Page 67 of Storm Bound
“Oh, Yaya. I’m an adult. And we’re not at your house,” Charlie said like a kid arguing for his right to eat chocolate.
“Should we… check your heart, Marina? That is what you came for, isn’t it?”
Marina grimaced but came to sit on the examination table for me, and I picked up my stethoscope.
Charlie had told me she avoided the doctor like the plague, so I knew she wasn’t here for her check-up, even if it was necessary.
“Deep breath in,” I instructed her. “And out.”
I listened to her heartbeat, trying to notice any irregular patterns, and then I counted her heartbeats. It was all looking good.
“It’s all sounding good, but I want to be sure. I want to do an EKG just to be on the safe side,” I told her.
Yaya looked from me to Charlie with distaste in her mouth.
“Is that going to hurt?” she asked me.
“It’s the same thing I did to you last time, Yaya. With the electrodes,” Charlie said.
Marina took a deep breath and then as she exhaled, “I guess that’s fine.”
I laughed and looked at Charlie, who brought me the machine from the end of the room.
“So, when are you marrying my Charlie? I need him back home permanently,” she said as I set down my stethoscope.
“Oh my God, Yaya. What the hell?” Charlie exclaimed.
“What? I love Jewish weddings,” she said, all innocent, and I couldn’t help but laugh.
“You can’t ask someone I just met when we’re getting married. That’s so embarrassing.”
“What’s embarrassing about it? It’s a simple question,” she said.
It was so obvious she was playing up to Charlie’s frustration and as a way to distract from the EKG. I didn’t know if Charlie could see it or if he was so focused on her “inappropriate” behavior to realize it, but Marina Karagiannis was a smart woman.
But I was smarter.
And somehow, the idea of marriage scared me less than the idea of moving in together. Now wasn’t that fucked up?
“Well, it’s a little soon,” I told her and asked her to lift her shirt, and Charlie helped me place the electrodes on her chest and arms.
“Soon shmoon. When you know, you know. I only knew my Petros for a week before we tied the knot,” she said, eyeing every sticky pad suspiciously.
“That’s true,” I said.
“So? Do you know?” she asked.
“Stop it, Yaya.”
“Now, Marina, I need you to be quiet while the machine is doing your reading, okay?”
She certainly didn’t like that. And it was so funny to watch her glancing from me, needing my answer, to the machine, as if it were going to eat her.
So that way I managed to keep her quiet for a few minutes, and when the machine printed the electrocardiograph, I stood next to Charlie and asked him to read it for me so that I could see how good his knowledge was.
Marina watched us with a frown, but my guess was she liked that I was training Charlie, yet she wasn’t a fan of what I was usingtotrain him.
She proved me right when we put the graph away and she asked me the question again. Just like my bubbe. She was relentless and wouldn’t take no for an answer.
