Dr. OB (St. Luke's Docuseries Book 1)

by Max Monroe

  She flashed a knowing look. “You don’t believe me.”

  “I guess I sort of believe you?” Honestly, I wasn’t one hundred percent certain, but considering Georgia had schemed a few times just during the short time Will and I had been together, I wouldn’t put anything past her.

  “Trust me, I don’t do favors for my brother.” She giggled nervously, and my eyebrows quirked up. Bingo. She was definitely here to be Dr. Relationship and try to fix what had already been broken.

  I grinned. “You really are a terrible liar.”

  “Ugh,” she groaned. “And I thought I was getting better at it.”

  I laughed at that, and she offered an apologetic smile.

  “Look,” she explained and sat down in my favorite cozy reading chair that had been pushed haphazardly aside to the front of the room. “I’m here for both you and Will.”

  I flashed a skeptical look, and she held both hands in the air.

  “I’m being completely honest.”

  “So you’re here to convince me to get back together with your brother?”

  She grinned. “Well, sort of, but mostly I’m just here because I wanted to make sure you were okay.”

  “Promise?”

  She nodded, and this time, as her eyes softened and creased at the corners, I believed her.

  “So, where did you end up renting an apartment?”

  “I got real fucking lucky,” I answered. “A friend of the family has offered to let me rent out one of their many investment properties in SoHo for an insanely low rent.”

  “That’s amazing.”

  “I know, right?” I agreed as I used packing tape to close the filled box. “I’m excited to have my own place again.”

  “I couldn’t imagine having to move back in with Dick and Savannah after being on my own.”

  “Trust me, it’s fucking terrible,” I said with exasperation in my eyes. “Honestly, I think Bill and Janet could give Dick and Savannah a run for their money in the inappropriate department.”

  Georgia laughed. “That’s almost hard to believe. My mother is literally the most inappropriate person I know.”

  I grinned. “Believe me, it’s no wonder they’re friends.”

  I couldn’t deny it made me feel sad to think of how well our families got along. Deep down, before Will and I had broken up, my heart had already been convinced that we were a forever kind of relationship.

  “He misses you, you know,” Georgia said into the quiet room, and I glanced up to meet her eyes. “He’s been a complete mess since you ended things.”

  “I wish things were different.”

  “I know from personal experience that sometimes things aren’t always what you think they are.”

  I tilted my head to the side, and she smiled softly.

  “Kline and I,” she explained. “Before we got engaged, I’d ended things with him out of assumptions. They were very, very wrong assumptions. And luckily for me, he didn’t give up on us.”

  “He fought for you guys to get back together?”

  She smiled like a woman who was madly in love with her husband. “Like you wouldn’t believe.”

  The sad thing was, despite my happiness that Kline and Georgia had managed to find their way back to one another, all I could think was that if Will had been trying to fight for me, for us, I hadn’t even given him the opportunity to do so. Since the moment I’d left his office, I hadn’t answered a single one of his phone calls, texts, and one night, when he’d stopped by my parents’ place, I’d made Janet tell him I wasn’t home.

  And the worst part of it all, I hated how miserable it made me feel.

  I hated that there was a tiny little voice inside my head that whispered, Did I make a mistake?

  Head down, writing out a prescription for the patient I’d just finished with, I’d successfully talked myself out of tanking my entire fucking life for a woman.

  Granted, she wasn’t just a woman, she was the perfect fucking woman, but I wasn’t going to think about that right now because when I thought about Melody, I got pissed.

  And after seven days had passed without a returned call or text or fucking email from her, I realized that I had to go back to the drawing board and think of something else that would convince her to let me explain.

  An “I can’t live without you” gesture of some sort, but fuck if I knew what that entailed. Mel deserved more than just me standing in front of her door with something cliché like flowers that she couldn’t even enjoy unless she wanted to break out in hives.

  Melody deserved the world, and that’s exactly what I wanted to give to her.

