Dr. Tempt Me

by Hamel, B. B.

  Aldo opened the door and stepped out, then stopped.

  “Who the fuck are you?”

  I jumped to my feet. That was Dean’s voice in the hall.

  “Well, well,” Aldo said as I hurried over. “Looks like Dr. Dean’s here.”

  “I said, who the fuck are you?”

  I stepped into the hallway, just behind Aldo and Davide. Dean stood near the front door, hands balled into fists, eyes hard. He looked like he was ready to spring to action.

  “Dean,” I said, holding up my hands. “It’s okay.”

  He stared into my eyes then back at Aldo. “I’ll ask one more time. Who are you?”

  “I’m a friend, for now,” Aldo said. “I’d listen to your girl there, pal.”

  “Let them go, Dean.”

  He stood there in the doorway, his body outlined and silhouetted by the light from outside, the sounds of the street spilling into the cramped hallway. The walls were bare and white, scuffed by time and neglect, and the two mobsters looked like they were ready to do something violent.

  Dean finally stepped aside. Aldo went first, grinning madly, followed by Davide who said nothing and gave no indication that he cared much about what had happened. Dean lingered, staring at them as they left, then turned to me.

  I ran to him before he could speak and threw myself into his arms.

  He hugged me tight. I let out one horrible sob as the fear of the moment unclenched itself from my chest and let my emotions come washing out. I felt foolish and horrible and alone—but also like I’d survived something I shouldn’t have.

  “Are you okay?” he asked.

  “I’m fine. They wanted to talk.”

  He tugged me back into my apartment and got me tissues. I wiped my face and nose, laughing a little. “I must look crazy.”

  “Not at all.” He glanced at the two mugs on the table. “What did they want?”

  “Threatened me. Told me to stop getting involved.”

  He nodded, eyes hard. “They won’t stop.”

  “I know.” I reached into my pocket and looked at the recording device—and felt my heart leap when I realized it was still running. I hit the stop button as Dean came over to me and stared at the little black rectangle as I hit play.

  The conversation began to spill out. “You recorded it all?” he asked, sounding breathless.

  “I did what you asked.”

  He laughed, like he couldn’t help himself, and pulled me into his arms again. I stopped the recorder, because I couldn’t handle hearing all that over again, not so soon after it happened. He hugged me and slipped the device from my hands, then dropped it into his pocket.

  “You did good,” he said, kissing my hair. “You did really good.”

  I tilted my chin toward him, then stood up on my toes and kissed him.

  He didn’t hesitate. He kissed me back with a fury, wrapping me tight, holding me hard against his muscular body. I felt a thrill roll through me in heavy waves like I might be pulled under, flipped over and over beneath the waves, and I wanted it, wanted it badly.

  The kiss broke off slowly and my lips lingered close to his. “We should get to work.”

  “Yeah, we should.”

  Neither of us moved until I slipped myself from his arms. The world felt like it was dropping back into focus, and all the reasons that kept me from him to start with were still there, waiting at the margins of my mind like mosquitoes.

  “Come on,” I said, “wouldn’t want to give Maria any reason to fire us.”

  He smiled a little, looking at me with worry in his expression, but led the way out to the street, and into his car.

  14

  Dean

  I held it together until we reached the hospital. Her kiss had been desperate and terrified, and it angered me all the more, that she’d been driven into fear by those bastards, those animals. I made sure she reached her floor safely and smiled to her, showing her that everything was okay—then hit the button for the administrative floor.

  I stalked out into the quiet cubicles like a general going into battle. Maria’s secretary looked up as I approached, an old, scaly creature with sharp eyes like a lizard. “She’s in a meeting,” the secretary said.

  “Tell her I’m here.” I loomed above her, standing straight, not bothering to hide my anger. “Tell her it’s urgent.”

  The secretary hesitated, then turned toward the door and knocked softly. Maria called out, and the secretary ducked her head inside—they had a short, whispered conversation before the secretary waved me over with an annoyed look. She silently gestured me to the door, then returned to her chair.

  I stepped into the now-familiar office. Maria sat behind her desk and held a finger up as she cradled the phone between her ear and her shoulder. “Yes,” she said, “yes, of course, of course. Listen, Trevor, I’ll have to call you back, someone just came in. Yes, okay.” She hung up then tilted her head and steepled her fingers with a pleasant smile. “Dr. Coarse, what can I do for you?”

  I shut her office door to keep the conversation from reaching her lizard secretary’s ears. “Your friends paid Fiona a visit this morning.”

  Her smile didn’t falter. “Who do you mean?”

  “You know who.” I didn’t sit. I wanted to pace, to storm across the small space, to rip it to shreds and to scream in her face, but this was a political situation. I had to be under control, or else I’d give her more ammunition to use against me.

  “I’m sorry, I’m afraid I don’t.”

  “I know you’re working with the Leone family.” I threw the name out there, as a sort of test.

  She flinched, ever so slightly, her smile faltering. “Who?”

  I grunted, my hunch confirmed. “Two of their thugs showed up at Fiona’s place this morning. They threatened her.”

  “I don’t know what you mean.”

