by Holly Rayner
“Mr. Antione,” I said, wondering how much of my little performance he’d just seen. My face flushed.
“Please, call me Mike,” he said. He’d told me the same thing several times before, but I’d never gathered the nerve to take him up on it. It felt too impersonal for a boss I never spoke to.
I nodded and smiled. “Is there something I can help you with?”
“Actually, yes.” He folded his hands behind his back, the button of his suit jacket straining against his stomach. “I wanted to know whether it would be possible for you to stop by my office after your shift is over today?”
My stomach dropped. What did that mean? I tried to think of a single other instance of any nurse being called into Mike’s office, but nothing came to mind. This seemed like a first. Was that a good thing or a bad thing?
“It won’t take long,” he added.
“Sure, I can do that,” I said, trying to keep my cool. I didn’t want him to see how badly I was panicking on the inside. “Can I know what this is in reference to?”
“I’ll tell you everything when you’re off shift.” He stared at me for a moment, smiling blandly. Then, he rocked back on his heels and continued walking down the hallway. “See you in a few hours.”
“Yes, absolutely.” I waved at his back, but as soon as he was around the corner, I clutched my stomach. I felt like I could be sick.
The rest of the morning and early afternoon passed in a blur. I barely ate my lunch and I kept forgetting patient’s names and mixing up rooms. Ciara was convinced I’d picked up the flu bug that had been going around, but I brushed away her concerns. I knew better. I was nervous. Incredibly nervous.
When I finally clocked out, grabbed my lunch bag out of the nurse’s station refrigerator, and began making my way towards the first-floor admin offices, I thought my heart would vibrate out of my chest. Was I about to lose my job? There had been rumors about eminent layoffs, but there were always rumors about layoffs. But what if the rumors were about to come true?
But why would I be the first one to be let go? I’d been at the hospital for a lot longer than some of the other staff, and I was good at my job. I had a great patient satisfaction score and I always picked up extra shifts. There was no way I could be about to get fired. But what else could this be about?
Mr. Antione’s office door loomed at the end of a long hallway. It was a dark wood, his name engraved on a gold plate next to it. I’d hoped for a printed-out picture of a crying baby with a funny phrase around it that said something like “What do you mean, it’s not Friday yet?” Something that would help me see him as a human being instead of a boss in a suit. But there was nothing. Just the hard wood and his name.
I knocked three times.
“Come in.”
I awkwardly walked into the office. Mr. Antione sat behind a small gray desk. I’d imagined something bigger, like a villain in a mafia movie. There was a picture of his family on the corner. He and his teenage son both wore blue button downs and his wife and elementary-aged daughter wore white dresses. It looked like a stock photograph. Again, it would have been nice to see a candid shot of him, maybe standing three feet deep in mud with a fishing pole or one of the pictures you can buy at amusement parks after you ride the roller coaster. Seeing Mike Antione with his hair mussed from the wind and his mouth open in a scream would have given me a strange amount of comfort in that moment.
“Thanks for stopping by, Jess.” He gestured for me to take the seat across the desk from him. “I hope I haven’t put you out by keeping you late.”
“Not at all,” I said.
I wanted to get to the point and ask what this meeting was all about, but now that I was sitting in his office, I really didn’t want to know. I wasn’t ready to be fired. I didn’t have very much money in savings. And it wasn’t just me anymore. Greg was living with me. Would he go and live with our parents? Or, more likely, would he go live with one of his buddies? Would his friends make sure he didn’t start using again? Would this moment in Mike Antione’s office become the moment at which my life as I knew it fell apart?
He propped his elbows on the table and steepled his fingers together, leaning forward. “I’m sure you’re wondering why I asked you to come in today.”
I nodded, not feeling confident I could say anything without my voice breaking.
“Did you know you were featured in a local paper recently?” he asked.