  But after spending the last two hours of my day trying to rack my brain for the perfect gesture without any luck and riding the subway home with a cake-covered briefcase a week ago, I’d gone straight to my liquor cabinet, taken out a bottle of whiskey, and gotten the British version of pissed. So fucking sloshed, I couldn’t lift my hand to pick up my cell phone, a cell phone I would undoubtedly have used to make a fool of myself if she happened to answer my call.

  So sloshed that all this goddamn pain hurt less, if only just a little.

  A week later, and the only step I’d managed in progress toward getting her back was step one of twelve where I put down the fucking bottle.

  I was just ripping the paper off of the pad and pushing myself to stand when Thatch, a shit-eating grin on his face, stepped through the door.

  “What are you doing here? How the hell did you get back here?”

  Kline stepped through the door after him, followed by Wes, and my eyebrows pulled together even closer.

  Wes rolled his eyes at my question. “Are you kidding? All that stupid giant has to do is wink, and women let him do anything.”

  Kline nodded. “Even after several case studies, I still don’t understand it.”

  Thatch flashed a grin and smiled. “Come on. This face could sell fake titties to a nun, son.”

  Kline shook his head and stepped forward, dropping a thick stack of papers on my desk with a dramatic plop.

  I looked down and took the weight of them into my hands as I asked, “What’s this?”

  “It’s the paperwork for the clinic,” he said simply, but the wave of shock nearly knocked me on my ass.

  Huh? I squinted my eyes together in confusion. “The paperwork for the…?” Did he just say clinic? As in, Melody’s dream clinic?

  “Clinic,” Wes confirmed. “The one you talked to us about,”

  “But you guys said…” I paused and glanced around the room at each of them in surprise. “You laughed about this. Called me a love-sick idiot.”

  “We remember,” Thatch spoke for the group.

  “He doesn’t realize love-sick idiots are our favorite,” Wes stage-whispered.

  “Oh,” Thatch said with a laugh. “Well, they are. And we love the idea of the clinic. So long as my name is on it.”

  “Thatch, we talked about this,” Kline said with a laugh.

  “We did. We talked about putting my name up in big neon letters.”

  “Shut up, T,” Wes muttered with a slight smirk on his face.

  “No way. You can’t shut me up. No one can shut me up! I am El Duce, and you are nothing but my minions.”

  “Jesus,” Kline said through a sigh.

  I shook my head, my mind spinning at how fucking amazing this was. How it would change countless women’s lives—and dramatically improve the health of their babies. And then I thought about how the one person who wanted it most wasn’t even here anymore, and my elation quickly faded. “It doesn’t even matter.”

  “Of course, it matters,” Kline replied confidently. But he didn’t understand.

  “No,” I disagreed. “She’s gone. From here. Probably from New York. She doesn’t want anything to do with me.”

  “They always say that,” Wes remarked.

  “Mel isn’t a part of a they. She’s not like anyone else. When she said she was leaving, she meant it,” I said,
and fuck, the words tasted bitter on my tongue. “Believe me, I’ve spent the last two weeks of my life trying to get her to talk to me.”

  “They always fucking mean it,” Thatch boomed, holding out his hand toward me and looking to the others in a gesture of Do you believe this guy? “But they very rarely want it. They just want you to stop fucking up.”

  Somehow, for some insane reason, I found myself looking to Thatch, of all people, for advice. “And how do I do that?” My voice sounded desperate even to my own ears.

  “You don’t. You’re a dude. But you can work out a system where your fuck-ups line up with her tolerance, and everything comes together in a neat little package.”

  “Start by opening the clinic,” Wes advised.

  “We did already do all the paperwork,” Kline mused.

  “And ponied up the money,” Thatch added.

  Was it all that simple? Could a new medical facility and an honest effort on my part make it all better? Was it the big gesture? The kind of gesture that I’d been trying to figure out, but couldn’t find…

  “Uh-uh,” Thatch clucked. “I can tell by your face you need to stop thinking right now. This isn’t going to solve any of your problems. Not at all. In fact,” he emphasized, “it’s probably going to make it worse.”

