she said, “but you only know what you think you want.”
Rebecca scowled. “What the hell does that mean?”
Dorothea shrugged, and Rebecca knew she’d get no answer from her. She knew Dorothea better than anyone. She knew that when she was snippy, it was the pain of her loneliness coming out. Since Louisa, her partner of thirty years, died last year, Dorothea’s usual prickliness had taken on a whole new dimension. But it was her ornery nature that had led Dot to create Doctors International Disaster Aid twenty years ago, when people told her it was too ambitious an idea for one woman to take on. Her stubbornness and passion had made DIDA the respected organization it was today. The work was unglamorous, unprofitable and sometimes unsafe, but it was so very necessary. During the past few years, Rebecca had become one of DIDA’s few full-time physicians, Dorothea’s right hand in the field. Rebecca had met her at a fund-raiser in Chapel Hill, and Dot had recognized the seedling of passion in her, the fearlessness and the longing to do something truly meaningful with her medical skills. Dot had exploited those qualities with vigor. She became Rebecca’s best friend. Mentor. Mother. At a small gathering at the home Dorothea shared with Louisa, she introduced Rebecca to her partner, who immediately understood what Dorothea was plotting. Louisa pulled Rebecca into the pantry, out of earshot of the other guests. “Dot’s seducing you, Rebecca,” she said.
Rebecca’s eyes flew open. “What?”
“She’s nearly sixty years old,” Louisa said. “She’s been talking for years about finding someone who’ll eventually take over the leadership of DIDA.”
“She hardly knows me,” Rebecca had said.
“Dot reads people,” Louisa said. “She knew just by looking at you that you were the one.”
Louisa had been right, of course, and while Rebecca had never come out and said, Yes, I’ll take over DIDA when you’re ready to turn over the reins, it was one of those things that was understood between them without needing to be discussed.
Although Louisa’s use of the word “seducing” had at first startled her, Rebecca knew Dorothea had never had any sexual interest in her. Dorothea labeled Rebecca a “one.” She believed sexual preference was inborn and fell on a continuum, with complete heterosexuality a “one” and complete homosexuality a “ten” and bisexuality a “five-point-five.” When she described people she’d met to Rebecca, she might say “he’s a cardiologist, practices in Seattle, a three.” A few years ago, Rebecca had been interested in a guy when she was on assignment after an earthquake wiped out a village in Guatemala. When she told Dorothea she was attracted to him, Dot had clucked her tongue. “He’s a seven,” she’d said. “Can’t you see that?”
“Oh, come on,” Rebecca had said. “He’s totally hetero.”
Dot had shrugged. “Just warning you.”
He was a seven. Maybe even an eight. He’d told
Rebecca he wasn’t married, but she soon learned that Paul, the man he shared a house with, was doing more than just paying his share of the mortgage. Dorothea had sized the guy up with one quick look. She could be spooky that way.
She had that skill as a physician, too, an ability to diagnose with a glance or the lightest of touches. Rebecca had learned so much from her. Dorothea had made her a better clinician, as well as nurturing her longing to work in disaster areas. “You need a wild streak to do this work, babe,” she’d told her during that early seduction period. “And you’ve got it. But you also need discipline.”
“I’m disciplined.” Rebecca had been insulted. “How do you think I got through medical school?”
“Different kind of discipline,” Dorothea said. “It’s a focus. No matter what’s going on around you—power out, buildings caving in, mud up to your ankles—you see only the patient. You need blinders.”
Rebecca had developed the blinders and the focus and the love of the work. She would never love that there were disasters in the world, but when she’d get a phone call in the middle of the night telling her there’d been a quake in South America and she needed to get to the airport immediately, she felt a current of electricity whip through her body.
“Brent,” Dorothea said now, “is a good man.”
Rebecca had expected Dot to give her a host of reasons why she shouldn’t even consider marrying Brent—or anyone else, for that matter. But Dorothea probably thought of Brent as the best match for her, given their shared commitment to DIDA. Their relationship was built on friendship and mutual respect. That was the best foundation for a marriage, wasn’t it?
“Well, yeah.” She sipped her wine. “He is. But I don’t see the point of marrying him.”
“It’s probably a bad idea,” Dorothea agreed. “But have you thought about what it would be like? The two of you sharing the leadership of DIDA together? Could be amazing, actually. Very fulfilling for both of you.”
Rebecca rolled her eyes. “You know, it irritates the hell out of me when you talk like you have one foot in the grave.” It also irritated her to think of sharing DIDA’s leadership with Brent. With anyone.
Dorothea shrugged. “Just being a realist.”
“A fatalist is more like it.”
Dorothea leaned toward her across the table. “I want you to be ready to take over the day I can’t do it any longer,” she said. “It may be twenty years from today or it may be tomorrow.”
“Well, I’m pulling for the twenty years,” Rebecca said. She added reassuringly, “You know I’m ready, willing and able, Dot. Don’t sweat it.”
“So back to you and Brent,” Dorothea said, and Rebecca realized this was not the first time Dot had considered their sharing DIDA’s helm. “You do squabble a lot.”
“Squabble?” Rebecca smiled at the word, but she had to admit that Dorothea was right. “True,” she said, “but only about the small stuff.”
“You both have the fire in your belly for disaster work, that’s for sure. He’s as wild as you are. Almost, anyway,” she said with a wry shrug. “You’re positively feral.”
Rebecca laughed. She liked the description.
“Neither of you has ever wanted kids or a house in the burbs with a white picket fence,” Dorothea continued. “You’ve got the same values.”
Right again, Rebecca thought. She’d never wanted to settle down. She didn’t care where she lived, and kids had never been part of her life plan. When she witnessed Maya and Adam’s battle to have a baby, the lengths they were willing to go to to get pregnant, she knew she was missing the maternal gene.
“You surprise me, Dot,” she said. “I didn’t think me getting married would be something you wanted.”
“I don’t particularly, but it’s your choice. Why would I care?”
“Because you like having me living upstairs from you, for starters.”
“Get real.” Dorothea took a sip from her water glass. “You’re pushing forty and—”
“Thirty-eight!”
