by Natalie Ann
“I didn’t do anything special,” Dena said. “He teased me with a picture of one of these the other day, wanting me to go over and spend time with him.”
“Did you?” Rene asked.
“No. I wasn’t playing hard to get. I just wasn’t ready to give in so easily. I said I’d take a rain check. I guess two days was long enough in his mind for the rain check.”
“Yet you aren’t spending time with him,” Amber argued. “He sent them to you. Are you going to go see him in person to thank him?”
“I guess it would be the right thing to do.”
“And you always do the right thing,” Rene said, grinning. “Like letting your best friends have a second cookie.”
“I’ll go give one to Ava, then that leaves two. Don’t you think Max and Karen should get one?” Karen was the nurse in the office.
“No. Because Matt should have sent you a dozen if everyone was going to get one. Instead they should be for you and your besties,” Rene said again, laughing.
Dena knew she was joking. “Fine. I’ll go give one to Ava and then you two can split one more. This last one is for Matt.”
“No,” Amber said. “Rene, let her take the last two to Matt’s and they can each have one tonight. Maybe chocolate will lead to something else.”
Rene giggled and though Dena didn’t like giggling that much, it was cute on Rene. “Okay, that sounds much better. I can take one for the team if it will get Dena laid.”
***
Matt grabbed his phone off the counter, saw it was Randall calling and wanted to ignore it, but he knew he couldn’t. Randall was still his boss and his stepbrother.
He should be thankful he still had a job and was able to stay busy, but right now he continued to be pretty sour.
“Hello.”
“Matt,” Randall said, his voice always chipper. Randall had a smooth way about him and one that Matt fell for like a fool as a kid. He hated that he fell for it as an adult too. “How are you feeling? Getting stronger?”
“Yep,” Matt said, then cringed when he realized he was being short. “The cold sucks, but I’m getting work done by the fire and working on getting stronger on top of it.”
“That’s good. I’ve got a case for you when you’re ready. I need your expertise on it.”
Matt tried not to snort. Randall never felt Matt had much expertise in anything. Not enough to be a partner. “What’s that?”
“Malpractice. Representing the doctor. You’ve always been for the doctors and not the patients. It’s that soft side of yours going for the underdog.”
He had. Not that doctors didn’t make mistakes, but they were human too and too many patients were out to get a quick buck when things didn’t go their way.
Frivolous lawsuits were the things that Matt liked to spend his time working on. He wanted to represent the accused that were being taken by people hoping that someone would just settle out of court for a fast payday.
“What’s the case?” he asked, grabbing a pen and paper.
“Weight loss surgery. One of those adjustable band things. I guess the patient claims she was promised a certain amount of weight loss and she’s suing because she hasn’t seen the results yet.”
“What?” he asked. “Is she following the doctor’s orders? Is she making any attempt to lose the weight on her own?”
“No. There are plenty of statements and pictures of her eating what she was advised not to. She hasn’t changed her diet one bit. She felt she wasn’t fully informed that she had to stop eating like she was used to. Like she wanted to. That the band was supposed to make her feel full, but it doesn’t.”
“She signed all her papers and had her consults?” Matt asked.
“Yes. I’m going to have it all sent to you. Can you do some research on this for me? See what you can find in the next few days?”
“Sure.” It’d give him something to do. Maybe he could talk to Dena about it a bit too. She had no clue he liked these kinds of cases because he’d always felt he’d want to be able to protect her if anything happened. If anyone tried to pull one over on her while she was working.
He remembered the first lawsuit he was assigned to assist on. It was a man choking in a restaurant. An off duty nurse stepped in and did the Heimlich. She broke one of the guy’s ribs as the food was really lodged in.
She’d saved his life.
He sued her for physical and emotional damages. He lost, but it cost the poor nurse thousands of dollars in legal fees and the feeling of not wanting to help someone in need when she’d devoted her life to that.
He tossed his phone back on the counter and was going to get back to work when his doorbell rang. He made his way to the door and pushed the curtain aside to see Dena standing there with a smile on her face.
He wasn’t sure he’d see her or even talk to her today, or any day. That was part of the reason he was short with Randall just now. Nothing seemed to be going his way when he wanted or needed it to.
