Free The Look of Love: A Novel by Sarah Jio Page B

support.”
    “Thanks,” I say, just as the door opens and Kelly, one of Dr. Heller’s longtime nurses, pokes her head in. “Dr. Heller, Dr. Wyatt needs to have a word with you.”
    “Tell him to come in,” she says.
    Kelly and Dr. Wyatt enter the room.
    “Sorry for the intrusion,” he says to me.
    “It’s no problem,” I say. I watch as Dr. Wyatt, a handsome, slightly younger doctor, hands a chart to Dr. Heller. Kelly looks on as they exchange a few words about another patient, which is when my vision begins to cloud.
    “Sorry about that,” she says a moment later, after Kelly and Dr. Wyatt exit. “Male physicians,” she says with a sigh. “They come in so cocky, and when it turns out they’re wrong about something, well, don’t even get me started. I just had to . . .” Her voice trails off when she sees me rubbing my eyes.
    “It’s happening, isn’t it? You’re having an episode.”
    I nod.
    “We need to track this. We need to see this on imaging. I’ll fast-track an MRI. If we’re lucky, we’ll pick up the tail end of this. Hurry, Jane.”
    Kelly, the nurse, returns with a wheelchair and pushes me hurriedly down the hall.
    “You OK, sweetie?” she asks in the elevator.
    I rub my eyes again. The fog is lifting now. “Yeah,” I say. “But you have to tell me. How long has she loved him?”
    “Honey, whatever do you mean?”
    “Dr. Heller,” I say. “How long has she loved Dr. Wyatt?”
    Kelly laughs nervously. “You’ll have to ask her about that,” she says, wheeling me down the long hallway to the imaging department.

Chapter 5

    1301 4th Avenue
    F lynn opens his eyes and turns to his right, where a nude woman sleeps beside him. Her blond hair is spread out on the pillow, and her mascara is smudged beneath her eyes. He sits up and notices the empty wine bottle on the nightstand beside him as the events of last night, still foggy, slowly come into focus. He was at his art gallery in Pioneer Square for his friend Ryan’s new body of work. His paintings weren’t memorable, or even very good, but Ryan was a friend, and Flynn couldn’t say no to hosting a friend’s exhibition. Thankfully, Ryan’s wealthy family dutifully bought every single canvas.
    Flynn climbs out of bed quietly. He doesn’t want to wake what’s-her-name. Jenna? Cara? Julie? Is she a cocktail waitress or a dental hygienist? An esthetician or a flight attendant? He can hear his sister’s voice in his ear then: “You only date one kind of woman: bimbos.” But what does Jane know about love? At least Flynn
has
a love life.
    He steps quietly onto the cold hardwood floors beneath his feet, careful to avoid the floorboard that creaks three paces from the bed. One creak and what’s-her-name would call him back to bed. Not that that would be a tragedy. But Flynn has a code of conduct. And morning sex, though quite enjoyable, is not something one does after a one-night stand. Morning sex is for relationships. Morning sex is for love. And Flynn has never been in love.
    He thinks about this as he stands naked in his kitchen, gazing out at the city beyond the floor-to-ceiling windows of his eleventh-floor loft apartment. He scoops the pre-ground espresso into the machine and pulls a shot. As he listens to the familiar hum of his espresso machine, a gift from a girlfriend whose face six years post-breakup is now fuzzy in his mind, he thinks about his life. Thirty-five. Never married. Never in a serious relationship. And maybe he’ll always be this way.
    He takes a sip of his espresso and looks out the window at the apartment building directly across the street, where he stares into the first bank of windows on the eleventh floor. Flynn wonders if she’s awake yet, the woman he sometimes sees cooking in her underwear, or nothing at all; crying late at night, or early in the morning; working in the spare bedroom that she uses as a pottery studio, spinning her wheel with such concentration, such intensity, he cannot look