“Are you planning to go into a convent sometime soon?” he teased. “Or are you just going to freelance?” Looking at him, she suddenly had to laugh at herself. This was very new to her, and she realized she could have learned a lot from her patients. How did they manage it? What did they say? She knew that many of them told people they had AIDS before they began relationships, but she didn't want to do that either. She just wanted to keep to herself, and enjoy her life with Jade. It would have been different if there had been someone in her life when it happened, but since there wasn't, as far as she was concerned, the doors were closed now.
“I don't have time for a relationship,” she said simply, and he looked startled. The way she said it sounded so final, and seemed so unlike her. She was such a warm person, and it was such a waste to think of a woman like Zoe without a man in her life. It really bothered Sam.
“Are you telling me you've made a conscious decision to that effect, at your age?” He looked horrified by the prospect.
“More or less.” She was referring to the decision she'd made, but she didn't want to get into it with him, and they were getting onto dangerous ground, which she didn't want to happen. But he was ready to pursue the subject with her with dogged determination. “I can't give anything to anyone, Sam, I'm too involved in my practice, and with my daughter.” It was an excuse, but Sam felt certain that she meant it.
“Zoe, that's bullshit,” he said firmly, “you're wrong if you think you can't give anything to anyone. There's more to life than just devoting yourself to your work and your baby.” He wondered why she was so determined to stay alone, if she was still mourning her old flame, though he doubted it, since he knew she'd gone out with Dick Franklin. But why wouldn't she get involved with anyone? Why was she hiding? She couldn't be that obsessed with her child and her work, or was she? “You're too young to close the doors on a relationship in your life. Zoe,” he said firmly, “you have to rethink this.” He felt a sense of personal loss as he looked at her and realized that she meant it.
She smiled at him, but she was unmoved by what he had said so far. “You sound like my father. He used to tell me that overeducated women threaten men, and I was making a big mistake when I went to Stanford. College was okay, but medical school was pushing. He said that if I'd wanted to be in medicine, I should have gone to nursing school and saved him a lot of money.” She was laughing as she said it, and Sam shook his head. He knew about people like her. His whole family were doctors, including his mother.
“Well, you should have gone to nursing school, if becoming a doctor was going to make you come to a dumb decision like that one. Zoe, that's just plain stupid.” He wondered if she'd had a bad experience, been raped perhaps, or if Franklin had actually done something to upset her and it was still fresh, or maybe she was involved with someone secretly, maybe someone married. Or maybe she was just telling him, nicely, that she wasn't interested in him, but he hoped that wasn't the case either. Otherwise he just couldn't understand it, but she seemed very firm about it.
She turned the conversation then to other things, which frustrated him even more. He found that they had even more in common than he'd previously thought, people, plans, their shared views about medicine, and passion for all it represented. Worse yet, he realized that he was even more attracted to her than he'd previously suspected. She had a great sense of humor, and a quick mind. She had traveled extensively, and there was something wonderfully honest and genuine about her. She told things the way they were, analyzed situations very astutely, and as she talked about her patients to him, it was obvious how much she loved them. She was the first woman he had met in a long time that he was really crazy about and wanted desperately to go out with. He had been attracted to her for years, but he had always hesitated to do anything about it, and having dinner with her and talking to her about a variety of things had infatuated him with her completely. And she was even more tantalizing because she was so insistent that she had given up on having any relationship and she wouldn't even discuss it with him. He felt sure there was another reason, most likely an affair with someone she was protecting, and the more he thought about it, the more he wondered if it was someone married. But as far as he was concerned, she could have said that. In fact, everything in her life pointed to it, the fact that she had so much time available to spend on her work, that she had no desire to get married, she was obviously involved and didn't want to admit it. And he was very sorry to know that.
And as Zoe watched him as they ate, and afterward as they sat and drank cappuccino, she found that she liked him too. He was exactly what he had always seemed, a real teddy bear of a man, someone intelligent and kind, someone you could really count on. And he was as enamored as she was with her clinic. He thought it had been an incredible thing to do, an enormous undertaking, and he admired her a great deal for it.
“I think of all the practices I've seen, yours is the one I most enjoy, and most respect. I really like the way you handle your patients, particularly the home care.”
“That was the hardest part to set up actually, to find the right people that you could trust without monitoring them constantly. I watch them very closely, but they still have a lot of leeway. The patients take a lot of responsibility too, though.” Many of her patients’ lovers and families cared for them almost without professional assistance, until the very end when they were assisted by hospice groups. Dying of AIDS was not an easy business.
They talked again for a while then of what she wanted him to do while she was gone, and he smiled as he listened to her. He knew it was going to be hard for her to leave them, and he tried to reassure her that her patients would be in good hands with him, and she believed him.
“So tell me about Wyoming,” he asked genially over their second cup of cappuccino. But he noticed when it came that Zoe was looking exhausted. He had noticed several times recently how tired she looked, but he didn't think much about it. Her practice was so draining that it wasn't surprising she was pale, and it was only tonight that he also noticed a certain gauntness to her figure. She was obviously in serious need of a vacation, and he was glad for her that she was going, “Who are you going to Wyoming with? You're not going camping, are you.?” he asked, wishing for an insane moment that he were going with her.
She laughed at his question. “I don't think so. I'm actually going with an old friend, from college. She's an incredible woman, and I haven't seen her in a while, but she called the other day and invited me. At first, I turned her down, but when I felt so lousy, I decided to do it. But believe me, knowing my friend, it won't be camping. She's even more spoiled than I am.” Zoe was not a camping aficionado either, and never had been. Like Sam, she didn't like bugs, snakes, or creepy-crawlies. “She lives in L.A., and I'm sure we're going to the Hollywood ranch of all time, if she could find one.”
“Who is she?” he asked casually as the check came, and he opened his wallet. “Is she a physician?”
Zoe smiled before she answered. “Not exactly. She's a singer. We've been friends since school, and she's never changed, not that anyone would believe it. The media give her a bad break, it's really not fair.” She looked thoughtful as she said it. “I almost hate telling people who she is, they immediately leap to a million inaccurate conclusions.”
“I'm fascinated,” he said, looking straight at Zoe as the waitress took the check away with his money. He was so intrigued by her, by the deep green eyes, and everything he saw there. “So who is she?”
“Tanya Thomas,” Zoe said quietly. To her, it was just a name, to everyone else it was a lifetime of hype, a million lies, a golden voice, a thousand images they'd seen, she was the legend, and Sam had the usual reaction. His eyes widened, his mouth dropped, and then he laughed at his own reflexes and grinned, feeling sheepish.