Chapter 37

Chapter Thirty-Seven

PRESENT DAY

SYDNEY

Tom and I are on date number six.

We are meeting in Chinatown, close to my absolute favorite dim sum restaurant, where I only got food poisoning one time. I've been dying to take him here, but he's proven himself to be a bit of a workaholic, so we've been scheduling our dates around his work shifts. But the dim sum restaurant stops bringing around carts at three, so he told me he'd take a taxi here right from work. When he said that, I got a little nervous, considering what he does for a living, but he promised he would shower before meeting me.

While I'm waiting on the corner, my stomach rumbling slightly at the aroma of stir-fried noodles that seems to permeate the street, my phone starts ringing. I fish it out of my purse—my mother's name is on the screen. I check the time—I have a few minutes until Tom is supposed to be here, so I take the call. Maybe it will distract my rumbling stomach.

"What's going on, Mom?" I ask.

"I just heard fantastic news," she says breathlessly.

"Oh?"

"Yes! My cousin's daughter Jackie just had twins at forty-two years old!"

My mother's good news is becoming increasingly insulting. "Wow. Great."

"At forty-two! Twins! That could be you, Sydney."

I shift my phone to my other ear, looking down the street to make sure Tom isn't coming toward me. "I'm not really worrying about that right now, Mom."

"Well, why not?" she huffs. "You're in your mid-thirties and you're single!"

Am I in my mid-thirties? I'm thirty-four. Doesn't that count as early thirties? I mean, I'm younger than thirty-five, so that's still early thirties, right?

"And you're not even seeing anyone," she continues.

I haven't told her about my five dates with Tom, mostly because I don't want her getting overly excited or pushing me for details. But it's almost worse when she's complaining about me being alone.

"Actually," I say, "I am sort of seeing someone."

"You are?" she gasps, as if I've told her something extremely shocking. "Who?"

"Nobody you know."

"Well, what's his name?"

"Tom."

"Tom short for Thomas?"

"I guess so."

"What's his last name?"

"Brown." Unsurprisingly, Tom was very difficult to google.

"And what does he do?"

Of course, that would be the first thing she would want to know after his name. "He's a doctor."

She doesn't need to know what kind of doctor he is. Sometimes I wish I didn't know.

"Oh, wow!" She sounds delighted now. "That's great!"

I lift my eyes from my phone and discover that Tom is climbing out of a taxi midway down the block. He stops for a moment on his way over to me to hand a few dollar bills to a homeless man sitting on the street, which is something he does more than anyone else I have ever met. Our eyes meet, and he waves at me. "And also, he's coming this way, so I'm going to go."

"Can I say hello?"

"Absolutely not . Goodbye, Mom."

I manage to hang up just as Tom gets within earshot. He's changed out of whatever he was wearing to the hospital, and his hair looks damp, like he recently showered. Good. I definitely don't want to smell dead body on him.

Because we are now on date number six, he feels very comfortable leaning in for a kiss. And as always, it's enough to make my legs go weak. Eventually, I'm sure that giddiness will go away, but I'm enjoying it while it lasts.

"Hello there," he breathes in my ear. "I hope I'm not too late."

"Only a few minutes."

I lead him down the crowded block, and for a moment I wonder if he'll take my hand. But he doesn't. Tom isn't a hand-holder, which is fine. Jake wasn't either.

We pass one of the fish markets that are present on nearly every block, then a store selling various tchotchkes and souvenirs. Tom must not have been to Chinatown in a while, because he seems intrigued by the items they're selling, even though I'm more focused on getting to dim sum before the cutoff.

"Hey," he says, "do you want me to buy you a decorative fan?"

"Thanks, but I'll pass."

"How about a miniature turtle?"

Sure enough, there's a tub filled with baby turtles no longer than my pinkie finger. They are actually pretty adorable. Do turtles make good pets? I have no idea, but I suspect a turtle purchased off the street is probably teeming with turtle bacteria. "No, thank you."

"How about some illegal fireworks? I bet they have some."

I roll my eyes at him. "Great. Just what I need, to blow a few fingers off."

"When I was an intern, I had a patient come in after a firecracker exploded in his hand," he says. "We had to amputate his first and second metacarpals. They let me scrub in—it was really cool."

