8. Other People's Hearts Ch. 09

Oliver didn't know what he was doing. His attraction to Lindsay had caught him completely off guard. He was still thinking of Sylvia whenever his mind wandered, so he didn't know what his body was doing when it urged him towards another woman.

Sometimes he imagined what would happen if Sylvie showed up and wanted to get back together. He pictured her waiting for him on the doorstep, her eyes red and sorrowful, her black hair in a tangled ponytail. He didn't know what he would do.

One part of him still craved her. In his dreams they were still together. Sometimes when he woke it took him a second to remember what had happened.

Another part of him was angry with her. She had taken six years from him and hadn't even given him the chance to fight for their relationship when it was on the line. He had known that things weren't as exciting as they were in the first years, but he'd had no idea they were as bad as they must have been. If she had just told him earlier he might have been able to save them.

Each time he imagined Sylvie's return he said or did something different. Sometimes he yelled at her and sent her packing. Sometimes he calmly told her that he needed time to think. Most of the time he took her delicate little body in his arms and they drowned their sadness in bed together, renewing their bond with fresh promises.

Lately there had sometimes been a third person in his scenarios -- Lindsay.

In these fantasies it was a Thursday morning that Sylvie showed up on his doorstep and he and Lindsay were returning from their walk. Rush was behaving perfectly, which is how he knew the scene was in his imagination.

So far he'd imagined a few different outcomes to this scenario. Often Sylvie would be jealous and her pleas would be more desperate. Sometimes she just turned around and left without putting up a fight and he'd rush after her. In one scenario he'd kissed Lindsay, but it was only to make Sylvie feel bad. It always ended in the same way, with Sylvie in bed with him promising to make things right.

He didn't know why Lindsay was sometimes a character in his imagination. He thought perhaps it was because she was beautiful enough that she would make Sylvie jealous.

Every week Lindsay got more beautiful. Part of it was her body. As she shed the pounds he could start to see what an amazing figure she was going to have once she reached her ideal weight. She was tall, in a proportionate way. Her legs seemed to be exactly the right length relative to her torso and her neck was long enough to give her an air of gracefulness. It was hard to tell because she usually wore baggy t-shirts, but he thought her breasts were full without being large.

But her beauty was more than just a nice figure. She had the most amazing smile, the sort of smile you found on movie stars. When she was smiling her mouth seemed to take up most of her face, and her round brown eyes shone with the sort of optimism that he found contagious. Maybe that's why he felt attracted to her -- her joy tended to rub off on him when he was with her. Even for a few hours afterwards he'd usually find himself in a good mood.

But he wasn't in a good mood after he accidentally kissed her. He felt like shit. Lindsay was his friend. She was a nice girl. What was he doing kissing her when he was still in love with Sylvie?

He was afraid he might have ruined their friendship. He liked hanging out with her and she was good to talk to, but it ended there. He had no intention of starting a relationship with her. He didn't have intentions of starting another relationship for a long time. He didn't know what he could say to make things go back to normal.

He thought about what to say all day on Thursday. Obviously he needed to call her and explain that the kiss was a mistake, but the words eluded him.

On Friday he had a scheduled triple bypass, which took most of the day. He was barely out of his scrubs when he was called back into the operating theatre for emergency surgery. He didn't get home until well after midnight.

Lindsay passed across his thoughts as he was brushing his teeth and it made his heart sink. Great. Not only was he an ass for kissing her, he was being a dick by not calling her afterwards.

On Saturday morning he dropped by the hospital to check on the patients he'd performed surgery on the previous day. It took a while. When he was done he turned his phone back on and saw that he'd missed a call from Lindsay. It had been almost two hours since she'd called.

He called her back immediately, without even thinking of what he should say.

"Hi," she answered.

"Hey, sorry I missed your call. I've been at work."

"That's okay," she said in an upbeat way. "I was just calling to see if you still want me to bring my dad around to look at the house?"

"Yeah I do, but can I talk to you first?" He definitely didn't want her dad around while he tried to explain that he wasn't interested in dating her.

"Sure. What's up?

"Ah... Maybe in person?" He probably owed her that.

"Okay. When?"

