Summary: Part 2 of the Ghosts of the Heart series.
Rating/Disclaimer: See first chapter.
Acknowledgements: Thanks to everyone who reviewed the first chapter, I wasn't expecting such a huge response! Hope this second chapter doesn't disappoint you.
Special dedication: To Sam Edwards, who died 25/09/01
Jing-Mei just couldn't take in what she was seeing.
She knew everyone had to let themselves go sometimes, vent whatever personal conflicts they were experiencing out of their systems. But she never really expected Dave Malucci, king of comic indifference, to be sobbing his heart out in the staff room.
Although he hadn't said anything, Jing-Mei knew that Dave had heard her enter the room and call his name. In the relative darkness of the room she could hear him trying to regulate his breathing. After a few uneasy moments she perched on the edge of the sofa where Dave was currently sprawled.
"What's the matter?" she asked gently.
Dave paused after hearing her question. He had never really thought that anything was wrong with him. You learned to roll with the punches that life threw at you, and moved on. But it seemed that Julia had been right once again, he really did need to open up to someone who would be around, who would listen to him. And Jing-Mei had asked, after all...
"Return of an old friend," was all he could muster, however. Dave had become so used to covering for his father, he barely even noticed he was doing it anymore.
"An old girlfriend?" Jing-Mei asked delicately. This was the first glimpse she'd had of the real person, the human side of Dave Malucci, and although it was due to some sort of pain, she wanted to know what it was.
She wanted to help him.
"The only one I've ever really cared about, if you want to look at it that way," he told her, swinging his legs around so that he was sitting up. "She... do you mind if I tell you this?"
Jing-Mei shook her head and slid across so she was sitting next to the young doctor. "It's obvious you need to talk to someone."
Dave snorted. "That's exactly what she said."
"How long were you a couple for?"
"Back then, I was with her for three years, but for the first two it was nothing serious. She wouldn't let it become serious until i told her about... my past."
Jing-Mei could certainly understand the girl's reluctance. In the year that she had known Dave, the most personal thing that she had learned about him was that he went to medical school in Grenada.
But had she, or anyone, ever taken the time to look beyond the humourous facade?
Dave sighed. "Then one night, I'd had too much to drink and ended up spilling everything out to her in one load. She helped me through the last year of med school and then I... I guess I couldn't handle it anymore. I left Grenada, didn't tell her where I was going, and threw away her telephone number."
"What got you so scared?" Jing-Mei asked. She had the feeling that Dave would clam up again unless she kept him talking, even though it bordered on intrusiveness.
He took yet another deep breath. In no way would this ever be easy. Finally, from some reserve of strength Dave didn't know he possessed, he gained the strength to look her in the eye.
Concerned eyes met troubled ones.
"This doesn't go out of this room?" he asked. Jing-Mei nodded, bracing herself for whatever Dave was about to tell her.
"My life was... everything was normal. Until my mom died. When look back on it though, it seemes as though before she died, she was the thing that kept my dad from falling over the edge."
"How do you mean?"
Dave struggled to put the vision of what he had only recently started to decipher into words. "There were little flashes... where my dad used to completely withdraw into himself, and my mom was the only one who would pull him out of it and make him my dad again."
"So he didn't cope well when your mom died," Jing-Mei concluded.
"I was seven years old..." Dave halted, looking for the right words yet again, to express what he needed to say. "Everything changed, literally overnight. He changed from Suburban dad, all-pitching, all joking father figure, to Psycho father. The kind who's never satisfied with anything. if I did something badly, I was a useless layabout. If I did something right, he never praised me, always put me down. And believe me, he showed his disappointment in me. Regularly."
"He hit you." A statement, not a question. Jing-Mei was reeling from the shock of discovering that someone who had seemed to be perfectly normal had been hiding a past filled with abuse and dissatisfaction.
Dave nodded, lost in his thoughts. "Yeah.. yeah, he did. Last time was before I left for college. I haven't seen him since."
"So, seeing Julia must have brought everything back."
Dave half-laughed, an action which at that moment felt alien to him. "You can say that again... I think somewhere in me I wanted her to stay again. To try to make things right... but then I remembered I was the fool in letting her go in the first place."
Both fell silent for a reflective pause. Dave couldn't believe he'd just spilled his greatest secret to someone he barely knew. Sure, he'd worked with her for a year or so, but their friendship was casual at best.
The way all his relationships with anyone were these days. Whether he wanted them to be or not.
Jing-Mei was having trouble working out that no-one had noticed there was something wrong with Dave before she stumbled upon the fact herself. Come to think about it, no-one really seemed to look beyond outward experiences with Dave. He was, after all, the doctor who provided comic relief...
"Dave... have you ever thought about professional help?"
Something undefinable in the young doctor's expression changed. "Julia told me I should, but I don't think I could do it. I've coped with it for this long, I can do it again."
"Okay, so that's out," Jing-Mei said. There was no point in forcing him to do something he didn't want to. That would only make things worse.
Dave scrubbed his eyes with his fist and again attempted a half-smile. "I'd better get back. You know, patients to see."
He got up and reached the door before she found a voice to call him back. "Dave?"
He turned back to face her. "Yeah?"
"I won't tell anyone. And if you ever need anyone to talk, anytime, call me."
