I crossed my arms over my chest, a barricade of sorts. “I need a shrink’s advice,” was my opening. “How do you say no when someone’s making a sexual advance that you’re not sure you want?”

“Is that what this is about?” Lindsey asked calmly. She set her briefcase down.

“I happened to be in the neighborhood. Or maybe it was just my subconscious.”

“I didn’t mean to mislead you…”

“No, you just omitted a few pertinent details, like living with someone.”

“You’re right. I’m sorry,” Lindsey admitted.

“Why?” I demanded.

“I thought if I told you, we wouldn’t make love.”

“We didn’t make love. We had sex,” I shot back. “A quick fuck on your office couch, remember? Does Amanda know?”

“Good Lord, I hope not.” Lindsey did seem taken aback at the thought.

“Does she suspect?” I pushed.

“Amanda’s not stupid,” Lindsey slowly acknowledged. “She knows Peter and I aren’t on the happily-ever-after track. That I don’t believe in monogamy.” Lindsey sighed, then added, “She probably suspects.”

“So that’s your excuse to sleep around? Your live-in doesn’t understand you?”

“I don’t need an excuse to ‘sleep around.’ I like sex, having sex. I try to be honest and up front about my desires. I don’t think love and sexual fidelity are the same thing. We substitute one for the other because we can measure one. You sleep with one person or you don’t. Love can’t be reduced to anything that simple and easy.”

“How oh-so-fucking liberal of you.”

“There are a lot of things I can’t do anymore,” Lindsey rejoined, the measured calmness gone from her voice. “I won’t ever ski again, or hike anything that isn’t short and tame. I can’t even just spend a day walking around, exploring new neighborhoods on foot. But I can still have sex, still enjoy it as much as I ever did. I’m not going to give that up just to pay obeisance to someone else’s morality.”

“Oh, yes, the I-have-noble-reasons-for-fucking-as-many-people-as-I-can school of philosophy.”

“What’s the issue here, Micky? That my sexual life doesn’t toe a monogamous line? Or that I had sex with you?”

“What’s the difference?”

“The difference is that I have the right to live my life. I don’t have to agree with you or reflect your choices. Until I involve you. Then we have to reach some sort of understanding. Do you believe I took advantage of you?”

“You’re not stupid, Lindsey,” I shot back. “We were in your office, your territory. I’d just been all but accused of being a child molester, recently broken off the most serious relationship I’ve had in my life, been working on a case that involves children being molested and having to relive… And watching the hell they go through,” I covered. “I thought it might be nice to talk to somebody about a few of these things. I got sex instead. Maybe you don’t consider that taking advantage of someone.”

“I don’t guess I thought…” she slowly let out.

“Deny it, Lindsey. Tell me how unfortunate it is that I’m so deluded.”

“That’s what I’m supposed to do?”

“Doesn’t everybody?” I retorted acidly. I wondered what redemption I would get from this. Or would I just have more lies added to those I already had to crawl over?

For a long time Lindsey didn’t answer. I didn’t think she would, but finally she said, “No, not everybody. Truth can be harsh, but lies haunt you. You’re right, I wanted you, so I nipped and tucked reality until it reflected my desire. I’m very sorry.”

I had not expected Lindsey to apologize. I had no response for this. The only reply I made was, “Yeah, well…” Then I shrugged.

“You’ve been sexually abused, haven’t you?” Lindsey asked gently.

This time I just shrugged.

She continued, “I don’t want to repeat old patterns, particularly destructive ones. And, yes, I knew that, saw it. A lot of your involvement with Cissy had overtones of you saving her from something no one had saved you from. Is that a fairly accurate guess?”

I shrugged again, then managed to utter, “Does it really matter?”

“Of course it does,” she replied. “Do you mind if I lean?” She waited for my quick nod before coming over to rest against the car. We were close, but not touching, as if she wanted to give me space without putting distance between us. “I realize that you’re not comfortable talking about this. I won’t push it. You may never feel comfortable with me. That makes me regret that I didn’t pay more attention to what you needed and less attention to what I wanted.”

“I’ll be okay,” I mumbled.

“Yes, you are okay and you will be okay,” Lindsey said. “That’s the amazing thing about people, the damage they can survive and still be decent and kind. As you are.”

“Thanks.”

“I am very sorry,” she said, looking directly at me. “If there’s anything I can do to make up for it…”

“Careful, I may think of something.”

“I hope you do. I hate living with guilt.”

“Can I ask one question?” Lindsey nodded, so I continued, “Were Peter’s lost keys planned or accidental?”

“He may have planned it, but I didn’t. To be honest, I’d considered seducing you for a while. I hadn’t planned our adventure on the couch. Carpe diem is a favorite saying of mine. If we hadn’t been interrupted, I would have suggested dinner—to explain a few things—and I wanted to spend the night with you.”

“That makes me feel less used. Can I ask another question? If it’s so over with you and Peter, why don’t you just move out?”

“Because I own the house,” Lindsey replied with a wry laugh. “Peter moved in with me. He thinks we can work it out. But unless he decides to make peace with my making the money and not being monogamous, I don’t see this relationship being saved.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Why? I’m actually looking forward to the time alone.”

“Still, you didn’t start living with him in the hope it would end.”

“Is that a comment on your relationship or mine?” Lindsey asked.

“Touché. No wonder they pay you the big shrink bucks.”

“Good avoidance technique. But I’m not going to let you get away with it. Did you break up with her or did she break up with you?”

“Neither,” I admitted. “I was supposed to go with her to her best friend’s birthday and I stood her up at the last minute. I had to, something came up on the case, but…we haven’t spoken since.”

