My jaw dropped open. “What?”
“I know!” she squealed. “It’s so exciting!”
Lucy had been at St. Vincent’s for about three years and she was the closest thing I had to a friend and a confidante here. The thought of her disappearing was upsetting, to say the least. My mind rejected the very concept of losing her.
“You’re quitting?” I parroted. “Why?”
Thoughts of trying to find more money to pay her percolated through my brain. I’d give her part of my salary to make her stay. I’d figure it out somehow. I’d beg Martin if I had to.
Lucy’s expression shifted and her excitement faded. She’d picked up on my emotions. “I can still come around to visit!” she promised. “Or we can go to lunch like normal friends.” She cocked her head to the side and regarded me seriously. “It’ll be better when I don’t report to you, Aimee.”
“You don’t report to me now,” I argued petulantly. “But that’s not the point. The point is I’m going to miss you!” Other than Brandon, I had nobody else to eat lunch with. On the off-chance I ate lunch, that is.
Lucy grinned and just shook her head at me. “I’m going to miss you too. But let’s be real. We can’t be normal friends while I work here. It’s just not possible.”
I stared at her. She was right. I didn’t like it, and I definitely didn’t want to admit it, but she was right. I’d always held a piece of myself in reserve around Lucy. It wasn’t because I didn’t respect her or thought I was better than her. It wasn’t because I was a doctor and she was a secretary. It was just because I was going to be in charge one day. And that meant being tough and not minding the loneliness. I kept her at arm’s length because it was better for me. Not better for her. Or fair to her.
“I hate this,” I finally said. I was being a brat, and I didn’t care. “I don’t want you to leave.” I was going to be lonely without her!
“I’m not dying, Aimee. I’m just quitting. I got my dream job. Or, like, my pre-dream job.”
“Your what?” I questioned.
“Pre-dream job,” she replied, as if that answer made any sense.
I couldn’t stop my grin in the face of her enthusiasm. “You’ll have to be a bit more specific, but either way, I’m happy for you.”
“I’m going to be a production/personal assistant on a real, big budget movie that’s going to be shooting here in Austin next month,” she told me proudly.
“A movie?” I parroted again. I was doing that a lot in this conversation.
“Yes!” Lucy did a little happy dance in her seat. “Goodbye boring hospital, hello exciting movie business.”
I couldn’t help but be pulled along with her enthusiasm. “That’s fantastic, Lucy.”
“I know!” She was so happy that I suspected she could hover.
“What movie?”
“It’s a romcom.” Lucy loved movies. She was a full on movie nerd, or as she liked to put it, a cinephile. “It’s a real movie!” she continued. “And a dream come true. I get to coordinate all the logistical details, run some of the scenes, and work with the director and the producer and all the actors. At the end I’ll get to go to the premiere and get dressed up in a fancy dress. It’s going to be so much fun I can’t even stand it.”
“How’d you get this amazing job?” I asked Lucy. “I didn’t know you were even considering leaving, but I have to admit that it does sound great for you.” I frowned. “I want to be unhappy about this, but you’re kind of making it hard to be grumpy.”
“Aww, thanks,” she replied with a grin, “but I really have you to thank for it.”
I blinked. Me? I didn’t know anything about movies, that was Lucy’s thing. She was a dedicated movie buff and was constantly telling me what I should be watching (and then laughing at me when I revealed my own cinematic ignorance). Sometimes she brought in lists of things she wanted me to watch. She was also the sort of pushy-but-effective-but-not-abrasive personality type that would be very well suited to the entertainment business. She got shit done and understood the power of gossip. Thanks to her tenure under Martin, she wasn’t easily intimidated, either. Lucy knew how to stand up for herself. She was quickly becoming a force to be reckoned with.
“You know that guy you had me check out the other day?” she asked me.
“The one with the shoulder?”
I blinked. The one with the shoulder? As far as I could remember, all my patients recently had shoulders. At least one. After a moment’s thought, however, I placed it. Brandon’s friend.
