by R. Lorelei
“I have one idea, and if this doesn’t work, then I will have to live with it.”
“What’s that?”
Chanel pulled her phone out and texted Nick. She turned the screen in my direction to allow me to see her text:
Channel: Nick, do you want to live in the new loft for one year and I’ll take your condo?
Chanel’s thinking was brilliant, if he agreed I would have two gorgeous men in the building.
We heard a chirp and Chanel held the phone so we could read his response at the same time. Nick texted her back:
Nick: Suck my dick for a year and I’ll think about it! NO!
Chanel rolled her eyes out of embarrassment over Nick’s hilarious comment. I snatched her phone, “Allow me.” I typed into her phone:
Chanel: This is from Aria, (from the Paddock) I’ll suck your dick for a year and you don’t even have to move.
I hit send.
When Chanel read what I wrote she started laughing. Nothing shocked her. I knew we were going to be great neighbors. That was the last time; Chanel ever entertained the idea of leaving her new loft.
~9~
Chanel
Today I was orienting with Dr. Bradley Hart. He was only 39 when he was appointed Chief of Cardiology. Evidently his work is exceptional for him to be appointed such a prestigious position at such a young age. He also was an Interventionist which meant he was trained to do special high risk procedures such as angioplasties and valvuloplasties.
Training with him was a privilege, so I was sure to arrive on the Cardiac floor before he did; I wanted to make a good first impression. I struggled this morning with my hair until I was forced to resort to a bun. I used my Oscar body spray, and put on a very light layer of makeup on my face so I didn’t look pale under the florescent light bulbs that the hospital used. Finally, I dressed business casual with one inch heels and the piece de resistance: my white Jacket and burgundy stethoscope.
The nursing station at quarter to eight in the morning was buzzing. The night nurses were finishing their shift and giving report to the day nurses. Charge nurses, physiotherapists, occupational therapists, and personal support workers, were planning out their day, while other departments were calling, asking for patients to be sent down in wheelchairs and stretchers for tests such as x-rays, and echo cardiograms.
I thought I spotted Bradley right away because he was the only other person wearing a white jacket in the station. Never having seen him before, I caught the eye of a young nurse and then glanced at the doctor mouthing, “Is that Dr. Hart?” She nodded yes and then I approached him cautiously making sure I wasn’t interrupting him.
After a few seconds I was able to snag his attention. He looked up at me and I was floored at what I saw. This couldn’t be happening, “Chase?”
He looked at me smiling like it happened every day, “You must have met my brother. We look a lot alike. I am Dr. Bradley Hart, and you are?”
“Chanel, your new resident.”
“It's a pleasure to meet you.” He took my hand and gently shook it. “Chase and I are identical twins, but that’s where our similarities end.”
I couldn’t get over it. He had the same shaggy dark hair cut a little shorter than Chase’s, dark brooding eyes exactly like Chase’s, and perfect features with a squared off jawline and perfect nose. I think I swooned again like I was caught in a second wave. I had to grab onto the desk to steady myself. Obviously when God made God’s gift, he was proud of himself and duplicated it.
I spent the entire day working with Bradley. We looked at his patients and discussed courses of treatment that would or wouldn’t benefit them. We discussed everything thoroughly. The longer I spoke with him, the more I realized intelligence was oozing from his pores. He appeared to be very kind and was never bothered over the countless interruptions and by my rattling off a gazillion questions.
Bradley was diligent, composed, and gifted, not to mention intelligent, gorgeous, and most importantly divorced. This brother seemed more delicious than the other, the one without the golden shoes. I left the hospital on my second day with a spring in my step.
~10~
The next two weeks flew by. Aria called giving me a time to pick up my key. I texted Nick when I had it.
Chanel: I got the key Hercules!
Nick: It’s about time u started acknowledging my strength Woman! I do wish u found someone else to help u with u’r move.
Chanel: Why?
Nick: Your neighbor Aria scares me! She meets me once and then texts me about giving me a blow job! Disgusting!
Chanel: Oh come on Nick, u met u’r match! She’s the 1st person I have ever met that’s as comical as u!
Nick: Whatever!
Nick was pounding at my door within an hour of our last text. Seriously, the man had no life, but I loved him, and compared to him I was a complete social hermit. He showed up in a blue dress shirt and jeans, ready for work. A girl couldn’t ask for a better friend then him. I was tempted to call a code purple on him, but we had way too much to do tonight.
We picked up the U-Haul and brought over the big stuff first, doing a couple of trips with the truck. Then, we packed Jezebel (Nick’s car) and Snowball up and drove them to my new loft. By the time we were done we were exhausted.
I stripped myself bare before Nick as he sat quietly on my grey sofa, “Shower?” I asked.
He smiled with his eyes, “Please.” I slowly undressed him, I wanted him naked. He kissed me deep. I grabbed the back of his hair and pulled him closer to me, deeper, for a much more penetrating and demanding kiss. He groaned in my mouth and he rubbed against me showing his arousal. My body tingled with desire for him.