"How about now?"

"Um... Okay."

"She gave him an address and he went straight there. It was the intersection of two rural roads north of Denver. She was sitting on top of a horse waiting for him.

Once he'd pulled over she steered the horse towards him. She dismounted next to him, her long legs making the leap to the ground gracefully.

She was wearing riding clothes. High boots over tight brown pants with some sort of close-fitting all-weather jacket and a bucket helmet. Her thick brown hair was in a single braid that extended half way down her back.

Oliver hadn't seen her in form-fitting clothes before and he noticed that his assessment of her body was spot on. She was perfectly proportioned, including her breasts, which made enticing mounds under her riding jacket without being so big as to appear heavy.

The big chestnut horse snorted and faltered beside her, pulling on the reigns she held. The cold air frosted on its breath.

"Is this Maggie?" He asked.

"No, this is King. What's up? You seem upset."

When she said it he realized he was upset. "I just, um..."

Lindsay watched him steadily.

He took a deep breath. "I like hanging out with you and I think you're very beautiful, but what happened the other day was a mistake."

She shrugged. "Okay."

"Really?"

She smiled. "It's no big deal Oliver. It was cold. The fire was warm. We kissed. It was nice. Shall we leave it at that?"

He was so relieved he found himself smiling back as he nodded. It had been nice, before he'd started attaching all sort of meaning to it.

He'd been complaining about the house and suddenly he'd needed to be closer to her. Lindsay had been warm and receptive and for a moment he forgot about how fucked up his life was. She had described it perfectly -- it was nice.

She brought her dad around later that day and acted as if the kiss had never happened.

"It's a gorgeous old house," her dad Spencer said. "It'd be a shame to just patch it up. I'd be happy to help you renovate it... Free of charge of course."

It was a really generous offer but he couldn't accept it. It wasn't his house. Along with everything else on the property, it belonged to Grace and Nicholas.

As they walked through the house Spencer knocked on walls and stomped lightly on different parts of the floor.

"We could pull this wall down," he said as he knocked on the wall between the kitchen and lounge room. "Open up the living area."

In the kitchen he swept his hand across the wall to the exterior. "We could turn this into a picture window to take in the view of the orchard and pond. Maybe put in a bar so you could pass food out directly to the deck."

Despite his reservations, Oliver started to get excited by the idea of giving the house a proper renovation.

"The floorboards are nice," Spencer commented. "They'll come up nicely with a scrub and polish."

"This needs to be torn down," he said when they went out to the deck. "But we could rebuild it with a bigger entertaining area and stairs that went down into the garden."

"Let me talk to my sister," Oliver told him. "She's the one who owns it."

Grace seemed happy for Oliver to do whatever we wanted with the house and Nicholas agreed. "Knock yourself out Ol," he said. "Just so long as you don't turf Luka out. I don't want him knocking at our door looking for a warm bed."

Spencer came around the next day with insulation batts for the ceiling and they came up with a plan of what to do and in what order. They would seal off the front half of the house through the winter and that's where Oliver and Lucas would live while they were working on the back half of the house through the winter. Once spring arrived they would tackle the roof, the deck, the kitchen, then the front of the house.

They would keep the layout basically the same and try to preserve its character, but open up the floorplan to make it feel more spacious and inviting.

They got to work right away. It made Oliver feel good to work with his hands. He liked the idea that they would breathe some life back into the old house.

Spencer was easy to work with. He was good humored and energetic and he didn't mind that Oliver didn't really know what he was doing.

"I'm really glad you're letting me help you out with this," he said once as they were driving his truck back from the hardware store. "I owe you a lot more than I'll ever be able to repay."

Actually, seeing how healthy Spencer was was all the repayment that Oliver needed.

Sometimes Lindsay came around with her dad to help. She knew her was around a toolbox pretty well. She never said anything about the kiss and it was starting to fade from his awareness until he saw her at the farm's Christmas party.

He could tell that Grace and Ellia had had a good time organizing the party this year. They had it up at the lodge and he couldn't remember a more lavish affair. The log support columns were decorated with spirals of fresh pine boughs interlaced with sprigs of shiny red holly berries and tiny sparkling lights. More pine boughs and white flowers were suspended from the dark wood of the ceiling beams.

