Frank
“I’m so stupid,” I whisper to myself. Anyone on the west side of Haunted Health can see my foolery. All they have to do is look out their window at the pink sunset and gaze down at the butterfly garden’s flowers to find me. How did I allow that moth lady to talk me into meeting Alette where anyone could see us?
What if she doesn’t show? What if she’s so offended that I get slapped in front of anyone looking out their window? Gossip spreads through this hospital like wildfire. It will be on every floor by morning. I can just hear the whispers.Dr. Stein shot his shot with Alette and got slapped back into his office.I’m a fool for sitting out here…
“Dr. Stein? You wanted to see me?” Her sweet voice carries on the breeze behind me.
I close my eyes and try to breathe in courage from the twilight air before I rise from the bench. She has no idea how I feel about her. We’ve barely spoken. Maybe she assumes this is about her care…but knowing the meddling Mrs. M, Alette probably suspects I have more to say than just how I want to save her life. I nearly drop my gift for her when I face her.
How can someone radiate such beauty in a hospital gown and grippy socks? The waning sunlight sparkles on her pale skin.Tiny strands of her long hair dance around her shoulders. Those large eyes bounce around the garden, though I silently beg them to land on me. I want her to seeme—not Dr. Stein, the miracle worker. Is it too much for me to ask that she share her sweetness with Frank the man?
My friends warned me there would be a woman to make me regret losing my hands, but I didn’t believe them until now. I’m frozen with my stupidity. What wouldn’t I give to greet her with a hug? The memory of our last one is burned on my body. I became addicted to having support…contact…the tenderness she brings to everyone. Who am I to want it all for myself?
“Dr. Stein? Are you alright?” She rushes forward to close the distance between us as I stare at her like an idiot. When her cold hands wrap around my forearm, the need to embrace her and shield her from the cool evening breeze overwhelms me.
“Mrs. M was right,” flies out of my mouth. Oh, for fuck’s sake. The old matchmaker said I would see Alette as more than a patient out here, hinting at the beauty I’d find. How can I tell Alette that? How unprofessional to let one of my patients see into my private life when I should have been focused on fixing the lady’s broken wing! “Mrs. M donated this beautiful place in honor of her late husband—”
“Her Horus,” Alette says with a coy smile that suggests she’s heard all about the aged couple’s love story. I’d guess the entire hospital has heard about Dr. Mills. “I’ve been meaning to visit this magical place, but I—"
“—have spent your time hiding from me,” I finish for her.
“Not you specifically,” she says, shaking her hair with vigorous denial.
“Then hiding from Liam when he manages your chart for me.”
She blushes prettily but doesn’t deny it.
“Please sit with me,” I say as I lead her toward the bench. I slide onto the far edge in hopes that my spot in the middle, where she now sits, is still warm. I can’t hold her against the chill around us, but hopefully I can offer a warm place to sit at my side. Her thigh is icy as it nestles next to mine, and for once, I’m glad I burn like a furnace. The large white box on my lap is awkward between us, but I don’t know how to present her with my gift.
Maybe Mrs. M was right, and I should have brought flowers…
“I know nothing about butterflies, but the green ones are quite pretty,” she says, pointing to the small, fluttering bugs.
“Once the sun sets, the larger, purple ones will come out. They are quite stunning.”
“Do you spend a lot of time out here, Dr. Stein?”
“Frank, please,” I correct her quickly. She nods and wraps her arms tighter around mine. I know she’s hiding from the chill, but a part of me wishes she were cuddling closer to me. “When I’m stuck with a patient’s care, I often come out here to think. I don’t leave the hospital…I can’t separate my thoughts from my patients…so this is as far as I get.”
“With such a pretty, peaceful place, I doubt I would wander far either.”
“Yet you want to travel realms.”
“I want to belong,” she says with a sigh. “I want to be surrounded by the loving acceptance weres experience from birth. I want that place in this world that can only be filled by me…because it’s mine.”
“I understand, but I didn’t find my place in the human realm. It wasn’t until Haunted Health became my home that I felt like I belonged. Do you feel it too?”
“Here? At Haunted Health? You probably feel it because you are Dr. Stein. The hospital would collapse without you in the OR. You save lives and fix broken monsters every day. Your purpose is clear as glass. When patients see you, they relax. Don’t give me that look. I’ve watched it happen through the vents. Just your presence calms them because they know you won’t rest until they are healed. It’s not just your gifts…I see how you take their problems on as your own.”
“I just do what I can to deserve my second chance at life—to deserve my hands—but I’ve learned from you, Alette. I’ve learned that sometimes they need more than Dr. Stein’s hands. They need Frank. I don’t know how to give them that part of me…but you do.”
“What? Me? I’m just nice—”
“Do you know the magic you’ve spread through this hospital? The lives you’ve changed?”
“Me? You have me mixed up with someone else. I’m the crazy lady who climbs through the vents to hide from the professionals trying to save her life.”
“Ruslan called you an angel last night,” I say, as an invisible hand squeezes my heart. The pain in that little boy’s face as he described what went on during his parents’ surgeries will haunt me forever. “That little boy’s future rested in your hands as you held him. He would have fallen apart without you. Who knows what would have happened—”
