Chapter Eight

CHAPTER EIGHT

AT THE EMERGENCY room, Donna and Hudson were shown into an exam room relatively quickly. By the time she heard the clacking sounds of someone picking up the clipboard from the plastic bin screwed to the wall outside the door, Hudson had fallen asleep in her arms. Donna had been gazing down at his elegant dark lashes brushing his flushed cheeks, his mouth hanging open in sleep. She felt a wave of love wash over her. She brushed his dark hair off his forehead and cuddled him closer against her chest. He was sleeping with his left arm under her right arm and around her back, with his head tilted back and his mouth open. She imagined it wasn't easy to breathe with a foreign object blocking one nasal passage.

After a quick knock, the doctor walked into the room, eyes on the chart, and said, "So, foreign object in the nostril, huh?"

As Dr. Jack Gentry glanced up and their gazes met, Donna's heart jumped. To mask her discombobulation, she quickly lifted a finger to her lips in a shushing motion. He lowered his voice and looked at her curiously, as though she looked familiar, but he couldn't place her. He wore blue scrubs and a white lab coat, with a pen tucked behind one ear. How did the man look good in absolutely everything?

"Mrs. Westerbrook?" Jack asked quietly, looking from the chart to Donna and holding out a hand. Donna lifted her left hand and gripped his in an awkward shake.

"No, it's Gable," Donna replied in a whisper. "But I'm not a Mrs."

Then Donna inwardly cringed at the clarification. Did he think she was making sure he knew she was single? Ugh.

"My apologies," Jack said, looking chagrined. "Failing at my training already. I'm not supposed to assume."

Donna appreciated his humility. In her experience, it was a rare trait among those of his profession—Dr. Balding being a prime example.

"So, how did this come to be?" he asked, sitting on a rolling stool and inching toward her, close enough that her closed knees were between his open knees, and he bent to take a look at Hudson's predicament. The proximity made her head swim just a little.

Stop it, Donna! She reminded herself that he was married. To the worst person in the world.

"Well, he pried it off a stuffed alligator when I was in the bathroom and decided his nostril would be a great place to store it. Maybe I need to get him clothes with better pockets," she joked.

Dr. Gentry smiled.

"Well, it's good that he's sleeping. We may be able to make some headway without waking him up. One thing we could try is the mother's kiss. It could be almost over before he knows what's happening. He's how old?"

"Fifteen months," Donna said. "Does it matter that I'm not his mother?"

"What's the relationship?"

"I'm Hudson's aunt. Donna."

"Donna Gable," Jack repeated slowly, still trying to place her. "We know each other."

It was a statement, not a question.

"We do," Donna said without elaborating and smiled, revealing her dimples. That seemed to jog his memory, but he didn't say anything.

"So the mother's kiss involves pressing his unobstructed nostril closed and placing your mouth over his. You have to make a good seal. Then you deliver a short, sharp breath into his mouth. That will often dislodge the object—or even shoot it across the room."

Donna nodded and bit her lip in thought.

"Will it hurt him?"

"It feels strange, and it might scare him. But it won't hurt."

"If you think it's the best way, we can try it. I hate to wake him up, though," Donna said.

"I'm afraid that's inevitable," he said with a kind voice.

Whispering, they talked through the logistics of the maneuver. Then Dr. Gentry rolled around so he was on her right side and hovered his left hand over Hudson's face and the other over his torso.

"Ready?" he whispered. Donna nodded, struck by the intensity of their eye contact as he counted to three.

With smooth assurance, he pressed Hudson's left nostril closed while reaching his forearm across the toddler's upper chest to keep him from fighting them off. Donna instinctively grabbed Dr. Gentry's elbow as she took a breath and leaned over to cover Hudson's open mouth with hers, the two of them cocooning her nephew in a strangely intimate hug. She vaguely registered the feel of the doctor's hand against her stomach as she engaged her abs to force out a breath. The curtain of her hair swung over her shoulder and draped over them as Hudson's eyes flew open in alarm and he started struggling, coughing and wailing.