“What do you want?” Lindsey asked gently.

“I don’t know…I guess for things to be okay…like they were with us.”

“You want to get back together with her?”

“Yes, I guess I do,” I answered softly, afraid to voice the desire for fear the words would turn into faint smoke on the wind.

“If it was over, Cordelia would tell you. I know from experience.”

“What happened between you and her?”

“You really want the whole sordid experience?”

“Consider it payback.”

Lindsey snorted, then said, “Okay. On one condition. Can we sit in my car and get out of the wind?”

After we were settled, Lindsey turned in her seat until she was facing me. “I first met Cordelia when we were both residents. She was fresh out of medical school, on her first rotation. I was three years ahead of her. I saw her in passing. Cordelia was even more shy then than she is now. I ended up working with her and another intern for a few hours one night. She was useful, he wasn’t, but that was about it.

“An enclosed place like a hospital sometimes seems like four walls and a gossip mill. One night one of those awful cases came into the emergency room. A fourteen-year-old-girl, pregnant. Her family was in total denial, they’d written it off as weight gain. She probably didn’t know enough about sex to know she’d done anything to get pregnant. No pre-natal, nothing. It was a breech birth, the baby wasn’t coming out, the girl had been in labor for hours. She was bleeding. By the time she got to the emergency room, she had lost a lot of blood and was in shock. She didn’t survive and the baby strangled in the umbilical cord. Within an hour of their arrival at the hospital, they were both dead.”

“My God,” I said.

“Yeah,” Lindsey answered, then continued, “Her family, mother, father, some uncles and aunts, were all in the waiting area. The attending doc decides he needs to take a woman with him. Cordelia’s the only female doctor around. When they get in sight of the family, he suddenly cuts out, leaving Cordelia. He didn’t have a great reputation, but this was pretty high-handed, even for him.

“Cordelia, with no chance to prepare, told the family that their daughter was dead, she had been pregnant, and that the baby was dead, too. There was quite a scene. From all reports, Cordelia handled it well, certainly better than the other doctor would have, but the family was pretty upset. A couple of versions of the story had the father taking a swing at her. In any case, it was a mess.

“After I heard about it, I decided to go find Cordelia and see if she was okay. I finally located her in one of the crash rooms, a hole in the wall with some beds in it for the residents to crash during their overnight calls. By the time I got there, she had curled up in a fetal position.

“Words just seemed useless, so I crawled into bed with her. I held her and she cried. Then, it just seemed the right thing to do, I made love to her. I didn’t even think about the fact that we were both women. Worrying about sexual orientation seemed insignificant. She needed someone to touch her.”

Lindsey paused for a moment, then said, “I did the right thing. To this day, I believe that.” She sighed, then continued, “But people can’t always be noble and virtuous, at least, I can’t. Things went back as they were, our lovemaking confined to that one special need and time. I should have left it there, but I didn’t.

“Several weeks later, Friday, I had the weekend off, and I ran into Cordelia leaving at the same time. I asked her to dinner and we went out. After that, I suggested dancing and took her to one of the gay bars on Bourbon Street. We danced for a while, this was before my accident. I was in a devil-may-care, randy mood, drinking steadily and I didn’t want to go home alone. At the next slow dance, we stayed on the dance floor, and I let my hands rove to places that weren’t platonic. The song ended and I maneuvered Cordelia into a dark corner and got even more explicit.

“Then we stumbled back to her place, she lived on Dumaine Street, and we made love all night.” Lindsey paused in her narration, looking away from me into the night.

“So that’s how you became lovers? You were bored and Cordelia was available.”

“I’m not proud of it. I was Lindsey, the golden girl. I had a big career in front of me. A shy woman three years behind me didn’t fit into my plans.”

“You had your fun, you dumped her,” I interjected.

“We saw each other a few more times,” Lindsey explained, “but I stopped returning Cordelia’s phone calls, deluding myself that I was letting her down gently, when I was just avoiding being fair with her.

“I know,” Lindsey responded to my look of disgust. “It wasn’t the right thing to do. We saw each other occasionally at the hospital and we were polite. I was busy, I was co-writing a couple of papers, flying off to conferences, doing all the things a golden girl does.

“I began working with a noted doctor from Harvard visiting down here. Our intellectual passion turned into something else. At Mardi Gras, some of his distinguished colleagues came down to visit him.”

“Of course,” I snorted. “Men are so much more acceptable.”

Lindsey shrugged and continued, “We went to a party and we drank a lot. Then we went to another party and drank more, and left that party with drinks in our hands to go to another party. We got in the car. My lover was driving. I ended up in the backseat, half passed out. I vaguely recall driving up Canal Street, the blur of those bright lights.

“I remember that split second of panic, instant fear—I never saw the other car, but someone did, and his terror became palpable. Then there was the scream of metal on metal, and, when that stopped, the scream of pain and shock from those trapped in the twisted metal. I just remember that nightmare vision, everything broken and out of place and blood everywhere.

“Then a few scattered memories, being pulled out of the car, the intense pain, the bright lights of the emergency room and thinking it so bizarre that I should be a patient. The next few days were a blur, pain and numbness that never balanced into any rest, and a creeping fear that something was terribly, terribly wrong.

“My lover had walked away from the accident with only a few scrapes and bruises. I never saw him again. He quickly disappeared behind a barricade of lawyers.

“Two of the passengers of the other car, a mother and her son, were killed. The father and a daughter survived, although they were seriously injured.

“I wasn’t very golden anymore. I was crippled and I deserved it, an arrogant drunk who killed a child. It didn’t seem likely that I would be a doctor, let alone an important doctor.” Lindsey was silent for a moment.