In Her Eyes Read online

  “Uhh, yeah,” he said, looking back over at Casey. “Just call me Ben, though, please”

  The two girls were now completely blocking him from Casey. “Oh my gosh. We were at your last race. You are so fast.”

  Casey laughed lightly and then started to turn away again.

  Ben put his arm on the girl’s shoulder in front of him. “It was great meeting you, but I need to…” He saw her step into a light jog. “Wait.”

  Casey looked back briefly, but kept moving in the other direction.

  “Can I get your number? Your email? Your name?”

  She held up the card. “You have my name,” she said with a smile. Then she jogged away.

  The two girls were talking between each other and then looked at him and asked, “Don’t you have a race this weekend against Missouri?”

  He just stood there, shaking his head.

  3

  Girls

  April 2, 2015

  Eddie Clark and Jimmy Garcia stood up from the table. Eddie ran hurdles and Jimmy was a sprinter. They both leaned over and bumped fists with Parker. When they looked towards Ben, he took a sip of his drink and ignored them.

  “Alright, Parker, we’ll catch you later.”

  “Alright, guys,” Parker said. He looked over at Ben after they were out of earshot. “Why do you do that shit?”

  “They don’t deserve to even be here,” Ben said as he watched them make their way through the maze of tables. “They don’t take it seriously.”

  “No one takes it seriously compared to you,” Parker said.

  “Whatever, man, let’s go.” Ben stood up and walked his tray over to the trash cans along the wall and Parker followed.

  Parker looked right at him as he turned around. “Holy shit, are you still caught up on this girl?”

  Ben didn’t respond. He just swung the door open and exited the Reitz Union. They both headed down twenty or so steps until they were walking across the north lawn. Hundreds of students were scattered across several acres of grass. Some were in bathing suits on their beach towels, silently affirming the fact that they attended the University of Florida for nothing more than a good tan and an increased shot at skin cancer. Meanwhile, others were simply lying against their backpacks, thankful for the shade of the huge laurel oaks. Sidewalks crisscrossed the cropped lawn, where even more students stood in groups talking, or hurried in directions likely opposite of the class they should be attending.

  Parker was finishing off the last of his fourth Subway cookie. He ate it in two bites, as if he hadn’t also just had a foot-long meatball sub and about a gallon of soda.

  Ben just shook his head. Parker was about three inches taller than him and twenty pounds lighter, regardless of what he ate. He looked the part of a collegiate runner. His DNA was the thing runners dreamed of. Only problem was he didn’t actually care that much about running. He was here on scholarship too, but running more or less got in the way of everything else for him. And by everything else, that pretty much just meant girls.

  “So, what am I supposed to do now?” Ben asked.

  Either Parker was ignoring him or he was busy checking out anything with a skirt and legs. Most likely the latter.

  “Earth to Parker.”

  Parker pried his eyes away from a tan blonde with a low cut top. “What? Yeah, I heard you.”

  “And…?” Ben said.

  “And…nothing. We’ll probably pass twenty more blondes on the way to class. Just pick one.”

  He wasn’t entirely wrong. A few seconds later another cute girl walked by and Parker nearly tripped as he jerked his head around. Parker looked over at Ben with raised eyebrows. “See what I mean? Why are you so hung up on this girl anyways? You talked to her for what, a few minutes?”

  “I don’t know man, it’s…it’s …she was just like gravity.”

  “Gravity?”

  “I don’t know how else to describe it. I just feel this pull.”

  “Holy shit man, you sound like Nicholas Sparks.”

  “Who?” Ben asked.

  “Nicholas Sparks. You know, The Notebook, The Last Song, The Longest Ride…” Parker stopped talking when he saw Ben laughing.

  “Do you like to get in your jammies with a bowl of ice cream and cuddle with your cat while you read love stories?”

  “Sometimes I hate you.”

  “I’m picturing it now. It’s so cute,” Ben joked.

  The sidewalk forked to the right and Ben turned towards McCarty Hall. “See you at practice?” Ben asked.

  “Unfortunately,” Parker said

  Ben kept walking towards Carleton Auditorium, but all he could think about was Casey Taylor.

  4

  Camouflage

  April 2, 2015

  By the time he got there, all the lights were turned off in the auditorium full of about four hundred students. He found an empty spot towards the back left. Looking around, he noticed half of the students were at least making an attempt to watch the video about camouflage among animals in nature. The other half were either scrolling mindlessly through Instagram or drooling on their backpack as they slept. Wildlife Studies was probably the stupidest class in the history of college classes.

  Everyone took it because it satisfied three of the required six “B” credits, which stood for biological studies. Most people think that colleges make some freshman classes difficult to weed out those who can’t cut it. The opposite is actually true. They make some classes so incredibly easy to weed out those who would be better off not wasting the best four years of their life learning about camouflaged frogs.

