Tears are for the soul

Disclaimer: The characters in this story do not belong to me. If you’re reading this, you know who they belong to. No copyright infringement intended.

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What soap is for the body, tears are for the soul. – Jewish proverb

“Call it.”

“Time of death, two fifty-six,” Elizabeth said softly. She sagged against the gurney, spent from her futifforffort to save the young med student’s life. She closed her eyes. I don’t cry when patients die, she thought. I don’t cry… I don’t…

“Lizzie,” Robert said. She looked at him. He saw her pain. She saw his rage. Keep it together, she thought. I don’t cry… He stripped off the lead apron and the gown and let them fall to the floor. “Come with me,” he said, turning to leave. She stood rooted. He turned back. “Now!” he barked. She started, then followed him out of the room.

He led her to his office. “Shut the door,” he said as he went behind his desk and opened a drawer. He pulled out a bottle of single malt scotch and a glass, poured a drink with a hand shaky enough to splash the desk. He handed her the glass and she drank from it, unthinking, unfeeling. The liquor burned her mouth, her throat, her sinuses, forged a trail of fire all the way to her stomach, sat there and glowed, mg heg her eyes water, discomfort making her briefly forget her failure. She handed the glass back.

I’ll get you through this, she’d told Lucy. It had been a lie, she hadn’t gotten Lucy through this. A huge sob escaped her, caught Robert’s attention as he was knocking back the last of the scotch in the glass. He glared at her.

“Don’t you cry,” he said. His voice caught and he poured another drink. Most of it went into the glass. “Don’t you dare cry.” He knocked back the second drink and slammed the glass to the desk. It was a sturdy on-the-rocks glass and it didn’t break and he stared at it, offended that something as trivial as this glass would be unbreakable, yet one precious girl was too fragile to survive despite the best the two of them could do.

Elizabeth sobbed again, drawing his attention away from the glass and to her face. The back of her hand was pressed to her mouth and her eyes were huge and swimming in tears. Thly lly light in the room was the city light that shone faintly through the window, and the half-light from the late night hospital corridor outside the door. Her tears caught that meager light as she blinked and they slid down her face, caught and sparkled like diamonds, caught and squeezed his heart until he cried out in pain.

“Goddammit, Lizzie, I said don’t do that!”

She broke down then and her knees buckled. Her butt hit the edge of the chair and she slif itf it, onto her knees and she had no idea how he got around the desk so fast but suddenly he was there holding her, keeping her off the floor, begging her to stop, don’t, please stop or I’ll cry, too.

“Shhh…” he said, pulling her close as she sobbed as if her heart would break, as her heart was breaking.

“Don’t…” he whispered. “Please…” But she couldn’t stoHer Her pain at her powerlessness tore her apart and she was unable to do anything but let it run through her and wash her soul.

The storm passed. She gathered her courage and looked at him, ashamed of her outburst, her loss of control, only to find the same storm had ravaged him.

The sudden compassion that bloomed on her face made him ache all over. She wiped away his tears with her fingers, carefully… tenderly. She held his face in her hands, caught with her thumbs the tears that continued to fall. Her kindness was undoing him. He tried to pull away but she held on, staring into his eyes and he remembered, suddenly, that he was in love with this woman.

He closed his eyes, not wanting her to see that. It was a mistake because the next thing he felt was her lips on his.

The ache intensified as she slid her tongue between his lips and he opened his mouth and let the kiss happen, then he gave in, gave up, pulled her to him, that which he’d wanted so badly, for so long, in his arms now, moving against him like a dream.

Shriven souls, burnt out ashes of emotion, despair and disappointment so deep it made them feel like hollowed-out shells, emptied of everything except a biological imperative. He pulled away and looked into her eyes, reached up and pushed her scrub cap back and off her head. Her hair uncoiled slowly, falling to her shoulders. His breath caught in his throat as she pulled away from him. His heart beat painfully in his chest, then nearly stopped as she reached around herself and slowulleulled her top over her head. She let it fall to the floor, then reached for his own top.