The doctor backed away and Donna instantly felt his absence. An unwelcome thought flew into her mind. She had been wasting her time on overgrown boys. This was a man. She might be tempted to ask if he had a brother, except for the prospect of having Trynn as a sister-in-law.

She marveled at her brain's ability to process that train of thought even as she lifted Hudson to her shoulder, rubbing soothing circles on his back, simultaneously jittery about his welfare. Dr. Gentry swung around behind Donna to peek at the progress they'd made, holding Hudson's arm against Donna's shoulder to keep him from messing with his nose.

"Good job, Aunt Donna," he said reassuringly, and she liked the way he said her name. "It's almost out."

A nurse knocked briskly on the door and walked in. For some reason, Donna was glad she hadn't interrupted them earlier. How would that have looked to an outside observer? Would Donna's elevated heart rate be obvious to a trained medical professional? If it was, Donna hoped she'd attribute it to the stress of the moment.

While Hudson sobbed, Jack blew up a disposable glove into a balloon and pretended to tickle Hudson with it, and Donna too. Her laughter bubbled up naturally; she didn't have to pretend for Hudson's sake. But nothing worked, until Jack slapped himself in the face with the balloon hand, then scolded it, and got slapped again. The mock battle had Hudson sitting up and giggling in no time, as one final tear followed the slope of his cheek and dripped to his t-shirt. The eyeball was now partially protruding from his nostril. Their goal was to keep Hudson from undoing their progress.

Jack continued to engage Hudson's attention with an animated smile and unexpected movements, while simultaneously instructing the nurse in a quiet voice to prepare a suction device. He was good at this. He showed Hudson how the device worked, trying it on his own palm and then Donna's, on his own cheek and then Donna's, on the balloon hand and then on Hudson's shirt.

"Auntie Donna, I'm going to keep playing this game with him," Jack said, without breaking eye contact with her nephew. "You start playing with his hair and work up to where you're holding his forehead back against your chest."

Donna complied, and Hudson was surprisingly cooperative, distracted as he was by the suction device Jack was moving around Hudson's body, from his toes, to his knees, to his tummy, to his chin. Once Hudson was accustomed enough to the clear tube and the whooshing sound it made that he stopped following it with his eyes, Donna tightened her grip on her nephew's forehead, and Jack deployed some magician-level sleight of hand to wave the balloon glove with one hand while swiftly suctioning the eyeball from Hudson's nostril with the other.

Donna released her grip and turned Hudson around on her lap before he could react. She started bouncing him on her knees, while the nurse took the instrument from Jack and put it away.

"Who's a brave boy?" Donna asked, and covered his face with kisses.

"Good teamwork," Jack said, holding out his fist for Donna to bump. Hudson lifted his chubby fist too, wanting in on that action.

The nurse paused near the door for a moment, looking at the doctor expectantly.

"I'll be just a minute," he said. "Donna's an old friend."

The nurse looked back and forth between them, trying to size up the level of familiarity, before leaving the room. This must not be usual behavior for him.

"Thanks Doc," she said, smiling broadly.

"You're welcome Daphne," he said, folding his arms with a satisfied smile.

"You figured it out," she said, breaking eye contact to hand Hudson his father's car keys to play with.

"The dimples," he said by way of explanation and flashed a devastating smile. "You were also someone from Grease?"

" Rizzo," she said, wondering if his thoughts had returned to the cleavage incident, as hers had.

"But I know you from somewhere else, too, don't I?"

"Several places," Donna said.

"And you're not going to tell me," he said flatly. She could see the questions in his eyes. Was he reflecting back on their previous conversation, where she had referenced a kiss but didn't elaborate?

"Nope," she said with a mysterious smile that probably came across as more flirtatious than she intended, flipping her long hair back over her shoulder unconsciously.

"And can I ask why not?" he asked, leaning toward her with his elbows on his knees, his gaze searching but amused.

