In spite of what JC cared to admit, her choice to move to London was not due to money, her studies, or the BDS scholarship. It wasn't even because of her father, to make his life easier after the great sacrifice he had made for her, moving to the States.

JC had chosen Europe because of her mom. Her mother was the one who'd always wanted to travel there but never did. It was her dream before and after college. It was her dream before and after JC was born, and part of JC believed her mother fell in love with Ben because she was in love with Europe.

So when her father proved to be anything but "Europe" or at least what her mother considered "European"—old, sophisticated, decadent—her mother was devastated. Her husband was the exact opposite of her favorite continent. He was young—she was young, too—hardly sophisticated at his 24 years and attracted to everything America had to offer. It was as if two continents had fallen in love. How could they get closer?

When her father left his wife and moved back to London it was official: her mother needed the Atlantic between them. She never visited Europe, not even when she did have the money, not even when cancer had eaten her away and doctors told her she had only months to live.

What was left for JC was nothing more than knowing that she was their Atlantic, connecting them and separating them at the same time, without knowing what had kept them apart. Whenever she tried to distance herself from the situation, JC realized they both were two interesting people with their merits and their flaws who, unfortunately for her, were incompatible. Distancing herself from her life was never really possible though, and there were times like this, when she tiredly ascended the few stairs of her filthy-rich furnished apartment after "Benjamin Goodman's all-day event" that JC felt betrayed.
Betrayed by her parents, by their egos, by fate, by bad timing, for she was certain that if her mother had met that funny, wicked Englishman her father had become in her thirties or in her forties the outcome would have been different. Of course the fact that her mother was 39 when she died didn't escape JC. It only made her angrier.

JC wasn't surprised at seeing the living room light on. She needed every light, even a map might have been a good idea to navigate through that house. The surprise was Kepler standing before the L-shaped white sofa. The image was completed with his laptop, left to one side, and a stack of papers, the work he'd obviously brought with him while waiting.

"You're checking up on me?"

"I wanted to make sure you won't be playing with matches." Pause. "I had the keys." His palm vaguely pointed at the extra pair of keys on the coffee table. "You'd said 'in case of emergency'." Pause. "I hope you don't mind."

That was surprise number two: Kepler had doubts he was welcome.

JC opened her mouth but she didn't trust her voice.

"I assume your father's friends came." An insecure Kepler was more than she could handle at the time. JC didn't register who moved first and who approached whom but the result was the same. His arms were around her and she hugged him hard, with all her might. Then the tears came.

"A shoulder to cry on". Not only had JC heard of the phrase, but she had relentlessly ridiculed it, laughing at people's need to share their tears, burden each other and then share some more. She never comprehended the need of a witness to her most vulnerable moments. A good cry in the shower, or a muffled one under the blankets was the best deal for her especially after her mother had called her a "crybaby". Okay, maybe tears had been easy for her, but after that they were all hers.

That was why JC could not grasp why crying on Kepler's shoulder felt so good, so liberating. It had to do with the shoulder, she guessed. The shoulder, the soft cashmere fabric with the soapy scent, the consolingly steady heartbeat under her ear and the large palm stroking circles on her back. That palm that held her in place when she felt nothing but broken. It was a recipe for disaster….

When JC recovered the capacity to think they were sitting on the floor and leaning on the sofa. Why they were not on the sofa was beyond her and she didn't care. His heart was still throbbing under her ear but now JC could take in more details…like the embarrassing wetness of his sweater and her need to blow her nose. Urgently.

She broke away from the embrace and grabbed a paper towel lying on the coffee table. So much for elegance! Hiding behind her towel, she stole glances at Kepler. His back must have started to feel the unforgiving metal of the sofa's modern design. He'd pulled his legs close to his torso to avoid the coffee table before them. It must have been uncomfortable and yet all JC could think of was the muscles of his thighs stretching the soft fabric of his trousers. He had powerful thighs. Now his leatherclad hand was carelessly resting upon his knee and JC felt her face growing hot and moved to stand up. What was wrong with her? Her hand slipped from the sofa and she had to grab his shoulder not to fall. That shoulder again. Did he always have such broad shoulders? He grabbed her hand to steady her and JC's eyes focused on the column of his neck, the strong line of his neck going all the way down to a flat stomach. She quickly averted her eyes.

