For days after their weekend at the lake house, Michael simply couldn’t think of anything but Carolina. When he went to bed at night, he closed his eyes and saw her face, that way she smiled just for him. In his dreams, they were together, just the two of them alone, and everything was perfect. As soon as he awoke each morning, he jumped right out of bed to go and send her an email or a text message.
It’s just us, he wrote one day. No one else and nothing else matters. Only you and me, together forever.
The next day he told her, You make me feel alive. No one has ever had this effect on me.
The next, You are so beautiful inside and out, Carolina. You are flawless. I’m so lucky to have found you.
First thing every day, he had some thought for her, some words about how much he loved her, desired her, wanted to be with her forever. He told her about specific memories he had—a certain way she’d touched him or looked at him, the way the sun had glanced off her hair one afternoon, a conversation they’d had. He told her about his fantasies of taking her away from it all somehow, of running away with her and leaving everything else behind. He shared with her every notion that came to him, every emotion that he felt in his heart.
You and your daydreams, she wrote to him one day after he’d sent her an email about buying a boat and taking her on a year-long cruise—another random idea that had just come to him. He could picture her laughing, her bright, beautiful smile, as she sent it.
But it wasn’t a daydream, not in Michael’s mind. Though he didn’t know how—or if—he could ever make it happen, being alone with Carolina had become an all-encompassing thought to him: running away, starting a new life, building a home and just finally being able to be together, as they were fated to be. He thought about it constantly—when he rode his bike, when he drove to work, when he talked to his patients. No matter what he did, Carolina was always on his mind. He was always thinking about how he had to be with her no matter what.
“But wouldn’t it be great?” he asked her one afternoon, spinning around on his creaky, old chair and propping a foot up on the windowsill behind his desk. Outside, summer was waning; the sun was shining but not as blisteringly as it had been for so many months. Michael’s mind wandered back to all the days he had spent out there with Carolina, at the Chateau Deneuve, at the cabin by the lake, at out-of-the-way restaurants and walking around the city’s parks, hiding under the boughs of the trees to kiss, to hold on to one another tightly. They were just small pieces of time, stolen moments here and there, much too few and far between. “If we could be together all the time?”
On the other end of the call, Carolina sighed. Though Michael had never been in her office, he could picture her sitting behind a desk, gazing out a window just as he was, her green eyes twinkling in the sunlight reflected off the city’s skyscrapers. “Of course it would be great,” she said, sounding a little forlorn. “I want to be with you all the time, Michael. I feel lost when I’m without you, like we’re linked together. Like I can’t survive without you.” She sighed again. “But running away…that’s not reality. Right now—”
“Right now I love you,” he interrupted, unable to hold himself back, unwilling to hear her reasons why they shouldn’t have accepted their fate. “And I want to be with you no matter what. Carolina, I don’t care about reality. You are my reality now.”
He paused for a moment, watched one of his patients strolling up the walkway to the building. He checked his watch—almost time for his three-fifteen appointment. “And if the reality is that we can only see each other every few days, and have to stay hidden away from the world…” He sighed as well and turned back to his desk. He glanced at the framed picture of his wife and kids; they looked back at him expectantly. “Well, then, I guess I’ll have to accept that…for now. But you can’t expect me to live without you in my arms forever.”
Carolina laughed a little. Michael pictured her again, saw her tossing her hair back from her shoulder, putting her thumb up to her mouth to bite her nail a little, something she did sometimes when she was coming up with one of her brilliant ideas. He saw the corners of her red-painted lips curling up into a grin, and he couldn’t help doing the same himself.
“Can you get away today?” Carolina asked him, her voice low. “Meet me at the chateau?”
“Well…” Michael reached over and turned the picture of his family away a little, at least so their eyes weren’t boring into him. Then he looked at his watch again. “One last appointment today,” he told Carolina, and then paused. He pictured her again, her long legs, her high heels. He wondered what she was wearing, and what she was wearing underneath it. “But to be with you,” he added, “I think I can cancel it.”