  Kline nodded. “But only until you make it better.”

  Huh?

  “I don’t know what the fuck you guys are talking about. Is the clinic good or is it bad?”

  They all looked to one another and smiled. I’d love to know what’s so fucking funny.

  “It’s good,” Kline promised. “But there’s a chance she’s gonna be pissed about it, but that only lasts until you can convince her it’s a symbol of what you’re willing to do for her.”

  “You see, William,” Thatch cooed. “Women are very complicated creatures.”

  I flipped him off. Kline looked to the others and nodded to the door. “We’ll get out of your hair. Just look through the paperwork and think about it, okay?”

  “Me, think about it?” I asked. “You guys are the ones who are going to lose money.”

  Thatch turned back as he was moving through the door, his hands going to the top of the frame so he could lean back in. He filled the entire space. “Some things, young William, are worth the money,” he said and followed it up with a wink and a smirk. “Plus, we could all use the tax deduction in the form of good charity and the ultimate gesture.”

  As they all filed out, giving waves and jerks of their chins, I looked down at the stack of papers on my desk and read the first few lines.

  “Those do-gooding bastards,” I muttered, the absurd amount of money they’d each pledged to the formation and operation of the clinic blinding me with the reality.

  Frustrated by my own discord, by how conversely happy and twisted inside-out miserable I was, I banged around on my desk like it held important things and yanked open the middle drawer to toss some knickknacks inside.

  I didn’t have a purpose, just a fuse to burn out, but as soon as the old drawer squeaked to a stop, so did I.

  Right there, on top of everything else, was that very first tongue depressor.

  Open wide! Everything you’re looking for is inside yourself.

  It was Mel. It was me. It was everything that was us, together.

  And it was the only reminder I needed to make a plan.

  It was time to get my shit together.

  This should have been an awesome day. I should have felt liberated and free and excited as I unpacked my belongings from their cardboard boxes and filled my new apartment with everything that was me, but I had never felt more alone.

  It was a soul-crushing kind of loneliness, and it made it damn near impossible to set up my apartment without doing something ridiculous like painting everything black or impulsively running to the nearest shelter and bringing home a cat.

  I didn’t even like cats. I was more of a dog person, but I had a feeling me and a sassy feline would have more in common in this miserable moment than a happy, tail-wagging puppy.

  I looked around my apartment, and it just didn’t feel like home.

  I honestly didn’t know what was home anymore.

  Will.

  Ugh. One day, my heart would catch up with my brain and get the memo that it was time to move the fuck on from Will Cummings… Right?

  It had been so fucking easy to move on from Eli.

  Why in the hell was it so hard to move past Will?

  Because you’re in love with him, and love never makes sense. And deep down, you think you might have made a mistake…

  Sigh. Thanks for the update, Subconscious.

  Love was a real motherfucker if you asked me. It was single-handedly the best and worst thing that could ever happen to a person. It was bliss when things were good, but if shit hit the fan and you weren’t with the one you loved, it left you pathetic, emotionally maimed, and wishing you could go back to a time in your life before that person stepped inside your world and made you realize how shitty everything was.

  Once someone left their mark on your heart, it was permanent. It wasn’t something that would disappear. And only time would allow for the discomfort to lessen until it became tolerable.

  There is no amount of time that will make not being with Will tolerable…

  Ugh. Jesus. I couldn’t sit here and fixate on the past. I had to get out of this funk. I couldn’t walk around my new apartment all day moping and doing nothing productive.

  Music. I need music. Loud, obnoxious, mind-numbing music.

  Jumping to my feet, I fired up my laptop and opened up my iTunes. Once Drake started to serenade me with “Hotline Bling,” I worked toward finding my mojo and set my sights on unpacking my dishes and putting them in the kitchen cabinets.

