by Jewel Ann
Warren barks a laugh. “Dorothy, I can guarantee that won’t be an issue on my part. As for you, I have no idea, but I’m willing to give it a go.”
My head jerks up to meet his mischievous, hazel eyes. “I’m very well-read on the subject. Probably more so than you.”
“Well-read?” Dr. Warren laughs more. He laughs at me.
It seems highly unlikely that I will join him for dinner or meet him in the on-call room. Although, the latter stands a better chance because I’m pretty competitive. And at this point, I want to show him I’m nothing to laugh at in bed.
He leans closer, sharing his coffee breath on a whisper, “Dorothy … are you a virgin? A well-read virgin?”
I stumble backward, hitting the wall. “No. I’m not a virgin!”
Warren’s eyes widen as he looks around the hallway at the few bystanders silenced from my answer that may have been a bit louder than necessary. Does he really believe I’m a virgin at thirty?
An unsettling amusement ghosts across his face as one side of his mouth curls into a smile, showing off one dimple. “When you take lunch, page me. We’ll see who does it better.” He pivots, strutting toward the elevator.
“I only have thirty minutes for lunch.”
“Then find me quickly.” He keeps strutting.
“But I have to eat my soup and carrots.”
“Bring them with you.” His shoulders shake, and I know he’s laughing at me … again.
* * *
Over the next five hours, I pass by different on-call rooms, and my skin begins to itch. I have to be allergic to Warren. Or he gave me something. He did breathe on me, and he’s around sick kids all day long. It’s disgusting how many doctors don’t follow proper protocol to prevent cross-contamination. I bet those on-call rooms are breeding grounds for every infection known to man.
Just what I need, some fatal infection that causes bleeding from all of my orifices. I inspect my skin for bruising—indicative of internal bleeding.
Since it’s a sunny day, I take my lunch outside instead of paging Dr. Warren. I prefer clean bedrooms … and half-deflated blowup mattresses, but that’s a story for another day. Planting my butt beneath a maple tree, I slip in my earbuds and re-listen to a podcast on flesh-eating infections. Just in case …
“Canned, no-chicken soup?”
Plucking my earbuds from my ears, I glance up at Dr. Hawkins and his god-like aura as he squats in front of me, sipping something from a YETI mug. He’s hot. My mind reaches for something better, a better word than hot because I like words—words like synecdoche and scaturient. But I have to call it like I see it. And the more I see it/him, it’s hard to not fixate on his hotness.
Tall, athletic build.
Bright eyes that shine with more green than brown in the sunlight.
A flosser’s smile.
And large hands—the strong, capable kind that can break something, not just the kind with freakishly long fingers dangling like jellyfish tentacles from bony appendages. Dr. Hawkins has hands that don’t just hold shit. They command everything they touch.
Or so I imagine.
“Yes.” I spoon another bite of my chicken-less soup.
“You’re eating that cold out of the can?”
I shake my head. “Room temperature.”
He chuckles. “There are microwaves in the break rooms.”
“Yes. But have you seen them? Disgusting.”
Rubbing his lips together, he nods slowly. I try to focus on the bridge of his nose, the safest place to look at people to give them the impression you’re looking them in the eye even when you’re not. However, Dr. Hawkins has no safe zones on his body. I can’t look at him anywhere without physically reacting with a flushed face and racing heart because, if my intuition is right (50/50 chance), I think he enjoys looking at me too. So I keep my focus on my soup, tonguing my teeth to make sure I don’t have parsley stuck between them.
My luck involves miscommunication catastrophes. I think he likes looking at me, but really I just have shit between my teeth—these kinds of miscues.
“Did you eat lunch already?” I ask between sips of soup.
“Yes. I have lunch with my mom on Fridays.” He nods across the street. “She works in that building. I get her favorite salad and take it to her.”
I squint at the building—another medical building. “What does she do?”
“She’s a psychiatrist.”
I nod and swallow. “Talk doctor.”
