“Is it typical to do injections at a patient’s house?”
“My treatment methodologies are not on trial here.”
“Your judgement is.”
I bristled. “How so?” I questioned. “I’ve treated Martin to the same standard of care of any patient.”
Out of the corner of my eye I could feel Brandon watching me. I wondered what he was thinking. Did he hate me for keeping his dad’s condition from him? It had been eating at me, but I couldn’t betray his dad’s trust. The one tiny silver lining to all of this was that at least now, finally, Brandon knew.
“You kept his diagnosis, something that could affect his judgement and sanity, from the board of this hospital,” she said imperiously.
“I kept confidential patient information confidential. Anything less would be a violation of the standard of care. My obligation is to my patients first, then to the practice of medicine as a whole, and then to this hospital. I understand where my loyalty needs to be and stand by it.”
Lucy, who had been keeping time, motioned to Edwards. “Alright, thank you, Dr. Ford. Dr. Koels, do you have any questions for Dr. Ford?” Martin shook his head, giving me a tiny smile of encouragement. “We’ll now hear from Melinda’s side of things,” Edwards continued. “Melinda, have you decided who you want to talk?”
Melinda looked from me to Martin and back again before answering. Her dark eyes shone with something that made me very uncomfortable. “Yes,” she replied. “I have. Brandon Koels will now tell us why his father is unfit to be practicing medicine, unfit to have his job, and why Dr. Ford is unfit for helping him do it.” She looked at Martin with hate in her eyes. “His father can ask him questions, if he wants to.”
Edwards was as unfazed and unblinking as ever. A small, crazy part of me wondered if he was dead, taxidermized, and being controlled remotely. “The committee recognizes Dr. Brandon Koels.”
42
Brandon
Melinda handed me a list of talking points, but as soon as I was summoned to speak, she couldn’t control me anymore. I didn’t even wait for her to ask me questions. I stood up and looked around at the assembled board members, wondering what was going through their minds. It didn’t matter. In a moment, they were all going to agree with me.
“I am as surprised as all of you to hear that my dad has MS,” I told the board. “But I’ve reviewed the records and I do not believe that his MS has impaired his abilities as a doctor or an administrator. Dr. Ford has done nothing wrong. I furthermore know for a fact that Melinda has engineered this entire ambush to depose him for personal reasons and that this is all a setup. I played along this far to set the record straight. A while back when she first approached me about getting rid of my dad as CHO, she told me that she believed he was doing unethical medical and financial things behind the scenes at this hospital. I listened to her at first, but there was no proof. I urge the board to see this situation for what it is—an ambush.” Melinda was looking at me like I’d just given birth to Satan’s baby right then and there. I paid her no mind. “Melinda thought that Aimee and my dad would be at Lucy’s going away party today and that she’d be able to drop this bomb on the board unexpectedly.” I continued, “She wanted to use me, as an estranged family member, to push her agenda, and I think she’d do anything to get rid of my dad. It’s well known that my dad and I don’t get along, so the fact that I’m defending him ought to tell you something about Melinda. If you take nothing away from me today, however, listen to this; if she’s willing to do this to my dad, then she’ll do it to you.”
I sat down to stunned silence. That was the longest speech I’d delivered in a very long time. After a good thirty seconds of abject silence, Melinda got up and walked out of the room.
Things happened after that, but I was barely present. I was in the room, but my mind was a thousand miles away. All I could think about as the board went through the motions of rejecting Melinda’s motion, and then removing her with an almost embarrassed efficiency, was the way Aimee had looked at me when I got up to speak. My dad had been impassive the entire time, but Aimee was a visible kaleidoscope of feelings. It was absolutely mesmerizing.
Aimee was staring at me with such a mixture of emotions on her face that I could barely look at her. It was almost painful. She looked far more vulnerable and unsure than I’d ever seen. Then, as I spoke, her expression changed.
Something appeared on her face that I hadn’t ever seen before. Some mixture of hope, joy, and wonder that was much more profound and powerful than even her blissful, climaxing face had been the day before. It squeezed my heart to see her look at me like that. It changed my heart to see her look at me like that.
I wanted her to look at me like that forever. Like I was a good person. Like I mattered, and like I mattered to her. It was fun having sex with her, and it was fun arguing with her, but having her look at me like I was important to her was everything. I needed it. I needed her. And not just physically.
I’d walked into the room today knowing that my life might change. What I hadn’t banked on, and what I really wasn’t prepared for, was realizing that I was hopelessly, helplessly, and totally in love with Aimee Ford.
43
Brandon
In the messy boardroom aftermath, Aimee disappeared. I’d been watching her carefully, but I blinked, and then she was gone. She probably hadn’t planned on spending all day defending herself against rogue HR representatives in a windowless conference room. I’m sure she probably had real work to do.
I wanted to find her and talk to her. I wanted to tell her how I felt. I’d never been one for big declarations of feelings, but I guess my speech earlier had inspired me. Unfortunately, I didn’t get the chance to use my newfound skills. My dad ambushed me first.