  He tried to join some of the other students and pulled up Instagram on his phone. When Parker had found out Ben wasn’t on social media, he set up Ben’s Instagram and Facebook. Apparently those are must haves for looking up hot girls you meet—and to give Parker credit, as soon as his account went active, he quickly racked up hundreds of followers, most of them girls. Still, he thought back to all the stupid stuff Parker did. He couldn’t believe he was actually following advice from a guy who once ran a race with two left shoes.

  He started to type her name into the search field, but the kid next to him hit Ben’s arm with a stack of papers. Ben looked over at the kid, a little confused.

  “Take one and pass it on, man.”

  Ben grabbed the stack, taking the top sheet off before passing the stack to the girl on his left. He looked down at the paper in front of him, focusing on the bold black letters at the top of the page that read “QUIZ.”

  Shit.

  For a moment he was a little nervous. Then he read the first question.

  “Animals use camouflage in the wild as a defense mechanism. True or False?”

  Like I was saying, weed out class.

  5

  Facebook

  April 2, 2015

  Parker unlocked the door to their dorm room, and Ben walked in behind him.

  “I can’t believe we’re still talking about this girl,” Parker said.

  “Just help me look for like ten minutes. If she’s not on Facebook or Instagram or whatever other social media crap you have on your phone, then I’ll stop talking about her. Deal?”

  Parker thought about it for a minute. “No.”

  “No? Seriously?”

  Parker tossed his backpack on the floor and it slid underneath his desk. “If I help you,” he paused, “then you owe me.”

  “Okay, whatever.”

  Parker sat down at Ben’s desk, pulled up Instagram on his laptop, and punched in her name: Casey Taylor. Thank goodness for IDs.

  “There are fifty-one Casey Taylor’s on Instagram. Most of them are ‘private,’ though.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “It means you can scan through these tiny-ass profile pictures, but that’s it.”

  Ben leaned over his shoulder while Parker scrolled through them.

  “Well?” Parker asked.

  Ben’s eyes scanned down the center of the page ov
er each of the circular profile pictures in the drop-down menu. Not a single one was the right Casey Taylor. “None of them are her,” he said.

  “Alright, let’s try something else.” Parker switched to Facebook and typed in her name again. There were only twenty-two results, and more than half were spelled “Cassey” or “Kasey.” Of the seven remaining there was a freelance photographer, a manager of relations, a musician, a host of some weird television show, and then staring back at Ben, a doctor.

  Ben pointed to the screen. “Holy cow, that’s her.”

  Ben watched as Parker clicked on her picture. A little box on the left popped up that read:

  Studied medicine at University of California.

  Graduated in 2014.

  Lives in Gainesville, FL.

  Born March 23, 1990.

  Work. Ask to see info.

  “Can we ask to see info?” Ben asked.

  Parker looked back and laughed at him. “That’s not really how that works, man.”

  “Okay, well, then it’s pretty dumb to put that button there.”

  “I have so much to teach you young Padawan…” Parker said.

  The rest of her profile was pretty empty. Parker explained that she hadn’t updated her timeline in several years, which meant she probably forgot she was even on Facebook. It didn’t matter, though; at least he had a starting point of how to find Casey Taylor.

  6

  Shands

  April 3, 2015

  Including college residents, Shands Hospital has almost one thousand physicians and over eight thousand nurses. How did Ben know this? Because for the last two days he felt as if he’d talked to nearly every one of them. And because it said it on the giant plaque he was standing in front of.

  There was a cancer center, a heart care center, women’s services, neuromedicine specialties, orthopedics, emergency medicine, radiology, and urology just to name a few.

  To put it bluntly. Shands Hospital was fucking huge.

  He was surprised he’d even made it through so many hospital wings without the slightest question of who he was or why he was asking about a resident physician named Casey Taylor. He was sure by now there were posters of him all over the place with eight simple words written on them: “Do not talk to this kid; he’s crazy.”

  He stopped a few steps outside the building in front of a giant blue board that read, “UF Health is Baby Friendly.” He looked up at the red, blue, purple, and yellow checkered windows that rose for 10 floors. He was at the last place he wanted to be: Shands Children’s Hospital.

  For a moment he considered just forgetting about the whole thing. This girl had said, what, two sentences to him?

  For all he knew there could be posters of her around school that read: “Do not talk to this girl; she’s crazy.”

  He laughed to himself, thinking how Parker would rephrase that. “The crazier, the better.”

  After about two hours of walking around the hospital, Ben was no closer to finding her than he was two days ago.

  What he could describe of Casey ended up describing about thirty percent of the women that worked there, which was nearly three thousand women. That wasn’t helpful at all. And that was just from the people that would actually talk to him. Most of them either looked at him like they were about to call security, or they just ignored him completely.

  Ben walked by several rooms that looked exactly how he remembered them. Eggshell colored hospital beds were covered with crisp white sheets, tucked neatly at every side. Teddy bears and other stuffed animals lined the beds, and colorful animal balloons floated in front of the health monitors. Most of them also had a navy couch with wood trim that folded into a bed just below the prison like windows. He hated those rooms.

  Turning the corner he found the same tiled mural of butterflies, and birds, and dolphins on the wall. And then he heard a familiar voice. A voice he really didn’t want to hear.

