Smolder

by Graylin Fox

  “What time do you need to be at work?”

  He joined me at the table with his coffee and a full half-gallon of orange juice.

  “Nine,” I answered between bites. Josh was the best cook in the Quinn family. Our father understood when he decided to become a pro wrestler, but made Josh promise that if he got injured, he would stop wrestling and go to culinary school.

  “It's seven thirty, you have plenty of time.”

  The air coming through the window was fresh and cool. Living on the marsh may be one of the best decisions I'd made. I loved nature, and Josh's crack yesterday about his hippy-dippy sister was correct. This weekend, we planned to go to a local florist and get the seedlings and potting soil for an herb garden. Gardening calmed my nerves and helped me to set aside all of the stories I heard throughout a workday.

  Josh headed to the local gym to work out for the day. He usually called ahead of time and let them know he was in town. Training young men who wanted to get into the ring was a passion of his, and this allowed the locals to sign up for sessions with him for a few days. I’d never checked the local gym scene, anywhere. Josh would call ahead, scope out the ratings online, like it was a research project.

  My mind wandered back to the past two days and I realized that if I was going to get a grip on the new job, I would need to pay less attention to my hormones and more attention to my patients. Cleaned up and full of resolve, I drove to work.

  The office was open, and Lee acted like the past two days had not happened. She gave me a full rundown of the day's schedule that included a number of insomnia and chronic pain patients from local physicians.

  I started in the emergency room. Last night, there was a celebration and one of the couples involved came into the ER around six a.m. The physicians and nurses could not get the couple to cooperate with them and all the consult said was, 'please hurry before we need to amputate.'

  I hurried. Unfamiliar people smiled at me as I walked as fast as I could through the back hallways. There were private hallways for doctors and staff to get from place to place that the public can’t access. It helps in transporting patients so they don’t get wheeled down a public hallway and allows the staff to maneuver quickly through the hospital where conversations about patients can be conducted without anyone overhearing it. The emergency room appeared in front of me as I turned the final corner and a crowd stood outside of one room. The group consisted of nurses, technicians, medical residents, and one irate woman shouting about being kept from her husband. I slowed down, this was the room where I was needed.

  One of the medical residents, a nice young kid who still looked like he needed a backpack, pulled me aside as I stepped through the doors.

  “Doctor Quinn, we have a complication.” He nodded in the direction of the irate woman.

  “The wife showed up,” I filled in for him.

  “Yeah. And now the couple is less cooperative.” He blushed and turned his head to something over my shoulder while he continued. “They are stuck together. Intimately. He took some erectile dysfunction medication, and they started before he was…”

  His voice trailed off, and I saw a sheen of nervous sweat on his face.

  “Before he was at full mast?” I tried to hide my grin. “It's okay. I think I can take it from here.”

  “Thank you, Doctor.” He rushed past me and away from the crowd.

  Medical school didn't really prepare you for the weirdness that wandered into an emergency room.

  “Poor kid.” Dr. K stood next to me. “His innocence left today.”

  “Oh, he will hold onto it a little longer,” I assured the concerned attending. “Now, anything medical I need to be aware of before I make him unhappy?”

  “I don't know how you could remove someone's erection.”

  He didn't realize he had said it aloud until one of the nurses gasped.

  “Ahem. I mean, no, Doctor Quinn. There is no medical issue you need to be concerned with. His heart and lungs appear normal, as do the woman's, so emotional distress will not place them at any risk.”

  “Thank you, Dr. K.”

  I took a deep breath and walked to the room. The man's wife attempted to stop me, but I avoided her and kept walking. She was the husband's problem once he got free.

  The couple covered in bed sheets argued in whispers. I turned back closing the door behind me, much to the chagrin of the crowd gathered just out of sight.

  “Is there anything I can help with?” I asked, and they turned their heads to me.

  The woman read my name badge and scoffed. “We don't need a psychologist. We aren't crazy.”

  “You are stuck to a man's penis, lying on a hospital bed in the emergency room, and his wife is ten feet away. Does that sound normal to you?” I asked.

  The man cursed as if he hadn't heard his wife outside the door. “My wife is here?”

  “Yes, couldn't you hear her yelling?” I replied.

  “We heard a lot of people yelling. You would think this doesn't happen every day.”

  I waited for the absurdity of the statement to catch up to him. It did.

  “Oh.”

  “Would you please tell me how this happened?” I asked.

  The woman answered. “His wife was out of town at his sister’s. Finally. She never leaves him alone because she thinks he's having an affair. I came over with my new nightie.”

  She paused and turned to make sure I could see her entire face. “It was the most expensive nightgown anyone had given me and now it's cut up and somewhere in the basement of this hospital.” She was visibly hurt.

  “Anyway, Georgie took extra little blue pills when I got there to make sure we could have fun all night. We started making love after a bottle of champagne, and I noticed Georgie had stopped moving. So, I asked him why he stopped moving, and he wouldn't answer me. I tried to get up and when I did, well, he came with me. I stood up and kind of bounced up and down but he was really stuck in there.”

