The scientist poured a glass of wine and sat six feet across from him at the table. The distance from end to end of the dining room -- from him to her, repelled them even further apart. The charge was negative to negative: a surgeon and a scientist. Their eyes bounced around the room to anything but each other, catching only refractions of physicality tinted red through their drinks. The chandelier hanging from the ceiling was the only hope of connection, extending its glass arms out to each of them and begging for conversation. The window remained cracked open as it had been all day, the lukewarm evening air gently breezing throughout the house. Like the chandelier and its failed attempts, the air was the only warmth there, its fingers embracing the atmosphere, thawing icy flesh and stone expression. A vase stuffed full of colorful wildflowers was placed precisely at the center of the table, perfectly positioned to block each of their view of the other. They did not mind.
The scientist stood up swiftly and suddenly, gathering her dinner plate and wine glass before making her way to clear the surgeon's. She caught his attention for the first time that night. “How was she today?” the scientist asked her husband. One elderly woman had been struggling to recover for the past few weeks. The surgeon followed her into the kitchen.
“Stable,” he assured her. He did not mention the woman’s aching and suffering, he did not mention her death wish or will’s revision but his wife already knew by the surgeon's sigh and fiddling fingers. "How's the project coming along?" He felt an obligation to ask.
"Slowly but surely." She answered more for herself than for her husband. The project was rather old; she and her partner had been working at it for a few years. It was physics integrated with some engineering. Her partner did all the engineering while she waited for a string of theories and explanations to emerge from the chaos that was her mind. The seconds before her partner would test it she'd allow herself a spark of optimism, an ounce of hope, which so far had only been smothered by disappointment. Just when she thought they'd finally finished, some circuit would malfunction or a tiny number left unaccounted for would be noticed.
The surgeon and the scientist laid themselves in bed, each of their faces attracted to opposite walls. The surgeon reached over to the nightstand to select a sound to occupy the hours: white noise. The scientist preferred drifting off to sleep entranced in the quiet rising and falling of human chests but she didn't care to disturb the necessary peace.
Subconsciously synchronizing each of her breaths with the surgeon's, she did what she always had and allowed her mind to wander to the project. She considered previous trials and errors as well as the next steps for progress. She wondered how long she could experiment before enough was enough, before it drove her completely insane. The scientist's head was silenced only in slumber.
~
The surgeon continued his repairing and patching of the foreign bodies that housed various dysfunctional organs. His greatest efforts were exerted into his work and he was disappointed by lost patients, but he had learned within his first years better than allowing attachment. His wife had her physics projects and he had this. The patients were patients – skin, bones, life systems and the substances they produced. They were bodies that malfunctioned as anything could and sometimes they'd go beyond rescue.
The old woman who had been in recovery – her name was Eileen – was different. The surgeon found himself looking forward to her company and visiting her during his lunch breaks. He liked listening to the woman's stories on days she felt well enough to tell them; her eyes would light up when he expressed even the slightest interest. Eileen was not any longer his business, but he wanted her to be. He couldn't think of another person whose presence he had been more completely absorbed by.
“How is your wife?” Eileen would ask. His wife would always launch the conversation. Eileen’s genuine interest reminded him of the scientist’s.
“She’s good,” he would reply. Sometimes he would believe himself.
Eileen would lock eyes with him. Her expression would not be either doubtful or trusting; she’d become an unreadable face simply carrying an empty conversation with which the surgeon seemed to be comfortable. “And how have you been?” she’d continue.
“Good.” The surgeon’s responses were ingrained routine that he projected robotically, but sometimes he would find himself hoping she’d ask him the questions again.
Then Eileen would tie some small talk back to a nineteen-fifties scene of someone embarrassing himself or herself and the surgeon would laugh not from his throat but from his chest until tears would stream down his cheeks, warming and softening his cold, gray face into lively shades of pink. One of the days, however, she wouldn’t tell him a story. She wanted his.
“Tell me about your wife,” she insisted curiously.
“What about her?” the surgeon asked. Her job? The color of her hair? Her favorite movie?
“Come on I'm tired of telling you my stupid stories and you don’t mention her much at all. You avoid the topic, actually. Tell me why you fell in love with her and why you still love her. I want to know why you made her your wife and why you’ve both stuck around for so long.”