“Yes, someone showed me the article.” I could feel sweat breaking out across my lower back. “I didn’t know anyone took the photo,” I added quickly. “I was on my way home from work and I stopped to help the kids on the bus. I was only there for a few minutes and then I left. And the article I saw didn’t even print my name, so if you’re worried about what the article could mean for the hospital, then—”
Mr. Antione held up two hands to stop me, his eyes wide. “Whoa. You aren’t in trouble, Jess. I’m sorry, is that what you thought?”
I bit my lower lip and then nodded sheepishly.
“I supposed I should have given you a hint about the purpose of the meeting. Again, I’m sorry. But rest assured that you are not in trouble in the slightest. In fact, it’s quite the opposite.” I realized then that Mike had a rather round face. It had seemed menacing to me when I’d first walked in, all lines and shadows. But now his cheeks were rosy with excitement, eyes sparkling. He was one white beard away from Santa Claus.
“The opposite?” I asked, hardly able to believe it. The pit in my stomach that had been yawning open all day suddenly began to close. My heart rate returned to normal. I sat up a bit straighter.
“Yes. A parent of one of the children you treated on the bus would like to meet you.”
Oh.
Relieved as I was that I wasn’t being fired, meeting the grateful parent of a child I’d put a bandage on was hardly something to make such a fuss about. In the time I’d been a nurse, I’d received thank you cards and gifts and sobbing hugs from parents wishing to thank me for my work. This wasn’t anything new. In fact, I found myself kind of annoyed that Mr. Antione had made such a big deal about it.
“Okay, I’m sure that can be arranged. You can give them my schedule if you’d like, and they can stop by the hospital while I’m working.” I cut off quickly on the last word, wondering if that would be okay. “Or, if you’d rather, I can meet them here while I’m not working.”
Mr. Antione swiped his hand from one side to the other as if he was dismissing an annoying notification from a touch screen.
“I think you will want this meeting to be a bit more formal than that.”
“Okay…” I said, a question in my voice.
“One of the children you helped was Jamie Hunt.”
“Right,” I said, recalling the small blond boy. “He was very sweet.”
“His father is Spencer Hunt,” Mr. Antione said.
The information took a few seconds to sink in, but then I remembered Jamie telling me his father was a doctor. I hadn’t thought to ask his father’s name.
“Spencer Hunt,” I repeated. “The British billionaire?”
Mike gave me a knowing smile. He seemed pleased that I had finally grasped the importance of the situation.
“Mr. Hunt went to a lot of trouble to track you down. He had to call every hospital in the city looking for the nurse who took care of his son.”
“It was just a bandage,” I said, growing nervous again. I didn’t want this to be a big deal. I’d only done what any decent person would’ve done in my situation.
“It was more than that to Dr. Hunt.”
Dr. Hunt. I’d referred to him as the British billionaire, but he was much more than that—he had been one of my idols since the start of my career in medicine. He started medical school at Oxford when he was only fifteen years old and became a pediatric surgeon, pioneering new surgical techniques that saved countless lives. Then, at the top of his career, he had created a robotically assisted device that allowed surgeons to perform
minimally invasive surgeries. His device meant faster recovery times for patients, and it had made him a billionaire.
In the medical world, Spencer Hunt was a rock star.
“He asked me to write down his number and have you contact him at your earliest convenience.”
“He wants me to contact him?” I asked.
Mr. Antione answered my question by sliding a folded piece of paper across the desk to me. “And I’m sure you understand that this number is not to be seen by anyone else?”
I nodded, grabbing the note and stuffing it in my pocket without looking at it.
“Well,” Mr. Antione said, standing up and walking around the desk, one arm extended towards the door. “Thank you for representing the hospital so well. And please let me know if there is ever anything I can do for you.”
I stood up in a daze, my hand pressed against the pocket where I’d stuffed Dr. Hunt’s number, trying to remind myself with every step that it was still there. “Thank you, Mr. Antione.”
