She shook her head at me and tried to put on an innocent-looking face. It didn’t really work. “I’m just asking for Vanessa.”
I raised an eyebrow at her. Vanessa, who was sitting on the entire other side of the room and talking with a couple of our friends, didn’t look very interested. In fact, she didn’t look interested at all. Vanessa was still recovering from everything that had happened to her. I doubted she wanted anything to do with men right now. Although she now looked totally normal, I knew that she was still working on performing ordinary tasks with her left arm. Caroline squirmed in her pink bridesmaid dress.
“I’ve caught the bouquet at every wedding I’ve ever attended,” she said after a second. Her eyes were wide and eager. “There’s no way I’m losing out this time. Even if I am permanently single, I’ve got a reputation to maintain.”
I laughed, and she joined in after a second. “I guess I can toss it now,” I told her. She made a little happy noise.
“What about my dance?” Eric complained. “I want the rest of my dance.”
“You’ve got the rest of your life to dance with Faith,” Caroline told Eric. She grabbed my hand from his and led me away. He let her do it with a frown. “I need to catch some good karma really quick.”
I’m not sure if there’s a proper technique to tossing a bouquet, but if there was, I didn’t have it. I just sort of squatted down and then cast it backwards over my head before whipping around to see who caught it. It probably wasn’t my most graceful move, but it got the job done.
In fact, it got the job done a little bit too well. The petite cluster of white daisies had more inertia than I would have expected. Caroline was closest to me, but the bouquet soared right over her head despite her valiant jump. Vanessa, who was further back, didn’t even look like she tried to catch it, although it would’ve required quite a dive. The bouquet sailed over the group of young women and straight toward none other than my mother.
She caught it with two shocked hands, blinking her eyes like she wasn’t sure how it came to be in her lap. Her eyes connected with mine across the busy ballroom and she grinned. Dr. Koels, who was sitting next to her, looked similarly excited. I hid my smile.
Since my mom had gotten with Dr. Koels, changes had taken place for both of them. My mom seemed more carefree and less anxious than she ever had, even before my dad died. Maybe it was just because she was with a semi-retired doctor and not a policeman on the mean streets of New York. I was just glad that she was she was happy.
As for Dr. Koels, he’d mellowed somewhat. He’d scaled back his time at the hospital and Dr. Ford was taking a much more active role in managing the day-to-day operations. The improvement in the overall culture of the hospital under her guidance was palpable. He definitely seemed happier, too. Word around the hospital was that he and his son were still privately at one another’s throats, but I hoped that they would work things out soon. Considering that both Drs. Koels were likely to be my family soon enough, I’d rather see everyone getting along.
“Of all the rotten luck…” Caroline groused, sneaking up behind me again. “I just can’t seem to catch a break lately.”
I patted her comfortingly on the arm. “I don’t think you would have gotten any special man-magic from catching the bouquet anyway.”
She rolled her eyes at me. “Yeah maybe you’re right,” she said after a moment, “but it couldn’t have hurt. I need some luck.” Her ensuing sigh was long-suffering.
I’d been so busy wedding planning lately that I hadn’t really given Caroline and Vanessa as much attention as I should have. But something about the look on Caroline’s face made me curious. There was something going on with her.
“Is there someone special you’re hoping to get lucky with?” I asked her.
She certainly hadn’t mentioned it to me if there was. I knew she’d taken on a bunch of new physical therapy patients and was running her support group at the hospital, so I didn’t think she had time for dating right now.
Still, her pale cheeks turned a delicate pink. “Maybe.”
I wanted to grill her for details, but Eric was staring at me across the dance floor. I was suddenly hypnotized. Caroline followed my gaze and sighed. “Oh, go dance with your husband,” she said when I looked back at her guiltily. “Just don’t let him get you into trouble.”
We both looked down at the baby bump showing through my wedding dress.
“I think it’s too late for that,” I replied.
Epilogue
Eric
On the day we closed on the new house, Mary came over to drop off the crib that I’d assembled for her. It had been for me—well, the baby—all along. It turns out she had another secret crib for her baby hiding in the other room. That was Mary though. She was always playing her angles.
“I like the house,” she said, staring around herself approvingly. “Very nice. I see you realized the meaning of ‘happy wife, happy life’ and yielded to all your wife’s demands.”
I smiled at her. “We compromised,” I replied.
“Did you?” Mary asked with a giggle. “Because it looks to me like she got her way and you went along with it.”
I shrugged my shoulders. “She mostly did, but I got some of what I wanted, too.”
Mary pointed at the big lawn outside the picture windows. “Uh-huh. So, does that meant you’re going to mow that golf course out there every weekend?”
I rolled my eyes at her. “Lord no. I’ll pay a neighborhood kid to mow it.” I’d never used a lawnmower and had no inclination or interest in ever doing so. There were parts of me that never moved beyond being a spoiled little rich kid. My approach to lawn care was one of them.
If there was one good use for my ‘freakish’ wealth, it was in paying people to do the things I didn’t want to do for myself. I was well on my way to convincing Faith we should get a maid, a live-in nanny, and possibly a cook. At least I knew I’d win that battle once the baby came. We were going to need the help.