He grins before bringing his red mug to his lips, still balancing in his squatted position. “Yes, she’s a talk doctor.” Dr. Hawkins clears his throat. “Listen. I just wanted to set something straight. The phone number in the card wasn’t for a babysitter.” He shakes his head, glancing down at the grass between us. “It was because I thought it might be a good idea if I bought you dinner. And I should have just came out and asked if I could buy you dinner, but instead, I put the number in the card and found myself fumbling for the right words … like I am now.” He rubs a hand down his face and whispers to himself, “Jeez, Eli …”
“No!” I set the rest of my soup in my lunchbox because there’s no way I’ll finish it before I need to get back to work. It’s laughable that Dr. Warren thought we could have sex and have time for me to eat my lunch in thirty minutes. “I know you think I shouldn’t have bought you those things … that I shouldn’t have spent the money on you, but I’m financially okay. Really. So please don’t think you need to buy me food. I just went to the store last night. Fridge is fully stocked. Definitely no need to buy me dinner. But thanks anyway.”
Dr. Hawkins drops his head, giving it a slight shake while running his hands through his messy, dirty blond hair. It’s not a new gesture. I seem to bring out that reaction in a lot of people.
Missed cues.
Misunderstandings.
What did I miss?
“I’m terrible at this.” He sighs.
“I don’t know what this is, but I think it’s probably me. If you need to buy me dinner, that’s fine. Just don’t get all … stressed.” My nose wrinkles. “And if you need a babysitter … I can do that too.”
He stands, turning his back to me, scratching his head while surveying the area.
I so desperately want to read his body language, the unspoken words between the lines that I can’t see. Is he mad at me? He looks frustrated.
“Dorothy … Roman likes the cape. I like your shoes and your smile. Both feel like something I need …”
“I got the shoes online. Amazon.”
Dr. Hawkins turns. “Amazon,” he whispers before chuckling an odd chuckle like a crazy man on the verge of losing his mind.
I stand, brushing off the grass from my butt and the back of my legs. “Yes. And my smile is from Dr. Crowe. He’s an excellent orthodontist. I still wear my retainers three nights a week. But you have nice teeth, so I don’t think you need Dr. Crowe.”
He digs his nice teeth into his lower lip, eyes narrowed a bit. “I think you should spend some supervised time with Roman before you babysit him for me. He’s with his mom this week. Would you like to have dinner with us when I have him again?”
“Sure.” Okay. Thank god. It’s not me. It’s him and his concern about a stranger watching his son. That’s cool. Too many parents blindly leave their kids with complete strangers from babysitting services. I respect his approach. If I planned on having kids, it would be my approach as well.
“Sure.” He grins. “I like sure. So I’ll call you after I check my schedule.”
“Or text me. We don’t have to talk. No one calls me except my dad. He doesn’t like to text.”
“What if I want to talk to you?”
I can’t imagine why that would be. Maybe he doesn’t know how to text, like my dad.
“Then you better call after I get home from school during the week … so after three, except on days I have clinical. Then it’s after four. Or you could call me after I get home from work on the weekend
s … so after eight-thirty.” I shake my head. “That’s not true. I walk for an hour and a half, so tack on ninety minutes to both of those times.”
He smiles like my parents smile at me and maybe a few friends I used to have, like Nicole. It feels comfortable like … acceptance. “Noted. I have to get back to work. I’ll call you.”
“Okay.” I start walking toward the hospital entrance. He walks beside me. “Did Dr. Hathaway listen to those burn podcasts? I bet she did. She’s so brilliant.”
“I didn’t ask, though I’m sure she did. Because, yes, she’s brilliant. She’s always on top of cutting-edge treatments in her field.” He exhales like his ex-wife, Boss Bitch, amazing doctor isn’t a great thing.
But she is. Julie Hathaway is the pinnacle of achievement for any woman in the medical field. I’d give my right nipple and even my clitoris on most days to feel that successful, confident, and generous.
“Was it weird? Asking her to look at your burns? I heard she left the exam room a bit aggravated.”
