Page 40 of Savage Blooms
Finley
As far as Finley’s memory reached back in time, there was Eileen. Eileen peering down at him through the bannisters as their fathers discussed lambing season while Finley, feeling much younger than ten, worried he might be turned out of the house at any moment for tracking mud on the rugs. Eileen on his thirteenth birthday, throwing stones at his bedroom window to tempt him outdoors to play a cutthroat game of cribbage on a blanket spread out on the grass. Eileen at fifteen, panting and ferocious beneath him after he chased her down and knocked her to the marshy ground for intentionally spilling coffee all over his only nice sweater. She had been angry with him for something, Finley didn’t remember what. All he remembered was the way her pulse pounded in her wrists as he pinned them over her head.
She had thrown her head back and laughed at the sky, euphoric despite the mud seeping into her dress. She was wind-bitten and wild, more animal than girl, glaring at him with glittering eyes. She had dared him to touch her, dared him to kiss her, and when Finley had sharply bitten her bottom lip instead, she had let out a moan that destroyed any resolve Finley had left.
They had made love quickly, devouring each other even as a light mist began to fall. Finley had been equal parts intoxicated and terrified – of Eileen, of her cruelty, and most of all, of how his own cruelty came awake in response. He had tried to be gentle, to slow down, but every time he drew away, Eileen dug her sharp half-moon nails into his back and begged him not to stop.
Afterwards, Eileen was left with blood on her thighs and tangles in her hair, and Finley was left feeling all at once emptied and full, excruciatingly aware that now they had begun this, there would be no end to it, not ever.
Now there was only Finley and Eileen, a two-headed hare, stretching on into eternity.
They had been born days apart, Finley in the run-down county hospital at a healthy eight pounds, and Eileen in her parents’ room in the big house, wailing and pale and prematurely sick even then. It was as though they couldn’t bear to be parted for a single moment of their lives, as though even in the womb, they knew they were meant for each other. It was as though every gulp of cold air in a world in which the other had not entered burned likepoison, and Eileen, who had never been one for waiting, or for kindness, had nearly killed her mother by coming early to the birthing bed.
Jennifer Kirkfoyle had forgiven her daughter the moment Eileen was put into her arms, but Eileen had never forgiven the world. Not for separating her by the circumstance of her birth from Finley, who she adored to the point of sacrilege, and not, Finley thought some days, for the injustice of being born at all.
“What’s the prognosis?” Eileen asked, holding still as a statue for her blood draw. Dr Dasgupta looked a bit put out with her, but he had been put out with her since she was a teenager, and Eileen didn’t seem too worried about it. She was draped across a chaise longue in the small, dim parlor, surrounded by her board games and decks of cards. Finley had only turned on one lamp, hoping to spare her from another migraine spike.
“You aren’t dying, but you do need to be more careful,” the doctor said, in his posh London accent with a hint of Bangladesh. Dr Dasgupta had known her since she was a skinned-kneed child who spent her days chasing Finley around the grounds, and he had never once called her “sir”. “You need to give yourself more time to recoup from your bad days. If you keep pushing yourself like this, you’re never going to fully recover.”
“I’m never going to fully recover anyway,” Eileen said, wincing a bit as the doctor removed his needle from her arm. “So why handle myself with kid gloves?”
Dr Dasgupta’s frown deepened. He had grown a mustache after his marriage last year, and the facial hair made him look even more serious than usual.
“That’s no kind of attitude to take. There are people in your life that care about you and want to see you as well as you can be.”
The doctor’s eyes cut over to Finley, and Finley dropped his gaze. There was no need to shrink from Dasgupta, and certainly no need to pretend that Finley and Eileen hadn’t been carrying on together for ages. Dasgupta had known about their dalliance before anyone in Eileen’s own family: he had discreetly prescribed her birth control pills before realizing she had no need of them. Still, Finley had never been entirely comfortable around the other man. And it wasn’t because the doctor was unkind, or because he was judgmental.
It was because he saw Finley and Eileen exactly as they were, not two star-crossed lovers from a chivalric tale, but two troubled young people who could neither stop hurting each other nor walk away from each other.
Finley had only been to church a few times as a boy, before his Catholic mother ran off with her traveling guitarist, but looking at Dr Dasgupta made him feel the same way looking at the priest had: like he was too recognized, too known in all his shortcomings.
“Can you give me anything else for the migraines?” Eileen asked.
“Nothing more than what I’ve already given you,” he said, carefully slotting her vials of dark blood into his well-loved leather bag. “Your best medicine is sleep, and limiting your stress, especially during menstruation, and avoiding alcohol.”
“Well, none of that is likely,” Eileen muttered.
The doctor swept his hand over his hair, always perfectly slicked back with fragrant pomade, and took a careful breath.
“Listen to me, Eileen. I promised your father I would always look after you, as your doctor if not as your friend. I know you think I live to lecture you, but I’m only worried. Your immune system can’t withstand these long nights and rainy walks outdoors. You’re in delicate health and—”
“We’re done here,” Eileen said, hauling herself up out of her chaise. Her gaze was shuttered, and Finley knew that look well. There would be no reasoning with her on this, at least for a while. “Run your tests and send me your reports. Meanwhile, I will continue to live my life.”
Gregory Dasgupta and the late James Kirkfoyle had been university chums, and the doctor had been one of the only consistently present adults in Eileen’s life after her parents’ death. After the accident, she had been shuttled between various tutors, therapists and specialists, but she was always delivered back to Dr Dasgupta when all was said and done.
Finley worried that sometimes, it was that very devotionthat made her hostile towards the doctor. Eileen always had trouble trusting people who stuck around her for too long.
Dr Dasgupta shook his head, beginning to pack all his supplies back into his case.
“Either you can choose to rest or your body will make you,” he said. “That’s all I have to say.”
“Noted,” Eileen said, retrieving a fat cigar from her front vest pocket and clipping off the end with a tiny golden guillotine. Finley could have killed her. She barely smoked, certainly not cigars, and he was positive she had produced this prop simply to drive her doctor insane. She stuck the cigar in her mouth and dramatically rifled through her pockets. “Got a light?”
The doctor rolled his eyes.
“I’ll see you next month,” he said, putting on his hat and moving towards the door. “In the meanwhile, try not to get yourself killed.”
He nodded at Finley as he passed, and Finley nodded back. They didn’t speak much during the doctor’s home visits, but Finley had his number. He had texted Dasgupta countless times when Eileen was up in the middle of the night throwing up from period pains, or laid up with a migraine so bad she could only tolerate total darkness. Dasgupta always texted back promptly, and he always asked if Finley needed any help or anyone to listen.