“Brandon, we need to talk,” he told me as I attempted to make my escape. I suppose I could have told him to fuck off, but he was dying. Slowly, and from the look of his records not for decades, but still dying. So, reluctantly, I followed him into his office.
In what was becoming a strange routine, we sat down and stared at each other. It was even more awkward than usual with his disease hanging between us. Now, I understood why I’d been forcibly brought back to Austin. He could have just told me. I guess he didn’t want me to know.
“MS, huh?” I finally told him. “That really blows.”
His expression was empty. “Is that your medical opinion? That it blows?”
“Considering that I might inherit it, yeah. It is.”
“There are some genetic contributing factors, sure,” my dad said, “but there’s no reason to assume that. I doubt your risk is—” He’d gone from zero to lecture in nothing flat.
I cut him off with a hand wave. “—greater than any other male with northern European ancestry, yeah I know. I’ll probably be just fine. I’m more likely to get cancer.”
“Honestly, your biggest risk is that you can’t get a transfusion donor for your O negative blood. That much is my fault,” he said.
I shrugged. I rarely thought about my blood type, which I shared with both my parents. As long as I didn’t get hurt, it didn’t matter. “You can’t help your blood type.”
We lapsed back into silence. The overwhelming hostility I felt toward my dad was gone, but the vacuum left from its absence didn’t feel much more comfortable.
“Thank you for what you did today,” he said after a few tense, quiet seconds.
“Don’t mention it.” I was trying not to think about it too much, myself. I could be packing my bags right now. This was my second chance to get out of this hospital and I’d intentionally sabotaged it. Again. And all for Aimee. It was starting to become clear to me that I’d do just about anything to be near her. Protect my dad, even. Forgive him, maybe. What the hell was she even doing to me? She was erasing things I thought were central to me and she didn’t even know it.
My dad was oblivious to my inner turmoil. Either that or he misinterpreted it. “You could have dest
royed my career. Easily. It was all there for you. I’m as confused as you look about that.”
I shrugged. “It would have been the wrong thing to do.”
“I still appreciate it. I appreciate you telling Aimee this was coming, too.”
“She needed to know as much as you did.” Talking about Aimee with my dad felt strange, to say the least.
“That’s true. But I know you never liked her, and the advance warning made all the difference.”
We fell into silence again. I didn’t exactly feel like a hero. After all, I initially helped Melinda. I certainly listened to her. Still, I liked to think I’d redeemed myself a bit today. And more importantly, she was gone now. Forever. Disgraced and dismissed. I hoped I never saw her again.
“You’re probably wondering why I didn’t tell you,” my dad said.
I shook my head. “Not really, no.”
He raised an eyebrow. “Oh?”
I shrugged. “I wouldn’t want you to know if I had MS. It’s personal and it doesn’t affect anything right now. Plus, we’re basically strangers at this point. It’s not like we have lunch every Thursday.”
“Maybe we should.” He was staring at me intently.
I froze in disbelief. “Have lunch every Thursday?”
He nodded. “What do you say?” he asked. “Maybe we shouldn’t be strangers.” His voice was casual, but this was him making an effort and we both knew how significant that was. Our relationship balanced on a knife’s edge. The choice was mine to make.
People say that absence makes the heart grow fonder but, in my case, proximity and serious illness seemed to have done the trick. I was still angry at my dad for a lot of things. I was still hurt by his distance when I was a child, his stoicism in the face of my struggles, his treatment of my mom when she was sick… but still. Even though he hadn’t been perfect, neither had I. I’d been a hellish teenager. I had pushed him away on the rare occasions when he did make an effort. As much as I wanted to, I wasn’t able to hate him quite as efficiently as I used to. It was so much easier to hate him than to admit that I missed him. But things weren’t as simple as they used to be.
One of the things that made the difference for me was that Aimee loved him. And because I loved her, I wanted to fix things between us. It was forgiveness by proxy. Or something. My dad was extending an olive branch to me, and this time I wasn’t going to throw it back in his face. Considering that the last time I’d done so, I’d attracted Melinda the viper, maybe forgiveness was a better path.
“Alright,” I heard myself saying. “We can try that.”
My dad smiled at me and I felt myself not frowning back at him for the first time in ages. We even shook hands.
I’d have to rearrange my lunches with Aimee, but I doubted she would mind.
44
Brandon
As much as I wanted to show up at Aimee’s doorstep again, I knew making a daily habit of that probably wasn’t a good idea. It was a creepy stalker thing. Plus, I could only imagine that Aimee was emotionally and physically drained after the day we’d had. So, like the gentleman I’d never been, I went home and found Aimee on my doorstep, instead.
She was still in her scrubs, and I suspected that she’d been there since finishing her shift a few hours before. She was sitting on the ground on my steps, looking so much like a dream that I almost thought I was hallucinating. But she smiled when she saw me, and my heart pounded in a way that I knew had to be real.
She was wearing that same mystified, hopeful look on her face. I knew we should probably talk, but she hopped up and kissed me. Instinct took over. I needed her body, and her soft skin, and her sweet mouth. I needed a little bit of oblivion and it was clear that she did too.
