Marina/Esther – “Dare” pt. 8

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Disclaimer #1: This is fan fiction. Terapia d’urgenza belongs to Rai2. No copyright infringement is intended by borrowing its characters for a little while. No monetary gain whatsoever is being made. All I’m trying is to spread the love for velvet jackets, sort through the cliffhanger debris and prevent further lesbian parking lot trauma.

Disclaimer #2: This is a story about women. In love. With each other. But I guess you already knew that. – If this is not your cup of tea, rest assured that I prefer coffee and that you needn’t read this. If this is illegal where you live, please be careful. – Also, I can’t believe that after ten years of writing fiction online, I still have to apologize for my contents. If fuchsia bras qualify as NSFW in your book, I guess this story might rate as PG-13 upwards.

Note/Nota: This story is also available in Spanish, thanks to Sam’s wonderful translating work! Updates for “Atreverse” can be found every weekend over at her blog,  “Ya sé que estoy piantao”. — Esta historia también está disponible en español, gracias al gran trabajo de Sam. El nuevo capitulo de “Atreverse” se puede leer cada finde en su blog, “Ya sé que estoy piantao”.

Additional note: This story is as of yet unfinished. It will be written and posted in parts, updated weekly, Friday nights at 9 p.m. (GMT+1). You know that my time is limited, and that my time management sucks, but I’ll try to keep it up.

 

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8

That last image of Esther stayed. The way she had turned around once more, smiling, waving back at Marina before she walked back through the garden, without hurry, and without turning around again.

Marina knew it because she didn’t take her eyes off Esther until she had disappeared behind the trees at the end of the greens.

If only she could jump and run after her, her legs carrying her out the terrace door, across the garden, the gravel moving below the soles of her shoes. To call out to her and reach for her shoulder before Esther even had turned around, and to embrace her tightly, forgetting the worries of what might happen.

With her good hand, Marina slapped the metal frame of the wheelchair and then couldn’t stifle a wince when the brusque movement pulled at her wound.

She wanted Esther back.

Actually, it was even simpler.

She wanted her.

The hug just now, given in friendly goodbye, had sparked a sudden rush of desire that left Marina dazed. She wasn’t even sure what she had said to Esther in goodbye, probably something that didn’t make much sense.

The only thing that made sense to her right now was the fleeting sensation of Esther’s cheek against hers in leaning down, the fragrant embrace of her perfume and the slight brush of soft curve against her shoulders that brought back images of Esther in an evening gown with a low neckline, walking next to her at a friend’s gallery opening, and Marina didn’t even remember whether the focus of the evening had been photography or panting.

Her personal focus of the evening had been Esther, Esther in that dress, and getting her out of it as soon as they reached her apartment.

In the end, they hadn’t even managed that, but faced with a disheveled Esther, breathless, the straps of her dress askew, Marina later had to admit that sometimes, losing clothes was overrated.

She could have painted the tantalizing sight even now, the slope of warm skin against dark fabric, a teasing outline in the quiet light of late hours.

Those first weeks, the only weeks they had shared, she had barely gotten any sleep, but still she had felt more energized and more alive than now, where doctors and nurses supervised her schedule, her diet and her sleep.

The white walls of the room towered over the wheelchair in its middle, leaving Marina adrift in its aseptic cradle. The room hadn’t felt this cold before Esther had come here, and had left again, seemingly taking all the colors with her. Even the bright Tyrol autumn was lackluster in comparison.

Hugging Esther had been the first vivid sensation since she had woken up again. Now that the sedatives had been replaced by simple painkillers and the endless hours of laying awake, her skin sticky against whitened sheets, had been changed for the frustrations, the aches and the sweat of physiotherapy, Marina seemed to be waking up for real.

She hadn’t known, not until that first, casual brush of Esther’s skin had sent her heart hammering.

And she hadn’t even been able to respond in kind, fumbling to hold onto Esther with her good hand and trying to grasp the fleeting moments between fingers that weren’t even good for a hug, much less for a surgery.