***
Whistling a light tune as he walked out of his office, Michael put on his jacket and slipped his cell phone into his pocket. Walking down the hallway toward the reception area, he glanced inside an exam room and saw his partner with a patient. Michael quickened his pace before Scott could see him.
“Marissa,” he said, pausing at the front desk where his assistant sat. “I need to cancel my three-fifteen.”
The young woman peered out over the high top of her desk, at a man sitting in the waiting room—the same man Michael had seen out his window.
“Dr. Sanford,” Marissa said, leaning over toward him and whispering. “He’s already here.”
“Oh, yeah,” Michael said, letting out a breath, puffing out his cheeks as he thought. “Well, just tell him—”
In his pocket, his cell phone buzzed, and he reached in and quickly whipped it out. Flipping it open, he found a text message from Carolina.
Do you believe that things happen for a reason? it asked. He stared down at the phone, considering the question.
“Dr. Sanford?” Marissa asked. He did not respond. “Dr. Sanford?”
Still gazing at his opened cell phone, Michael wondered what Carolina had on her mind. Did he think that things happened for a reason? He guessed that he did—at least, he had since he’d met Carolina. Before then, he’d simply stumbled through his life without much of a higher purpose, letting things happen to him instead of actively going after what he’d wanted—without, now that he thought about it, really even knowing what he’d wanted. He’d married Julie because they’d been dating for a while and it was time; they’d had children because that was what married couples did. He’d worked in a hospital because he’d interned there and they’d offered him the position when he’d graduated. When he’d gotten tired of that, he’d joined a practice with the first colleague who had asked him.
For the first time now, he was ready to take charge of his life, to go after what he wanted—and get it. Carolina inspired that sort of passion in him.
“Dr. Sanford,” Marissa whispered loudly through clenched teeth, finally drawing his attention. “What should I tell your three-fifteen?”
“Oh, uh, tell him I was called out on an emergency,” he said, beginning to type something into his phone. “I’ll go out the back door.”
“You’re going to sneak out?” his assistant asked. “For real?”
He paused his typing and looked at her, a little surprised that she would talk to him like that.
“Dr. Sanford,” she went on, “I know that what you do or how you handle your patients isn’t my business, but I really feel like I have to say something here because now this involves me. You’re asking me to go out there and lie to this guy who already took time out of his day to show up here, and for what? Why are you leaving in the middle of the day again?”
“Again?” Michael asked with a bit of a nervous laugh. “When do I leave in the middle of the day?”
“At least once a week,” Marissa told him. “Maybe you think I don’t notice, but I do. I also see you holing up in your office and spending all your time between appointments on the phone. You’re two weeks behind on your paperwork, and you’re not even scheduling as many patients as you used to. Over the last three months, your appointments have gone down by about a third. Dr. Sanford, this just isn’t like you.”
Michael just looked at her for a moment. Had he really been pulling away from his work so much? He hadn’t noticed; it sure hadn’t felt like it. He’d been so focused on Carolina, nothing else had seemed to matter.
Carolina, he thought, checking his watch. He had told her he’d meet up with her in fifteen minutes. He had to get out of there.
“Listen, Marissa,” he said, “I’ve been busy. I’ve had some things going on. Just help me out now and I’ll get back on top of things as soon as I can, alright?”
Still seated behind her desk, Marissa folded her arms and looked at him skeptically.
“I’ll owe you one, okay?” Michael said, then walked away from the desk, down the hall and toward the rear exit.
Once outside, he paused and took a deep breath of the humid afternoon air, running a hand through his hair as he did so. It felt good to be free, but that exchange with Marissa had him worried. He hadn’t realized that he was being so obvious, that anyone had noticed that his attention had been somewhere other than his work. It was clear to him now that he couldn’t call Carolina from work anymore. He would have to find some other way to keep in touch with her.
He looked down at his cell phone again, still clutched in his hand.
Do you believe that things happen for a reason?
Everything happens for a reason, he’d started to type back in the office, while Marissa had been ranting at him. Smiling now, he finished his message. You and I happened. That’s the only proof that I need.