Despite the somewhat distant, fractured past between them, Dave felt a metaphorical bond between them, and a weight lift off his shoulders. "Thanks. I'll remember that."
The rest of the day in the ER passed in a haze for both Jing-Mei and Dave. Dave was trying his best to focus on his patients, but every so often found himself slipping back into memories of the past, and wondering what on earth had possessed him to confide in someone else.
After all, he and Jing-Mei had never really seen eye to eye on anything. He genuinely found her attractive, but had the feeling she didn't appreciate the techniques he used to employ her attentions.
Jing-Mei also went about her work in a daze. It didn't go unnoticed by the other members of staff how oddly both Jing-Mei and Dave were acting.
"I wonder what's up with Chen and Malucci," Abby remarked idly as she and Haleh checked the store cupboards during an unusually quiet period.
"When Malucci came back from his break, he looked upset," Haleh divulged. "And he'd left here with a gorgeous woman as well."
"That sounds more like the Dr Dave I know," Abby laughed.
"Maybe, but it doesn't explain for Jing-Mei's odd mood," Haleh reminded her. "And you too have been quiet all day. Care to explain?"
Abby sighed, and locked the cupboard door. "It's nothing, Haleh. Really."
"Nothing to do with a certain Dr Kovac swapping shifts with Mark?"
"No, 'm sure there's a perfectly reasonable ex-" Abby began, but Dr Benton poked his head round the door. "We need the both of you in Trauma One yesterday!"
Working in the ER meant you had to get used to having your impromptu gossiping sessions cut short.
Jing-Mei walked out of the hospital at seven o'clock, at the ned of her shift. it was a lovely time of day in the August summer, and she put all her preoccupations aside to bask in the sunshine on the way to the subway station.
That is, until she saw a weary looking Dave unchaining his mountain bike from a pole.
He looked up when she approached him, uncomfortably aware that someone was there. His expression cleared somewhat when he realised who it was, but only slightly.
He still didn't trust her completely.
"Working tomorrow?" He asked, as if nothing untoward had happened that day. Avoid serious conversation at all costs.
"Not at the moment, but you never know how things go," she replied. "How about you?"
"No. Think I'll see if I can play hockey tomorrow. Something to take my mind off things," he admitted. "I never thought I was good at sports, but maybe I just need an outlet."
"I might have to come and watch you play sometime," Jing-Mei suggested with a twinkle in her eye. "So if someone gets injured there'll be a real doctor on hand."
"It could be the start of a beautiful relationship," Dave agreed. Then, more seriously, tentatively, he added, "In more ways than one."
"Where is it that you play?" Jing-Mei asked innocently. "I'll make sure to have the paramedics on call."
"Sarasota Park. 2pm, if I'm going to be there at all. I prefer ice hockey, but we'll see how it goes."
"Well I'll come to your match, or practise, or whatever it is, and yopu can shout me a coffee afterwards," she suggested.
"Got yourself a deal," Dave decided. "And thanks... for everything," he said, almost too quickly and quietly for Jing-Mei to hear, before he turned and pedalled off into the sunset.
As luck would have it, neither were called into work that day. Jing-Mei decided not to bring the paramedics in as promised, but instead sat on the grass to watch Dave and his team fight for supremacy over some other, random, team.
Hockey wasn't really her sport, but she knew that it would mean a lot to Dave to have her here. To prove that someone cared.
She didn't want him to be alone after Julia's visit the other day.
_Careful. You might find yourself falling for a man with too many emotional probelms. You did that before, and look where it got you._
"What were you thinking about?" Dave questioned as he jogged up to her and promptly sprawled on the ground. "You looked as though someone was trying to forcefeed you snails."
"Not exactly," Jing-Mei deflected. She didn't want to practise what she preached, didn't want to open up to someone about the last couple of years. "More memory-oriented."
"You should take up hockey," Dave suggested. "Great way to take your mind off things."
"I think I'll stick to the study," she said. "Are we going for coffee?"
Dave thought for a moment. "I don't think I'm in the mood for coffee."
"Cheapskate."
"I'll pretend I didn't hear that. How's about a stroll in the park? We could go to the pond and pretend to feed the ducks." he said, scrambling up to his feet while Jing-Mei got up more sedately.
"Why the pretending? can't we actually feed tem?" she asked as they set off to the pond.
"I don't have any scraps of food with me, and I don't particularly want to feed them my hockey stick," Dave told her as he swung the stick by his side. "And unless you are in the habit of keeping stale bread in your pockets, we'll have to go with pretending for today."
"Sounds like a plan," she told him. They walked to the pond in silence, and stood by the water's edge for a while watching the ducks swim and paddle in the blue water.
"Wouldn't you like to be a duck?" Dave asked quietly. "All you would do is swim, and eat food that people throw at you. Not a care in the world."
"There are good things, good people in this world too, Dave," Jing-Mei reminded him. "Maybe we have to look harder than we'd like to find them, but they're there."
Dave didn't reply, and Jing-Mei let the subject drop. There was no point in pushing it.
"I might go home," he said after another protracted silence. "Thanks for coming to watch me play, but I'm not really up to company today." _Plus, I'm finding it hard to have a conversation with you. We've never been friends, not really._
"See you at County tomorrow," she called after his retreating figure, watching him walk slowly over the grass, his hockey stick leaving trails behind him in the long grass.
_Am I really sad to see him go?_
