Page 8 of Saving Texas

“Come on Jeffers, you’re on my team!”

I looked up to see Clara sitting on a gurney, pushing herself forward with one foot on the floor like it was a skateboard.

“What’s the game?” I asked.

I was usually the most serious guy in my unit, but around Clara, I couldn’t help but give into being playful.

“Last team to the end of the parking lot buys barbecue at Jimmy D’s,” she said, as a nurse, a doctor, and two other guys from my unit joined us, pushing two gurneys between them. “Girls ride, boys push.”

The six of us maneuvered the three gurneys through the doors and out into the parking lot, where a crowd of hospital staff and emergency responders had gathered. We lined up by the curb until someone blew a whistle, then we were off. Clara flattened herself on the gurney, laying on her stomach and giving me instructions.

“Faster Jeffers,” she shouted as one team pulled ahead. “We can’t be last.”

“Johnson ran track in high school,” I complained as my teammate sprinted down the road pushing a petite nurse and leaving the rest of us in the dust. “That’s not fair.”

“Life’s not fair,” she called back.

Suddenly she turned onto her side on the gurney, holding on with one hand and sliding her scrub top up.

“Hey Anders,” she called to my other teammate.

When Anders turned to look at her, Clara pulled down one bra cup, exposing a nipple. Anders stumbled, his eyes damn near popping out of his head, as Clara laughed and rolled back to her stomach.

“Come on Jeffers, I got us a lead, don’t lose it.”

***

Now I wondered if maybe Clara’s carefree attitude had been a cover for something else, or if it had been genuine. Maybe life had just killed her joy in the years since we’d been together. I flashed back to our night together when she told me there was no such thing as a happily ever after. Something about that hadn’t set well with me. At the time it didn’t seem to jive with the rest of her personality, but then we’d spent the next eighteen hours in our own little lovers’ paradise, and I’d forgotten all about it.

When Clara didn’t answer my question, I decided to take one last shot. I gave her my most charming smile. It was a little rusty because I’d scarcely used it since a couple of bad tours in Afghanistan that had left me bitter and wounded.

“Okay, we don’t have to talk about that now. I seem to remember you like Texas barbecue, how about we go to Jimmy D’s for dinner?”

Her eyes widened. “That place is still there? No way.”

“Jimmy D’s has been an institution since before World War II, of course it’s still there. They still have that honey mustard barbecue sauce you always loved too.”

At some point during her ten-day tour here a group of us had gone to Jimmy D’s and Clara had been so obsessed with the place we’d gone back a second time after the gurney race. I remembered the way she’d somehow sweet talked the owner into shipping a couple of bottles of their honey mustard sauce to Portland. I was pretty sure Clara was the reason Jimmy D’s had a thriving mail order business to this day.

I let out a breath as she finally answered my invitation.

“Okay, I guess I wouldn’t mind going back to Jimmy D’s now that you mention it.”

If I’d known that barbecue sauce would be the thing that started thawing that ice around Clara, I would have led with it. I didn’t even argue when she insisted on driving. I slid into the passenger side of her RAV-4 hybrid, relieved she had a sensible vehicle. As soon as she got into the car, the scent of citrus drifted to my nose, reminding me how she always used a lemon verbena hand lotion.

Twenty-five minutes later we were seated at a tiny table in the corner of Jimmy D’s, waiting for our food to come.

“What have you been up to the last seventeen years?” I asked. “Did you stay with Doctors in Disasters?”

She nodded, fiddling with the straw in her lemonade.

“Yeah, I was with them until a couple of months ago, actually.”

She sounded sad.

“Wow, so you’ve been traveling for them this whole time?” That was impressive. I knew that most people got sick of being on the road all the time.

“Not the whole time. They’d usually deploy me about once a quarter,” she said. “I’d go for four to twelve weeks, depending on the assignment.”