Smitten by Helen

It was the year that we lived in Brookside Towers in the Medical Area, right next to the hospital where I worked. It was the closest I could get to the hospital without physically living inside it. And we paid top dollar for that privilege.
Brookside Towers was an apartment complex with three buildings - a T-shaped building (Troy), an L-shaped one (Lectos), and a C-shaped called Cilicia. We lived on the seventh floor of the latter, in a "deluxe" apartment that was anything but. By now, I have learnt that in Boston, deluxe means one needn't worry about rodent infestations. Indeed, I was grateful for small mercies; we were in the middle of the building, flanked by two apartments on either side - I had been spared Cilicia's mighty curve.
Across from the closet that we called our kitchen, in the small ante-area, was a huge bay window against which I had placed our desk. This was before I had realized that sunlight from the window visited our ante-room and kitchen/closet for only two hours a day - in the middle of the morning; never when I was home. The rest of the time the apartments along Cilicia's right curve blocked off the light. As a protest, I didn?t cook that year.
There were other things that were special about that first year that I was a clinical fellow. There was the realization that I had to impress; that I had to make it here. I had to compete with the best in the world and come out on top. I had to win in a game in which there were very few winners. Ever a believer in that the world was for my taking, I put on my best Type A behavior. Not that it was something I was unused to. Years of clawing my way up have honed my skills to perfection. I wore charm on the outside, and hostile competitiveness on the in. I dazzled with my intellect and killed with my cunning. I praised when it was necessary, and excoriated when it wasn't. Along the way, I did take care of a lot of patients. Diabolically angelic; that's what I was. What is it that they say? The ends justify the means?
This was the year that I set my alarm every night to wake me up at 4 am. Not that I actually got out of bed at 4. No, I reserved fifteen minutes for cursing at myself for having to get up at that god-awful hour, and another fifteen for cursing at that never-there husband. By this time I had stopped keeping track of his nights on hospital call.
It was on one of those early mornings in the middle of February when I first saw her. I was sitting at my desk, sipping coffee, catching up with my endless reading, when someone flicked a light on, in the apartment to our right, one floor below. It was a woman wearing nothing but a towel turbaned upon her head. I watched as she toweled her hair vigorously. She then spent an inordinate amount of time blow-drying and setting it. Never once did she look up towards me. I remember feeling vaguely annoyed by that - by how she could be so blissfully unaware that someone was watching her.
A couple of days later I saw her again. This time she had some panties on. I tried to catch glimpses of her face as she would intermittently swing her hair away from her face in the process of drying it. After a while I just gave up and focused instead on the languid movements of her body. Strangely erotic, strangely erotic the exquisite jiggling of her breasts was. I longed to reach out and touch, to make a noise that would make her look up; come to me. I just sat there, hot and transfixed.

After that I didn't see her for a while, or what seemed like a while. Perhaps another week. Then I ran into her in the elevator.
I was pretty sure it was her because I recognized the carefully coiffed brown hair cascading onto her shoulders. We stared through each other politely, pretending not to notice each other's existence,
as New Englanders are wont to do. I tried to memorize her face for later reference. The expertly plucked, perfectly arched eyebrows above her heavily-lashed light brown eyes. The lips with a hint of pink
gloss. She was a well put together woman, I thought. From her white pants, I guessed her to be a nurse. From her badge, I read her name - Helen, it said. Helen Conti.
I saw Helen of Cilicia regularly after that. Three times, maybe four times a week. Mostly from my window, on quiet mornings by myself, sometimes quick glimpses in the evening, occasionally in the lobby, or in the elevator. A few times I got off the elevator on the sixth floor and paced around for a while, hoping to catch sight of her. We developed a nodding relationship of sorts. I found myself thinking about her often; fantasizing about her. I wondered what kind of person would sacrifice an hour of sleep to do their hair; I wondered about men in her life, although I never saw anyone. I wondered about what the other rooms of her apartment looked like, from the inside. I wondered about what made her laugh, cry, get angry. I wondered what she was like to kiss, to smell. I wondered and I lusted.
The year (from hell) ended and I got the promotion I so richly deserved, had given my all for. My husband and I decided to move out of Brookside Towers. We wanted to get further out of town, away from blaring ambulances, triple parkings, screaming drivers, needy patients. I wanted time to heal. Fifteen years of raw unbridled ambition, of shoving competitors out of my way had left my elbows rather bruised. I wanted to nurse them quietly, apply some salve to my wounds - in preparation for the next round of elbowing.
I agonized about not seeing Helen again, as I read over the new lease. In the end I signed on the dotted line. The deed was done. Complete. I had stayed with the known.