Of Hope Lost and Found Ch. 04

Thomas and I got along well, but we only interacted a few times a week, and only in a professional capacity. He showed up again in my bath time and bedtime fantasies a few more times, though not of my own intention. Usually as I was getting myself close to a sweet release, his voice or his eyes would appear, guiding me as I crested the wave of my orgasm. It didn't affect how I related to him, though, and he certainly wasn't the first friend to pop up now and then to help my imagination.

A few weeks before his three month trial period was up, Thomas told me he was ready to sign a long-term contract. I told him I was glad to hear that, but that I wanted to talk with him a little more about it. I really didn't understand what motivated him. And though in most cases, I trusted that believing in our cause would naturally follow after someone committed to it (like love had followed marriage with Glen), in Thomas' case, I felt too insecure to wait and see.

Then, as luck would have it, he and I would be spending some time together that weekend. Gina had set up a big dinner for some of our most generous donors. It was going to be a black tie affair, and the three of us- Gina, Thomas and I- were going to be there, rubbing elbows and making an appeal for the remaining funds to supply our clinic with the equipment we needed. But as the date approached, Gina backed out, though for good reason. She and Andrew were adopting the baby of one of the girls who had come through our crisis pregnancy center, and the birth mother was having some complications. A C-section was schedule for the night of the banquet. So it would be Thomas and me.

That afternoon, Gina was in my office, rushing me through the last business of the day.

"What are you wearing tonight?" she asked.

"Oh, I'll find something," I said. I hadn't thought about it.

"Dottie! You...you need to take this seriously!"

"I'll be fine, Gina. I've been to more than a few of these things over the years, you know that."

"But..." I gave her a look that cut of her next line of argument. She waited a moment, then said, "Wear the sparkly black dress."

"The what?"

"The black dress with the silver sequins- you should wear that."

"Oh, I don't know...I probably don't even fit into that one."

"It'll fit fine. You just wore it last year. You look very sexy in it."

"And just why do you want me to be sexy, Gina?"

"Becauuuuuse...most of the big donors are men. You need to keep them so distracted that they won't notice your hand on their wallets."

"Riiiight. Shouldn't you be more worried about Miranda's C-section tonight?"

Gina's smile faded. "I am. I'm just trying to distract myself. You could at least indulge me."

"Leave it be, Gina. I'm sure this evening will go just fine...for both of us. And it's time for me to head home and get ready. If I'm going to squeeze into that slinky black thing, I'm going to need to get started early." I winked at her as I stood to leave.

Gina smiled, "Go get 'em, tiger!"

"Don't you mean 'cougar'?" I joked.

Gina answered with a feline roar as I walked out the door.

*******

Thomas had asked to pick me up that evening, though not out of any gentlemanly impulse, I'm sure. Parking would be limited and I lived right on his way to the venue. I was slipping on my shoes when the doorbell rang. I had just expected a text saying he was outside. Wasn't that how people did things these days?

I ran down the steps and opened the door. We both stood there staring for a few seconds. Thomas was in a black tux with a green bow tie and vest. I suspected- a later confirmed- that they were from a friend's wedding that he had been in. The word that came to mind was dashing. The next word was yummy. The only thing that kept him from looking debonair was his expression. His eyes were wide open, his eyebrows raised high, his lips slightly parted. He was checking me out.

Thomas was the first to speak. "Wow, Dottie. You look...elegant. Fantastic. I don't think I've ever seen you with your hair down."

I blushed and thanked him. He was right- I always kept it up, usually in a stereotypical church-lady bun. It was just more convenient that way. But I knew that my silver hair perfectly matched the sequins on the dress. Since I wasn't going to be moving too much this evening, having my hair down was a nice change of pace.

Thomas chuckled out of embarrassment. "I'm sorry, I just...am resisting the urge to touch your hair."

"Well I'll remove the temptation for you. I need to grab one or two other things and I'll meet you at your car."

He gave a short nod and walked back down the steps to the sidewalk. I grabbed my fancy handbag and threw in a few business cards, just in case. I glanced at the mirror to ensure that what little make-up I had applied was still as it should be, then headed out to the car.

Thomas was waiting outside the passenger door, opening it for me when I got there.

"You don't need to be all formal or anything. You've got the job, already," I teased him.

"Dottie, the way you look demands this treatment," he said sincerely. I didn't put up a fuss. It was nice being treated this way, even if there wasn't a romantic element to it, there was a nice feel to being treated like a lady. I had long ago reconciled in my head the conflicting desires to be treated as an equal and to be treated special. For me, chivalry was not insulting or chauvinistic. It was a cultural celebration of our differences. And Thomas did a good job of it.

As we drove, I had some last minute thoughts to go over with Thomas, making sure he knew what kind of questions to expect. To my delight, Gina had prepared him very well, and his own acumen made up for anything that hadn't been already discussed. In the evening traffic, we had about a 30 minute drive.

