by Julie Wright
I peeled her off my arm and scowled. “This is not exciting. This is a disaster. I’m over it. He’s over it. There’s no reason for anything to be brought up again now.”
“Hm.” She raised a brow at me, mocking me with the ability because I still couldn’t do it and she looked crazy fabulous when she did it. “Sounds like denial. If you’re both so over it, why would you think it’ll come up?”
I hung my head in my hands and wondered if I was going to throw up. Or maybe pass out. Maybe both. “I don’t know. That door closed a long time ago. I’m not prepared to deal with the reality of it, that’s all.”
She gave me her pity-sigh, the one that was long and sad, like a foghorn from a lighthouse. “Well, maybe this is a new opportunity. You know what they say: when one door closes, another one opens.”
I moved my hands from my face to glower long and hard at my friend. “And you think that’s supposed to make me feel better? That somehow a bunch of doors opening and closing means I’ve got opportunities? Doors closing and opening isn’t the sign of an opportunity, it’s the sign of a haunted house! I am being haunted. Everett Covington is my own personal poltergeist.” I growled and buried my face in my hands again.
“Maybe that’s the answer.” Becca tugged on a curly, blonde wisp that had strayed into her eyes and moving it back behind her ear.
I peeked between my fingers. “An exorcism?”
She groaned and pulled my hands from my face. “No. If you feel haunted by it, that means there’s something still there, something you can’t let go of. If you face this and either embrace it or get over it, then maybe you’ll be a better date for those poor saps stupid enough to ask you out.”
I stared at her a long moment. She smiled with the encouragement that could not have come from anyone else.
But I wasn’t feeling encouraged. “You think I’m a bad date?” I asked.
“Sweetie, you know I love you, but you are thirty-five years old. You need a man before the hours of this place grays your head and wrinkles that cute face of yours so you look like a moldy apple someone left in the break room.”
“I’m not thirty-five yet.” I said.
Becca put her hand up to halt my protest on my tongue. “You’re closer to thirty-five than you are to thirty-four.”
I conceded the point by asking, “What do I do?”
She tilted her head to the side and gave me that look—the mischievous one that would have meant trouble if we were both younger and less responsible. “Is he cute?”
“How would I know?” I said too fast and with too much defense in my tone. “I only saw him for a second in the hall.”
“Okay so not just cute, but hot.” She knew me too well for our own good. “A hot new doctor who is likely to be the new meat around all the single ladies in this place means you had better stake a claim and stake it fast. Some of these women are desperate.”
“Well, I’m not one of them, so I don’t need to stake a claim.” But my heart quickened at the mention of the other women in the hospital—pretty, intelligent, talented women. Would Everett date one of them? Would I have to watch him date someone else all over again?
Argh! And why did I care if he dated? We were over. The deed was done. That chance was gone when his arms went around Liz to offer her comfort and when there was no one to offer me comfort when Grams died. Done!
We were done.
And I’d made my peace with that, hadn’t I?
“Dr. Stone?” Another nurse drew my attention from Becca and the puzzle of Everett.
“Yes, George?”
“The Baker girl is prepped and ready.”
I checked my watch and nodded. “Right. I’ll be right in. Thank you.” I existed in this hospital to be a doctor, and Everett or no Everett . . . that was what I was going to do.
The decision would have been easier if Becca hadn’t smirked and waggled her eyebrows at me.
I didn’t see Everett again for the rest of the day, though I dreaded every moment for fear of what I would say to him when we came face to face again. What could we say? What if he wore a wedding ring? Worse, what if the woman he called Mrs. Covington was Liz? Liz would not like seeing me again. Not that I wanted to see her either.
The last time Liz and I made eye contact had been the single worst day of my entire life. Even thinking about that woman and that day filled me with so much sadness I wondered if I could drown in it. I went home that night and streamed movies from the internet and could not recall a single one of them.
I didn’t see Everett the next day either. He hadn’t been in the clinic seeing patients yet, though there was a general buzz of gossip and speculation about him among the staff. I heard him called handsome, intelligent, funny, charming, and arrogant—though that comment came from Rachel who didn’t like doctors much, since, as a nurse practitioner, she felt she had as much experience as we did, and not nearly half the respect.
Where were they hiding him? It’s not like our department was so huge that a new hire was impossible to introduce to the rest of the staff—at the very least to the other doctors.
The third day I turned a corner and there he was, right in my face, close enough to see the shift in his eyes as they went from brown to green to gold to brown again. He smiled at me, his eyes warm, his smile gentle. “Andrea without an E. I wondered where you’d been hiding.”
“I haven’t been hiding. I’ve been working.” I didn’t return the nickname greeting. It simply felt too intimate, too personal, too hard to push past my lips. He must have noted the omission because he raked his hair back with his fingers—that nervous habit I knew so well.
He used his left hand, and I should have been ashamed of myself for straining to really see those fingers as they glided back through his dark hair, but I couldn’t help it. Sometimes, a girl just has to know.