We stumbled inside and made a passionate, fumbling, eyes-closed kind of love in my bed. This wasn’t hate fucking anymore. Not even close. And it wasn’t the half-drunk, half-fantasy of our night at the ROT rally. This was something else and, while it scratched an emotional itch along with a physical one, I knew that it was just killing time before we got to the real reason she was here tonight. The sex was as incredible as it ever had been—better actually—but even orgasm didn’t quench the anticipation I was feeling. I had to tell her that I loved her. I’d never been happier. Or more afraid.
“I’m so glad you came over,” I told her when we were lying side by side and panting after sex.
“Me too,” she said sleepily. Her fingers traced up and down my arms and I shivered at the feeling. There was a relaxed affection in her that had never been there before. She’d never touched me like this, and it felt especially significant to me. Her little smile was sweet and mischievous. “I feel much better.”
I laughed but I wasn’t going to let this opportunity pass by being too casual and easygoing. Maybe it was too soon, and maybe this change was too delicate, but I needed to talk to her. I couldn’t risk any more delay. “That’s not what I meant, Aimee,” I told her. “Not just because of the sex, although it was wonderful. I’m just happy to have a chance to be with you. To talk to you.”
“Brandon, who are you?” she asked me, turning to press herself up on her side. “Who are you really?”
I blinked at her. “Who am I?”
She nodded. Her blonde hair cascaded over her shoulders and I reached over and pressed it back behind her ears. She was so pretty it was easy to get distracted. Especially when she was topless. I thought about her question for a moment. How could I even answer a question like that? What could I say that wouldn’t sound completely stupid? “I’m the same person I’ve always been. The same person I was when we were teenagers. Maybe a bit less… angsty than I used to be, maybe? But pretty much just the same.”
She shook her head. “I used to think I knew you.”
“You do know me.” I smiled at her. “You probably know me about as well as anyone does.”
Aimee definitely knew my dark side better than probably anyone. She’d seen me at my very worst. I hated to admit it, but it was true.
But even so, she seemed ready to think better of me. Her eyes were soft, and a little smile was threatening to break out. “I thought you were just a bully. An entitled, popular, good looking bastard who didn’t give a shit about anything. But you’re not.”
“Maybe I am,” I admitted. I’d always been a jerk to her, and to most people, actually. I wasn’t going to downplay my faults now. It was pointless. “Maybe deep down I don’t give a shit about half the things I should.”
“You clearly give a shit about your dad,” she told me.
“I didn’t do any of that for him,” I insisted. It didn’t even ring true to my ears, so it was no surprise that Aimee looked skeptical.
“Then why do it? You probably could have gotten your revenge against him.”
“I did it because it was the right thing to do.” I curled my leg around her possessively and she snuggled closer. “And I’m motivated by more than revenge.”
“Is that the only reason?” she asked me. “Because it was right? Not because you care about your dad at least a little bit?”
I shook my head. I sighed. “Nothing’s that simple. Family least of all. What do you want me to say?”
“Tell me why you did it. Tell me exactly why.” Her eyes were soft. For once, we weren’t arguing. We were just talking. Like regular people. This was probably the best chance I was going to get.
“Honestly? I did it for you.”
Her soft mouth opened into an ‘o’ shape. “What?” she stuttered. Her eyes were huge. “Me? Why?”
“I know you might hate me, and you would have every right, but that’s the truth. I did it for you. I wasn’t willing to let you or my dad get destroyed for some crazy woman’s ambition. Even… after everything. I know you probably still hate me, but I wanted to do this one thing right.” I looked away, feeling foolish and unsure. Being this vulnerable was new, and somewhat terrifying.
“I don’t hate you, Brandon. I don’t hate you at all anymore.�
� Her voice was gentle.
My eyes were drawn back to her very blue ones when she reached out and touched my face, cupping it against her little palm. “Good,” I told her. “Because I think I’m in love with you.”
45
Aimee
Brandon’s bed wasn’t covered in fluffy pillows trimmed with lace like mine was, but it was big, warm, and soft. He was strong, comforting, and made me feel wanted down to the bottom of my soul. He was being kind to me. I was totally exhausted and overwhelmed. But when he told me that he loved me, I felt both a compelling urge to get up and run away and an opposite urge to stay. After all, I asked him the question because I wanted to know the answer. He did it for me.
For me. Because he loved me.
He’d given up the opportunity to get revenge against his dad, who he thought murdered his mother, for me. He chose me and the right thing to do over his hatred and pain. That mattered. It mattered a lot. There was a nobility and goodness in Brandon I hadn’t ever seen before. I wasn’t ready to deal with my feelings yet, not really, but I knew it was important that I’d met the real Brandon.
We ended up having sex again until late into the night after his declaration. I didn’t know how to answer him with anything but my body, so that’s what I did. We fell asleep in each other’s arms. I slept better that night than I had in ages.
Miraculously, we both had the next day off. The day dawned bright and hot, and I woke up slightly too warm with naked Brandon wrapped around me. It had been ages since I’d woken up to someone. It felt nice. Really nice. Nice enough that the couple of extra degrees of body heat was comforting rather than irritating.
Bad For You: An Enemies to Lovers Romance Page 18