  I considered taking out the recording device and showing it to her, but I knew that would force her hand. If she was aware that Fiona had taped that conversation, then Maria and the thugs would be forced to act as fast as they could. They’d turn to violence, like they always did, and I wasn’t sure I could stop an entire crime family, backed by the power of the hospital.

  “Stop playing games. And don’t threaten Fiona again.”

  She spread her hands. “If anyone here is playing games, it’s you, Dr. Coarse. You’re the one breaking into offices. You’re the one digging.”

  “My office was ransacked, although I’m sure you won’t admit to having any knowledge of that.”

  “If someone broke into your office, you should report it to security.”

  I rolled my eyes. “You should know that some of my patient files were destroyed. Some of my notes are missing. That could cost someone.”

  “We have electronic backups.”

  “Not for my notes, we don’t.” I clenched my jaw. “Tell your thugs to leave Fiona out of this.”

  “I have no control over these thugs, whoever they may be. And if you were smart, Dr. Coarse, you might counsel Fiona to listen to those men. Maybe it would be better for everyone if the two of you went back to business as usual. You do have important jobs, after all.”

  I stood staring at her, heart beating heavy in my chest, each pounding thump nearly pushing me toward desperate acts. Instead, I turned away.

  “You’ve made your threats, so I’ll make mine: leave Fiona out of this.”

  “Or else what? You have nothing to threaten me with, Dr. Coarse.”

  “I’ll make sure you burn for this, one way or the other. I suspect if you weren’t worried about that—you wouldn’t be bothering with all this.” I walked to her door and pulled it open.

  She said nothing as I left, stalking back toward the elevators. I felt her secretary stare into my back as I went.

  I nearly trembled with rage as I rode back down a floor. I stopped at the lounge to grab some coffee then walked out onto the floor, forcing a smile on my face, nodding at the nurses who lounged beh
ind their stations, looking half-bored, half-excited, the way hospitals always were on the verge of something happening. It was never quiet, not exactly. There was silence, or at least there was silence punctuated by bleeping machines and the soft drone of human voices, but quiet suggests a lack of action. Even in the middle of the night, the hospital was never still.

  I caught Fiona coming out of a patient’s room and she nearly startled as I approached.

  “You okay?” I asked.

  She nodded, accepting the cup of coffee I offered. “Just on edge.”

  “Busy right now?”

  “Not really.” She chewed her lip and looked back toward the station. Mary sat behind the desk, gazing in our direction, and I could only imagine the sort of gossip she was brewing.

  “I talked to Maria.”

  She froze up, eyes darting side to side. “What happened?”

  “She denied everything, of course, but threatened me at the same time. She’s a serpent, that one.”

  Fiona nodded and fidgeted with the coffee cup, the white waxed cardboard the same color as her skin. “Did you record it?”

  I nodded and took the small recorder from my pocket. “She didn’t give up much though, but of course.”

  “Good.” She sucked in a breath. “I don’t know what to do. I keep thinking about those guys just showing up like that.”

  “You can come stay with me.”

  She looked away and shook her head. “No, thanks. I’ll get a dog instead.”

  I laughed. “You can’t take care of a dog. You work too much.”

  “Then a gun.”

  “Not a terrible idea, although you’ll probably shoot yourself by accident. Might as well get a dog.”

  She gave me a look. “What should I do then?”

  “Get better locks on your door and keep your head down. Or come stay with me.”

  She opened her mouth to say something, but Mary suddenly stood and came barreling toward us. “She’s crashing,” she said, storming into the room Fiona just walked out of.

  Fiona gave me a wild look then her face seemed to shift into something solid and stone-like. She followed Mary into the room and I ran in on her heels, dropping into doctor mode, our previous conversation completely forgotten.

  That was how it went at Mercy: one second we were talking about the mafia breaking into her house, and the next we were saving a patient.

  The girl on the bed was young, mid-twenties at most. She was having a seizure, and Mary and Fiona worked to get her stabilized as I skimmed her chart then stepped in to help. We got her physically under control, making sure she couldn’t hurt herself, then I got an anti-seizure medication and added it into her IV. The drug took a few minutes to work, but soon she calmed down, and Mary stepped away from the bed with a sigh. The girl was pretty, brown hair, round blue eyes, and she groaned softly, making strange sucking, grunting noises, as Fiona touched her shoulder and spoke to her in a low whisper.

  I stepped out of the room and stretched my back.

  “Lucky you were there, doctor,” Mary said, giving me a look. “What’s going on with you and Fiona, anyway?”

  I smiled at her. “Nothing at all,” I said.

  “Really? Strange, since I see the two of you whispering together in hallways.”

  “It’s almost as if you’ve never seen two colleagues speak to each other before.”

  Mary snorted as she walked back toward the desk. “You act like doctors treat nurses as equals.”

  I sighed and turned away. I didn’t need to get into that argument. I knew I’d lose, some way or another, and it’d only lead to Mary getting pissed, and more rumors on top of it. Doctors and nurses were always somehow at odds, and I never quite understood why—we both did important jobs and had our own roles. Society placed more emphasis on doctors, but nurses saved as many lives, if not more. I had nothing but the utmost respect for what the nurses did day in and day out, doing the hard work of keeping bodies alive, being there even when times were rough.

