I felt Miss Elizabeth tense up at my side.
Huh. That was interesting.
Did she not like Anna?
“Hey, Bee,” she said as she nudged Brutus. “Look who’s decided to grace us with her lovely presence!”
Brutus peered over his shoulder and nodded before he went back to scrubbing. “Lizzie.”
She nodded back. “Brutus.”
Anna bounded over to us. “You look good. How do you feel?”
Miss Elizabeth looked up at me before she answered. “Hungry. Ready for my pain medication.”
Anna clicked her tongue and swatted the woman at my side playfully with the rag in her hand. “Don’t tell me Doc’s slave-drivin’ ya with those walks of his. Doc, take it easy on the girl, would you? She’s only got two hips.”
“Anna,” Brutus said.
“What?” she asked as she turned back around.
Brutus tossed her another wet rag. “Go wipe down the table.”
Anna stuck her tongue out and mocked him in a low voice. “Go wipe down the table. Go fetch the water from the river. Go get the candles so we’ve got light in case the power goes out.”
Miss Elizabeth giggled. “You do an impression of him well.”
“No, she doesn’t,” Brutus murmured beneath his breath.
I caught it then, just before I turned away. Anna had crossed back to the table, rag in hand, quiet for once, and I watched her glance over at Miss Elizabeth with something that wasn’t teasing at all. It was soft. Careful. The kind of look someone gives a person they’re rooting for but don’t quite know how to say it to yet. It was gone in a blink, buried under Anna picking up where she left off, but I’d seen it. I filed it away.
“Come,” I said as I ushered her toward the sliding back door, “before dinner gets cold.”
Anna shouted after us. “Doc and Lizzie sittin’ in a tree!”
Miss Elizabeth shouted right back at her, on time and on pitch. “I will kick your fucking ass!”
Anna fell apart in laughter while I escorted Miss Elizabeth outside, and I found that she giggled a bit to herself as well. I watched as she turned toward my backyard, but I found myself so enamored with how she looked beneath the moonlight that I couldn’t pull my eyes away.
“Wow,” she whispered.
I saw the lightning bugs reflecting in those steel gray eyes of hers. They held such stoicism, so many secrets. And yet, when she reached out and caught a firefly on her fingertip, they lit up with a childlike wonder that had my attention arrested.
“Did you know that lightning bugs are one of the last living creatures on the planet that utilizes bioluminescence?” I asked.
“Is that like the stuff I see online, where someone puts their feet in the ocean and it lights up blue?”
I watched as she lifted her finger, and the lightning bug took flight once more. “Yes. It’s exactly like that.”
She smiled up at me. “What else do you know about lightning bugs?”
“You want me to talk about lightning bugs?”
She shrugged. “I want you to talk about whatever you wish to talk about.”
I lost myself a little bit to her at that moment. Even though it was unprofessional. Even though it wasn’t like me. Even though there was a chance I’d regret it, getting attached to a patient, I couldn’t help the thrill that rushed through my veins.
Someone wanted me to talk.