She felt a fluttering in her chest again. Did he know the effect he was having on her? But his pager went off before she could answer, drawing his attention to the little black device in his hand.

"Well," she said lightly. "Just because you don't wear your wedding ring at work doesn't mean you're not married."

He gave her a startled look, all traces of friendliness disappearing in an instant.

"I have to get this," he said, rising briskly and holding the eyeball out to drop it in Donna's palm.

"You're free to go," he said over his shoulder when he reached the door, and humiliation washed over her.

Why had she opened her big mouth?

It seemed like he was flirting, but of course he couldn't have been. That would be so unprofessional, possibly even unethical. And he seemed like the type to take his profession seriously, if not his marriage.

How mortifying that she had read his banter as anything more than geniality. No wonder he clammed up and raced out of the room. He must think she was so pathetic. Why would a devastatingly handsome doctor with a tv-star wife who had recently been photographed for People magazine wearing a barely-there bikini, in a feature about diet tips from the cast of Drama Club , stoop to flirting with a waitress who worked at a gimmicky theme restaurant and absolutely did not have washboard abs?

It was probably just bothering him that he couldn't figure out how they were acquainted. He was used to having all of the answers. And she, who was nothing more than a puzzle for him to solve, had basically accused him of hitting on her. At a hospital. While he was on duty.

As she carried her nephew to the Jeep, she wished desperately that she could erase the entirety of the last hour. An alligator eyeball in a nostril is hardly an emergency. She should have listened to Cat and taken Hudson to an urgent care instead.

She sincerely hoped she would never see Dr. Jack Gentry ever again.

After a visit to the bathroom, a diaper change, and visit to the vending machine for some Goldfish crackers, Hudson ran to the shiny, silver elevator doors and begged to ride the "owigator."

He'd been so brave about the eyeball extraction. How could she say no to the excitement that was practically bursting out of him? She lifted him so he could push the up button, deciding she'd let him ride all the way to the top and back down just once.

On the top floor, they spent a good 20 minutes looking out the windows of the visitors area, gawking at the fluffy clouds above them and the miniature cars below. She pointed out the direction of the ocean, even though they couldn't actually see it from this vantage point.

On the way back down, Hudson lit up the numbers to every floor before Donna could stop him, which made for a long, slow descent. He said an enthusiastic "Hi!" to everyone who joined them for a floor or two, instantly charming patients, staff, and visitors alike. Donna decided this could count as her service project for the week—taking her nephew to spread cheer throughout all 15 floors of the hospital.

When the doors slid open on the eighth floor, Donna's stomach sank into her Prada leather sneakers.

Jack raised his eyebrows at her as he stepped onto the elevator in his street clothes, with a leather satchel over his shoulder. He smiled down at Hudson, who was now breathing free through both nostrils. She was tempted to pretend she forgot something and hop off at the next floor, but Hudson had already toddled over to Jack and reached up his arms. Jack visibly softened and picked the little boy up. Hudson reached out his hand to touch the digital floor-number display, now at his eye level, watching intently as the number changed at each floor.

They rode in silence as two people joined them on floor six. After they both exited on floor four, Donna and Jack started speaking at the exact same moment.

"I'm divorced, by the way," Jack said while Donna blurted out, "I didn't mean to assume…"

"Sorry, what did you say?" she followed up.

"You mentioned at the restaurant that you know Trynn," Jack said, eyes trained on Hudson. "We've been divorced for a year."

"Oh, no," Donna said. "I'm sorry. I hadn't heard that. I haven't seen Trynn since the panel at UC-Irvine."

"You were there?"

"You really aren't good with faces," she laughed.

"Okay Donna Daphne Rizzo Leia Gable, you must enjoy torturing me," he said, putting Hudson down when he started to squirm. "I know I know you from the In Character Cafe. Where else?"

"Let me refresh your memory," she said, pulling up her pant leg and pointing her toe to display her shapely right ankle above the curve of her no-show socks, which were, in fact, showing.

