noteful | Entries tagged with brian

Meg is more or less encamped at a table in the library on Monday evening. Carrie helped her carry her things over in the late afternoon, fetched most of the books she needed, and will be back around 8pm to help her put everything back, and then they can grab a late dinner somewhere.

(If there is one thing being on crutches has taught Meg, it's that sometimes you just have to be gracious and let people help you. It doesn't necessarily come all that naturally, but she's trying. And Carrie's right -- what takes her fifteen minutes would take Meg at least forty, and Meg would do the same for her, and yes, all right, if Meg really insists, she can pay for dinner.)

By 7:00, she's finished everything she needed the library books for, and most of what she wanted to get done that night. She checks back over the notes she's taken and wonders what the likelihood of Carrie's getting back early is.

"Thought I might find you here," Brian says, pulling out the chair next to hers and sitting down. "Can I interrupt?"

"Sure," she says, cheerfully. "Anyway, you kind of already did."

"Guess I did," he says. "Well, I won't keep you long."

"It's really okay; I'm mostly done."

"Yeah, well, I really just needed to talk to you about Saturday," he says.

"What about about Saturday?"

"I know we had plans, but I need to cancel."

"Our plans for Saturday?" Meg says, carefully.

"Yeah."

"Saturday. My birthday. You're canceling our plans."

"Meg, come on. We'll go out Sunday, for Valentine's Day. And for your birthday. I just have some other stuff I need to do this weekend." He glances over at something across the room, and Meg turns to see what he's looking at.

There's a group of his friends over by the door, clearly waiting for him to finish up already. And it occurs to Meg that this is all happening here, in the library, with people waiting for him, so that she'll just say okay and not make a fuss.

Meg looks down at her notes, and counts to five. And then ten. And then twenty.

"Come on, Meg," Brian says, when the silence has gone on too long. "Don't be like this. We'll do something Sunday."

Meg looks up at him, and if he flinches, it's not really surprising. He's never seen Meg mad before, not really.

"Don't be like what?" she demands, raising her voice just a little.

"Don't be like . . ."

"Don't be a goody two-shoes? I think that was your last complaint about me," she says, and she's no longer even remotely using a voice that's appropriate for a library. People at nearby tables are starting to turn to look at them. And it's pretty clear his friends can hear her. "Well, be careful what you ask for, Brian, because this is my not being a goody two-shoes."

He starts to say something, and she doesn't let him.

"Laura was right about you; you are a jerk. A thoughtless, self-centered jerk with an ego roughly the size of Ontario. And I don't need that, or you. So you know what, do whatever you want on Saturday. And on Sunday. All the weekdays that follow, next weekend . . . because you certainly don't have plans with me. Ever again."

"Meg--"

"Good-bye, Brian. Better luck with the next girl you knock down a flight of steps." Meg picks her notes back up. She can't say that she's actually focused on them, while he spends no more than thirty seconds trying to reason with her, she doesn't look up from them, either.

Meg's been spending a lot more time in her res hall lately than she ever did in the fall. She'd still rather study in the library, but getting there and back, with books and notes and pens and all, has become something of a major undertaking. It's easier to just study in her room, unless she actually needs something from the library.

It's where Saturday afternoon finds her, sitting on her bed, with her foot propped up on pillows. In theory, she's doing biology homework, but it's briefly being neglected while she talks to her roommate, Carrie.

"You actually made him study, on your study date?" Carrie asks, cheerfully incredulous.

"Well, not the whole time," Meg says. "Just . . . most of it."

"Alone with your boyfriend for two hours, and you get six chapters read." Carrie starts to laugh, and shakes her head. "Only you, Meg."

"I had things I had to get done; I told him when he called," Meg explains, but she's starting to laugh, too.

"But there was some 'date,' too, right? Not just 'study'?" Carrie asks.

"There was some . . ."

"Some hope for you, then," Carrie says.

Meg responds by throwing one of her pillows at her roommate. Carrie throws it back, and goes to answer the knock at the door, both girls still laughing.

"Am I interrupting something?" Brian asks, looking from one girl to the other.

"Not really," Meg says.

"Nothing at all," Carrie says, at the same time. "I'm just going to go do that thing we were talking about that I need to go do somewhere that's not here," she adds, grabbing her purse and her coat. "See you later, Meg. Brian."

Meg waves good-bye to her roommate and turns her attention to Brian. "Hi."

"Hi." He nods at the books on the bed. "Studying?"

"After a fashion," she says. "Nothing that can't wait."

"Good," he says, leaning over to kiss her.

"I wasn't expecting to see you this afternoon," she says.

"Thought I'd swing by and say hi."