Does he have hair on his chest? The question wormed its way into her mind with a life of its own.

"Oops!" she exhaled, relieved that the exclamation could be due to her almost fall but acknowledging that it probably came a bit too late to have been instructed by her reflexes. "One more humiliating moment to add to my list." Had she said that out loud?

"Hardly a humiliating moment," Kepler offered, and nothing in his voice betrayed he had guessed the tempest in JC's head. What was wrong with her?

"I'll be back in a minute—" JC almost ran to the bathroom. The cold water on her face couldn't perform miracles. She looked at her reflection in the mirror. Puffy eyes and a red nose: the vogue embodiment of seduction. She pressed the towel to her face. She couldn't believe herself.

"I'm making some tea!" she yelled from the kitchen and pretended to be busy opening and closing drawers to give herself some time to think straight.

"I have to apologize—" she started as she entered the living room.

"Don't—" Kepler took the tray from her trembling hands and placed it on the table.

"You don't know what I'll apologize for."

"I don't need any apologies from you, Christine. Never will. If you care, you'll give me explanations. I don't care for apologies." It was the usual Kepler and his unusual rules.

"Explanations?"

"You could explain why you feel so embarrassed. It's been a difficult week for you. Tears are not a sin."

"I'm not a crybaby!" JC felt as if she were listening to her eleven year old self talking to her mom. Her tone was the same. She winced and ran a hand through her hair. She removed the pin holding her ponytail. It was giving her a headache.

"Who said you are? Your father died." For once, Kepler had no clue what kind of a crazy adolescent game was playing inside her head.

"You don't understand!" She took a deep breath to withhold the rebellion against…whom?

"Then make me understand." He crossed his arms over his chest and waited.

"I don't know what's gotten into me. I guess it was the stress. I was worried about…today all week." Another deep breath. She owed him some honesty. "I've grieved over my father for two years. The five stages of grief? Denial, anger, bargaining, depression, acceptance? I've passed them all, every single one of them. I'm not stupid. I can read medical charts. He didn't have a chance. His stroke was so severe that it was a miracle he could breathe for himself." A miracle and a curse to see him deteriorating day after day.

"Then why—?"

JC didn't pretend she hadn't guessed his question. "I had two paths at the time: one was the easy one, the more humane one. Fewer debts, fewer medical bills. A public facility and his torment would be over in a few months." She took a few more breaths to calm herself, to talk as if talking about another woman, about someone she knew, not herself. "If I followed the 'humane path,' I would never be sure if I did it for all the right reasons or because I was angry with him." He didn't avert his eyes. He continued to look at her, waiting. "The other path was the one you know and you paid for." Her smile was bitter. "I am a scientist, Kepler. I have to have faith. There are so many people working on new research every day. Who knows what Ben's chances would have been in a few years from now? I work in Bioprinting, for God's sake! Everything is possible!" She pressed her fingers on her brow to send the images away.

"Are you still angry with your father?" Kepler's voice was gentle, even a little unsure.

"What's the point of this now? I'm not a little girl. I can't blame my parents when I keep making the same mistakes. I'm angry at myself! I was the one who never asked. I didn't want to make my mother miserable, I didn't want to bother Ben, I wanted to be the understanding daughter, the one who could be patient and adult and mature but what does that get me? I'm the one with all the questions and the people who had the answers are now dead. And do you know what's even worse? I know for a fact that Ben never cared to know me, not for who I really am. He had his friends, his job, his novel, his hobbies, his daughter—it was some kind of a title—but he didn't really know who I was and it wasn't because I was a difficult person or I was a freaking introvert or something. He just didn't care to—" Her voice broke and her eyes watered up with fresh tears.

She found herself in his arms again and this time it was all his doing.

"Christine—" he murmured against her hair.

"Do you know when I felt it in all its clarity, Kepler? When it was so crystal clear? I was with my patient from Phase I, the one who died. Everything went so wrong back then…. And I was such a bitch—"

"I'm sure you were nothing but lovely," the voice said above her ear.