He looked at her blankly.

"I came late and was a little distracted by a sprained…" he said, and she saw the moment it dawned on him. "That was you!"

"Yes, and thank you," she said. "You were right. It was just a sprain."

"Do you wear glasses?"

"Just that day," she shrugged. "They went with the outfit."

"But you had an accent."

"It also went with the outfit. I was in theater school, remember?"

"I don't remember that girl having dimples, though. She did have a ‘manic pixie dream girl' vibe, though…" he said.

Did he just say "dream girl"?

"My dimples only show when I smile, and I didn't have much to smile about," she said.

By now, they had reached the lobby and were walking to the parking lot, each holding one of Hudson's hands.

"One, two, fwee," he kept insisting, lifting his little feet off the ground with every "fwee." So Donna showed Jack the intricacies of the "one-two-three-swing-Hudson-high-in-the-air" game. His squeals brought smiles to both of their faces, and when their eyes met, Donna felt a jolt in her heart. Generous lips. Straight, white teeth. What a smile.

They paused the game to allow someone in scrubs to pass them on the sidewalk from the other direction.

"Beautiful family, Doc," she said, walking briskly past before Jack had a chance to respond.

Donna and Jack glanced sideways at each other and laughed.

"I'll set her straight next time I see her," Jack said.

"A medical professional should be able to tell that this little boy could not be the product of the two of us," Donna said, mussing Hudson's hair, the same dark shade as his mother's.

"We'd definitely have little towheads," he said, practically swallowing the last word. They both fell silent, each of them quietly contemplating how their conversation had taken such a personal turn.

Donna cleared her throat. Had he parked near her? Didn't hospital staff have designated spaces?

"So, you and Trynn didn't have any kids?"

Jack cough-laughed. "How well did you know her again?"

"Just from the one play," Donna said, wisely suppressing her initial inclination to say, "Better than I wanted to."

They had reached the orange Jeep on the first floor of the parking garage.

"Well, this is me," she said, pulling Ty's keys from her pocket and lifting Hudson up to buckle him in his carseat, which was not a smooth process for her even when Jack Gentry's eyes weren't following her every move.

"These things are ridiculous," she grunted, finally clicking all of the latches into place and handing Hudson a board book to play with.

She flipped her hair back over her shoulder and turned to Jack, still standing back by the bumper with his hands in his pockets.

"Well, thanks again," she said, reaching out to shake his hand, then instantly wondering if that was weird. Probably not, since he didn't immediately let go.

"Did I dance with you at a wedding?" he asked, looking closely at her face.

For reasons she couldn't identify, she was tempted to lie to him.

But she didn't.

"Yes, my sister Catharine's," she said. "At your wife's insistence, I might add."

"Ex-wife," he felt it necessary to clarify. "I remember now. Your hair was up. You wore a pink dress."

"Good memory."

"Well, I don't get to dust off those old dance moves very often these days," he said. "Plus, I rarely forget a face."

"Ha! You've managed to forget mine several times."

"There were extenuating circumstances!"

"Such as…"

"Such as the fact that you look completely different every time I see you. Glasses, braids, wigs, entire costumes…"

"All clothes are costumes, if you think about it," she said. "You were wearing your doctor costume earlier. And now you're dressed like an office worker on casual Friday."

He glanced down at his plaid button-up shirt and olive chinos.

"Is that bad?" he asked.

"Not necessarily," she said. But if she were dressing him, she would have suggested something less drab—something that brought out the intense blue of his eyes.

"So I know you from the cafe," he started counting on his fingers, "from the musical you were in with Trynn, from the sprained ankle, from your sister's wedding…"

"And now from the great alligator eyeball rescue," she grinned, peeking in at Hudson, whose eyelids were growing heavy.

"But somehow, I don't remember kissing you."

His eyes flicked to her mouth, and she felt delicious tendrils of heat swirling in her stomach. "You didn't."

