weren’t ready to go back outside and face the rest of the day.
Michi leaned back in her chair, trying to relax, but she was too wound up for that, so she simply sipped her tea, ate her scone when the server brought it, and stared out the window at Eric’s building, like that was going to give her some kind of resolution. Intermittently, she flipped through her phone to various photos of Riku and only then did that feeling of despair go away. One perfect little face with such a calming effect. Who would have ever guessed that she could have fallen in love so deeply. But she had, and she would literally give her life for that little boy.
“I hope you like blueberry, because I’ve bagged up one to take with you. You look like you’re in a blueberry kind of mood,” the server said, handing over a bag. “On the house.”
“Thank you,” she said, as she repositioned herself in the seat. “So, tell me—what, exactly, identifies a blueberry mood?”
“Someone who’s worrying or being contemplative. You’ve been in here quite a while and it’s obvious something’s on your mind. Something heavy, judging from all the frowning.”
Was she so transparent that the young man with the scones could identify her mood? He was right—it was definitely blueberry. “Maybe if I come back, I’ll be in a strawberry mood. Would that be better?”
“Yes, because our strawberry scones are one of the most popular and strawberry is a very happy state of mind.”
“Then make sure you save me a strawberry and I’ll work hard on my strawberry mood before I get here.” She took a bite of her blueberry scone, then a sip of her tea, and started to pop back into her photo gallery, but a voice at a nearby table startled her out of her plan.
“Help! Somebody, please, help. She’s choking.”
Instantly alert, Michi jumped up and ran to the table where the ladies she’d observed were sitting. Sure enough, one of them was choking. Sitting up straight, confused, trying to breathe, the woman rolled her eyes up at Michi, and her expression was beyond frightened. She was dying, and she knew it.
“Please, stand back,” Michi yelled to the crowd, as she leaned the choking woman forward and slapped her back five times. She’d hoped that whatever was lodged in the woman’s windpipe would come loose, but unfortunately that didn’t happen.
So, from behind again, she wrapped her arms around the woman’s ribcage, forming a fist with both hands. Then she pulled the woman toward her, giving an upward thrust each of the five times she tried. Still, nothing happened. And now the woman was turning blue. Her lips, her fingernails. Oxygen deprivation, Michi knew as she started the whole procedure over again. “Has somebody called for an ambulance?” she shouted to the crowd.
One deep, smooth voice stood out over the noise of the crowd. “ETA less than five,” he said, pushing himself through the crowd, then kneeling next to Michi. “And she doesn’t have five minutes left in her,” he continued.
Michi looked over to see who was working with her, and gasped. “Eric?”
“Michi?” he said, as he took over the upward thrusts Michi was doing. One, two—on the third thrust it worked and the woman sucked in a deep breath.
“Stay still,” Michi cautioned her, trying not to think what would happen next, when the ambulance took her to the hospital. “The paramedics will be here shortly, and they’ll take you to the emergency room so the doctors there can run some tests to make sure you’re good.”
Gasping for breath, the woman nodded her understanding as Eric took her pulse again. “Much better,” he said, giving her a reassuring pat on the arm. “You’ve come through the hard part like a champ, and this next part in the hospital will be much easier. And it won’t be happening on a cold cement floor.”
She smiled up at him, drew in a deep breath, then closed her eyes, not from fear but from trusting Eric, who’d taken off his jacket and placed it under her head.
The way Eric was with the poor woman...it nearly brought a lump to Michi’s throat. This was a man who was born to be a doctor. A man who shouldn’t have given it up. And he was Riku’s father, she thought as a swell of pride overtook her. “Paramedics are on their way in,” she said, glancing out the window, not so much to watch for the paramedics as to pull herself together.
Immediately, the onlookers in the café began to move tables and chairs back and push the display shelf of coffees and mugs for sale to the wall to make room for the two paramedics, their equipment and their stretcher. “Her vitals are stabilizing,” Eric said. “So now it’s more about her being frightened than anything else.”
The woman looked up at him again and nodded, and Michi was still amazed by the way not only the woman but everyone in the room responded to him. Even in the middle of a medical crisis his voice was so calm, so reassuring she was impressed by how much she remembered the detail of it. It was the same deep, convincing undertone that had seduced her. The same richness that had enticed her into his bed. Yet now she could hear the edge, the command. And she could see the way people were responding.
“I was actually thinking about you earlier,” Eric said.
There hadn’t been a day gone by since he’d left her that she hadn’t thought about him. She’d sculpted the perfect words to say when she did finally catch up to him. Practiced them. Edited. Practiced. Edited. And now that the moment had arrived, all she could think to say was, “How have you been?” Stupid. Stupid. And she didn’t hear his answer between the noise of people still moving tables back and the mad flurry of the pounding feet of people trying to get out of the way.
“She’s doing better,” Michi said, as Eric bent down again, but this time not as keen to watch the patient as he was to look at her. “Respirations still shallow and fast, but nothing dangerous.”
Ruth, the choking victim, smiled at Eric like he was the only one in the room as the paramedics took quick vital signs, then lifted her onto the stretcher. At that point, Eric took her hand and went with them to the ambulance, and it was only when they had arranged her in the back and were getting ready to shut the door that he let go. Once he did, he slapped the door to indicate everything was good, and the ambulance siren came on, then the vehicle nosed its way into bumper-to-bumper New York traffic.
“She really trusted you,” Michi said, standing behind him.
“I think if you’re in a life or death situation and there’s somebody there to help you, you naturally trust them. Haven’t been in one myself, but it makes sense.”
“How have you been, Eric?” she asked again as they walked back over to the sidewalk.
“Busy. New responsibilities, a new job, a new life.”
“Medicine’s loss,” she said, clearly uneasy. This wasn’t the right place to tell him about Riku, neither was it the right time. But it was circling around her now, the reality of what she was about to face. “My, um...aunt mentioned you’d left surgery to take over your family business.”
“Duty called,” he said. “But that’s life, right? Things happening when you least expect it. Like you. I thought I saw you outside my building a while ago,” he said, following her back through the congestion of people and displaced tables and chairs in the café. “Standing on the sidewalk.”
“I was taking a walk earlier, so you might have.” Since