He pushes the elevator button and turns to face me, arms folded over his chest. “Just how much gossip about me do you hear on a daily basis?”
The doors open and I step onto the elevator first. “I’m not here that often. But if you divide the gossip into a daily amount and multiply it by seven, then I’d say it’s a lot.”
He follows me onto the elevator and leans against the opposite wall. I stare at his shoes. They’re older blue Nikes. Not great, but far from awful. And not on my No Way In Hell list. His sinewy arms and his genetically sculpted face make up for the worn Nikes.
“People feel sorry for me?”
“I don’t know. Maybe. They just talk about you and your …” I stop before saying hotness.
“My?” His eyebrows lift.
They’re good brows. Not a unibrow and not like some of the older doctors who get one long-ass brow that’s like an inch long and standing straight out, ready to stab someone. Whenever I see that, I just want to pluck the damn thing from their face. Do they not have a mirror or close friends to tell them about it?
“I don’t know … really.” And I don’t know for sure. I know a lot of the nurses whisper inappropriate comments about him. Inappropriate because of sexual misconduct rules at the hospital and inappropriate because they’re married with kids and attending church on Sundays.
My opinion of his hotness stays in my head. No one can fire me for my thoughts … except when I let them slip out to patients like, “Yeah, you might die.” A rare occurrence that happened only once, just after I started and at the end of a very long day when my brain felt ready to explode. In my defense, the boy was fifteen and knew he was dying. He just wanted one person to give it to him straight. And that just so happens to be my specialty.
But I never join in the break room chatter about Dr. Hotness Hawkins (not my label) and the speculation of his penis size in relation to his hand size and finger length ratio. There is nothing scientific to back that up. That I did mention in the break room once, but it wasn’t well received by my coworkers. I think they used the word “killjoy” to describe me.
“Finish what you started to say.”
“Oh shoot.” I grin as the doors open to my floor. “No time. Bye, Dr. Hawkins.”
CHAPTER FIVE
Meatballs
Elijah
Five days after our chat outside of the hospital and in the elevator, more alluding to my gossip popularity, I decide to call Dorothy. No solid reasoning backs my decision. I just know that my incessant need for things in my life to make sense has gotten me nowhere.
No clarity.
No family unit.
No wife.
No hope that it’s all just a bad dream.
So I change directions and let instinct guide me. My instinct says Julie would shed several tears if I died, but short of that, she wants nothing to do with me. My love rubs her like a splintery piece of wood someone impaled into her chest. Every move I make only intensifies her pain and angers her.
“Hi, Dr. Hawkins.” Dorothy answers on the first ring, probably because I’ve followed her guidelines for the best time to reach her. I have a feeling she has a lot of guidelines. Fine by me. I’ll take all the cues and guidance I can get. If she doesn’t brutally murder me with the truth first, I find it quite possible that her honesty could unshackle me from my self-doubt.
That self-doubt sucks. It’s a creepy little bastard that lingers in a dark corner waiting to chase me into the street, where I have a high probability of getting struck by a bus. When someone says “It’s me, not you,” it’s a blinking neon sign that there’s something so fundamentally wrong with you, that they’d rather take the blame than let you find out how they really feel about you.
“Dr. Hawkins?”
I clear my throat. “Yes. Hi. How are you?”
“Tired.”
“Oh, is this a bad time? I can call you when you’re less tired.”
“Okay.”
I stare out my bedroom window at the sunset over downtown Portland, a ridiculous grin pinned to my face. Maybe Dorothy is on the autism spectrum, lacking the social filter of neurotypical people, or maybe she prefers complete honesty over frivolous lies.
On my days off, I like to sleep in as long as Roman will allow. But my mom has a gift for waking me up with an early phone call. She asks if I’m sleeping. I always lie and say no because I don’t want her to feel bad for waking me. Maybe I should say yes and follow it up with an honest “but that’s okay.”
“Or I can make this really quick so you can get to bed.”
“Okay.” Her personality continues to feed my amusement—my joy.
Even if she is honest to a fault, she at least has an aptitude for agreeability.