"But you, er, Daphne, said…"

"I kissed you," she said mysteriously. "But it wasn't my idea. I was just following orders."

"Orders?" he looked more confused than ever. "Honestly, I'm pretty sure I would remember."

"And yet, somehow you don't," she teased.

Her phone started ringing.

"It's Hudson's mom," she said. "I have to grab this."

"Okay," he said, looking reluctant. "Well, see you around."

"Given our history, the odds are pretty good," she said, then swiped to unlock her phone.

"Hi Audrey! Everything's fine," Donna said into the phone, watching Jack walk away, back toward the hospital. "But hang on, I need to ask the doctor something real quick."

She muted her phone and called after Jack.

"Hey Doc!"

Jack paused and turned around.

"Is his nostril going to be all stretched out now?"

"No," he said, amusement in his voice. "Cartilage doesn't work that way."

"Got it. Thanks again!"

He nodded, and she turned to close Hudson's door.

"Audrey?" she said, unmuting the phone as her screen lit up with another call. "Hudson's totally fine. The doctor got the eyeball out in no time. He barely even cried. Hang on, Mom's calling on the other line."

She answered Julie's frantic call, reassured her, then clicked back over to Audrey, who was in a full-blown panic.

"Audrey! Audrey, calm down. It was a toy eyeball. He stuck it up his nose. He still has both of his original eyes."

Hysterical laughter bubbled up in Donna's chest, which she tried unsuccessfully to suppress.

"Deep breaths, Audrey," she said, ignoring a new call coming in from Cat. "I guess you didn't read all my texts. I'm SO sorry for the misunderstanding. No you don't need to come to the hospital. He's fast asleep. We're on our way. We'll meet you at Mom's."

She rounded the bumper to the driver's side and nearly collided with Jack, who had returned to hand her a small piece of paper.

"I promise," she was saying, accepting the paper without looking at it. "We got the best doctor on duty. He's right here, do you want to talk to him? No? Okay, hang on."

She covered the mouthpiece, tears of mirth gathering in the corners of her eyes.

"She thought you removed her son's actual eyeball," she said with a half-snort, grabbing his forearm to steady herself. Jack's face broke open in a grin as bright as a sunrise, and Donna felt blinded by the rays. Until this moment, she had no idea how sexy shared laughter could be.

Then Abba's number flashed on the screen.

"Audrey, now Abba is calling, and I just missed a call from Cat. If you accidentally spread some rumors, I'm going to need you to go ahead and tamp them down. I need to drive."

She looked helplessly at Jack as her phone lit up like a switchboard. He gave a low wave and, chuckling, walked away for the second time. She read the hastily scrawled note he had torn from a prescription pad.

D—

I'm interested in solving the mystery of the alleged kiss.

–J

Professionalism be damned, they had now fully entered flirting territory. He'd even included his phone number—in stereotypically bad doctor handwriting. Did medical school have a mandatory course called Illegible Penmanship 101? Or was this simply a topic that got neglected in favor of more important matters like, say, the circulatory system?

"Yes, like I said, he's asleep in his carseat," Donna continued to reassure Audrey as she pulled out of the parking lot, passing Jack with a wave. "We'll be home soon."

It occurred to her that Jack hadn't been parked anywhere near her. He must have had some other reason for walking her all the way to her car.

The next day, Donna considered the note and what she knew of Dr. Jack Gentry.

For one thing, they crossed paths with unusual frequency, given the very different circles they traveled in.

For another, his surgeon friend had made it clear that Jack had sworn off actresses, so why had he returned to the cafe several times, even requesting to sit in her section? (Back before she reminded him he was married, of course, which he actually hadn't been at the time, as it turned out.) Donna didn't think he seemed like a player, but maybe she was misreading him.

For a third thing, his short-lived marriage to Trynn Gentry made Donna doubtful that she could be his type in any way, shape, or form. She and Trynn were opposites in practically every way, except for their shared background in theater.