Marina scowled at the metal frame of the chair, seeing only iron bars that blocked her from getting up, from walking out of the veranda door into the afternoon, and from Esther.

It was an unusual, unpracticed position for Marina – having to wait. Having to ask for help.

Marina didn’t like having to ask for things. It wasn’t that she preferred to be asked instead, she simply liked to make her own decisions.

Control issues, Piero called it. He was her counselor in this retreat and the only person who didn’t mollycoddle her for the money that had bought her this recovery stay. Everyone else was trying to cater to her, but Marina always had to ask.

Whether someone could wheel her out in the garden. Whether someone could help her change clothes. Whether someone could assist her with the stupid remote control she had been stupid enough to drop onto the stupid floor.

Control was something she didn’t have issues with. It was the lack of control that grated on her nerves.

And it didn’t matter how many times Piero would tell her that Luigi’s death wasn’t her fault; the fact remained that she could have saved him if only she had ordered a more thorough scan the first time.

She couldn’t have known it, Piero kept telling her. None of her colleagues, no other doctor, nobody would have ordered an extra scan under the circumstances.

But what others did or didn’t do wasn’t a standard that Marina applied to herself. She could have prevented this death, or at least given Luigi a better fighting chance.

So the standards of others wouldn’t apply to her. That was Piero’s observation, and when Marina had protested, he had pointed out that he was merely summarizing her position – that nobody else would have done it didn’t apply to her. And he wanted to know whether she saw herself in general above rules, or with more right to control things than others.

Marina had been more than happy when her physiotherapist had interrupted. For the next two hours, the pain in her leg and the lack of balance had kept her from thinking of anything beyond the inches between her and the next handle to grab.

Control was not something with which Marina felt on a first-name basis at the moment.

Her parents and her ex-lover were shipping her around like a piece of cargo and even though she was a capable physician, now she had other doctors and therapists telling her what to do and it irked her, no matter how gently the people were phrasing their demands.

Marina knew that they were mostly right, which only irked her more. She had glimpsed pages of her patient files and had seen the scans. It was patience and physiotherapy, and even though her chest and shoulder were healing nicely, she knew that there was no way to predict whether her leg would be healing equally well.

If she got out of this with a limp, she would still be lucky.

Hell, she was lucky to be alive.

And even that hadn’t been her doing.

That had been Esther.

At the moment, all that Marina did was owing people. She owed Esther, she owed her parents, she even owed Vera. And most of all, she owed a little boy who had gone so young that he hadn’t even known all the wonders he would miss out on.

Why should Marina deserve second chance when she hadn’t been able to give one to him?

He hadn’t woken up again, and his mother had gotten a gun.

Marina had woken up, to the sight of Vera by her side. She had been touched without wanting to and even in retrospect, she was absurdly flattered. Even though things between them were over, at least as far as Marina was concerned, the old dream of waking up with Vera had still been a familiar and comfortable pattern for her sedative-addled brain.

It was what she had always wanted, only now, Marina didn’t want it any longer. She looked across the room at the elegant bouquet of flowers. For a surgeon, Vera had a horrible sense of timing.

Of course the bouquet was perfectly composed, with no bit of green or flower petal out of place.

So much like Vera herself, and so different from Esther, who once had smuggled a small bouquet of daisies in a test tube into Marina’s locker, and when Marina had wanted to know where she had gotten daisies, Esther had told her “outside”. Despite walking out into the stretch of green next to the parking lot nearly every day, Marina had never thought to stop and look down at the flowers.

A small bunch of daisies would warm up the room much more than all the floral art available on delivery.

It would be much easier to want Vera. Once more, separate season tickets, expensive restaurants out of town, stolen nights in remote hotels, no demands and no questions.

Esther, on the other hand, meant a whole lot of questions. Paradoxically, it also meant losing control. For a long time, Marina had thought that Vera’s elusiveness equaled a lack of control, but then Esther’s fears and rejection had hurt much more.