The fireplace whooshed and popped every now and then, the perfect accompaniment to the Christmas music played by the string quartet.

An enormous Christmas tree was decorated with hundreds of colorful birds made of feathers and sparkling glass, which nestled among shining silver baubles. The deck was softly illuminated by thousands of little fairy lights which shone from the dozen or so cut spruces dotted around.

Everyone was dressed up. Although his family generally tended to keep things pretty informal, they liked to give people a chance to feel glamorous. Most people they treated lost weight on the program and they seemed to enjoy the opportunity to wear nice clothes.

He was talking with Adrian when Lindsay arrived with her dad, although Oliver was facing away from the front door so he wasn't immediately aware of what, or who, had made Adrian stop talking mid-sentence.

"Wow. Lindsay is looking good," Adrian said.

Oliver turned as she was handing her father her winter coat and was treated to a view of her back.

The back is not ordinarily considered an erotic part of the body, but Lindsay's back was the sexiest thing Oliver had seen in a long time. She was wearing a long, deep red satin dress which instead of a back had thick red ribbons that criss-crossed down to the small of her back. Oliver could see her shoulder blades and the line of her spine which disappeared enticingly under the shiny red fabric swishing over her butt.

Oliver lost his train of thought.

"Hm. I'd better go and welcome her," said Adrian as he left Oliver standing dumbly in the middle of the room.

Oliver watched as Adrian greeted Lindsay and Spencer. She turned and he saw that the front of her dress was very conservative. Thick swaths of fabric covered her breasts entirely and it was cut so as to move around her body rather than cling to it. Her hair was pulled back into a large, smooth bun at the nape of her neck. She smiled warmly at Adrian and accepted his outstretched elbow with a laugh.

He led her down the stairs and half way across the room before stopping abruptly and turning to her. He gave her one of his wicked grins before pointing up to the ceiling above them. That sneaky bastard. He'd steered her directly under the mistletoe. Lindsay laughed again and gave Adrian two kisses, one on each cheek.

It was at that point that Oliver remembered kissing her, or to be precise, he recalled the feeling he'd gotten while kissing her. The moment in which he'd felt freed from all the shitty things in his life.

Oliver's observations were then interrupted by Simon and Gretchen who wanted to give him the good news that they were expecting a baby. Gretchen was overcome with emotion, her eyes teared as she told him that they had tried for years to become pregnant but had no luck, even though they'd seen fertility specialists.

"They always told me to loose weight," she said. "But they never told me how. I felt like such a failure before I came here."

They asked if he could recommend an obstetrician and he wrote out Sylvia's contact information. Even if she couldn't be trusted as a girlfriend, Sylvie was the best there was when it came to obstetrics.

"If she says she's not taking on new patients tell her I sent you," he told them. He assumed that would still mean something to her.

Giving that referral put a dampner on the event. He circulated and smiled and gave season's greetings but he didn't feel again the magic of the party the way he had earlier in the evening.

When he saw Lindsay he smiled and they chatted for a few minutes but he still had Sylvie on his mind. He wasn't able to see her with the innocent eyes he'd had at the beginning of the night.

"Do you want to walk this week?" She asked. Christmas day fell on a Thursday this year -- the day she helped him with Rush.

"Sure, unless you want to sit it out?"

"No, I'll be there at the usual time."

Christmas morning was bitingly cold. Oliver had been unable to shake the shadow of sadness that had settled over him since the Christmas party a few days earlier. His work schedule always slowed over the holidays because nobody wanted elective surgery at that time of year, making putting up with himself all the more difficult.

It was still dark outside when Lindsay showed up. He let her inside and she gave him a present wrapped in brown paper.

"Sorry Lindsay," he said. "I didn't get you anything."

She shook her head. "It's for Rush."

It was a bright red dog jacket made out of heavy-duty rain jacket material.

"I made the fleece lining detachable, so it can be for rain or cold weather." She showed him how the fleece came away with big, silver snaps.

"You made this?" He asked, surprised by the flawlessness of it.

"Yeah. I like to sew. My mom taught me when I was a kid."