But…maybe that was the reason right there. Since things had fallen apart with Trynn, perhaps he was looking for someone as different from her as possible? Donna would definitely fit that bill.

Or could it be that the physical response she felt in his presence was reciprocated? Did he feel the same gravitational pull toward her that she'd been trying to deny, with limited success? Did he get that sinking sensation in his stomach, the shallow breathing, the electrified nerve endings? Did he wonder what it would be like to kiss her for real?

Donna almost couldn't bring herself to imagine it. He'd always been so utterly out of reach, either married or so far out of her league that she hadn't let herself even entertain the thought. But now that she knew he was single, and he'd sent her some very unsubtle signals, she found she couldn't get him out of her head.

So, with a swarm of butterflies swirling in her chest cavity—to a degree she hadn't felt since junior high—she texted the number he had scrawled on the note, rewriting her response several times before finally settling with:

"What do you mean ‘alleged kiss'? Are you accusing me of telling but not kissing?"

She hit the send button and sat staring at the screen, willing those three little dots to appear that would tell her he was texting her back.

But he didn't respond right away.

Or at all that day.

Or the day after that either.

And refreshing her messages every 15 minutes didn't seem to be helping.

She knew residents worked long shifts and weird hours, and he didn't have the kind of job where he could be on his phone all the time. But after a couple of days, she concluded there had to be more to his lack of response than that.

He must have regretted handing her that note, decided she wasn't worth the effort, or moved on to someone else. Possibly all three.

And Donna wasn't about to make herself look desperate by texting him again.

A couple of weeks later, while Donna was wiping down tables at the end of the afternoon shift, dressed as Samara Morgan from The Ring horror movie—a dark curtain of hair hiding her face—she saw Jack walk slowly past the wall of windows, hands in pockets. Was he trying to look casual or something? He seemed to be surreptitiously scanning the interior of the restaurant. She ducked into a corner, watching him through her stringy wig. When he reached the corner, he turned back the way he came, again glancing repeatedly into the empty restaurant.

What was that all about?

He obviously wasn't just passing by on his way somewhere else.

But if he was looking for her, she wasn't hard to find. The hours were posted clearly on the door, and she was here almost every weekday.

A waiter in a Freddy Krueger costume walked in from the kitchen and screamed. Surprisingly high pitched.

"Donna!" he said. "You don't have to stay in character after we close. You almost gave me a heart attack."

Donna laughed and pulled off her wig, going along with his assumption rather than confess the truth—that she was hiding from a hot young almost-doctor who'd been loitering on the sidewalk.

"And you thought you were going to be the scary one on this shift," she said.

She finished her closing checklist, climbed into Kermit, and headed back to her apartment.

A sudden weight of loneliness and dissatisfaction pressed on her. Was the novelty of the In Character Cafe beginning to wear off? Or was it that Halloween, Thanksgiving, and Christmas were just around the corner, and all the looming family parties were already starting to get to her? She could picture it now. At gathering after gathering, she would still be stuck at the kid table with her younger sisters, with three blissful couples at the other end of the room reminding her every second of what she still didn't have. Four couples, if she counted her parents.

She hadn't realized how high Jack had gotten her hopes that day at the hospital until they sputtered out like a deflated balloon.

When she was holding that prescription in her hand, she finally let herself acknowledge the unspoken attraction she felt toward him—which had been building, interaction by interaction, for years. He must have felt it too, at least a little. Otherwise, why walk her all the way to her car, and then return to hand her a flirtatious note? And why go radio silent when she responded? And even more puzzling, why bother scouting out her place of work if he can't even be bothered to respond to a text?

Maybe his sarcasm detector was on the fritz, and he took her message to mean she was actually upset. Which, if he had gleaned anything about her personality at all, would not make sense. And it wouldn't reflect well on him either. If there was one personality trait she would never be able to live with, no matter what other myriad attractions he possessed, it was humorlessness.

Maybe it was better this way.

Maybe if she immersed herself in another play, she'd find something—and maybe even someone—new to occupy her thoughts.