“Do you mean Mark Rodgers? The guy with the dislocated shoulder from the motorcycle accident?” I’d almost completely forgotten that Lucy was involved.
Lucy nodded, however, and I tried to focus back on Mark and Lara. “That’s the one,” she told me. “Well, you asked me to come downstairs and check him out. When I was doing all his paperwork and showing him out, the director and the producer came by to see him. Apparently, he’s an actor. A real movie actor, although I didn’t recognize him from anything. Anyway, I managed to talk my way into a job!”
I blinked at Lucy in disbelief. “Wow.” Then again, if anyone could do such a thing, it was her. “Good job!”
Lucy nodded excitedly. Her long blonde hair was in natural ringlets and it bounced with her eagerness. “The producer really liked me. Apparently, I was just what she was looking for.”
“That’s because you’re awesome,” I told her. “I’m sure you’re going to kill it.” Even though losing her might kill me.
“It was so surreal!” Lucy shook her head in disbelief. “Like something out of a movie. We got to talking and she told me that she needed a production assistant and I volunteered and—bam—I got the job!”
“That’s crazy,” I told her with a look of disbelief. “I’m happy for you, really I am, I’m just surprised.”
Lucy smiled at me indulgently. “I know you are. It’s going to be an adjustment for you without me. You’ll have to start actually interacting with people and not using me as a crutch for gossip.”
My lips parted in surprise. “I see your filter is already off.”
She shrugged her narrow shoulders. “What filter? Why, are you surprised? Besides, come on, you know it’s true.”
I couldn’t deny it. I absolutely used Lucy as a crutch for my own inability to get out and socialize. Especially when it came to hospital gossip, I was kind of a dud. I was naturally a standoffish person, but hospital gossip was a huge force here politically. I had to be informed in order to be effective in my role and on my slow rise up the ranks. My solution was to use Lucy to help keep me informed. Lucy was a perfect agent for me. She was smart, discreet, and up in everybody’s business all the time. It was easy for her. Nothing went on here without her knowing about it. And because she was always in the know, I was always in the know. It was a perfect arrangement, except that it was now officially over.
“I guess I’m going to have to do my own dirty work now, huh?” I asked Lucy. The idea did not excite me in the least. In fact, it scared me to my core. I was going to have to make a huge effort to make some new friends if for no other reason than it was necessary. This was probably the kick in the ass I needed, but it definitely wasn’t the one that I wanted. My head was already starting to hurt at the thought of it.
Meanwhile, Lucy was grinning at me like I deserved my dark fate. “Don’t worry. I’ll teach you my gossipy ways.” She giggled. “I promise I can make you popular.”
I raised an eyebrow at her. Thoughts of the Wicked musical danced in my head. I was definitely Elphaba in this relationship. “I’m going to need it. Badly.” I sighed. I’d never been popular before in my life. This was going to suck so hard. I had such a hard time talking to people sometimes. I was fine in professional situations, but when it came to small talk, I totally froze up. If it’s possible to have the opposite of the gift of gab, I had that. The gift of quiet. Or the curse. “I’ll need you to teach me everything you know.”
Lucy nod
ded. “Don’t worry, you’ll pick it up,” she told me confidently. “And that brings me to my second piece of news. That rumor I told you about? It’s kind of a big deal. You’ve got a serious insurrection on your hands.”
“An insurrection?” I almost smirked, but Lucy’s expression wasn’t happy. Her face turned pale and her eyes were now wide in her face. All her prior good humor was gone. An insurrection sounded awfully dramatic, though. Lucy had uncovered some pretty crazy stuff as my eyes and ears in the hospital, but this was on a totally different level. “You’ve got to be kidding me. That sounds like some Game of Thrones shit.”
“You don’t watch Game of Thrones,” she said, but it wasn’t really a denial.
“I listen to you talk about Game of Thrones,” I replied.