  Georgie was so embarrassed he had pulled the sheet over his head.

  She continued, “I've never had anyone get stuck before, and I've played around a little bit in my time.”

  I didn't doubt that. It was evident she had seen a number of plastic surgeons as the scars were visible from my slightly behind-and-below her reclining form angle.

  “After my Phillip died, I played with everyone. The pool boy, the young lifeguard at the club pool, I even slept with some of my friends’ husbands. Well, I was hurting, you know?” There was no tinge of regret in her tone. She looked genuine, and I had to fight to keep from laughing.

  “Yes, ma'am. When we lose someone we love, there is a strong desire to find affection. Not everyone chooses the sexual promiscuity route, but it is not unheard of.” I thought that sounded very good.

  “Exactly. Anyway, back to Georgie. He wouldn't shake loose even when we tried olive and baby oil. I called 911, and told them I had a man stuck somewhere private and to please hurry.” She looked flustered. “Do you know the police showed up in riot gear? Where did they think I had a man stuck?”

  “I'm out,” George said and pulled away.

  “It appears you are free to go, ma'am. George has freed himself,” I said to the relieved couple and left the room just as his furious wife ran into it.

  “The sexual promiscuity route?” Dr. K looked as if he was going to burst into laughter at any moment.

  He looked adorable with a huge grin on his face that emphasized his dimples and laugh lines around his eyes. It made me happy to see him light up like that. I wanted to go over to him and share a laugh, but we did have an audience around us.

  “It was serious to her.” I took my patients seriously even if the situation veered into the strange. “They came apart.” I fought the urge to laugh and bit my lip.

  “He got embarrassed. Her story took all the blood from his penis and moved it to his cheeks.”

  “That is an odd visual before lunch.”

  I thanked Dr. K for an
other fascinating consult and went back to the office. He caught up to me a few yards later.

  “I wanted to tell you how beautiful you look today,” he said. His cheeks were pink, and he took my right hand in his and kissed it. He took his time and made sure our eyes were locked. A rush of desire ran through me.

  “I could get used to moments like this,” I said. I think I swooned.

  I never understood the meaning of the word until that moment, but I suddenly understood it perfectly. As he stood in front of me smiling, my body melted into a puddle at my feet. I put my left hand to my face, and it was as hot to the touch as I was sure the rest of me did at that moment.

  “So could I. As long as I’m not holding a scalpel.” He winked and went back to work as his name was called over the intercom.

  Falling. I’m falling.

  I walked back to my office in a haze barely aware of passing people in the hallway. Even speaking to them but I couldn’t recall the conversations even a few steps later.

  Lee handed me two phone messages and began singing under her breath. I was down the hall before the words clicked. “I'm stuck on you.”

  “You are a sick woman, Lee Curtis.” I sat at my desk and returned the calls.

  It was two of the nurses who wanted their children tested. I asked Lee to set up those appointments for the next two Friday afternoons.

  I hung up the phone and waited. Lee's phone hit the cradle, and she was in my office seconds later.

  “What happened in the ER?”

  She checked the patient's charts every time there was consult to add their information into my patient database. So she would know the details before I did. Although many of the handwritten ER notes only give an overview, enough to make a curious assistant even more curious.

  “What did the intake information say?” I asked.

  She blushed. “One man and one woman attached due to erection.”

  “That about covers it. It was his mistress, and his wife was there by the time I got there.”

  Her laugh lit up her face. “How do you ask people questions when you are sure they are lying?”

  I smiled. “I love that part. The lies get more inventive and interesting all the time.”

  “I get angry when someone lies to me.” She leaned back in the chair.

  “In my personal life, that applies to me as well. Patients lie because they don't know we ran the blood and urine tests. The 'I don't drink or smoke anything' line is pretty normal, until I remind them we have the test results.”

  She nodded. “Then they tell the truth.”

  I agreed. “Most of the time. For a rare few, the lies get more complicated, and we start having fun.”

  “You are strange, Dr. Quinn, in a good way.” She rose turning to leave the room.

  “Thank you, Lee. Normal is boring,” I said. “And Dr. K kissed me.”

  She turned back. “Here I thought you were flushed from the consult. You have a crush, Doctor.”

  Chapter Six

  Lunch was served daily in the doctor's lounge, and I hoped I would run into Dmitri again. It was the equivalent of any other free buffet. I stayed in a corner by myself and watched small groups come and go. I started people watching as a teenager at the mall, and then I went to school to get paid for it.

  If only I had known how long it would take to get here. A doctorate in psychology takes nine years of college and that’s if you don’t take a year off. A bachelor’s degree doesn’t do much, but some of my classmates got their Master’s degrees after the first two years of graduate school and then took time off to work for a while, or start a family.

  I went through the entire five years of graduate school without a break and then did my post doctorate fellowship at Emory Healthcare. Twenty-nine years old is a little late to join the workforce, but I loved school and considered a career in teaching before the hospital environment enthralled me.