Still, it was Esther who had driven all the way up from Milan. It was Esther whose blanket had been strewn across the cramped visitor’s chair when Marina had first woken up. And it was Esther who had tackled her to the ground when the gun had been pointed at Marina.

The magnitude of the gesture still paralyzed Marina.

Esther had saved her life.

It wasn’t a comfortable knowledge. It wasn’t flattering, or reassuring, and most certainly not romantic, most of all because Marina knew that Esther hadn’t done it to prove a point. It was simply who she was.

Esther had risked her own life to save hers.

The knowledge was suffocating. It humbled her. And it left her alone with the question whether she would have done the same for Esther.

She hoped so.

Early on, when Esther had built up the courage to talk to her again after the sudden kiss in the elevator, Marina had felt so sure of what she was doing. She was the one who was showing a nervous, blushing Esther a whole new world.

Marina had called the shots. She had paid the dinners, she had knowingly dressed to catch Esther’s attention, and to see her blush again in that utterly endearing manner when she caught her staring. She had, not an accident, the perfect nightcap on the rocks at hand, and when Esther had finally worked up the nerve to lean in, she had been waiting for her.

Marina couldn’t pinpoint when exactly that dynamic had shifted, but with every time Esther refused to look at her at work or cited her father as a reason to not stay the night, she had turned into the one who was stumbling along, unspoken wishes on her lips.

It had been her decision to try and change Esther’s mind, from organizing a surprise vacation, which Esther rejected, to simply kissing her in front of half the hospital, her own body giving in to the impulse that had been denied again and again.

She had been the one to break up with Esther, struggling to be in control again. Only that this control hadn’t made her feel any better. She might have said the words, but Esther had been the one to push her away. And when Esther had, hesitant at first, tried to open up again, Marina had paid her back every rebuke and every rejection, with interests.

And she had felt lousy during it. Petty paybacks were a pathetic thing to cling to.

But Esther hadn’t relented. She had kept asking, and she hadn’t even tried to hide her hurt at Marina’s continued rejections. And it had made Marina lash out even more, trying to get the upper hand on her own feelings and finally having to recognize that she had fallen too hard for Esther to simply get up, dust off her coat and walk on.

That she was scared enough to hesitate faced with Esther’s gentle flirtation told Marina all she needed to know and didn’t want to hear.

She was still in love with Esther.

She wanted daisies in test tubes and striped knitted jackets and the bout of breathless hunger low in her stomach when she stopped in front of Esther’s door to pick her up and Esther walked up to the car in those jeans that she knew drove Marina crazy.

Only it wasn’t Marina who was driving the car.

It was Esther who came up from Milan, who argued with the security guards and who had the guts to call her.

It was Esther who called the shots now. Esther had stolen scrubs and changed shifts to see her, yet she had never asked for anything. Esther came by, and Esther left again, and not once in all the past weeks had she seemed insecure or frightened or in need of something.

When they had first met, Marina had stood by and winced more than once as Esther’s kindness and honesty made her an easy target for abuse. Esther had been so damn vulnerable that all that Marina wanted was to shield her and protect her. And yet, it seemed that Esther was the stronger one of them.

And Marina didn’t know whether she had anything to offer up to Esther’s confidence. At the moment, she was glad to dodge Piero’s questions  and couldn’t even get up on her own to give Esther a proper hug.

Slowly, Marina turned around with her chair and reached for the stuffed little tiger under her pillow. At first, she had placed it on her nightstand at the Regina Isabella because it annoyed the hell out of Vera to see the cheap toy outshine her own expensive floral greetings.

Now, it was the closest thing to Esther Marina had to hold onto at night.

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That’s it for this week, people. Thanks for stopping by! The following chapter will be available next Friday, 9 p.m. (GMT+1) Comments, as always, welcome below. (final update to this chapter posted on Oct. 31st, 23:34 GMT+1)

~ by Anik LaChev on October 30, 2009.