I finished lowering his shirt and let it drop to the floor. He helped me take off his tight fitting jeans and then I curled my fingers in his briefs dropping them to the ground where his jeans already laid.
He fisted his fingers in my hair near the nape of my neck and then he kissed me one more time. This time I groaned into his mouth. “It’s time for me to please you after all the help you’ve given me,” I whispered. I slid down Nick’s body like I was lowering myself down a pole, until my lips found their way onto his dick. I held him firmly as I took him deep into my mouth, sucking hard, and doing soft sweet motions on his crown. I could tell by the way he grabbed my hair and his soft moans that he liked what I was doing.
He warned me by calling out my name but instead of letting him release outside of me, I made sure he wasn’t moving anywhere, and I drank his cum willingly, welcoming his warm fluids into my mouth and swallowing every last drop. This moment was about him, no code, no expectations, just me loving Nick for who he was.
We showered together. I washed him and he washed me. I offered for him to stay the night and he took me up on it. We fell asleep in each other’s arms, it was cozy.
We really had to stop doing this. Nick and I weren’t dating anyone else right now and it was just so easy. We had no expectations for each other and rarely ever argued, so when we got involved with other people, they had very big shoes to fill.
I had been working with Bradley for about three weeks when it happened. We had a busy morning, and what made it different from most was Mrs. Wilson had started turning sour in the early morning, and by ten the nurses called a code blue on her. Her body became lifeless. Everyone went running to her room, there were three nurses, two of them from the Coronary Care Unit, a respiratory therapist, and myself and Bradley.
The nurses placed the board from the crash cart under her chest so they could begin compressions. A nurse recorded everything that was happening. Electrodes were placed on Mrs. Wilson’s chest so they could monitor her heart with the monitor. Bradley determined her heart rhythm she and treated her accordingly in efforts to bring her lifeless body back.
The respiratory therapist put a breathing tube down her throat to ensure her airway. A second intravenous was introduced into her veins to run an i.v. bolus on her. The bolus would increase her blood
pressure, we hoped.
She was shocked three times with electricity. The first two times the machine on the crash cart was set for 200 and then in a last ditch effort we increased to 360 hoping her heart would stop and then restart back into a rhythm and begin pumping blood on its own again.
Compressions resumed after each jolt, and although we had worked on Mrs. Wilson for forty-five minutes, she succumbed to her morbidities and co-morbidities resulting in a lifeless body. We called her time of death.
The nurses called her family during the code, and they started arriving shortly after her body was tidied up and the room was clean. Bradley looked at me, “I’ll tell the spouse, you go into the back room and start charting. We’ll grab lunch together outside of the hospital to review what happened.”
I was really upset, because she was the first person to die this way since I became a Resident. I nodded my head, and turned back slowly to walk away. I liked Mrs. Wilson. She had been here on this hospital visit twelve days and we thought she was improving. Bradley was planning to discharging her Monday after her new pacemaker was checked.
I chose a computer in a corner of the nursing station where I thought nobody would go and I cried. The monitor was blurry, and I reached for a Kleenex wiping my eyes, but more tears came.
Bradley must have finished telling Mrs. Wilson’s spouse because he found me and pulled a chair up beside me. He spun my chair so I was facing him and I found my legs between his. Embarrassed by him seeing me in tears, I apologized for not being very professional, “I’m so sorry.”
“Don’t be,” he reassured.
He took my hand in his, and consoled me, “Let me take you to lunch.” He didn’t let go of my hand the entire way to his truck. God’s gift to man, the one without the golden shoes, managed to comfort me in record time.
~11~
Bradley led me to his large Black Hummer parked in the Doctor’s lot. The ruggedness of the vehicle suited the man who drove it. It was mild out and the cloudless sky boasted a larger than life sun. It was the first winter day that felt milder than the rest and showed the first signs of spring. It made me sad to think that Mr. Wilson would be spending it grieving over his sweet wife.
Bradley opened the door for me and I stepped up into his fancy truck which was full of black leather and fine wood grains. It had that new car scent mixed with the smell of him which was an intoxicating concoction.
Referring to his truck, he looked at me almost apologetically and shrugged, “Got it in the divorce settlement.”
“I don’t know who would ever divorce someone as kind as you.”
He took his place in the driver’s side and started up the truck with a low rumble.
He confessed, “Tell that to my bitch ex-wife, she blames me for everything. I made her run to my brother’s open arms.” He growled.
“Your ex-wife slept with Chase?” I was shocked, “What brother does that?”
“Mine, and more than once.”
“Are they still together?”
“Chase claims he was showing me how I could do better than her. Sleeping with her was his way of proving his point. She would have taken me to the cleaners if my lawyer hadn’t beaten her to it. Bitterness doesn’t begin to describe how I feel towards everything.”
“Are you angry at both of them, Chase and your ex-wife?” I questioned.
“Don’t forget my lawyer too. I was screwed by all three.”