"You can call me Tom, if you like," he said, as the business talk died down.

"Oh? Is that what you prefer?"

"Either way is fine. I go with Thomas in professional affairs, but friends call me Tom."

"Well, Tom, I hope we can be friends."

"Me too," he said softly. "By the way, this isn't the first time our paths have crossed. I doubt you remember, though."

I'm usually pretty good at remembering people, even with all the folks that have passed through our doors over the years. But Tom wasn't ringing any bells, and I thought I would remember someone like him.

He laughed at the way I was working to recall him. "Let me help you out," he said. "It was your last year teaching. I was a freshman and actually had a course with Doc Lock-up."

"Doc Lock-up?"

He glanced over at me, then looked back at the road.

"You don't know?"

I shook my head no, not realizing at first that he couldn't see me. He went on anyway. "Your nickname among the students- I assumed you knew. You had a few nicknames: Doc Lock, Doc Oc, and Doc Hot..."

"What?" I asked, mixing my word with a laugh.

"Well, Doc Hot is obvious- it was a bit sexist, I know, and considering the classes you taught on gender equity, it was a little ironic, too. Doc Lock was because you were rumored to have been an ex-con, and Doc Oc was because there was a crazy story that you once took out a guy's eye while you were in jail. So, like- ocular"

"Oh, really?" I said with a smile. "Do tell."

"I can't believe you never heard these. They said Doc Lock had been in lock-up, but she turned her life around, started studying and got a Bachelor's, Master's and PhD while in prison. She got out of jail and went straight to the university. You had a bit of a hard core attitude, so the story seemed plausible to a lot of people."

I smiled, thinking about the rumors and how it may have helped me to command a level of respect from my students. "And to think, I just assumed everyone was impressed by my teaching," I said softly to myself.

"Huh?" Thomas asked.

"Nothing...I was just realizing how odd it is that I never knew about that."

"Any truth to the rumors?" he asked, glancing over at me.

"Well that is privileged information, young man," I said.

"You'll tell me when I'm older?" he teased back. We were just pulling up to the venue- a converted mansion on the outskirts of town. It had a ballroom with an entirely glass ceiling- beautiful on a clear night.

"I'll tell you when I think you can handle it." I normally didn't mind telling people about my past, but it seemed fun to tease Thomas about it. I liked the thought of him imagining some scandalous bad-ass history of me.

The valet opened my door and we headed towards the ballroom. Thomas offered me his arm, which I thought was very considerate, but unnecessary. "Tom, you don't need to act like my date this evening. It's just fine for us to be here in a professional capacity."

He squeezed my arm a little with his elbow and said, "Gina told me to treat you like royalty this evening."

"Oh, Gina told you that, did she?" I had made her swear to back off. But before I could say some harsh things about Gina minding her own business, Thomas continued.

"She said that by making you look more important and, well, desirable, it will give potential donors the impression that this is something more important than they realized, making them more likely to give."

I couldn't help but laugh at that. She was right, I knew, but it was also just like Gina to use perfectly rational excuses to get me into a sexy gown and then have a handsome doctor treat me like a princess. It's all just good business, I could hear her saying...with a wink.

*******

The banquet was a wonderful time. I'm always a bit disoriented, though, at such events. It's like I'm stepping into another world. I spend my days mostly among women who are homeless, or abused, or facing some other crisis. We try to help people get by from day to day, and sometimes the best you can do is convince them to have hope that tomorrow will be better. But the people at the banquet...I sometimes think that if I could just convince each of them to volunteer at the Hope's Advocate for a day, all our funding problems would be over. I gave one of my usual speeches, casting vision for our clinic an introducing our new doctor. After that, it was just mingling.

Thomas did very well in that context. He was comfortable, he spoke well, and he looked the part. As a doctor, he earned instant respect from people. He stayed close to my side most of the evening, trying to pick up on who were the really influential people that we needed to pursue. At one point, someone asked him very loudly (under some alcoholic influence, I imagine), "Why on earth are you throwing away a career that was just getting started?"

It was an awkward moment, and the half-dozen or so people in our conversation group looked around at each other. Someone tried to move the offending questioner away from the group, but Thomas said, "No, no, stay. It's a very fair question at its heart." A few other people gathered around to listen.

Thomas went on, "Your question, sir, implies that a career is valuable based on the money one earns from it. I disagree. And from speaking with many of my colleagues, I gather that many, perhaps most of them did not go into our field for the money. True, the daunting level of our student loans forces us to pursue higher-paying jobs. But most of us went into medicine out of a sense of calling. And that, I'm sure you know, is the meaning of the word 'vocation'. Vocation means calling. I feel called, sir, to help people with my medical skill."

As Thomas paused for a sip of his drink, a woman to my left interjected, "But wherever you work, you'll be helping people, right? What was wrong with staying where you were?"