  I knew the afternoon was going to be rough as soon as I got back to the office. In the waiting room sat a small family. A soldier from a local army base in his fatigues, his wife who looked frazzled enough to guzzle an entire keg and still shake, and two children. The children were the patients to be seen, according to the chart Lee handed me when I walked in. She didn't say anything out loud, but rolled her eyes as she walked away.

  “I want to play Mommy. How come we have to be here?” one of the children asked.

  The mother didn't answer. She looked at me instead. Parents who stopped being parents the second a professional was in the room caused me more headaches than anyone else.

  “Why don't we talk in my office,” I said and gestured down the hallway.

  I would thank Lee later for closing and locking both the restroom and kitchenette doors as both children tried to get in on their way past.

  We settled into chairs, and I asked the first question I always asked when faced with one or more frazzled parents. “Who is in charge at home?”

  “I am!” the young girl piped up proudly and stood up with her arm in the air.

  She looked about two years old. I glanced at her parents, and they nodded in agreement.

  Then the logical follow-up question. “Who decided a toddler should run the house?”

  “I did!” Again, the small child answered proudly, and the parents didn't contradict her.

  I began my discussion with the “you really are the parents and need to be making and enforcing the rules” speech. It should be required before anyone could take a child home from the hospital. All health professionals, physical and mental, had a version of this speech handy at all times. We all were amazed at how often we needed to give it.

  The parents asked for and received a list of chores for the children, and the age appropriate punishments to accompany them. I drove home the need to punish them every time they violated a rule because sometimes leads to flexibility and chaos. They promised to try and scheduled an appointment for the next week.

  After they left, I walked to front to see what the rest of my schedule was for the afternoon.

  “How does my afternoon look?” I asked Lee as I found her in the hallway unlocking the kitchenette. “Locking those was a good idea,” I complimented her.

  “I only wish I'd thought of it before both kids came running here. I caught them standing in front of the open refrigerator. Like it was their home.” She was amazed. “I asked their parents to come get them and their dad walked up here and stared at them having hissy fits.”

  “Ah. It seems Mom will be the disciplinarian at home,” I noted.

  “I don't think anyone is in charge. The kids ran through here like they owned the place. Their dad sat there with his eyes closed, and mom was on her cell phone until right before you came in the door.”

  “I wonder how long it took their Dad to tune them out,” I wondered.

  “He works at the bomb range.” She smiled.

  “Ah. So he either has learned to tune them out…”

  “…or he is completely deaf,” Lee finished for me.

  “Ready for lunch?” That sexy Russian accent turned my head, and Dr. K stood in our doorway.

  I could only nod in agreement. He wore a blue sweater with grey slacks and didn't have his lab coat on. Good lord, I would have to remember not to walk behind this man if I wanted to keep my sanity.

  He stopped and let me through the door before him, and planted his hand firmly in the small of my back. I didn't have my coat on either as I removed it every time I sat at my desk. His hand was warm, and my back tingled where he touched me. I found myself imaging him running his hands over my back and pulling me into an embrace. As we passed people in the corridor, he pulled closer to me, and I smelled his cologne.

  It was a warm, musky smell that reminded me of sandalwood candles after they burnt for a few hours. I found myself leaning into him to get another whiff. He smiled and pulled me closer. We made quite a scene when we entered the doctor's lounge practically arm in arm. I didn't care. We made our way through
the buffet line and sat at a table in the back corner.

  “How did you find your way to Savannah, Georgia?” I asked as we ate.

  “I moved to the United States fifteen years ago with my family.” He looked down at his plate.

  My heart dropped. He’d said his family, and suddenly I pictured a wife and children.

  “Your family?” I asked, and hoped he didn't hear the disappointment I felt.

  “My wife and I are divorced now, Ellie. She left me five years ago for one of my residents.” He kept his gaze locked on his empty plate.

  “Had she always been stupid?” I blurted out without thinking.

  His head snapped up, and I caught his gaping jaw before he started to laugh. “Yes, I guess you could say that.”

  “You have children?” I asked.

  “Yes. A son and a daughter, who live with their mother in Atlanta now. I see them once a month, and over the summer, they come here so they can spend time at the beach.”

  It was clear from his tone he missed them.

  “How old are they?” I hesitated to ask more questions because he seemed hurt by the answers, but my curiosity pushed me forward.

  “They are teenagers now. Soon, my son will have his own car, and they can visit more often. I miss them as little ones. I can still remember when they used to be amazed at the simplest things. Now they love everything American. I grew up in Russia, and their mother is Italian. They learned about Italy, but not Russia.”

  “They will ask you about Russia, Dr. K. Maybe they felt living with their mother, they needed to be more Italian with her.” I grasped at straws in order to ease some of his pain.

  “That is a possibility. Their mother removed all things Russian from the house when we got divorced. Her new boyfriend was American and thought she was exotic and cool.” His face twisted into a smirk.

  “I take it their relationship didn't last,” I said it as a statement.

  “No. It seems she was tired of me, and his worship of her gave her an out. Is that how you say it?” He looked to me for confirmation.