His ring finger remained bare, and the tightening in my chest eased up much more than I cared to admit. The problem came when my mouth finally opened to speak and the only thing blurted out were the words, “So, you’re not married?”
The mental face-palm was hard enough to give me phantom pain in my forehead.
His smile widened, just a fraction. “I’m not. Couple of almosts, but in the end, my heart wasn’t really in it, so nothing worked out.”
“I’m sorry,” I said as the words not sorry did a dance in my gray matter.
“You?” He raised his brow with a look that made me worry he could see my not sorry dancing in my mind.
“Same. Couple close calls, no results. Becca jokes I’m married to my job, but when she does, Nathan jokes I’m really married to the idea of irritating our mother by denying her grandchildren. Since Nathan and Becca are likely to actually get together, my mom can get grandchildren through them, instead.”
I was talking too much.
“How is Nathan? I saw him when he won Chopped. That was pretty amazing. And who’s Becca?”
Everett had watched my brother on Chopped.
That he cared enough to stay connected through that small detail pinged my heart, forcing me to shake myself into reality and realize he’d asked me a question. “Becca? She’s a nurse here. You’ll come to love her when you get to know her. There isn’t anyone more competent or trustworthy. Actually, the whole staff is pretty great.”
He leaned his head to the side and outright grinned. “They say the same thing about you. And I hear, I owe you a debt of gratitude.”
“Gratitude? For what?”
“Your quick thinking and interference with another doctor’s exam of an aneurism patient led the administration to realize that doctor had a problem. I only work here now because you helped them see that he shouldn’t work here.”
Which was all just a nice way of his saying I got that other doctor fired. “Doctor Wyatt’s termination wasn’t my doing. He got himself fired by writing himself out prescriptions for narcotics,” I informed Everett so there was no question of how everything really happened.
> “He got himself fired, yes. But you kept him from getting fired by actually causing harm to a patient.”
“Oh . . . well, anyone would have been able to do the same thing. I just happened to be in the vicinity when they brought her in.” We’d been standing a long time, doing nothing but talking, and we weren’t even talking about anything that had to do with any of the important things I imagined we ought to be discussing. I stepped to the side to move past him and remove myself from the awkward situation. “Well, it’s great to see you. I’d better get back to work. Gotta finish rounds and get back to the clinic for appointments.”
“Right. Me too. Appointments.”
We both flashed smiles, his looking as nervous and baffled as mine felt and we moved around each other.
Before I made it three steps away, he said, “Hey, Andra?”
I turned, but not enough to encourage a great deal more of that awkward conversation. “Hm?”
“How are you, I mean, it’s been what? Six years? How are you, really?”
Six years. It had been six years.
“I’m fine. Good. Living the dream.” I almost turned entirely away again, but hesitated before finally asking, “And you? How have you been?”
He appeared startled to have me ask the question. “Good, I guess. I . . .”
I had no manners, hadn’t asked after his life, or asked about his family. With an inward sigh, I forced myself to face him directly again, to make myself have a civil conversation. We would see each other often, and beginning the relationship well would make it easier in the future. “Where did you do your residency?” I asked.
“Johns Hopkins.”
We discussed residencies, and pros and cons between the two hospitals as well as the pros and cons of the hospital we stood in at that moment.
“I’m glad things have been good for you, Everett. You deserve good things."
He raked his fingers through his hair again. “You too. I’ve thought about you a lot over the years. I’ve missed you.”
Not again. Not again. Sweet mercy, not again. I couldn’t fall into the cyclone one more time. I also couldn’t drag him into the cyclone. It wouldn’t be fair to either one of us.
I turned my smile up to “bright” the way I did with worried parents when they brought their children in for testing. I was surprised how much of my job consisted of comforting worried parents. “Well, it looks like we’re both good. Things worked out, and we’re right where we belong.”
“Exactly. Right where we belong. Standing in front of each other. Again.”
That hadn’t been what I meant. I meant we were right where we belonged separately, not together. But to refute him would mean saying words my mouth couldn’t seem to form. Instead, I ducked my head and said, “Well, see you around then.”
My feet didn’t need encouragement. They fled the scene, dragging my traitorous heart along with them. Everett was back. How would I ever survive such a universal glitch in my life?
Getting back to the clinic felt like returning to a refuge. I collected my wits in my office and forced myself to focus. I had several patients who needed my time today to be about them, not about silly matters of ex boyfriends.
I laughed at that.
Yes. Ex boyfriends. The plural form totally counted with Everett. We’d gotten together three times and broken up just as often. Fate had a terrible sense of humor for throwing this guy in my path over and over again.
Finally feeling collected enough to be of use to my patients, I exited my office.
And ran right into Miss Pearl.
Chapter Seventeen
“Seriously?” I did not mean to say it out loud, but seriously?
How could this woman, of all the people on the planet, turn up outside my office just moments after I had the most awkward, uncomfortable conversation in my entire life. It wasn’t bad enough that Everett showed up again with his I miss you’s and his smile that made my stomach flip whether I wanted it to or not, but his greatest administrative advocate had to show up as well?