“Mike,” he reminded me. Then, as I was almost out of the door, he coughed. I turned around. “And, if the topic comes up, you could mention our need for a remodel of labor and delivery? Dr. Hunt is a very generous man.”
I didn’t bother explaining to Mr. Antione that it would be surprising if I managed to remember my own name while meeting Dr. Hunt, so his request was almost an impossibility. Instead, I smiled and nodded. When the elevator doors closed, I pulled the note out of my pocket and unfolded it. It was simply the ten numbers scrawled across a page.
I folded the note again and shoved it into my purse with shaking fingers.
Chapter 4
Greg emerged from behind his laptop, eyes wide. “He’s a billionaire.”
I nodded and slurped noodles from the takeout container into my mouth. “Yes, I know.”
“Billionaire,” he repeated, with slightly more emphasis, as if I hadn’t registered it the first time.
“I know, Greg.”
“And he wants to meet you?”
“Apparently.” I shrugged, trying to play it cool.
“I take back everything I said about you working too much. This is perfect.” He closed his laptop for the first time in half an hour and leaned back into the couch cushions, his arms folded behind his head.
“What’s perfect?” I asked, hesitant to even know. Greg had been researching Spencer Hunt and going on and on about all of his accomplishments. Not only did I already know all of these facts, but being reminded of them made me nervous. I’d been home for three hours, but I still hadn’t gathered up the nerve to call him.
What was I going to say? What if Mr. Antione had been confused and Dr. Hunt only wanted to send along his thanks, no formal meeting necessary? Well, if that were true, how did Mr. Antione get his phone number? Was it even Dr. Hunt’s phone number, or would it go to a secretary or something? I sighed and slurped up another mouthful of noodles.
“You’re gonna be so rich now.”
I stopped chewing and tilted my head to the side. “How do you figure?”
“Because this guy is obviously interested in you,” Greg said. “You know…romantically.” He waggled his eyebrows.
I inhaled sharply and began to choke, coughing and sputtering on my Chinese food. “What are you talking about?”
Greg leaned forward, elbows resting on his knees. “Why else would a billionaire want to speak with you? A man as important as him would send flowers and a card, not take time out of his busy schedule to meet up. Plus, have you seen pictures of the guy? He’s an eleven on a scale of ten. And, yes, I’m secure enough in my own masculinity to admit that another man is handsome.”
“I’m so proud,” I said, rolling my eyes. “And he could want to speak with me because I comforted his child during a somewhat traumatic situation.”
I had seen pictures of Dr. Hunt, and Greg was right—he was very handsome. The kind of handsome that seemed to only exist in fitness magazines and teen television dramas.
Greg shook his head, unconvinced. “No way. He saw your picture and thought you were cute. Now, if you play your cards right, you can put a ring on it and we will both be set for life.”
“First, you’re insane,” I said, padding into the kitchen in bare feet to throw away the takeout box. “Second, even if you weren’t insane and there was some truth to your theory, why would you be set?”
“I’m your brother,” he shouted from the living room. “Does blood mean nothing to you? Are you just gonna forget about me once you’re filthy rich?”
“You need medical help.”
“Already got it,” he quipped.
I froze for just a second. Greg didn’t have a hard time joking about his stint in rehab and time in the hospital after his overdose, but I couldn’t joke about it yet. I’m sure part of it had to do with the fact that he hadn’t seen himself lying unconscious in a hospital bed. He hadn’t sat in the uncomfortable waiting room chairs, wondering whether he would wake up or slip away in his sleep.
It had been unbearable, and even a year later, making light of it was impossible. Those had been the worst few days of my life.
“So, when are you going to call him?” he asked.
“Maybe tomorrow.”
I flopped down in the armchair, my legs dangling over the side, and flipped through the TV guide channel. I was in the mood for something cheesy and romantic, which Greg would hate. He would either demand we change the channel ten minutes in or retreat to his bedroom to play video games. Honestly, I hoped for the second option. I was exhausted and wouldn’t mind the alone time.
