What Burns Away by Melissa Falcon Field Read Free Book Online Page B

wooden stand, catty-corner along my bedside. He stood back to admire the gift, his hands on his hips, as he stretched up onto his toes and grinned at me like a kid with cookie.
    â€œWell,” he admitted, “it won’t sound exactly like the tide rolling in, but it’s water. Salt water. And maybe watching the fish will soothe you some. Make you feel more at home, with your own tiny ocean.”
    â€œThat’s sweet,” I said, softening, meaning it, wanting to unbutton the resentment I felt about the lonely weekend in a city where I was too new to possess friendships and too unfamiliar with the map to explore in what felt like a never-ending snowstorm.
    We sat together in the good kind of quiet.
    Still wearing his scrubs and wrinkled white coat, Miles cleaned the glass, tested the brackishness of the water with a hydrometer, installed the filter and heater, and added the coral, the plants, and the sand.
    While he worked, I pulled plastic bags full of starfish, tiny sea horses, and two silver angelfish, intricately speckled, from the boxes. Setting them on the bed, I examined the delicate sea creatures inside each clear balloon and told Miles, “This is really nice. Thank you.”
    He turned to me, all smiles. I remember something in his shoulders easing.
    â€œIn fact,” I goaded, “they look so lovely I want to eat them.”
    We both laughed at my reminder of Miles’s single complaint about our move—the city’s lack of fresh seafood, the reason, he claimed, for his new diet of burgers, pastries, and cheese curds, along with his fifteen-pound weight gain. And with my taunting, he tackled me onto the bed, arms dripping wet to the elbows.
    â€œIt’s not a perfect situation,” he reminded me, straddling my lap, holding me down against the pillows. “But it’s an excellent place for clinical work and academics. It’s the medical teaching setting I hoped for, with important science happening and Lasker fellows, all these great thinkers, and device innovations. It’s the perfect combination, everything I wanted.”
    He kissed me hard on the cheek and returned to the tank.
    â€œSo these critters will need to bob around a while,” he instructed, depositing the bags atop the water with the same gentleness I’d seen him use to place Jonah in the crib, with the careful hand I imagined he used to operate on his patients. “When the temp hits 78 Fahrenheit, cut their bags open and let them dive on in.” He pulled a tiny thermometer from his pocket and left it on my nightstand.
    â€œThank you,” I told him. “It’s pretty.”
    â€œI’m still working on procuring a beach.”
    I leaned into him then, wanting to be close, to be held. Remembering how we were, how we could be.
    Miles nuzzled a spot beneath my ear. “I miss you,” he said, twirling a strand of my hair around his finger.
    Clinging to my husband, I felt my morose mood dissipate. “I miss you too,” I said in perfect time with the resounding ping of his pager.
    â€œProbably the fellow.” He sighed, crestfallen, searching his pockets to silence the noise. “I know, Claire, I know. I’m frustrated, too. It’s just…the ER’s a mob scene, really sick patients coming through. My procedures are booking months out, and all the fellows are still in their first few months of training. Walking them through the more complicated clinical cases is part of the deal. And then there are my research deadlines—I’m sorry I dragged you into all this craziness. But it won’t always be this busy, honey. And I do believe that in the long run, this move will be good for all of us. The whole family.”
    I fell limp, my hands slipping from our embrace. This job was everything he wanted, yet it had claimed so much of him that there was little left for Jonah and me.
    Miles phoned the hospital call operator and held the line.