sat down anyway.
“Looks to me that you’re sitting down,” I responded lightly as I gently put down my cup. “Are you working on a case by talking to a patient? Might want to keep it easy-going if they’re in recovery.” Truth, but at the same time, I was giving her a little jab.
“You seem a little tense still about the whole… me and Chalk working together. Would I be right?” she surmised.
I wrinkled my nose a little bit and sniffed. She even smelled good, how annoying. “I don’t know you and if you’re around my daughter, I would like to know more about who you are.” Yeah, a full blown excuse for my real feelings about Chalk being with this woman at all.
“Ahhh, so that’s it.” She put her perfect pouty lips into a thin line, drumming her fingers on the outside of her cup, and her face formed a smirk as if she could see through my flimsy reasons.
How could she? What I told her was a legitimate excuse.
“Woman to woman? I think this is a little deeper here.” She kept tapping her fingers on her coffee cup.
The sound was causing anger to flare up inside me, making the situation worse. Don’t try your investigative tricks on me. “Can you stop tapping the cup for a minute?” I snapped, finding myself liking her teal nail polish against my wishes.
The look on her tanned, perfect face almost feigned sympathy, making me feel like a raving banshee. Instead I sat still in my seat, listening to what would come next.
“Mmmm. How do I say this?” Angie shifted around in her seat, trying to get comfortable. “I’ve done so many interviews, I don’t know why on earth I’m nervous about this.”
My eyes fell to the table as I heaved out a sigh, waiting for her to get the stumble show over with. “Just go ahead with it. Did you sleep together or something?” I asked with a raised eyebrow.
A horrified look overshadowed Angie’s face. “Noooo. We didn’t. We flirted though. I know you guys are broken up. I just don’t want things to get weird,” she said in a casually, arrogant tone.
Well, that worked my nerves. She might be beautiful, but she’s stuck up.
She saluted at me with a weird smile. “I actually quite like you and want to spend some time getting to know you. If you would be interested, I wouldn’t mind interviewing you about your condition. That might tug at my readers’ heartstrings.”
I saw the excitement she had over my illness and it made my stomach churn. I also wondered how she knew about that. “Ah, I don’t know. I have been well for quite a long time now, so… I really do have to get to work now, otherwise I’m going to be late on shift. I hope you find the information you’re looking for,” I snapped and scooted my chair back, giving her one last sharp look.
Her expression didn’t change, and she didn’t seem too disturbed by my harshness.
I moved down the hall with a slow anger brewing that Chalk was even entertaining this woman.
It wasn’t the best possible start to my morning to be fuming on my rounds. By the time my lunch break rolled around, I’d calmed down and tried to reconcile the fact that if Chalk wanted to date someone else other than me he could. The thought saddened me, but what could I do? It made me peel back my own layers. I was naive to think he would wait for me. I simply abandoned him really. Too into my own head to even help the relationship. Toward the end, I couldn’t even care for myself, let alone a man and a daughter.
Me? Well, I’d been too sick to date anyone for the first year and a half. The second half of recovering, I went on a bunch of bungled dates which I got to joke about with the ladies now. But even I didn’t stop dating for him…so how could I expect him to do that for me? I fumed more throughout the day, feeling like a yo-yo. First, resenting his dating then kicking myself for being mad about it when really, I had no right.