All pleasantness faded from her pretty face. “Well, it’s pretty much that. It’s an honest-to-God coup attempt, Aimee. I’m sorry to be the one to tell you this, but Brandon is trying to get you—and Martin—fired. He’s working against you. He’s been lobbying the board of directors in secret. Melinda is helping him. They’re both arguing that you and Martin are incompetent and corrupt and he’s a better alternative because of his military background and outsider viewpoint. Some of them are listening to him, too. At least a few of the board members are on his side, too. He wants to take over the hospital as the new Chief Medical Officer.”
I blinked. “Brandon’s doing what?”
35
Brandon
“You want me to do what, exactly?” I asked Melinda, hoping I’d somehow misheard her. I could feel a migraine headache coming on. How the hell did I get myself into this mess? “We’ve already been through all the records. There’s nothing usable in any of it.”
I’d just spent the last few weeks meticulously looking for the financial corruption and medical mismanagement that Melinda thought my dad was guilty of. I’d been game enough to look into it, but honestly, there was absolutely nothing. He was a dick, a crappy parent, and a sanctimonious hypocrite, but he was not a crook. I would have been somewhat disappointed, except that I was far too distracted with thoughts of Aimee these days.
Melinda shrugged. “It would have been too easy if there was a smoking gun in the hospital financials.”
“Not only the financials,” I told her. “I also went through all of my father’s cases for the last five years. No negligence.”
It was certainly disheartening to find out that my dad was not nearly as incompetent or outwardly corrupt as I believed. Unsurprisingly, Aimee’s cases were just as clean, although I hadn’t really expected to find anything but perfection in her work. And perfection was exactly what I found. Aimee had textbook documentation and excellent judgement. She could be used as a case study.
“It doesn’t matter,” Melinda told me. She was visibly undeterred. “I found something, and tomorrow all you have to do is be at the right place, at the right time.” Melinda was as excited as she was oblivious to my misgivings. “We’re ready to move ahead with the plan,” she continued, propping her feet up on one of the many boxes of files that littered my office floor. “It’s well known that you despise Aimee Ford and the feeling is mutual, so I hardly know why you’d complain. Look, tomorrow is Aimee’s friend Lucy’s last day at the hospital. There’s going to be a party for her and both of them will be distracted. We’re going to use the opportunity to get you in front of the board.”
“Why?” I asked skeptically. I leaned back in my chair and attempted a blasé attitude. “I’m not planning on sticking around long enough to need to impress a bunch of spoiled fat cats on the board.”
Melinda grinned like the devil. “Impressing them in the short term is essential. We need you to temporarily take Aimee Ford’s place as the board’s favorite doctor.”
“I’m not out to get Aimee Ford.” I rolled my eyes. “I’m focused on my dad.”
That was a lie. I was definitely out to get Aimee Ford. But I wanted to “get” her in a very different way than Melinda imagined. I wanted in Aimee’s bed. I wanted in her heart. I didn’t want her job.
“But you hate her,” Melinda insisted. “You hate her almost as much as you hate your dad. Everyone knows and the feeling is clearly mutual. I heard a rumor that Aimee tried to get you fired just last week.”
I resisted the urge to snap at her. Everyone knew jack shit about me. The rumors were endless and false. And I was making progress with Aimee. She didn’t hate me anymore; I was sure of it. Relatively sure. Somewhat sure. I shook my head against the feeling of unease.
“What is it exactly that you want me to actually do when I meet the board? You haven’t told me that part yet,” I argued. “I need to know what I’m walking into. I need to know what you found.”
The only reason I even continued to entertain this ridiculous plot was because I wanted to know what Melinda’s endgame was. I obviously wasn’t interested in taking down Aimee or even my father. It wasn’t my style to be that dramatic. Did I want out of this assignment? Yes. Did I want it at the expense of Aimee’s career? God no. I’d already proven that to myself once at my dad’s wedding.
“Let me handle that,” she told me. “I’ve been working on a very special presentation for the board.”
“I need to know what sort of a situation I’m in for,” I told her. “I don’t like surprises. I’m not going to go along with this unless you tell me what’s going to happen.”