He put the jacket on Rush and they went outside to walk. Their feet crunched on the icy ground as the dawn sky lightened to grey. The snow they'd had earlier in the season had mostly melted away, all that remained was dirty patches on the north side of the apple tree trunks. The bare branches stood desolate, like the old bones of happier times.

Lindsay seemed to be in just as pensive mood as he was. She was being uncharacteristically quiet.

"Are you okay?" He asked.

She sighed. "Yeah, I just always miss my mom on Christmas. It was her favorite time of year."

He didn't really know how to respond, so he just kept on walking.

"She would have loved the party the other night," she continued. "All those decorations, the music and everyone wearing beautiful clothes... It would have been right up her alley."

"My mom loved Christmas too," Oliver said.

"How did she die?"

"Car accident. Yours?"

"Cancer. It was your garden variety death, but that didn't make it any easier."

Oliver didn't know why, but he admitted, "I was there."

"In the car?"

His heart was beating at a million miles an hour. He'd never told anyone this before. "No, I was following behind. We were caravanning up to the lake. I saw the car that crossed the median strip and took them out."

He shivered involuntarily as the noise of that moment pierced his memory, the screech of tires and crunch of metal.

"I pulled over and ran back to their car, or what was left of their car."

He looked at Lindsay, peering up at him with wide brown eyes. She gave a small, slow nod. He breathed out heavily as he turned his eyes back to the trail, pure ice fogging the air.

"There was blood everywhere. I didn't know what to do first. I have all this medical training and I didn't know what to do. There was no room to work on them both at once.

"I went to the passenger side, where my mom was, and there was just blood everywhere. You have no idea how much blood there is in the human body until you've seen it all over the floor."

He shook his head. "There was nothing I could do for her. There was a piece of metal piercing through half of her abdomen. I tried to pull it out, but it had gone all the way through her seat."

"She was still conscious. She recognized me. She told me to go and help my dad."

His footsteps faltered on the cold, bare dirt. Lindsay gently pulled Rush's lead out o his hand. He stopped trying to walk.

"I left her. I left my mother to die alone in what must have been the most tremendous pain."

Oliver realized that he was crying. The skin on his cheeks tingled as his tears frosted.

"My dad wasn't in much better shape. The car door had folded in on his legs so I couldn't even see half of his injuries. He kept on asking me about my mom and telling me to go to her. Finally I told him I couldn't save her. The look in his eyes... I can't bear to think of the look in his eyes when I told him that."

Oliver tried to swallow the knot of pain in his throat.

"He was searching for her hand. She was probably already dead, but I leaned over him and put her hand in his. He whispered her name, then he closed his eyes and that was it."

"She was pronounced dead on the scene. Dad managed to hold on for a few more hours, but he never regained consciousness."

Oliver let his chin rest on Lindsay's head as he sniffed and choked in the cold air. He didn't know at what point she had started to hug him. He pulled her closer to his chest and she squeezed him in return.

He had no idea how long they stood like that.

The morning sky shifted from grey to powder blue.

He could feel Lindsay breathing steadily in their embrace.

He felt like his heart had been ripped from him.

Finally he said, "Can I make you breakfast?"

Lindsay nodded and they walked slowly up to the house.

"Where's Lucas?" she asked.

"Probably already at whoever's house he's decided to grace this morning. My guess would be Grace and Nicholas' place.

He made her pancakes with spelt flour, rolled oats and ground flax seeds with hot blueberry sauce and soy yoghurt. It was good that she didn't complain that it tasted too healthy.

As they were eating he apologized for springing that story on her.

"That's okay," she replied. "You don't need to apologize."

"The worst part was the look on my dad's face when I told him about mom. I wish I could take that back. And... well obviously I wish I would have stayed with my mother longer. Maybe given her some comfort... You know I didn't even think to tell her that I loved her."

Lindsay took a sip of her tea before she said, "You know, it sucks to watch your mom die slowly, but there are advantages too."

"You get to say goodbye?"

"Yeah but the person dying gets the chance to say whatever they want. I remember when my mom went into hospice care. She told me that she wanted me to forget about the entire last year of her life."