  “Benson?” Dr. Sanchez called out.

  The voice stopped Ben cold where he stood. For a moment he thought about just breaking into a run. That seemed to be the only solution he had lately. But something held him standing still where he was.

  Dr. Sanchez walked up beside Ben. He had shaved his thick black mustache, and there were large bags under his eyes. He looked tired, Ben thought, possibly even sad.

  “How are you?” Dr. Sanchez said, touching Ben’s shoulder lightly. “What brings you here?”

  Ben didn’t answer.

  “I’ve been reading about your races in the paper. That’s really great,” he said with a smile.

  Ben’s eyes burned into the orange and green coral shaped designs on the floor, but he didn’t say a word.

  “Well,” Dr. Sanchez said lightly, “I…I better get back to work. It was…good to see you.”

  Ben wanted to nod, or at least acknowledge the man in some way, but what do you say to the man that killed your daughter?

  7

  Watching Him

  April 3, 2015

  The sliding glass doors closed behind Ben as he stepped outside the hospital. He closed his eyes and imagined an enclosed concrete building. On the inside there was a blue sky and several clouds, but on the outside there was nothing. He focused on the walls for several seconds, picturing himself alone inside them, away from the memories, and the noise, and the pain.

  It was a method he had created to remove distractions while running that he called “creating the zone.” He breathed slowly for several more seconds, and then like a wave wiping away the footprints on a beach, his mind felt clear.

  Ben took several steps down the concrete walkway. About every twenty feet was a square brick planter with a large oak tree planted inside. A heavy spring breeze lifted up bunches of brown serrated oak leaves and scattered them across his feet.

  To his left was a small bike rack, and just behind it a green chain link fence surrounded by several small bushes in an attempt to hide the transformer.

  To his right a few concrete picnic tables. The circular kind, with out of place adornments sculpted into each base. They were all full. Two guys in scrubs sat on top of one with their feet on the bench, another was full of students in plain clothes, and at the third sat a cute blonde girl holding the remains of a sandwich in one hand, propping open a book in her other.

  You’ve got to be kidding me.

  * * *

  From a table about ten yards away, Casey Taylor finished the last of her turkey and cheese sandwich. She sat her book down and tossed a couple empty Ziplock baggies into her lunch box.

  When she looked up she was surprised to see someone else sitting down at the bench on the other side of the table. She recognized him right away.

  He had short dark brown hair that looked like it might be curly if he let it grow out. His features were strong and angular; he couldn’t be more than a year or two older than her, if that. He was wearing blue mesh shorts that ended a couple inches above his knees and looked like they were made out of cotton as opposed to nylon. And a plain white tee-shirt with the word “Florida” written across the front in blue clung to his lean frame. His name was Benson Wilder.

  “You are an extremely hard girl to find,” he said.

  Casey didn’t respond, but instead watched as he reached across the table and grabbed her keys. “Let’s try this again,” he said.

  “Do you have time? I mean, there are probably lots of other half-naked girls on roller blades who need to be saved.”

  As if on cue a group of three girls walked by. The redhead on the far side said, “Hey, Ben, good luck this weekend!”

  Casey rolled her eyes, swung her lunch box over her shoulder and grabbed the keys out of his hand.

  “Wait,” Ben said as she stood up from the table. “Go out with me.”

  “What?” she said, turning around.

  “Go out with me.”

  “I don’t even know you.”

  “Okay, well, what would you like to know?”

  She thought about
it for a minute. All the boring questions popped into her mind. Where are you from? What are you studying at UF? How do you like the track team?

  She knew the questions didn’t really matter, though; in fact, she surprised herself when she realized she kind of, sort of, really did want to go out with him. She thought about Emma, though. Ultimately no twenty-something guy wanted to date a single mom. So, instead of taking a chance, she made up an excuse.

  “It’s my first-year residency, and I have a…” She caught herself. Only a few of her classmates knew she had a daughter, yet for some reason she almost told him.

  “You have a…?”

  The way he looked at her right now was so intense it was intimidating. She almost felt compelled to tell him, but she’d gone down that road before and it never lead to anything good. “I have no time outside of the hospital.”

  The door opened behind Casey. The same door Ben had walked out a few minutes ago. A middle-aged, and somewhat overweight black woman stuck her head out, “Casey.”

  Casey turned around; it was Candy, one of the nurses. “Dr. Hasara is asking for you.”

  She looked back at Ben. “I’m sorry, I have to go.”

  “So, can I call you? Email? Text? Write you a letter?” Ben said as she walked away.

  Casey looked back and part of her wanted all of the above, but instead she smiled, and continued walking through the sliding glass doors.

  * * *

  “Girl, who was that fine lookin’ man you was conversin’ with?” Candy asked.

  “Just some guy,” Casey said. “Do you know what Dr. Hasara wanted?”

  “Girl you need to quit changin’ the subject and go look in the mirror.”

  Casey ran her hand through her ponytail. “Do I have something on me?”