As sometimes happened, the traffic gods were on the side of the angels. Melanie made every light that was between the shelter and Bedford Memorial Hospital. Which in turn meant that she got from point A to point B in record time.
After pulling onto the hospital compound, Melanie drove the serpentine route around the main building to the small parking area in the rear reserved strictly for emergency room patients and the people who’d brought them.
Once she threw the car into Park and pulled up the emergency brake, Melanie jumped out of her vehicle and hurried in through the double electronic doors. They hadn’t even opened up fully before she zipped through them and into the building.
The lone receptionist at the outpatient desk glanced up when he saw her hurrying toward him. Dressed in blue scrubs and looking as if he desperately needed a nap, the young man asked her, “What are you here for?” His fingers were poised over the keyboard as he waited for an answer to input.
“Dr. Stewart’s head,” she shot over her shoulder as she hurried past him and over to the door which allowed admittance into the actual ER salon.
Ordinarily locked, it had just opened to allow a heavyset patient to walk out, presumably on his way home. Melanie wiggled by the man and managed to get into the ER just before the doors shut again.
Safe for now, she buttonholed the first hospital employee she saw—an orderly—and said, “I’m looking for Dr. Stewart.” When she’d called the hospital on her way over, she’d been told he was still on the premises, working in the ER. “Can you tell me where he is?”
The orderly pointed to the rear of the salon. “I just saw him going to bed 6.”
“Thank you.”
Melanie lost no time finding just where bed 6 was located.
The curtain around the bed was pulled closed, no doubt for privacy. She was angry at Stewart, not whoever was in bed 6, so she forced herself to be patient and waited outside the curtain until the doctor was finished.
As she stood there, listening, she found that Dr. Stewart was no more talkative with the hospital patients than he was with the women and children he’d examined at the shelter.
It occurred to her that if he was like this all the time, Dr. Stewart had to be one very lonely, unhappy man. Obviously he was living proof that no matter how bad someone felt they had it, there was always someone who had it worse.
In her opinion, Dr. Mitch Stewart was that someone.
* * *
Mitch had been at this all morning. Rod Wilson, who had the ER shift right after his, had called in sick. Most likely, Wilson was hung over. The man tended to like to party. But that didn’t change the fact that he wasn’t coming in and that left the hospital temporarily short one ER doctor. Which was why he’d agreed to take Wilson’s place after his own shift was over.
As far as he was concerned, this unexpected event was actually an omen. He wasn’t meant to go back to the shelter, this just gave him the excuse he needed.
He’d felt out of his element there anyway, more so than usual. Here at least he was familiar with his surroundings and had professional people at his disposal in case he needed help with one of the patients.
That wasn’t the case at the shelter and even though he knew his strengths and abilities, he didn’t care for having to wing it on his own. Too many things could go wrong.
Finished—he’d closed up a small laceration on the patient’s forearm caused by a wayward shard from a broken wine glass—Mitch told the patient a nurse would be by with written instructions for him regarding the proper care of his sutures.
With that, he pulled back the curtain and walked out.
Or tried to.
What he wound up doing was walking right into the annoying woman from the homeless shelter.
His eyes narrowed as recognition instantly set in. “You.”
He said the single word as if it were an accusation.
“Me,” she responded glibly.
Since he’d started walking, she fell into place beside him. She wasn’t about to let him get away, at least not until she gave him a piece of her mind—or a chance to redeem himself, whichever he chose first.
Mitch scowled at her as he pulled off the disposable gloves from his hands. “You realize that this is bordering on stalking, don’t you?”
Her eyes narrowed into slits. “You’re not at the shelter.”
“Mind like a steel trap,” he marveled sarcastically. He paused to drop his gloves into a covered garbage container. “Tell me, what gave you your first clue?”
There were things she wanted to say to him, retorts aimed straight at his black heart, but she had to make sure first that there wasn’t the slimmest possibility that he could be convinced to come back with her.
She gave him one last chance. “There’s a room full of people waiting for you.”
Mitch frowned. “Didn’t your director give you the message? I called,” he told her.
“After the fact,” she pointed out since he had called almost an hour after he should have been at the shelter.
“Better than not at all,” Mitch said sharply, wondering why he was even bothering to have this discussion with this annoying woman. He didn’t owe her any explanations.
“Better if you came back with me,” she countered, going toe-to-toe with him.
Her display of gall completely astounded him.
“Better than what?” he asked. And then his eyes widened. “Are you by any chance actually threatening me?”
She would have loved to, but she was neither bigger than Dr. Stewart was nor did she have anything on the doctor to use as leverage, so she resorted to the only tactic she could.
“I’m appealing to you,” she retorted.
“Not really,” Mitch shot back.
The moment the words were out of his mouth—and he was glad he’d had the presence of mind to say them—he realized that they actually weren’t true. Because, strangely enough, she did appeal to him. What made it worse was that he hadn’t a clue as to why.
