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.“Why?” His response was sharp.“My family, your family, this country, no one desires us to be together.Where is the hope in a future?” Her words were true, but painful to Eli, to her, all the same, “I heard you arguing with your father.I don’t want to do that to you.I am tearing you away from them.”“No, Rebecca.My father will come to understand.My mother will grow to embrace you like a daughter.” Eli insisted on solving this problem Rebecca had formed in her mind, but he wasn’t accustomed to resolving feelings and the unseen emotions of the heart.Even a lawyer had his limitations.He enjoyed deliberating concrete evidence, figures and facts.“It’s not just your family, its mine too.It’s everyone.” Rebecca wiped her face, her tears from her reddening eyes.“You can’t tell me the prejudice is not there when it is.I don’t want to admit it, but it’s there all the time.We can’t even get away from it with the people who raised us, the people who are supposed to love us, no matter what.”“Don’t do this.” Eli’s calm demeanor, which formed habitually out of practice at his law offices, crumbled and his emotions intensified.“Please, don’t do this.I love you.” His words pressed hard into her ears as he drew her close to him.The emotions she tried to hide, to forget, leapt to the foremost of her mind.“I love you.” Rebecca reached for his hand and her forefinger glided across his knuckles and wrist and back again, “but we have to be apart.” With a heavy breath, she took her hands away and wiped more tears from the corners of her eyes.Eli pressed her to his chest.“I don’t want to let you go,” he said and Rebecca struggled with her arms to push him back, wanting with every instinct to pull him toward her and make love once more.“You have to,” she said with a brief exhalation of air, her sigh caught between pleasure and retreat.They pushed and pulled in each other’s arms, not in a dance of passion, but in a dance of sadness and pain.Rebecca’s robe became entangled in Eli’s embrace, clinging to his fingers and then she pushed him with frail hands and red eyes, with a spirit that wanted to pull him back.Eli turned away, released the silk robe, and walked to the door with his head down and without looking back to say goodbye.For Eli, goodbye would not come easily, not with someone he loved more than himself.He knew in this moment he loved her more than anything else, because when she asked him to go, he left not for himself as everything in him drew him to her, but for her, because she asked him to.The last request that he could honor between them and he did because he loved her.The next day was terribly upsetting for Rebecca and she could barely get out of bed, regretting what she had done and second guessing her decision, but the phone rang and she did not have time to dwell in her thoughts.The man on the other end spoke and requested that she come back to the hospital to fill out paperwork if she still wanted the job.Rebecca hung up with a new hope inside of her, a hope that the course of her life had not ended with Eli, but perhaps had another beginning, a beginning that would be spent in healing the sick and nursing the wounds of patients.She told herself this was best between them.He could live in peace with his family and marry the kind of woman they expected and she could fulfill her familial obligations.She, half despondent and half with earnest diligence, clad herself in a long black silk dress with a gold colored belt and made her way to the hospital across town.She found the steps of the hospital to be wide and long and had to walk a bit before hitting each next step.The gentleman on the other end of the phone waited for her in the front office and escorted her to a back room where the man who interviewed her sat.Her long brown hair with hints of warm honey was pinned up into a bun.A black silk scarf wrapped around her neck and her black long heels helped her decadent dress wear easy on the eyes
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