His eyes are lit up the way they always are whenever he talks about anything medical. "Oh, please, tell me more," I say.

"Well, the burns were extensive, involving the entire palmar aspect of the—" He stops talking when he sees the look on my face. "You were being sarcastic."

"Obviously."

Despite all my experience with blood, the thought of a person getting their fingers chopped off turns my stomach, and I certainly don't want to hear about it when we're about to eat. But Tom looks so crestfallen that he can't tell me all about the hand ravaged by a firecracker. He's quiet the entire rest of the way down the block.

But by the time we get to the dim sum restaurant, he seems to have cheered up. When I show him the door, he jumps in front of me to open it first, holding it for me like he always does. That is definitely not an act on his part. He really is a gentleman. What can I say—he's perfect. Well, except for his job. "After you," he says.

As we're walking inside the restaurant, we pass two elderly women who are on their way out. One of them does a double take when she sees Tom. "Dr. Brewer?" she says.

He blinks at her. "Yes?"

"Dr. Brewer!" She's a small, round woman with close-cropped gray hair and comically oversized glasses. "I thought that was you! My name is Velma Stewart. I'm a patient of yours." Tom looks at her in astonishment, and she adds, "I mean, my husband was. He passed and you did his autopsy a few months ago."

"Oh!" Recognition fills his eyes. "Yes. Yes, of course. How are you, Mrs. Stewart?"

"Better now." Her eyes become misty for a moment. "I just wanted to thank you for coming to talk to me. You told me that Harvey died quickly and in his sleep, and that he didn't suffer—that gave me so much peace. And then you let me ramble on telling you stories about him for about an hour even though I'm sure you were extremely busy."

His cheeks color. "Oh, I didn't mind."

"You are such a good listener," she says. "You were so kind to me. It was one of the worst times of my life, and it really helped that you were there to listen. Bless you, Dr. Brewer."

Tom looks embarrassed but he's smiling. "I'm glad I could help."

The old woman sets her gaze on me. "You have a good one there, young lady." She looks back over at Tom. "And he's so handsome too!"

Well, I knew that part.

The woman thanks Tom about five more times, then she ambles out of the restaurant, leaving the two of us to have our dim sum lunch together. I can tell he really enjoyed that interaction, and he's still smiling when we sit down in our booth.

"That was nice," he says. "I don't get to interact with patients too often. Obviously. Sometimes I really miss it."

"Did you always know you wanted to be a pathologist?"

"Actually, when I was younger, I wanted to become a surgeon."

I can imagine that. He's so smart and knowledgeable, and I have noticed he's very good with his hands. He would have been a great surgeon, I bet. "Why didn't you?"

"Uh…" He rakes a hand through his black hair. "I guess I just… I don't know. Turned out it wasn't for me."

I glance over my shoulder at the door—the old woman is long gone. "Why did she keep calling you Dr. Brewer? I wasn't sure if I should correct her."

Tom hesitates for a split second. "My last name is Brewer."

What? "You told me your last name is Brown!"

"No, it's Brewer."

"You definitely said Brown!"

I remember it well, mostly because I was thinking at the time that Tom Brown was an impossible name to google because there would be so many hits. And sure enough, my search turned up nothing, even when I added "MD," "New York," and "pathologist." Not that Tom Brewer would be much better.

Tom lifts a shoulder. "Sorry, you must've heard me wrong. I'm one hundred percent sure my last name is Brewer. I can show you my driver's license if you want."

I'm not sure what to make of this. I was certain he said Brown, but we were in a loud coffee shop, and my nose was gushing blood, so I admit it's possible I might not have heard him correctly.

He leans in close and smiles so I can see his white teeth. "Do you still like me even though I'm Tom Brewer, not Tom Brown?"

"I suppose…"

"Good." He gets up from his seat, brushing his palms on his blue jeans. "And now I'm going to go wash my hands in the bathroom, because I was just in a taxi. Grab me some shrimp shumai if they come by with it."

Excellent. Now I have a chance to google him since I know his real name.

As soon as Tom disappears into the bathroom, I whip out my phone. I'm not messing around, so I punch into the screen "Thomas Brewer MD pathologist."

Right away, I get a hit. I click on it and…

Okay, that's interesting.