“At least you got the modern look you wanted,” Mary conceded, “although this is a pretty far from the condo downtown you lived in.”
I shrugged. I didn’t really miss my bachelor pad. The time had come for me to move beyond a lot of the things I used to care about. I also watched a lot less football and drank a lot less beer these days. It was good for me. “It’s a good investment. Plus, the schools are better.”
Mary smirked, and her green eyes sparkled. “Oh, how the mighty are fallen,” she said to me with a dramatic wrist to the forehead. “If year-ago you could hear current-you, he’d kick your ass.”
I rolled my eyes. The house was on a big lot in a good school district like Faith wanted but had a modern design like I wanted, all smooth, shiny surfaces and clean lines. By doctor standards it was fairly modest sized, too, which Faith insisted upon. She claimed she didn’t want to clean rooms we didn’t use (although the idea that my wife would be cleaning anything was also ridiculous, and I wouldn’t have it). Compared to the gigantic, cavernous maze that I grew up in (basically a Greek revival haunted house), the three thousand square foot house seemed positively quaint. Faith still called it a mansion.
Still, Mary had a point. Year-ago me would definitely wonder what the hell had happened. But then again, year-ago me didn’t get to come home every day to Faith, and he’d sure wanted to. Now I had everything I didn’t know I wanted, and everything I did. It had turned out pretty perfectly.
“Year-ago me didn’t know what he was missing,” I remarked, grabbing the crib and dragging it toward the baby’s future nursery.
“Is Faith here right now?” Mary asked, looking around corners as she followed me.
I shook my head in disappointment. “She’s at work.”
Mary made an equally disappointed noise. Although Faith had been the bigger person and invited all three of my sisters to be bridesmaids, and they’d all accepted, Mary and Faith still had a bit of a tense relationship. It would take more than a few months to era
se the hurt feelings between them. I think Mary’s invitation to watch the baby a few days a week had gone a long way to helping Faith turn the page on hating her.
Despite their differences, however, both Faith and Mary were making an effort to mend fences. It was slow going. They’d been meeting for regular lunches as a start. Faith had also asked Mary to be our child’s godmother which had made Mary cry like a baby herself. It never ceased to amaze me how generous and forgiving Faith could be, although I was certainly happy to capitalize on it if it meant my favorite sister and my wife would get along.
“I wanted to talk to Faith about the wedding,” Mary said as I continued to drag the crib, entirely without her help, toward its eventual destination.
“Our wedding?” I asked absently. Faith and I’s wedding had been the best day ever. The only thing I regretted was not dancing more with my new wife, although it was true that I now had the rest of my life to work on that.
She shook her head. “No, her mom’s wedding,” Mary answered as if I should have known the answer already. “I know which caterer she should use.”
I winced, and Mary snickered. “I’m sorry,” I told her, “but the fact that my boss is going to become my step-father-in-law is beyond weird.” I was still trying to wrap my brain around it, and the added weirdness of my step-brother-in-law working at the same hospital to boot.
The good news, and there was good news connected with this disturbing turn of events, was that the elder Koels was sliding ever more thoroughly toward retirement. Aimee Ford had taken over the majority of the Chief Medical Officer job, and she was about a thousand times less difficult to deal with. She was also greatly improving the tone of things at the hospital, cutting down the cattiness that the nurses were allowed to exhibit, and keeping the senior staff physicians from turning everything into an awful boy’s club. In time, I knew that Koels would cease being my boss and just be my step-father-in-law. I hoped it would come sooner rather than later.
“At least you know it means that your mother-in-law won’t be moving in with you,” Mary replied.
I nodded gratefully. I liked Rosary, and she liked me, but there was no way I could cohabitate with her. Her eccentricities had eccentricities.
“True facts.”
“Besides,” Mary said, following along unhelpfully as I dragged the crib along. “You’re going to need the space. You just know that Faith is gonna’ fill this place up with kids. For all you know, she’s carrying triplets now.”
I froze in fear. “How about we just start with the one.”
Mary grinned. “Don’t worry. You’re adaptable.”
Epilogue
Caroline
“He’s looking at you again,” Vanessa whispered, distracting me from the exercise she and I were supposed to be working on. Faith, who was sitting nearby, nodded sagely with her hands crossed over her big, pregnant belly like a tiny, blond buddha (she’d recently gotten highlights).
“Focus on trying to keep your outward rotation smooth,” I told Vanessa, demonstrating the range of motion and trying to focus and keep my voice sounding professional. My hands longed to straighten my hair and make sure it was still falling smoothly down my back, or casually look over, but I resisted. It didn’t matter what my hair looked like at the moment.
But was he really looking at me?
“He’s definitely looking at you,” she repeated teasingly. I refused to turn around and look. Refused. I was working.
I swallowed hard and shook my head at her. I wasn’t even going to take her bait today. “And make sure that when you rotate inward, you’re not just letting your bicep do all the work. It should be your forearm that’s running the show.”
“Are you really just going to ignore the super-hot guy staring at you?” Vanessa asked me, still in a whisper. “Because he’s really staring. I think you should go talk to him.” Her eyes were dancing with mischief.