“Great. Would you like to have dinner next week?”
“I like to have dinner every week,” she deadpans.
I chuckle. Is she joking? Serious? I don’t know. I like that I don’t know. It makes the possibility of getting to know her that much more appealing.
“Me too. Roman is a fan of dinner too. He likes spaghetti. We’d love for you to have spaghetti with us next week on a night that works with your schedule.”
“Well, Mondays are chaos. Tuesday might work if I put some extra study time in on Monday. Wednesdays don’t work because it’s pet night at the car wash. When you purchase the Better or Best wash, you get a free pet wash. And Thursdays I glean at the farmer’s market. The other three nights I don’t get off work until eight, and I’m sure you don’t want to eat spaghetti that late. Although … I’m not opposed to carb loading after a long shift. I pretty much eat around the clock when given the opportunity. My mom wondered if my insatiable hunger was a parasite issue, so I did some extensive research on it and had myself tested. Turns out I have no parasite issues. I’m just hungry a lot.”
Pet washes. Gleaning. Parasites.
While so many questions race in my head, I promised one quick question before letting her get to bed. The other questions will have to wait until spaghetti night. “Tuesday sounds like the perfect night.”
“Um … yeah. Maybe.” Indecision seeps into her words. “I’ll see if my dad will feed Wilbur, Orville, and Gemma.”
Okay. Even with the time restraint … I have to ask. “Wilbur, Orville, and Gemma?”
“Yes. My emus and my dog.”
So much for rumors.
I have no idea where Dr. Warren and Dorothy stand. It never feels like the right time to ask him, especially since I’ve been planning my own date—dinner—invitation. And he doesn’t bring it up, so I assume (secretly hope) she rejects his invitation. But he is right about one thing, Dorothy Mayhem evokes an unavoidable curiosity.
I close my blinds and head downstairs to the kitchen. All the food talk makes me hungry. “Tuesday at six work for you?”
“I’ll check with my dad.”
“Fine.” I open the fridge and grab a bowl of grapes. “Tuesday at six, unless your dad can’t feed yo
ur pets. Then you feed them, and we’ll have dinner at seven instead.”
“But what time does Roman go to bed?”
“Eight.”
“So I’m coming over for an hour? Two if my dad feeds Wilbur, Orville, and Gemma?”
“You can stay later than his bedtime.”
“Why?”
I chuckle. “I don’t know. To talk to me.”
“About what?”
“Maybe you can tell me about your emus.”
“I can tell you about them while we’re eating dinner.”
“True.” I have no great response. She makes nothing easy for me. “I guess if we have nothing to talk about after Roman goes to bed, then you’ll go home.”
“Okay.”
Okay. So difficult and agreeable at the same time.
“Okay. I’ll text you my address. Maybe I’ll see you around the hospital this weekend.”
“Okay.”
I grin again.
Not true. I just haven’t stopped grinning.
“Goodnight.”
* * *
Dorothy
“Hey.” I plop down into my dad’s recliner since he’s chosen to sit on the sofa with my mom. Apparently they will have sex tonight. My mom let it slip that Dad only sits next to her on the sofa when he wants sex.
Things I never, ever, in the history of mankind, needed to know. So basically, walking in on them sitting on the sofa together always feels like the opening credits of a porn film not appropriate for anyone of any age.
They pause their Netflix show and glare at me with wide, expectant eyes.
“What?” I shoot them a wrinkled-nose look.
“What are you doing?” Mom asks, setting her bowl of popcorn on the coffee table.
“I’m sitting in this chair.”
“Why?” She prods.
Funny story … my uncle died (not the funny part) and left me a lot of money.
Me.
Not my mom or my grandma. Not my other cousins.
So I bought some land with a small house on it and added a parents’ quarters off to one end. I figure since they housed me for twenty-six years, the least I can do is return the favor. Besides, I like having them there. It’s not that we spend hours bonding, watching TV together, and sharing meals. I just like having the company. So we share the kitchen and laundry room, but they have their own bedroom, bathroom, and family room.