When I looked up, Greg was staring at me.
“What?”
“Call him now,” he said.
I screwed up my face and shook my head. “No.”
“If you wait until tomorrow, you’ll never do it. You won’t do it in the morning because it will be too early to disturb him and during the day, he’ll be at work. And then, in the evening, you’ll come in exhausted and claim you don’t want to interrupt his dinner. It will just become a crumpled piece of trash that accidentally gets left in the pocket of your scrubs and gets ruined in the washer. Just do it now.”
I hated how right Greg was. He knew me better than anyone. This was the kind of thing I would put off forever and hope would just disappear. Perhaps, if I ignored Dr. Hunt, he wouldn’t reach out again.
But the crazy part of it all was that I did want to meet him. At least, part of me did. I wanted to ask him questions about his career and bask in the glow of his genius for a few minutes. However, there was another part of me that didn’t want to meet the man who had been my idol for so long. What if he was a jerk? Or, even worse, dumb? What if it turned out that all of his accomplishments were flukes or products of his family being incredibly wealthy and capable of buying his success?
I knew that was unlikely, but the thought still gave me pause. It would be better not to know.
Greg snatched my purse off the coffee table and began digging through it.
“Excuse me,” I said, grabbing for my purse, but Greg yanked it away. “What do you think you’re doing?”
He pulled out my phone and the small square of paper with Dr. Hunt’s number on it.
“Don’t you dare do it,” I warned, eyes narrowed.
Greg smirked and began punching in the number. I lunged for him, but he dodged me and moved around to the back of the couch.
“You’re a man. I think he might notice that you aren’t a female nurse,” I said.
Greg shrugged. “You could have a personal assistant. I’ll set up the meeting for you.”
I stopped trying to tackle him. Actually, that didn’t seem so bad. Of course, it didn’t make any sense for a nurse to have a personal assistant, but not having to call him and schedule the meeting myself relieved a bit of pressure.
“I hope you don’t mind if I tell him you’re in the bathroom,” Greg said. “I’ll tell him you had some bad Chinese food and couldn’t get to the phone.
”
I yelped in alarm and continued to chase him around the living room. It felt like we were kids again, climbing over furniture and fighting over the remote control. Despite my best efforts, Greg managed to tap in the phone number.
“Greg, don’t you dare! I will never speak to you again. I will kick you out of this house. I’ll tell Mom!”
He threw his head back and laughed like a villain, then tossed me the phone. I fumbled it for a few seconds before I was able to turn it right side around, but by the time I went to cancel the phone call, I heard a faint voice. My eyes widened in alarm.
“Answer it,” Greg hissed. “Talk to him.”
I let out a shaky, panicked breath and then put the phone to my ear. “Hello?”
“Yes, hello?” The voice on the other end of the phone was deep and silky, like the voice actor for dramatic movie trailers. It was also quite British.
But that didn’t necessarily mean I was talking to Dr. Hunt. It could be an assistant or whoever incredibly wealthy people had answer their phones.
“Hello,” I repeated.
I stood there for a second, waiting for the other person to say something before I realized I had called them. Or, rather, my brother had. But either way, this person had answered my phone call. I had to start the conversation.
“Is Spencer Hunt—uh, Dr. Hunt there? Or available?”
Greg slapped a hand over his mouth and tried not to laugh, finding great joy in my awkwardness. I stuck my tongue out at him. Something about being teased by Greg made me act like a child again rather than a mature adult. I turned away from him, trying to focus on the conversation.
“Yes, this is him.”
So, the deep voice belonged to Spencer Hunt. That seemed unfair. Someone so handsome shouldn’t also have a great voice. And an accent. He needed to have some kind of flaw to balance it out.
“Hello,” I repeated for the third time. “This is Jess Richards. I’m a pediatric nurse at—”
“Ms. Richards! Yes,” Dr. Hunt said. “I’ve been expecting your call.”