"Hi," she says, and kisses him again.

"Oh, and I brought you something."

"Brian, you didn't have to do that," Meg says.

"I wanted to. Besides, it's nothing all that much." He hands her a styrofoam cup. "Coffee."

Oh, he really didn't have to do that.

Meg hasn't had coffee in three weeks, because the doctor told her to avoid caffeine, while her leg is healing. She and Brian had had a whole conversation about all the things she couldn't eat or drink, the first time they went out, and how nature seemed to be adding insult to injury.

"Thank you," Meg says, and while it sounds a little forced to her, Brian doesn't seem to notice.

"You're welcome."

Meg holds the cup but doesn't drink any of the coffee. "How've you been?"

Brian talks, at some length, about his classes and his friends and what he's been doing that weekend, while Meg holds her cooling cup of coffee and doesn't drink it. Finally he stops, and gives Meg a puzzled look. "That's going to get cold, you know."

Meg nods. "Coffee does that," she says.

"Well, aren't you going to drink it?"

"I . . . Brian, you know I'm not supposed to." But from the expression on his face, Meg can tell he's completely forgotten. "I'm not supposed to have caffeine while I'm . . ."

"Right, your leg," he says.

"Right."

"Come on, Meg. One cup won't hurt anything."

"It's . . . it's just that . . . it's easier to not drink any than to . . . I just want to be out of this stupid cast."

"You know, most girls would just drink the coffee. God, you are such a goody two-shoes sometimes, Meg."

Meg starts to say something, then pauses. It's not like it's an accusation she's never heard before; she's actually heard it a lot. She more or less heard it from Carrie ten minutes ago. She's used to it, she's not bothered by it, and anyway, she knows it's basically true.

But it's different, very different, when Brian says it. Or maybe it's the way Brian says it. Like it's a major personality flaw, or something she should be ashamed of or embarrassed by.

"I'm . . ." Meg starts, but can't think of what she's supposed to say next.

"Forget it," Brian says, waving one hand dismissively.

"Brian--"

"No, just forget it," Brian says. "I have some stuff I need to do. I'll let you get back to your books."

"Brian, please don't be mad, I--"

He bends down and kisses her again. "I'll call you," he says, and leaves.

Meg sets the coffee cup on the bookcase next to the bed, and wonders if she shouldn't have just shut up and drunk the damn stuff.

The phone rings at 9:32 am, and Meg's startled, because no one calls that early on a Sunday morning unless something is wrong.

She's not expecting it to be Brian Reed, who she hasn't heard from since they had a meal that was not quite lunch and not quite dinner on Thursday. But it had been a very nice neither-lunch-nor-dinner, and she'd kind of thought she'd have heard from him before kind-of-early Sunday morning.

"Meg, hi, it's Brian," he says. And, without asking how she -- or her ankle -- is doing, continues, "I thought we could have lunch. I can meet you at noon."

"Um," says Meg, "I'd really like to, but I don't think I'll be back from church by twelve. How about one? Or dinner?"

"Church?"

"Yes."

"You're going to church?"

"Yes," Meg says again. And then, though she feels a little like she's being asked to defend something she shouldn't have to defend, she adds, "I try to go every Sunday."

"Meg, you broke your ankle on Tuesday."

No, thinks the part of Meg's brain that pays close attention to how things are said, you broke my ankle on Tuesday, and the rest of her brain pushes that thought away as a reaction to being tired, and having too much to think about, and too much to do.

"No one could expect you to go," Brian continues. "Blow it off."

And she can't exactly say, Well, yes, I broke my ankle on Tuesday, but then I met an angel on Thursday, and I think that kind of tips the decision in favor of not skipping services. And even if she hadn't . . . "Brian, I'm sorry. I'd really like to go, but I'm not free till one o'clock."

"Yeah, it's just that I already have plans this afternoon. I'm sorry, too. I guess another time."

Meg sits staring at the phone after that call for longer than she means to, and tries to make everything that's happened since she fell on those steps make some kind of sense. And then realizes how late it is, and she does not need to be late to church on top of everything else, and rushes (or at least hobbles as quickly as she can manage) out of her residence hall.

She is late, and she hates being late, hates disrupting the service, hates that there's no way to slip into a church quietly and without drawing attention when you can't quite manage the doors without help. She's distracted and pre-occupied and not feeling exactly prayerful or attentive. She stands and sits and manages to say the responses, but it's all just rote, and she could be reciting the multiplication tables and it would mean as much to her as what she's saying.

She might as well have stayed home, she thinks, and not had that awkward conversation with someone she really does want to like and . . .

