Thanks for all the great feedback. This is just a short one. More soon.
Chapter Three
I almost told Patrick that I love him tonight. I wonder who would have been more surprised if I had – me or him. It couldn't even get more cliché – it was during sex and in the middle of a toe-curling and clearly mind-numbing orgasm and it almost slipped out. Some cosmic power must have stepped in because instead of the "I love you" that was on the tip of my tongue I said – screamed, really – "Harder." It actually makes me laugh to see that juxtaposition.
This time when Patrick got to Robin's apartment door it was tightly closed and there was yellow crime scene tape strung across the door. Without a moment's hesitation Patrick ripped it down and let himself in.
Her apartment was even more of a mess than his hotel room. He dropped his suitcase by the front door and walked in and began picking couch cushions up off the floor and putting them back the way Robin liked them. He then walked into the kitchen and opened the fridge and grabbed one of the beers that she had taken to keeping for him here for the rare occasions he indulged in alcohol. He went to lean on the counter when he noticed that cabinet doors open that had to be closed, jars that had to be straightened. He took a swig of beer before putting it down on the counter and bending down to take a bottle of cleaner out from under the sink and grabbing a handful of paper towels off the brushed metal holder she had sitting on the counter. He went to work wiping the fingerprint dust off the cabinets, the counter, the appliances, the breakfast nook table, the door to the small balcony off her kitchen and everywhere he could see it. Once he started, he couldn't stop. It needed to be normal, clean, the way she liked it. He needed to be busy. He was about to toss the towels into the garbage when he stopped short. The garbage was now empty and he had seen enough crime dramas to know the cops had probably taken it. He shook the morbid thoughts away and got another bag out.
On his way back to the living room he picked the tablecloth from the dining table off the floor, shook it out and folded it and placed it on the table. Then he walked over to Robin's office, beer in hand, and sat down at her desk.
Her cell phone and charger were gone. Her papers were in shambles, her computer was still there; Aidan told him that they had duped it for further investigation, but didn't want to take it offline in case she, or someone else, tried to contact her that way. Aidan had suggested that Patrick look through things himself in case there was something he saw something they missed.
"You know her better than almost anyone."
That's what Aidan had said and yesterday, two days ago, Patrick amended, he might have agreed. Today, he wasn't so sure he knew her at all. The thought physically pained him.
He turned on her monitor and typed in the password he had seduced out of her one night when he wanted to get online to check his own email. His fingers paused over the keyboards as the sensations of making love to Robin on the floor by the computer bombarded him.
Laughter, the room had been full of laughter, then the sounds of passion and then laughter again. He had gotten the password and she had lain sated and unmoving on the floor while he checked his email.
A slight smile curved Patrick's lips as he relived the memory, then the eerie quiet of the apartment pressed in around him and he continued typing. First, he checked his own email in case there was something from her. There was nothing, just a bawdy joke from his medical school friend Tyler and some spam. Then he switched to Robin's Outlook and began scanning her inbox. A lot of stuff from Brenda who they still hadn't heard from, which Patrick secretly hoped meant that the two friends had spirited away together in some man-hating pact, and other friends that he recognized, many he did not and some colleagues.
He scanned through the folders. He wasn't surprised to see that she had a system. Things were organized into categories and sub-categories. "Friends." "General Hospital" "Sorbonne" "Trials" "Articles" "Research" and so on. The most voluminous and recent emails were in a sub-folder under "Background" – there were a bunch of emails about drug protocol X65746, something Patrick had never heard of but apparently Robin was working on quite actively with some doctor in Europe. Not finding anything of note and too tired to think straight Patrick was about to shut off the monitor when something on the floor by the desk caught his eye.
He bent down and picked up the photograph. The color on the print was strange, like the lighting was off or the printer was running out of ink. But the strangest thing was that it was a picture of him during the epidemic wearing the smothering and smelly protective gear of that time. He held the photo closer to the light of the monitor and recognized that he was sitting in the hospital chapel. His eyes were closed and he winced when he saw that there was a tear on his cheek. He could pinpoint the moment exactly because it wasn't like he made a habit of sitting in the hospital or, for that matter, any chapel. It was after Robin had refused to take the antidote.
That night he had sat with her until she had fallen into an uneasy sleep and then he checked on some other patients. At some point in the early hours of morning he had passed the chapel doors, remembered Liz's heartfelt plea for her husband and after debating it for a moment told himself it was as good a place as any to sit down for a few minutes. He hadn't prayed, exactly, but probably as close as he thought he'd ever come since before his mother had died. He thought about Robin, about what he would do if she had died. He remembered trying to convince himself he felt the way he did because she was a respected colleague and that he'd never lost a patient before. Even that she was just another attractive female he wanted to get to know better. He had been barely fooling himself then, but he wasn't fooling himself now. He cared about her, very deeply. Might even…shaking his head he put the photo down and turned off the computer monitor. He sat for a moment and tried to let the dark ease him. It didn't.
He retrieved his suitcase from the where he left it at the front door and put it down in the bedroom and then went into the en suite bathroom and automatically began to put it back into order much as he had the kitchen. He found two bottles of bath wash in the linen closet, one was a plain style and the other bottle was a spare of the pretty French stuff she used. He chuckled to himself as he imagined she had probably bought the generic stuff for him but was torturing him with her feminine one for a while first. Or she was hesitant to give it to him and he grimaced as he imagined himself freezing like he had with the key. Without letting himself think about it he left the generic one in the cabinet. He turned the shower on hot and stripped his clothes off and got in.
TBC