  Three Drake songs in and I was on a booty-shaking roll. Dishes were being stored, and the number of unpacked boxes was increasing at a slow but constant pace.

  You’ve totally got this, Mel.

  As I folded up a now empty cardboard box and set it near my garbage pile by the door, the sound of my phone ringing loudly reverberated off the empty walls and caught my attention. I snagged it off the counter and saw the name Georgia on my screen.

  “Hey, Georgia,” I started to greet, but I was immediately cut off by her heavy breathing and panicked voice.

  “Mel! Oh my God… I think I need your help.”

  My eyes grew wide with concern. She didn’t sound like her usual perky self at all. “What’s wrong? Are you okay?”

  “I think I’m in labor,” she said through panting breaths. “Jesus, these contractions won’t stop coming…”

  Considering Georgia was still four weeks away from her due date, worry fell into my stomach like a bowling bowl.

  “Holy hell… Where are you?”

  “I’m actually downstairs,” she breathed.

  “Downstairs?”

  “At your apartment,” she explained in a tight voice. “I wanted to stop by and bring you a little housewarming gift, but holy hell, I think the extra blocks I walked to get your flowers pushed me into labor.”

  “Shit,” I muttered. “Stay put. I’ll be right down.”

  With lightning-quick speed, I tossed on shoes, grabbed my purse, and sped out of my apartment door, running down the two flights of stairs that led toward the main entrance. The second I stepped outside, I found Georgia sitting on the stoop with her hands clutching her stomach and her giant purse and a potted plant of daisies near her hip.

  “How far apart are your contractions?”

  “Like, four minutes, I think,” she said and then groaned. “Jesus Christ, these hurt worse than last time…”

  “Okay. Just take some deep breaths,” I reassured and rubbed a soft hand down her stiff back. “I’ll grab a cab, and we’ll go straight to St. Luke’s.”

  “Okay…Oh! Ow! Motherfuckingshit!”

  Oh boy. Maybe Cassie was some kind of witch. It looked like Georgia was about to have
her bundle of joy four weeks early.

  Mel had officially moved in to her apartment and out of Bill and Janet’s place.

  Obviously, since she’d been pretty goddamn consistent about not answering my calls, I didn’t find that information out from the source herself.

  Rather, Georgia had been the one to fill me in, and even then, she’d done it reluctantly—the little traitor. Still, I didn’t blame her. I liked Melody better than I liked me too.

  I looked around the too quiet space that was my living, and sadness clenched my gut. Everything sucked without Mel. My apartment. Work. My goddamn life. Every-fucking-thing.

  I stared at the two lonely tongue depressors in my hand. I had no idea why I’d brought them home from work with me, but here they were, in my hands, and a constant reminder of what I’d lost when Melody walked out of my life.

  I wanted her back in my space, back in my life, back with me.

  I needed a plan.

  Since the clinic, her life’s passion project, had become reality, I needed to find the right way to present it to her. I needed her to understand that I would literally do anything for her, that I loved her, that I wanted to spend the rest of my life with her, and that no matter what happened between us, even if she still didn’t want to be with me, I wanted her to be happy.

  I’d been hoping Georgia would throw a surprise birthday party for Kline so that I could talk her into inviting Mel, but Kline didn’t want to focus on anything but his wife and kid—soon to be kids—this year. I was disappointed, but reason told me Melody probably wouldn’t have come—thanks to me—anyway.

  Twirling my two lonely tongue depressors in my hand, I looked down at the screen of my phone again, but it gave me nothing.

  No phone call. No text. No Facebook message to tell me how she was.

  I just wanted to hear from her, even if it was only ten seconds to hear her voice. Every cell inside of my body felt starved for her—her presence, her smile, her laugh, basically anything that made up the woman I couldn’t picture a future without.

  Just then, a buzz made my skin hum as my phone danced across my leg. I looked at the screen for at least ten seconds before believing the name I read on the screen.