"When you compare yourself to other people," the Reverend Peter Webb is saying, from the pulpit, almost done with a sermon Meg hasn't processed a word of until this minute, "when you wish you were other than you are, that is an insult to God. I'm not talking about trying to be a better person, to be the best you that you can be; God wants us to do that. I'm talking about when you want to change the fundamentals, when all you see is what you're lacking, when you focus on how you measure up, or don't, compared to someone else. God made you, perfect and whole and complete. And of all the gifts He gives us, that may be the hardest one He asks us to accept."

In the last row, Meg's gotten very, very still.

"But you have a purpose, we all do," the priest continues, "and God made you the perfect person for your purpose. And your gift may not be grand, but that doesn't make it unimportant. It may be a generous heart, or a good sense of humor, or a capacity for compassion, or a way with words, or an eye for beauty, but it is your gift. From God. To you and no one else. And God calls each and every one of us to use the gifts we have to make his creation a better place. And he tells us, with that call, 'You are my beloved child.' Amen."

Meg misses most of the rest of the service, for all that it's rote and as familiar as her own name. She's still sitting in that pew when the service ends, and the rest of the congregation files out, and the church gradually goes quieter and quieter, the smell of extinguished candles growing fainter, till she's alone with just the watery colors that the stained glasses throws onto the walls around her.

She's still there when Mr. Webb comes back into nave, with his stole over his arm, and stops when he sees her. "It's Meg, right? Did you need some help?" he asks, and indicates her crutches.

"No, I'm . . . I'm sorry, I didn't mean to . . . I was thinking about your sermon. I can go if you need to lock up or go home or something."

He smiles at her. "That's always nice to hear," he says. "And you're fine. Take all the time to think you want, Meg. And if you need help with anything," he says, and he does not indicate her crutches this time, "let me know."

There's a certain amount of paperwork that accompanies being a university student, and while Meg is the sort of person who hands things in early, one of her professors is Mr. Last Minute. Which is why she's spent the last forty five minutes, waiting to get something signed.

It was bright and sunny when she got there, but night falls pretty early in Montreal in January, and it's already getting dark and colder when she leaves. The sun-melted snow that dripped off roofs today is freezing into treacherous icy patches on walkways.

And stairs.

The young man is in a hurry, going up the steps, when he moves to avoid one icy spot he manages to push her onto another.

Meg is not quite sitting and not quite lying at the bottom of the steps. There's no pain, not yet, but she's pretty sure that once her brain has processed the flood of information coming from her ankle, it's going to hurt a lot. Because she's also pretty sure she heard the bone break.

And, yes, okay, that hurts in a breath-taking, eye-watering, oh-my-holy-good-God sort of way.

"Oh my God," says the young man, hurrying back down the steps. He has the bag she dropped when she fell. "Are you all right?"

She shakes her head, slightly. "I think my ankle's broken."

"Broken?" He drops back on his knees near her feet. "Which one?"

"Left," she says, "but please don't--" she breaks off in a hiss of indrawn breath as he touches it.

"Sorry," he says, and straightens up. "Probably shouldn't move that, then."

Meg shakes her head. "No."

"Right," he says. "I'm going to go find someone and get them to call for help. I'll be right back."

He takes off his coat and drapes it over Meg, over her protests.

"Right back," he says, again, and starts back up the steps. And then stops. "I'm Brian," he says. "Brian Reed."

"Meghan Ford," she says. "Meg."

He smiles. "Meg. Don't go anywhere, okay?"

Meg doesn't see herself as having a lot of choice in that matter. She tries to get comfortable, but given that she's sitting on an ice cold sidewalk with throbbing pain in her ankle, it's kind of a lost cause.

She doesn't wait long, though, before Brian is back with help, and someone who knows what he's doing splints her ankle, and they can get her inside to wait for the ambulance.

She's surprised, a little, when Brian announces he has no intention of leaving her alone at the hospital, and more than a little surprised when he actually sticks around for the whole process of x-rays and explanations and a having a cast put on and getting a refresher in the use of crutches. But he does. And she's glad to have him there, because he's easy to talk to and a good distraction from everything else.

He makes sure she gets back to her residence hall, and hands her off to the care of her roommate, but not before he's gotten her to agree to meet him for lunch in a couple of days, so he can check up on her.

Carrie and Olivia want to hear everything, but pain killers and sheer exhaustion are taking their effect, and so Meg promises to fill them in tomorrow and goes to bed.

She's almost asleep when it occurs to her that this a heck of coincidence. If she were the sort of person who believed that sort of thing, she might even have said she jinxed herself. She's not, of course, but still. It's going to make for an interesting time explaining things, if she winds up in That Place in the next six to eight weeks.

(And what are the odds that she won't?)