"Lovely is the exact opposite of what I was. I was a freaking bitch. I almost fired two employees. I couldn't, but if I could have I would have fired them in a heartbeat. At the end, I was sleeping in the patient's room at night suspecting the night shift was careless somehow. I ordered new cultures twice a day—he had developed two different gram+ infections and we had no clue what was happening. That doesn't happen without negligence of some sort. His tests were driving us crazy—they made no sense just when we had the first signs of serious progress. When they finally removed him from the unit to the ICU he lasted no more than a couple of days. Septicaemia."

JC closed her eyes to the image of the empty bed when the patient was finally moved to the ICU. BDS lawyers were adamant. Their hands were tied. The man's family and the expert they had hired were threatening to unleash chaos via the press. Kepler tucked a loose strand behind her ear and JC was brought back to reality.

"I never liked hospitals, I didn't go pre-med just because I didn't want to watch all that pain. I was detached, I was safe in my lab and even when I accepted the promotion I kept my distance. I was leading the team but there were plenty of doctors and nurses to care for the patients. I needed the data, the tissue tests, and a clear mind. Whether I had pig tissue before me or human tissue it was the same thing.

"That patient's case shook me on so many levels. It revealed to me a world I was too cowardly to acknowledge but not blind enough to ignore. Not after him…" Kepler's heartbeat was racing and JC couldn't blame him. It was what he would have to face in a few weeks' time. "Anyway, one night I was reading by P8's bed—"

"P8?"

"Patient Eight. We knew their names but the staff used to call them by the file number. I know, pretty inhumane but if you've lived in hospitals as you once said you did, you know things can get pretty ugly. It's a defense mechanism—to survive what they see day in, day out.

"P8 was in bed looking barely human with all the bandages, the catheters and the tubes—"

"Are you trying to make me change my mind?" Kepler seemed to be giving her a way out of the confession she was dragging out because it hurt too much, but it was too late.

"He asked me what I was reading. A stranger, a man who could barely see me through his bandages, who couldn't really speak because every movement was a torment, asked me what I was reading. Don't imagine any deep conversation. I just told him and asked him to rest. He was already exhausted. And then it hit me. Ben had never asked me what I was reading. It was always about what he read, which movie he watched, who among his friends managed to get his book published and why this was fitting or a tragic fate's injustice. It was all about his life. He even talked more about my mother—censored stuff always—than about me. Until that moment, I had never realized it. Ben was already in a coma, I was struggling with student loans and medical bills and a man who was fighting for his life was more curious about me than my father ever was. When he chose to come for me in the States, Ben didn't know me, he liked the picture of him finally proving he could be a good father. And it was the decent thing to do. Ben wasn't a bad man. He was decent and fun, he just didn't know me. He either didn't care or thought he had figured me out. I don't know what's more insulting." It was uncanny. What had hurt her so much an hour ago now felt so far away from her. It was as if her father had sailed and now she could barely see the trace of his sail in the horizon.

"That patient…. Was it the first time you failed at something?"

"It was. I hadn't realized it until now but it was." She risked a smile. "It was more than the failure though. That time, when I stood to walk away, P8, the patient, grabbed my hand. He had a strong grip for his state. I expected a cry for help. He was in terrible pain. His infection didn't let the painkillers we were allowed to give him work properly. His heartbeat was so rapid from the pain, it was on the verge of setting the alarm off. Eventually the doctors had to put him under heavy sedation, in an artificially-induced coma. Anyway, I waited for a complaint, a moan…nothing. He was breathing hard. He said "thank you". His voice was hardly the voice of a living human being anymore but I heard the words clearly. When I was removed from my position I thought a lot. Part of me believed I deserved it, another was so relieved…. That man was tortured. He had a chance in life even without a face and we took that away—"

"Shhh—don't think about it now. Don't do that to yourself."

"It's my fault, Kepler. Things happen in my life and I just react to them."

"You can't control everything."

"I control nothing."

Remember! Take care of yourselves, treat yourselves with small-or great-pleasures and share the love. It helps the immune system!
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Thank you for your reviews (and the amazing burial ideas!) as I thank TOWDNWTBN and Vale for their hard work and efforts.