They undressed each other slowly, never looking anywhere but in the other’s eyes. And when they were completely naked, she lay down on the floor and he covered her.

She was like the warm womb from which he’d been expelled, long before his own remembering. She was comfort and inexpressible sweetness. She spread her thighs, drew her legs up, and when he entered her, her cry was that of welcome with no trace of tears.

He filled her completely. He felt that. They fit perfectly together and the sensation traveled from the source up his spine and exploded in his head. His mouth found hers again. Hot tongue thrust in and out in imitation, in sync. And there was nothing nothing but him giving himself to her, trying trying to crawl inside her, be wier, er, be one with her. And there was nothing else but her opening opening to him, opening herself and letting him in.

Sex as fleeting as life, synaptic flash, a split second of annihilation, two voices crying out in ecstatic harmony and it was done. Infinity briefly gsed,sed, found beyond bearing and quickly dropped, the hand, the fire too incompatible to co-exist. Now it came back to them as they came down, their mortality, their failure, their complete and utter vincibility.

Ashes.

Robert felt like crying again. Except Elizabeth was holding the back of his head, caressing it. The gesture, instinctive or purposeful, comforted him. He kissed her, giving her himself, giving her the last of himself, then he pulled away.

Her arms tightened around him. She wasn’t ready to release him, she couldn’t relinquish this consolation, not yet, not now. But the moment of glory had already passed beyond her ability to hang on to. And the real world with all its inhabitants hove into view, as quiet and as full of unseen weight as an iceberg.

She let him go.

He mopped her up with his scrub cap. They slowly dressed themselves and got to their feet. Robert put the desk between them again, busied himself with putting the bottle away and wiping up the spilled scotch. Elizabeth stood by the door, uncertainly.

“Go home, Elizabeth,” he said, not looking at her. “This never happened.”

The pain in his voice sliced through her. “Robert…” she began.

“Go home, Elizabeth,” he repeated. “Go home before I embarras bos both by begging you to stay.” She drew a breath, preparing to speak when his “Please.” stopped her.

He looked up at her then, and she saw that begging was imminent. Her heart failed her, failed them both and she fled.

^^^

He had to talk to the cops. Then there was the last thing he would ever do for Lucy.

“I apologize, Ms. Knight, for my inadcy.”cy.” Robert addressed the cooling remains of the young med student who, not twenty-four hours before had been full of enough life to illuminate a three bedroom home for six months. “Mea culpa, mea culpa, mea maxima culpa,” he murmured, as he began the task of putting her back together again. “I couldn’t save you; my most grievous fault.”

He thought about what had never happened in his office and wished to Christ it would happen again. Not much chance of that. Momentary indiscretion aside, Greene seemed to have her pretty much in the bag.

“Damn shame, too,” he told the dead girl. “Because he’s not enough for her… and I am? Well, I’m glad you asked that question, Ms. Knight. Because I happen to know, for a fact, and especially after tonight’s festivities that yes indeed, I am without a doubt. We’re a match made in hea oh, oh, and speaking of heaven, Ms. Knight, when you see God, and I’m sure you will, be sure to tell him that Robert said he sucks.”

Ms. Knight had nothing to say to that and Robert continued to stitch. “It’s the least I can do,” he murmured and his thoughts returned again to what had never happened in his office, what would not have happened if Lucy hadn’t died. What had happened between Elizabeth and himself had happened because Lucy had died. “This fuck’s for you,” he mused, just as Kerry Weaver cripped into the room.

“I had to close her chest,” he told her. He pulled up the last thread and Kerry snipped it. “Thank you,” he said.

Kerry began to shroud Lucy and Robert said, “The nurses can do that.”

Kerry said, “I know.”


The sun rose over Lake Michigan that morning, as it always had.

END