I frowned at Vanessa and Faith giggled at me. “You’re just trying to get out of the work, here.”
Vanessa rolled her eyes and performed the exercise flawlessly. She knew that my motives for being here were not entirely altruistic. “I’ve already done these a billion times with my physical therapist. You’re deflecting, Caroline.”
I felt a hot blush spread over my face. Feeling foolish, I shook my head.
“I’m going to go grab the weights,” I told her seriously. “If this is too easy, we can definitely fix that with some weights.”
The fact that her eyes widened slightly was somewhat gratifying, even if she immediately smirked and rolled her them at me.
“Oh, I’m so scared,” she said sarcastically. Vanessa hated displaying any weakness whatsoever. She was tough, determined, and stubborn. It’s what made her such a wonderfully motivated physical therapy patient. It’s also what made her such a pain in the ass to live with sometimes.
I grinned evilly at her. “Good, you should be. How does ten pounds sound? Or should we go straight to twenty?”
She blanched, and I turned and was finally able to see if he was really staring. He was. He definitely was. My eyes met his for a fraction of a second and then skittered off in fear. Usually I was so bold and brave around people, men included. But not this one, and definitely not today.
The man was tall, with striking light eyes, dark hair, and sun kissed skin like he’d just returned from an extended Caribbean vacation. He was damn hard to miss. In the clinic next to the hospital where I was doing my clinical rotations, we got a lot of older folks recovering from hip replacements, a fair number of pediatric surgery patients, and the occasional sports injury from a college kid. He didn’t really fit neatly into any of those categories. He was a mystery. For one, he didn’t seem to have any injuries although he was doing all sorts of diverse rehab work with Dr. Ben.
Tall, dark, and handsome over there had first come into the clinic a few weeks ago and I’d noticed him right away. He wasn’t a patient of mine, of course, I was only given the easiest cases as a SPT. The S stood for ‘student’. I was only working with Vanessa today because she requested it and it was time for Faith, Vanessa, and I to hang out.
It definitely wasn’t because the time we could meet in the clinic happened to be when the mystery man came in for his weekly session. It definitely wasn’t because I liked watching him and silently flirting across the room. No. It definitely had nothing whatsoever to do with that at all.
My steps felt weirdly light and floaty while I was under his gaze, but I managed not to trip or fall over something or anything equally embarrassing. I made it over to the weight rack. I grabbed the hand weights I was looking for and turned to head back to Vanessa. The lecture I’d attended the night before was replaying in my head like a broken record.
“There will come a time in every Doctor’s career when they are tempted by a patient,” my professor, Dr. Hammond had said to the packed lecture hall. Her tone had been somber, and her expression was serious. “Let me be one hundred percent clear when I tell you that yielding to that temptation will destroy your career. There are no if’s and’s or but’s about it. Sleeping with your patients destroys your credibility as a clinician, violates your patient’s rights, and puts you on the losing side of an ethical battle that can take your license and your livelihood right out from under you.” Dr. Hammond’s voice was bleak. “If it sounds to you like I’m trying to scare you,” she continued, “it’s because I’m trying to scare you. Our profession puts us into close physical contact with people. Most of those people will not push your buttons. Some will. You need to learn now, while you’re still students, how to resist that temptation.”
I’d felt like she was talking directly to me. I looked around myself to see that there were still fifty other people there with me, but I still felt singled-out and foolish. I’d been yielding to the temptation much too easily.
“What’s most important,” Dr. Hammond continued, “is that you know that the clinic is a sacred place. It’s a place where people come for hea
ling. Even if it’s not your patient that you have an attraction to, or that has an attraction to you, it’s still highly inappropriate for you to pursue any sort of a relationship with a patient who’s there to fix a physical problem. There are places to fix romantic problems, of course, but the physical therapy space is for physical therapy.”
My cheeks must have been bright red and I squirmed in my seat. I wondered if somehow, she’d figured me out and had planned this entire lecture for my individual benefit. Was I telegraphing my crush at her recent observational visit at my clinic? He wasn’t even there that day and I’d been working with old Mr. Oliver, who was almost ninety and smelled like pain cream and moth balls…
“Think of it this way,” she’d concluded, “if you went on a date with someone and it went poorly, would you then want to see that person every time you went in for your physical therapy session—even if they weren’t your primary practitioner? No. Of course not. As a patient, you’re better off believing that your Doctor of Physical Therapy has no personal life, no libido, and no crushes. That way when you’re in the clinic, you can always be focused on your own healing.”
I’d felt guilty through the whole two hours lecture. I was guilty of doing exactly what she’d been saying never to do. I was falling for a patient. As I’d learned from her lecture, even though the man I was crushing on was not my patient, it would still be inappropriate for me to act on my feelings.
For the last month, I’d been meeting Vanessa in the clinic where I worked for two entirely separate but equally important reasons. The first, to help my dear friend and roommate recover the use of her replanted forearm, was totally fine. The second, batting my eyes at a patient, was not. I’d even gone so far as to try and catch the bouquet at Faith’s wedding to give me the extra little push of luck I needed to win him. I was such an idiot sometimes.
A Bad Case of You Page 23