If he’d had a type, which he’d long since not had, it wouldn’t have been a mouthy little blonde who didn’t know when to stop talking. He liked tall, sleek brunettes with tanned complexions, dark, smoldering eyes and long legs that didn’t quit. Women who kept their own counsel rather than making him want to wrap his hands around their throats to stop the endless flow of words coming out of their mouths.
So why the contradiction in his head?
He told himself the double shift had made him more tired than usual. He just wasn’t being his usual, reasonable self.
“They need you,” Melanie insisted as she continued to follow him down a corridor.
“They need a doctor,” he corrected.
His intent was to show her it wasn’t personal, that anyone would do and that it didn’t have to be him. Furthermore, wasn’t going to be him because at this point he just wanted to take a shower and go home.
He kept walking. So did she.
“Last I checked, that was you.”
He stopped just short of his destination—the locker room. At the last moment, she held herself in check to keep from colliding with him.
“Look, how about if I get you someone else?” he suggested.
“I’ve always been a great believer in the bird in the hand school of thought,” Melanie told him.
This actually might have been amusing if she weren’t so damn annoying. “I’m neither a bird, nor am I in your hand,” he told her tersely.
“No, but you’re here, you’re a doctor, and you’ve already been to the shelter.” As if to drive her point home, she said, “The kids saw you.”
“They’ve probably seen a SpongeBob SquarePants movie, too,” he said, exasperated. “Would you want him to be their doctor?”
She looked at him, wondering if maybe she was pushing too hard. The next moment, she decided that he was just trying to confuse her and get her to back off.
Taking a breath, she tried another approach. Softening her to
ne, she said, “Please? They’re at the shelter, waiting and right now, they’re waiting for you.” And then she gave it to him with both barrels. “Somewhere along the line, when you first started studying to be a doctor, didn’t you want someone to be waiting for you to come and save the day?”
He laughed shortly at the image she was attempting to promote. “You mean like a superhero?”
“No,” she corrected, “like a super-doctor.”
Just then, a man in a security uniform approached them. Specifically, Melanie noted, the guard was approaching her.
“Is there a problem here?” the security guard asked, looking from her to the doctor. His hand was resting rather dramatically on the hilt of his holstered weapon as he waited for an answer.
All he had to do, Mitch thought, was say yes and this annoying woman would be out of his hair once and for all. But he had to admit—grudgingly so—that there was a germ of truth in what she’d just said. Once, when he was still very young and very idealistic, he’d had great hopes for the profession he was aspiring to. His head—and his heart—had been filled with thoughts of what he could accomplish.
In those days, he’d been inspired by what his father had accomplished before him. Though he’d never said as much, back then, his father had been his idol and he’d wanted to be just like him.
All it had taken was losing a couple of patients to show him how wrong—and foolhardy—he had been. At the end of the day, all he could hope for was the same amount of wins as losses.
“No,” he finally said to the guard, “there’s nothing wrong. She was just reminding me of an appointment I’d forgotten about.”
The guard looked somewhat dubious. “If you’re sure everything’s all right...”
“I’m sure,” Mitch told him.
“Okay, then,” the guard murmured. “Have a nice day.
And with that, he withdrew.
Melanie gazed at the man she had come to drag back to the shelter. “Thank you.”
“Yeah,” he muttered. “I’ll probably live to regret that.” He started to push open the door behind him. When he saw that his self-appointed conscience was about to come in with him, he said, “Unless you plan to suddenly join the staff, you can’t come in here.”
Was he going to evade her after all? “Why not?” she asked.
“Because it’s the locker room.”
“Oh.” She suddenly realized he was right. “Sorry.”
Was she blushing? It didn’t seem possible. These days, everything was so blatant, so out in the open, he doubted if anyone blushed over anything. It was probably just the poor lighting.
Mitch jerked a thumb behind him toward the locker room. “I’m just going to go take a shower and change out of these scrubs.”
“Fine,” she responded, then, in case there was any doubt, she added, “I’ll be out here, waiting.”
Mitch made no verbal comment, he merely grunted in response to her affirmation. It never occurred to him to think that she wouldn’t be.
Chapter Five
Tucking away the supplies he’d brought with him into his medical bag, Mitch didn’t even hear the knock at first. When the sound continued, more insistently this time, he glanced up, bracing himself.
Now what?
He’d already spent forty-five minutes more than he’d anticipated at the shelter and he really didn’t want to get roped into anything else that would prevent him from leaving—always a viable possibility whenever that woman, Melanie, was involved. Over the course of the past month, that lesson had been driven home more than once. Even a slow learner would have picked up on that by now and he was far from that.
Anticipation mixed with dread filtered through him when he saw Melanie walking into the alcove that she’d persuaded the director to turn into a permanent exam room—or as permanent as anything could be here in the homeless shelter. Slightly larger than a linen closet, it had room for the necessary examination table and just enough room for him to move around in.
Any sort of lengthy conversation resulting from an exam, however, still took place in the director’s office. Polly willingly surrendered her office to him whenever he came to the shelter.
Lately, that was two, sometimes three times a week and never for as short a duration as he initially anticipated.