  But it wasn’t worth having a conversation about it. I wandered back toward the elevators, and lingered there, waiting for Fiona to come back out of that room, but she never did. I imagined her standing at the girl’s bedside, speaking to her softly—and I realized I didn’t even know the patient’s name.

  That was the difference between doctors and nurses right there. I was willing to bet Fiona knew that girl’s name, and her story, and a host of other details about her. Patients tended to be collections of descriptive factors and symptoms on a chart for doctors, but they were always people, flesh and blood, for the nursing staff.

  I left that floor and headed back to my still half-ruined office.

  15

  Fiona

  The day felt like it dragged on and on, and the only thing that kept me going was constant coffee, and Mary’s insistent nagging.

  “I know you two have got something going,” she said, leaning back in her chair. “Come on, Fiona, spill it. He all but admitted it earlier.”

  “No, he didn’t, because there’s nothing to say.” I sighed and closed my eyes, rubbing them with my heels of my hands. “You’re obsessed.”

  “I need the truth.” She pounded her hands on the desk. “The truth, damn you.”

  “You can’t handle the truth.” I grinned at her.

  She laughed and stretched her arms. “I get it, you don’t want to talk about him, and I don’t blame you. But I’ve got to admit, Dean’s one of the decent doctors.”

  I snorted. “That’s not what you said before.”

  She waved me off. “Sure he is. I like him anyway.”

  “What changed your mind?”

  “You really want to know?”

  “Of course.”

  “It’s the way he looks at you.”

  I laughed a little like she was joking, but stopped when I realized that she was very serious. “What’s that supposed to mean? He doesn’t look at me like anything.”

  “Someone sounds defensive.”

  “I’m just saying.”

  “He looks at you like you’re some kind of prize. It’s hard to explain. It’s like he can’t help himself.”

  I frowned a little, looking away and down toward Morgan’s room, the young girl with epilepsy. I thought of him coming in and helping, no questions asked, no hesitation, and I knew most doctors would do the same thing—and yet a lot of them would linger, and get involved, and try to start prescribing everything under the sun. He didn’t, he left when the crisis was over, when he realized I didn’t need his help.

  “I haven’t noticed,” I said.

  “Come on, you have to have noticed.” She grunted and stood up. “Think about it then, you know it’s true. He’s a good one. You should go out with him.”

  I shot her a glare. “I don’t date doctors. You know that’s a bad idea.”

  “Sure, sure, but you should anyway.”

  “Why, so you can tell everyone?”

  She barked a laugh. “Sure, that, and I think you’d get along with him. I’m not always thinking about number one, you know.”

  “Hard to believe,” I muttered.

  She laughed again and waved a hand as she went off to check on a patient.

  I thought about that for the rest of my shift. I kept thinking about the time we’d spent together, trying to imagine the way he looked at me, and couldn’t see what she meant. I was probably too close to it though, unable to see the truth of what was happening right in front of me.

  A couple hours later, he showed up right on time, like always, and waited for me to get my stuff. He smiled as I fell into step next to him in the hall, our shoes making a soft thump on the linoleum, and the sounds of beeping, of voices, followed me along. I smelled antiseptic and saline drip, and the walls were a soft teal, dull and smudged with dirt and grime from years of abuse and neglect.

  In the elevator, he leaned toward me. “I don’t think your friend Mary likes me very much.”

  “You’d be
surprised, actually.”

  He laughed. “Really? She wanted to get into it about doctors versus nurses.”

  “That’s her favorite topic. She can go on and on about arrogant doctors all day long.”

  “I assume I fit into that category.”

  I shrugged a little, smiling up at him innocently, batting my eyelashes. “No, of course not, you’re perfect.”

  He sighed and looked away, smiling, shaking his head. “Damn nurses, you’re all the same.”

  “Of course we are, since we’re all disposable minions to you doctors.”

  “I’m not doing this with you.”

  I grinned and leaned up against him, feeling my heart thud fast lumps in my chest. We got off the elevator together, and for the first time in a while, I wasn’t thinking about what people might think. Normally when we walked together, I kept picturing the dirty looks, the sideways glances, the assumptions and the future gossip boiling up around us like dying weeds, but today I didn’t care about any of that, didn’t care if people thought we had a thing, because we did, and damn them all, they had no clue what it meant. Mary could gossip all she liked, but she had no clue what we were doing, not even the slightest idea.

  Dean drove us slowly back through the city. I stared out the window, thinking about those mafia guys, their dirty looks, their slicked-back hair, their boring windbreakers. I saw bright red Virginia creeper slithering up the fence of a parking lot, and ragweed breaking up through the cracks in the pavement, and it was startling how nature managed to intrude into the city, where people worked so hard to keep it away.

  “I don’t want to go back to my apartment,” I said softly, watching people march down the block in suits and backpacks and dark slacks.

  “You can come back to mine.”

  “I don’t want to do that, either.”

  “We’re running out of options then.”

  “Drive me somewhere far, far from here.”