Page 27 of Brain Damage

“I love you, Charlotte,” he says again.

“I love you too,” I whisper.

18

I know I’m supposed to be having a romantic dinner to celebrate Clark’s and my six-month anniversary of dating, but all I can think about is how itchy I am.

My last patient of the day came in with an itchy rash on his arms and chest that I had initially been led to believe was eczema. By the time I identified it as scabies, it was too late. I was wearing gloves and all, but if I had known there was a chance he might have scabies, I would’ve gowned up. Hell, I would’ve put the guy in a bubble.

Now my incredibly handsome boyfriend is sitting across from me, telling me some story about an encounter he had trying to hail a cab, and all I can think about is the tiny bugs burrowing into my skin.

I think I might go crazy.

“You seem a little distracted, Charlotte,” Clark says, raising an eyebrow at me.

I can’t tell Clark about the scabies. You don’t tell the most handsome, sexy man you’ve ever met that you might have scabies. You just don’t.

“Just thinking about work.”

Clark nods and smiles. “Anything you want to talk about?”

In addition to being ridiculously handsome (have I mentioned that before?), Clark is incredibly interested in my work. Most people’s eyes start to glaze over after a few too many stories about skin problems, but Clark has impressive listening skills. When I tell him about some troublemaker patient or a fight I had with an insurance company, he always makes me feel better about it.

So yes, believe it or not, Clark is a really great boyfriend. I wouldn’t have thought it. I had assumed that a man who looked like him would almost definitely break my heart, quickly and painfully. But Clark hasn’t shown any signs of it. He’s sweet, relatively attentive, and he’s understanding about the long hours that I work on top of the fact that I’m training for a marathon. (My knee is so much better.)

Sometimes I wish he weren’t quite so handsome though. Obviously, I don’t mind having an attractive boyfriend, but I just wish he were a little bit less ridiculously good-looking. Especially at times like these, when we’re sitting together in a restaurant, and I feel like everyone in the room is wondering how a woman who looks like me ended up with a boyfriend who looks like Clark.

Our waitress, a girl at least ten years younger than me with shapely legs that put my muscular thighs to shame, comes over to clear away our dinner plates. “Can I interest you in some dessert, sugar?” she asks Clark.

The waitress has been flirting shamelessly with my boyfriend throughout the entire meal. I’m beginning to wonder if she has some sort of bet going with the waitstaff over whether she could go home with him.

“No, thank you,” Clark says to her. To his credit, he hasn’t been flirting back.

Our waitress looks disappointed as she walks away. Notice she didn’t even bother to offer me a dessert. Good thing for her I’m not the one tipping.

Clark takes a sip from his wine glass, gazing at me over the rim. I scratch my bare forearm self-consciously. I know the symptoms of scabies take at least two weeks to manifest, but I still feel really itchy.

“Charlotte,” Clark says softly, “I just want to tell you how wonderful these last six months with you have been.”

“Me too,” I mumble.

Maybe I’ll go get myself some permethrin cream at the pharmacy on the way home. It will make me feel better about the whole thing.

“I feel so close to you,” he goes on. “I never thought I’d feel that way about another person.”

“Me too.”

Really, you’re supposed to tell sexual contacts if you have scabies. Clark is most definitely a sexual contact. But I just can’t make myself tell him. I don’t want him to think of me as the woman who gave him scabies.

Clark stands up for a minute, and at first, I’m completely confused. Did he realize I was concealing my raging case of scabies from him and is going to walk out on me? But then, instead of walking out, Clark does the exact opposite of walking out.

He gets down on one knee. And pulls a blue velvet box from his pocket.

No. Way.

“Charlotte,” he says. He opens the blue velvet box and a gigantic diamond catches the light of the chandelier above us. Brigid knows all about diamonds—the number of carats, the cut of the diamond—but I don’t know any of that nonsense. But I’ve got eyes and I can tell that this diamond is huge. I cover my mouth to keep it from hanging open. “Will you marry me?”

Okay, I don’t feel itchy anymore.