As he watched Melanie approach him, his attention was drawn to what she was carrying. His eyes narrowed and he nodded at what she’d brought into the room. “What’s this?”
“It’s a cake,” she told him. Then, still leaving it on the tray she’d used to bring it in, she placed the whole thing on the exam table right in front of him. “Well, actually,” she amended, “it’s a large cupcake.”
He had to learn to be more specific when he asked questions, Mitch told himself—at least when it came to things that had to do with Melanie.
“I know what it is. I want to know what it’s doing on a plate in front of me with a candle in it. A lit candle,” he underscored.
“Waiting for you to blow out the flame,” she told him with a smile that he was finding increasingly difficult to ignore each time he saw it. The reason for that he refused to explore.
He made no move to do as she’d just instructed, not until he knew what he was getting himself into. When it came to Melanie, the more information he had before he got further involved, the better. And even then, he wasn’t always fully prepared. The woman was just not predictable.
“Any particular reason you have this sudden need to set a cupcake on fire?” he asked.
Her smile was patient—and he found it so much more annoying because of that.
“I’m not setting it on fire,” Melanie told him. “It’s to celebrate—”
“—your one month annie-versay,” April piped up excitedly, coming out from behind Melanie.
The next moment she giggled into her hands as if she’d just played some sort of a fine joke on the solemn-faced doctor—whom she obviously really liked despite the rather somber expression he usually wore.
Then, in case the significance of what she’d just said had escaped him, April proudly announced, “You’ve been coming here a whole month!” She made it sound like a feat equal to coming in first in the Kentucky Derby. “Make a wish and blow it out!” she urged excitedly.
He knew there was no way he was getting out of here until he complied with this nonsense, so he put his medical bag down on the floor. Leaning over the exam table, Mitch slanted a glance toward the woman who’d brought in the cupcake—and him, he thought grudgingly—in the first place. Then, none-too-happily, he blew out the candle.
“A month, huh?” he repeated as if the fact was just now registering in his brain. “Funny,” he said, looking directly at Melanie, “it seems longer.”
“Funny, I was just going to say that it doesn’t really feel that long at all,” Melanie deliberately countered. “But then,” she allowed, “I wasn’t the one who was dragged here, kicking and screaming.”
“Who was kicking and screaming?” April wanted to know, a puzzled expression on her small oval face as her eyes grew large.
Melanie ruffled her hair affectionately. “It’s just an expression, honey.”
April appeared to be only half listening. Her attention, as well as her eyes, was fixed on the large cupcake. After a moment, she shifted both over toward Mitch.
“Aren’t you going to eat that?” she asked. “I helped Melody make it.”
He didn’t want to insult the little girl, but he didn’t want to hang around, either. It seemed that the longer he stayed—the longer he stayed.
“Tell you what,” Mitch suggested, thinking he had come up with the perfect solution. “Why don’t you eat it for me? You like cupcakes, right?”
“Very much,” April told him, solemnly nodding her head. And then she pinned him with her large, soulful eyes. “Don’t you?”
“Yes, yes I do,” he told her, gathering up his medical bag again, his body poised for flight. He deliberately avoided looking
in Melanie’s direction. “But I’m kind of in a hurry.”
April’s eyes just grew more soulful. “You’re always in a hurry. Don’t you wanna stop some time?” she asked.
The logic of children confounded him. He was in over his head.
Mitch finally looked toward the woman who had roped him into doing all this, volunteering his services in a place he must have passed a hundred times in his travels through the city without having noticed even once. She owed him.
“Help me out here,” he requested.
Melanie spread her hands wide. “Sorry, I’m kind of curious to hear your answer to that one,” she replied.
As always, she ended her statement with a smile, a smile that was beginning to burrow a hole in his gut, working its way through the layers he had applied around himself over the years. Layers that were meant to insulate him from everything and anything so that he could concentrate strictly on doing what he had been educated and trained to do—being an excellent surgeon. To him that meant dedication—and isolation.
Right now, that didn’t seem to be enough.
Feeling cornered and outmaneuvered by a five-year-old and her older sidekick, Mitch stifled his exasperation and just sighed in temporary surrender.
“Okay, I’ll have some of the cupcake—as long as you have the rest,” he said to April. “Deal?”
The sunny little face that came up to his belt buckle lit up even more. “Deal!” April cried.
“I just happen to have a knife, a couple of paper plates and a couple of forks right here,” Melanie told her reluctant celebrant, producing said items almost out of thin air.
“Of course you do,” Mitch murmured under his breath. He saw April looking at him as if she was trying to understand something. Deciding to get in front of whatever was brewing, he asked, “What?”
“You do that a lot,” April told him with a small, disapproving frown.
“Do what?” he asked. He wasn’t aware of doing anything out of the ordinary.
“Talk little, like you’re whispering to somebody,” April answered.
Melanie thought that was a very apt description of the way the doctor mumbled under his breath whenever he disapproved of something. She’d caught him at it a number of times.
Dr. Forget-Me-Not (Matchmaking Mamas) Page 5
