Carved in Bone

Dr. Brockton.” She turned the knob and cracked the door.
    “Miranda, wait. Look, I made a mistake. I’m sorry I did, and I’m sorry you saw me make it.”
    “Yeah. Me, too.” She shoved the door open furiously. It banged against the doorstop outside and careened back into her, catching her on the forearm. She yelled in pain. “Ow, shit! Oh, goddamn! Oh, son of a bitch. Oh, oh, oh!” I started toward her, but she saw me coming and shouldered on through the door to get away. The heavy steel door slammed shut behind her.
    Yeah, Einstein, that went well, I sneered at myself. What a screwup. I plopped onto an ancient stool and laid my forehead on the counter. Closing my eyes, I took three deep breaths and tried to calm my mind by focusing on the sounds around me instead of the turmoil inside. Somewhere in the bowels of the structure, the ventilation system thrummed. Outside, beyond the maze of girders and concrete pilings, a weed-eater buzzed relentlessly, then gave a strangled cry and died. Moments later, the ventilation system fell silent, too. In the sudden quiet, all I heard was a deep groaning, the sound of an animal in pain. I looked out the lab’s wall of windows for the source of the sound.
    Miranda sat crumpled on the concrete steps outside the stadium, her purse and backpack a few steps below her. Hunching over, she clutched her right arm to her chest, sobbing from somewhere deep inside. I hurried outside. As I got close, I noticed that the ulna—the forearm bone that runs from the elbow to the wrist—had a lumpy kink that hadn’t been there sixty seconds earlier. The bone was broken; things just kept getting worse.
    “Miranda, you’re hurt. Let me take a look at that.” I laid a hand on her shoulder.
    She shook it off. “Don’t touch me. Just leave me alone.”
    “No. Until I get you to a doctor, I’m not leaving you alone.”
    “Look, I’m a big girl, okay? You don’t have to take care of me. Besides, I wouldn’t want to make you late for your next babysitting session.”
    “Miranda, I made a mistake. I’ve never done that before, and I’ll never do it again. I’m sorry, but I’m only human.”
    “But…why her? ” And she began to sob anew.
    Jess was right. I had been blind and careless. “Oh, Miranda. Listen to me. You’ve already got the best of me, don’t you understand? If we tried to have more, we’d end up with nothing.”
    She raised her head and stared at me with anguished eyes. “You don’t know that. Why do you say that?”
    “Miranda, I love working with you. It’s my favorite part of my job, and my job is the only bearable part of my life these days. When we’re in the lab together, I don’t feel thirty years older than you. I feel young and smart, and connected to a person I like and admire enormously. But if we were together in a different way—in a relationship, in a bed—our thirty years’ difference would hit us like a ton of bricks. Sooner or later you’d feel sorry for me, and then you’d feel trapped by me, and then you’d start to despise me. And that would kill me. It would absolutely kill me.”
    Something in her face softened a bit. “Oh, bullshit, how could I ever despise you? I worship the damn ground you walk on.”
    “Not so much. Not lately.”
    “Don’t be stupid. Of course I do. I’m just…so… furious at you for messing around with…with some child! ”
    “Temporary insanity. Point taken. A never-to-be-repeated mistake. She is, after all, a whole five years younger than you. But just for the record, in the eyes of the law, I believe she’s an adult.” A low growl emanated from Miranda’s throat, which I took to be a good sign—too much feistiness in it for a suicide candidate. “She’s smart, too, for an undergraduate.” The growl ratcheted up a few decibels. “And fairly easy on the eyes…” An elbow—her left elbow—shot out and caught me in the ribs. “Ow. Not as smart or fetching as you, of course, but then again, who is?”
    “Damn you, why can’t you just let me stay mad?”
    “Well, judging by that arm, it’s not so good for your health.”
    “Oh, that. I did that on purpose. So I could file a worker’s comp claim. I’m tired of being your defleshing slave.”
    “You’re saying you needed…a break?” She groaned at the pun. “By the way, if you really want to sound professional, you should use the German term, diener .” She rolled her eyes. “Come on, let’s get you over to Student