“Don’t worry, it won’t affect you either way.”
“I need to know what you’ve got on my dad.”
“Why?”
“Because it personally affects me and my family name.” I was beginning to get frustrated and I fought it down. I needed Melinda compliant. “I want to see the proof that everything I’ve always thought was true about my dad actually is true. Is that so much to ask?”
“And you can’t wait one day?” she asked.
“I don’t see why I should have to wait one minute.” I shrugged. “I’ve put up with you spinning rumors about me. Apparently, I want to take over as Chief Medical Officer? A little warning would have been nice before you put that out into the ether. A little reciprocation would be nice, now, too.”
Melinda pouted. Her confidence was making me nervous. “You really don’t trust me, do you, Brandon?” her voice was taunting.
I raised an eyebrow at her. “I don’t trust anybody. Try not to take it personally. I just need to know what you’ve got planned in case it backfires on me.”
“I won’t take it personally if you don’t. I don’t trust you either,” she said after a moment. “Do this my way and you’ll be free from this hospital by the end of tomorrow’s shift. That’s the deal.”
I was afraid of this. She was just a little bit too smart to reveal her plan to me, super villain style. That meant I would need to outthink her. Reluctantly, I knew it was time to ask for help.
I shook my head reluctantly. “Alright Melinda, what time do you want me there tomorrow?”
I needed this conversation to be over. I was going to be late to lunch with Aimee.
36
Aimee
I called out sick and went home. I felt sick. Brandon was out to get me, or at least, my upcoming promotion.
It all made too much sense. Brandon wanted what I’d been working for these past few years. He wanted to be Chief Medical Officer. And because he was Brandon-fucking-Koels, he was probably going to get it. His whole act of taking me on a nice date had just been meant to fuck me into complacency. And it had worked like magic.
He lived a charmed life growing up and was used to getting his way. Brandon was the wealthy, popular, brilliant son of a wealthy, popular, brilliant doctor. He was good looking and charming when he wanted to be. He had a way with people too. Even when he was being an asshole, people were drawn to him. He was magnetic. Even though he was a freakin’ menace and delinquent in high school, he was still the prom king. Most people just naturally liked him, at least until they got to know him.
So,
it was no wonder to me that the board members, who were almost like regular people only much richer, liked him, too. Unlike me, a precocious, ambitious girl who acted nothing like the submissive, quiet women they probably liked, Brandon was the epitome of what they did like. He was brash, dominant, and confident. He had experience overseas and a spotless military record. Maybe most importantly for some of them, he also had his father’s last name.
Indecision and doubt made my heart feel sick. Did Martin want him to succeed him? Was I always just the backup? I felt half guilty for even considering it because Martin had told me a thousand times that he wanted me to take over when he retired, but that was all before Brandon showed up again. Maybe he’d changed his mind? Maybe getting married had reminded him how much his real family meant?
I pulled half a pint of vanilla ice cream out of the fridge and devoured it in a fit of indulgent self-doubt. It was sweet, cold, and it distracted me for about thirty minutes, but it didn’t fix my problems. When the bowl was empty, I was too.
Daniel called as I was staring at the nutrition information in dismay and reflecting on the fact that I’d just consumed twelve hundred calories in a semi-fugue state.
“I thought you were working today,” he said in surprise when I answered. “I was going to leave you a voicemail about going out on Friday. You, me, and Lucy haven’t done that in a while.”
Daniel still used voicemail instead of texts. It drove me up the wall a little bit.
“I called in sick,” I explained. My voice sounded flat and miserable in my own ears.
“You sound terrible.”
“Yeah.”
“Are you hungry? Do you want me to bring you some buffalo chili? I just made a pot,” he offered.
“Oh, no thanks. I appreciate the offer though.” The thought of eating chili after all the ice cream made me feel vaguely nauseated. Ordinarily I liked Daniel’s buffalo chili (made with real, ground buffalo), but this wasn’t the day for it.
Bad For You: An Enemies to Lovers Romance Page 15