“I’m also glad to see you, Doctor Stone,” she declared. “I take it, you’ve adjusted well to life as a doctor?”
“Yes. Thank you.” The question reminded me of how she had been there for me during the death of my grandmother. She wasn’t just an advocate for Everett, she’d been an advocate for me, too. To think of her in any other way was unfair. “How have you been, Miss Pearl?”
“Quite busy. The heart business is a lot of work sometimes.” She passed a hand over her eyes and looked tired in way I hadn’t ever seen her appear before.
“Are you okay?”
She smiled. “I really am glad to see you, Andra.”
And that did it. Her calling me by my first name instead of calling me Doctor Stone melted any resolve I had. I wrapped my arms around her and gave the woman a hug. “And I’m really glad to see you. Sorry for seeming startled at first, but I was . . . well . . .”
“Startled?” she asked.
I laughed and pulled away. “Yes. Exactly that. So what have you been up to? What brings you to Boston?”
She shrugged. “Same thing as usual. Broken hearts needing fixing.”
She certainly had a way of putting things. I looked at her and realized that she hadn’t aged at all. She seemed maybe fifty years old when we’d met the first time. That was six years ago. Not a single gray hair, not a single wrinkle at the corners of her eyes. I wanted to ask her what skin care system she used because clearly, it worked miracles.
“Where are you off to, Miss Andra?” she asked.
I checked my watch. “Appointment. And I should really get to it. Daniel’s parents are likely to give the kid a donut if I keep him waiting too long because they’re afraid he’ll get bored.”
“A donut doesn’t sound too bad,” Miss Pearl said.
“It is when you’re dealing with childhood obesity and hypertension as a ten year old.”
“Then I’ll see you later,” she offered, giving me a warm pat on the cheek before disappearing down the hall.
Yes, that was what Miss Pearl did best. The hospital Houdini.
I wondered throughout the day why she’d come to my clinic and hospital. Did someone else get fired? Or maybe someone was going to? Or, more likely, someone was about to retire and—
I halted in the hallway in front of the check-up room.
Maybe a surgeon was retiring?
Maybe a heart surgeon.
Half the surgeons were pretty old, of retirement age, where they would be turning their eyes to enjoying the fruits of their many years of labor in the hospital. And if one of them retired, then it meant a position would be opening up. Perhaps Miss Pearl arrived to choose a new surgeon.
I hoped as I’d never hoped before, even though it was just as likely I'd made the entire scenario up and no one planned to retire at all; and Miss Pearl was merely here to help with the hospital’s scheduling or whatever.
Maybe I would get the chance to be a surgeon sooner than I’d hoped.
Maybe.
I went in to Daniel’s appointment with a far better attitude than ever before and was able to coax his parents to commit to a diet plan that would help their son control his blood pressure and keep his ticker tocking longer and more effectively. They also grudgingly agreed that removing the TV from their son’s bedroom might encourage him to leave his room every now and again, and perhaps go outside and get some exercise instead. This admission was a breakthrough of huge proportions, since his parents wanted me to fix the symptoms, not the problem.
They agreed that the hypertension their son experienced at so young an age gave legitimate cause to worry. The kid experienced problems that most people didn’t suffer well into late adulthood. Daniel’s pleasant demeanor and general sweetness would likely lead to friends if he could just get outside long enough to make them. Getting outside might get him into building a tree house, or playing a sport.
My next patient was Clarissa, one of the most bea
utiful children I’d ever laid eyes on. Her dark curls framed an oval face, blue eyes, and a ready grin, even with the fact that she suffered from a myxoma, a tumor in her heart. We discovered the tumor after her parents brought her in as a last effort to understand their daughter’s chronic and debilitating fatigue. They’d been to doctor after doctor and none of them could ever figure out what made the little girl so exhausted all the time.
At the time they brought her to me, I listened to their story, read her charts and immediately set her up for the tests necessary to check on a blockage in her heart. They found it on the right side, and we referred her to Dr. Mendenhall for surgery.
I took care of her post op recovery and felt elation at the girl’s energy levels.
That night, I didn’t go home, but instead collected the packages that had arrived in my office and took them to visit the rooms of patients who were set up as residents of our hospital—those kids with terminal illnesses. A ballerina doll and a bear in a super hero cape had shown up, and I knew just who needed them.
The two children slept as I crept into their rooms and delivered their presents along with a note to them filled with positive messages.
Only after the presents were quietly delivered did I go home and think about Everett going home. Where did he live? He couldn’t have had a girlfriend there waiting for him, or he wouldn’t have told me he missed me.
Well . . . that might not be true either. He had told me all sorts of things when he was dating Liz. That thought helped put my mind back in order. I wasn’t going there again. I would not tangle myself up in all things Everett.
I wouldn’t.
I firmly made that decision when I found myself thinking about him while I stirred the pasta in the pot of boiling water.
I resolutely made the decision again while grating fresh parmesan over my plate and imagining him teasing me for insisting on fresh parmesan.
I definitely made the decision when getting ready for bed and thinking of how I felt the night we’d decided to work things out.