He thought for awhile. “Well, she’s a physicist—a brilliant one,” he explained. “We teach each other things. She’s the only person I’ve met that has no background in medical terminology yet still has the intelligence to completely comprehend the things I explain to her.”
Eileen smirked. “So she’s smart. Lots of people are smart. Tell me something about her.”
The surgeon stared through Eileen to the wall behind her where memories and details of his scientist were projected, flickering through time with scenes and slides shuffled and unorganized. Realizing that the compilation’s explanation would verbalize as a scatterbrained listing of insignificant recollection, he told Eileen, “I can’t explain it – her.”
He wanted to answer her questions. Her childlike curiosity would be impossible to deflate.
“You’re no fun,” she teased. “But just do me a favor. Remember that she is there.” Her tone shifted. “You’re a busy guy, I know, so do not hesitate speak out every thought that comes to your mind within your time around her.” Her gaze dropped to her toes poking up under the blanket. “I had one of those. After fifty six years with him, I began noticing a loss of connection. In attempt to make up for it I started a list.”
The surgeon was once again absorbed by one of Eileen’s stories, but this one was vastly different from her others.
Eileen continued. “I started a list for every little thing he would do that made me smile. I listed every one of his chivalrous gestures and peculiar habits and crazy antics. I wrote down the date of every day he brought home flowers and I documented his exact words every time he presented them to me.” She looked back up at the surgeon. “Of course he didn't know any of this. I was waiting until I had a significant list to give him for, I don’t know, an anniversary or birthday or something.” She picked at the loose threads on the edge of the bed sheet. “I think you can guess the ending to this story.”
The surgeon admitted, “I don’t even know that I could make such a list. I mean, not that I don't love her; I married her. Of course I love her. I run a hundred miles an hour twenty four-seven. I'm always so tired.”
He stood up to leave her room; his lunch break was over. Before he made it to the door, Eileen rushed, “Fix it.”
~
The scientist arrived to work during that same week to find her partner already there, sitting in a rolling computer chair pulled up to the table. Staring down at her hands resting atop it, she appeared contemplative and thoughtful. “What do you think of this?” her partner asked.
The scientist tried to remain hopeful. “I think it's worth experimenting a little while longer.”
Her partner's attitude of surrender, which had been apparent for months, was beginning to discourage her. “Alright,” she said. With each of her cynical statements, the project became more difficult to keep afloat.
The project was a two person task that she knew could not be carried out on her own. The scientist refused to reveal her doubts. “What do you think?”
Her partner did not respond.
If she were to quit, the scientist would be forced to, as well. The scientist added, “You know what, never mind. If we haven't figured it out by now, we aren't going to.” She hoped that the drastic shift in outlook for dramatic effect would at least guilt her partner, if nothing else.
Her partner found her voice. “No. Years of work only to walk away?”
The scientist had gotten the reaction she initially wanted but on a whim she added, “It’s a waste of time, effort, and money if we are getting no where.” The words that escaped her mouth felt as if they were someone else’s. She thought it was even worse that she believed them.
Five o'clock rolled around and both the scientist and the surgeon left work hurriedly.
The surgeon tried keeping his word to Eileen. He wanted to leave himself enough time to buy some fresh flowers to set out on the dining room table before the scientist arrived home.
Their usual repetitive cycle was only briefly broken when she noticed the roses at dinner. The scientist smiled, thanked him, and then jumped back into her routine. There were no hugs or kisses or memories reemerging. There was only a mass-produced vase on a table stuffed full of roses identical to trillions of others gifted by billions of other people in millions of other situations that same day.
“I'm going to go take a shower,” the scientist declared after cleaning up from dinner. She made it into the bathroom without a comment by the surgeon, but was then interrupted by knocking on the door. The scientist opened it.
The surgeon was gripping the flowers from the dining room in his bare hand. His arm was extended out to her in offering of the roses, which apparently had already begun wilting in the store. The thorns were jagged and completely exposed, but the surgeon did not appear phased. His face was as flushed as it had been with Eileen, but this time it was not with laughter.

“I want to fix it, Cady,” he exhaled.