It was good that Bradley felt he could confide in me. I just wanted to take him in my arms and run my hands through his shaggy hair and look into those dark eyes of his and comfort him. “I know a good Bistro that’s close to the hospital, where we can talk,” he said in a low voice. We sat in silence the rest of the way until he parked. The entire time we drove I imagined what it would feel like to have his hands and those full lips all over my body. He said my name interrupting my relationship starved thoughts. Imagining him anywhere near me just made me shiver.
The Bistro served organic everything and fresh bread. We stood in line to get our food and then chose our table after. There were no servers interrupting us; I could see why he chose this place. The restaurant was busy and the buzz of chatter along with the noises of porcelain to metal ensured our privacy for the discussion we were going to have.
“What went wrong?” I asked.
His dark eyes appeared darker, “She could have infarcted or we could have missed something completely different like an aneurysm. Only way of knowing would be with an autopsy.” He redirected the conversation back to me, “Did you want to tell me what bothered you most about her death?”
I have experienced dying patients before, but this one was different because, “She was going to be discharged. I didn’t see this one coming.”
His brooding eyes looked to mine, “It bothered me too, Chanel” he confessed. “I just had to get out of the hospital and try to escape from it.”
“So you felt the same?”
“I did.” His hand brushed mine accidentally or maybe on purpose as he was reaching for the salt and then he said something that made my heart to a flip flop, “Maybe we can escape it together.”
“I’d like that,” I simpered.
His dark eyes looked longingly into mine for a fraction of a second before he cast them down, but the silence between us lasted longer and for a brief second I thought maybe he regretted flirting with me.
“How did you tell Mr. Wilson without letting it show that his wife’s death bothered you?”
“I couldn’t. A tear gave me away.” Okay, he admitting that he wasn’t strong was so sexy. My insides turned into a warm jelly.
His hand was resting on the table and I covered it with mine, “Thanks, it feels better to know it’s okay to cry, and that you felt the same.” There was nothing more attractive to me in the moment than this strong man who wasn’t afraid to cry.
We finished our lunch and headed back to the hospital. Our relationship with one another was never the same after that day, it was better.
We were far more cordial with each other. We would go to the cafeteria and have lunch together or sometimes we would go to the doctor’s lounge and sprawl out on the couch placing our feet up on a table that was probably older than both of us, staring at the television but not watching it. Sometimes, we wouldn’t talk, we just shared each other’s companionable silence. He was becoming a whole different kind of friend, unlike Nick.
~12~
Our time together got increasingly comfortable and Bradley and I started confiding in each other. I would sit next to him while he told me stories about what his ‘bitch ex-wife’ would do, and I always actively listened to him or even poked fun at his stories making him laugh. Sometimes I found myself wanting to defend his ex-wife scything that she couldn’t be all that bad, after all, he did marry her.
When we were alone one day in the doctor’s lounge, I faced him on the couch and asked, “Why so much hostility? I know it’s not really the money.”
He took a really long time to answer me, ”I was truly love with her.”
“You talk in past tense, so you’re not anymore?”
“Not anymore.” When he said it, he looked away and I suspected it wasn’t completely the truth. I think there were residual unresolved feelings.
“Then why hold onto that anger? What are you getting out of it?”
“It’s protecting me from making the same mistakes again.
“That makes sense, coming from a weak person.”
“So you’re calling me weak? I call myself smart, he argued.”
What about yourself? Is there a special somebody in your life?”
I didn’t know how to answer him. I didn’t think he was going to believe me, but I said, “No. I’m not dating anyone. Just haven’t found the right guy yet.”
He looked at me suspiciously, “I find that rather hard to believe, you’re very beautiful.”
I ran my fingers through my hair self-consciously and looked into his very serious eyes,
he had a six o’clock shadow that made him look more rugged and sexier than usual, “Why thank you for the compliment Dr. Hart but unfortunately it’s true,” I said playfully.
“I do have a friend that I go to when I’m lonely, a fuck buddy if you will, and when he’s lonely he comes to me. It’s a mutual agreement we have. Sad to say, I don’t think either one of us has had a date in over a year. I think I’m less inclined to get involved with anyone because I know he is always there, so I’m not so quick to settle on just anyone less than near perfect.”
He frowned, “You’re devaluing yourself and letting him use you.””
“You’re implying it’s one sided, but we use each other. I have no qualms with my friend Nick. He’s never let me down because my expectations for him are very low, he can’t hurt me because I’m not in love with him, and he’s really a very good listener.”
“You deserve more.”
“What do I deserve?” I was hoping he would say something like, “You deserve me.” but he didn’t. I instantly regretted telling Bradley about Nick. This new look of disappointment in me was smeared all over his face.
I was halfway through the door when I felt his hand grab my wrist and spin me around. He pulled me back into the room to face him. His brooding eyes searched mine; the room was filled with a tension I couldn’t describe. “This conversation isn’t finished,” He scolded.
His body closing in on mine and his bold hand not letting go. Frozen to my spot I wished him to kiss me. I found myself undeniably attracted to him. His finger stroked my cheek and he began to lower his head towards mine, then as if catching himself becoming inappropriate, he suddenly stopped himself and stepped back before saying, “We better get back before they start paging us.” I needed a second to recompose myself; I had practically gone into cardiac arrest.