"I was tired of helping in such a limited way," he answered immediately. "Yes, I helped a lot of people who were sick and wounded. But all I could do was tend their wounds and send them on their way. And I knew that there were so many others who would never walk through our doors because they couldn't afford it. People needing help but not wealthy enough to get it. But what really frustrated me was that I wasn't helping the real problems. I stitch up a woman's face then send her back home to the man who busted it. I treat a man with hypothermia, knowing he's going right back out to his cardboard box. A kid comes in with a knife wound that he says is from 'making a sandwich,' and all I can do is give him some stitches. There are some big problems that need big solutions, and I didn't feel like I was getting at that."

Like everyone else in our group (which was growing as Tom's deep voice projected through the ballroom), I listened, fascinated. I saw the fire in his eyes, the fire I had seen in Jimmy's eyes so long ago. The fire that once burned in my eyes when I planned to change the world. But unlike Jimmy, Thomas seemed to genuinely believe what he said. And he was committing himself to changing things.

"What I found at Hope's Advocate," he said, gesturing my direction with his hand," is a place where the real problems are being addressed. Now they can't go about fixing the whole system- that's up to some of you here to worry about." With that, he nodded towards a few local political figures in attendance. "But they're trying to change the world of each person that comes through those doors. They're helping abused women become financially independent. They're providing medical and legal counsel. They're giving homeless families places to stay and helping them into more permanent situations. I am excited by the prospect of doing one little thing in that big project, contributing in my small way to a larger, worthwhile undertaking. That, sir, is my calling that is worth more than money. That, ma'am, is why I'd rather be working with Dottie and her team than with the most reputed medical team in the country."

A few listeners clapped their hands and said some encouraging words. Thomas was intense without being belligerent, and no one could deny his passion. He was such a fine speaker, too, that I wondered if he should consider a political career of his own, someday. A few people waited around to see if he had anything more to say, but the conversation broke up into smaller, more personal groups. Thomas was explaining a few things to a gentleman next to him, and I was pulled aside by an older couple.

"Glen would have loved him," the smiling woman said, looking at Thomas.

"He certainly would have. You knew my Glen?" I asked.

"Oh yes. I'm Betty and Ron's youngest daughter, Rose. I grew up in his church but had moved away by the time Glen got there. I saw him often enough, though, and Mom would talk about you two so much. They really loved you like their own."

I wasn't much for sentimentality, especially when I was trying to be professional, but talking about Betty and Glen got me thinking and remembering. My mind started wandering and my heart started aching. After a short conversation with Rose and her husband, I made my way over to Thomas, needing to hold his arm and be close to him. I told him we should be leaving soon, after I made some closing remarks.

*******

"You impressed me tonight, Thomas," I said on the drive home.

"Not only you, I hope," he said thoughtfully.

"No, I imagine I wasn't the only one stirred by your little speech. You're quite passionate," I said.

"Well," he paused, "you've given me something to be passionate about." After another moment's pause, he went on, "I mean...it's so good to have something I believe in so strongly. All that frustration and longing for something better is getting channeled into this new clinic. Everything I said tonight...I meant it, it's not just fluff."

"I know you meant it. I could tell. I've been burned before by charmers who say the right things to get the right reactions, but in the end they're only passionate about themselves. You've made the commitment already- that makes all your talk mean something."

"My parents always taught me that love follows commitment," he said, and I nearly jumped out of my seat hearing Glen's words in Tom's mouth. "But I used to think that was because they wanted to prepare me for an arranged marriage. Regardless, there's a lot of truth in that statement."

"More than you may know," I mumbled softly.

As we pulled up to my house, Thomas got out and hurried around to open my door and help me out of the car. It wasn't necessary, but I indulged him. He walked me to my porch, stopping one step from the top. I was on the step above him, so when I turned around, I was almost at his eye level. Unbidden, I felt the urge to kiss him. It was only a flash of desire, followed by a heart stopping moment when I wondered if he was possibly thinking the same thing. Lately I had been letting my imagination get out of control- the more I let Thomas show up in my fantasies, the more I was wanting him. And here he was- so strong, and handsome, and passionate...those deep brown eyes that had burned with anger over the same wrongs I was trying to correct...

It must only have been a few seconds that I stood there looking at him. He looked back with an unreadable expression. I finally came to my senses and said, "Thank you, Thomas, for being a wonderful..." the right word failed me. Companion? Escort? Partner? All of them had too much sexual implication. Date? Friend? Neither were really appropriate...

"Chauffeur?" he suggested playfully.

"Person," I said, "and partner in a worthy cause." I was relieved I had come up with something that sounded mature.

"Truly my pleasure, Dottie. And just so you know, I intend to earn enough of your trust to find out Doc Lock's real story."

I smiled at that and turned to go into the house. Thomas went to his car, but waited until I was inside my door before driving away. I kicked off my shoes, trotted up the steps and started a warm bath. My imagination was waiting to be unleashed...