Those cookies had been delivered hours ago and he’d gotten not one response at all. Not a text. Not a call. Nothing.
But here she was standing there in his doorway when he opened the door, the cold air smacking him in the face like an angry woman’s palm at a poor pickup line. “Hey. What do you have there?” he asked.
“Dinner. Hope you haven’t eaten yet.”
He looked at the brown bag that his nose was telling him was chicken and broccoli with chicken fried rice. Dena’s favorite. He was hoping there was chicken lo mein in there for him.
“No, I haven’t. That smells great. What’s the occasion?”
“I’ve got two cookies left for dessert. I thought I’d share them, but the least I could do was bring dinner first.”
“Two left,” he said. “Wow, you must be on a sugar high.”
“I had one. The girls in the office had three. Next time, send me more. It wasn’t enough for the whole office and I was hoping no one got offended.”
“I can do that,” he said, not even thinking of it. All he’d been thinking of was getting on Dena’s good side, but he should have considered that she never wanted to upset or hurt anyone and having to pick favorites for cookies might have annoyed her more than helped him.
“Since you remembered my favorite comfort dessert, I took a gamble this was still your favorite comfort dinner.”
It was. He was glad she remembered and went to the effort to bring it to him. When the two of them wanted dinner out, Chinese was a quick, cheap, and filling meal for them. They could get a few meals out of it and he’d always enjoyed trying to use chopsticks.
“Want to grab some plates and we can eat in front of the fireplace?” she asked.
“Sure.” He made his way to the kitchen for plates and forks.
“What?” she said. “I made sure to get chopsticks for you. After all these years I’d love to see if you learned how to use them.”
“I haven’t and I’m too hungry to even consider trying. Forks are just as good.”
She laughed and the two of them set about putting their dinner on plates and spreading out on the couch with their food on their laps.
“How has your week been?” he asked.
She looked up startled by his question. “Fine. Normal.”
“Why do you look so shocked by the question?” he asked.
“I don’t know. Just a different conversation than we’ve had in the past.”
“As you’ve said before, we are different people and should treat this that way.”
“True,” she said. “So yeah, work is good. It’s always busy. Max’s practice is crazy. He gets all sorts of people here for his services. How about you, what are you working on?”
“Doing research for a few cases. I got a new one today. I thought maybe I could pick your brain on it.”
“Why me?”
“Because I have a specialty in law. Or one I always enjoyed and considered my specialty. It’s defending medical professionals and that is what
is going on here.”
“What?” she asked, coughing. “Why is that your specialty?”
“Because I always wanted to make sure you’d be protected if it ever came to it.”
Not Helping
Dena didn’t know what to say. She’d never really looked into what kind of law Matt practiced, but she sure the hell didn’t expect that he would do something because of her. Especially after he’d left her before college even started.
“That makes no sense to me.”
“Why?” he asked.
“Matt,” she said, sighing. “You made it very clear your feelings about me way back in the day. Now you’re telling me that your career is focused on medicine because of me.”
“My feelings for you were completely different than my reasons for ending the relationship. I never stopped loving you,” he said.
She looked over into his eyes, saw the truth behind them and wanted to dump her dinner on his lap and run out the door. How dare he do this to her? How dare he play with her emotions this way?
“You have a funny way of showing that.”
“We said we were going to be honest with each other. I’m trying to be. I’ve told you why I did what I did. You told me to stop apologizing for it, so I will. But I never stopped loving you. I just tried to move on with a life that didn’t include you.”
The hurt again, it was there and it was springing forth like a manhole cover after a gas explosion. “How did that work out for you?”
“Not very good.”
“I have to ask. If you hadn’t had your accident, if you hadn’t died and woken up calling my name, would you be here right now?”
“Most likely.”
“That’s not helping me at all.”
“I know that,” he said, “but I’m being honest. There has been a hollow pit in my heart, in my stomach for years. Nothing fills it. Nothing ever will but you. I was trying and not succeeding. I’d like to think even without the accident, I would have come back here.”
She didn’t know what to believe right now. “I don’t know what to think.”
“I know,” he said. “I understand that and I’m going to do everything I can to get you to believe that. Have you stopped loving me?”
She wanted to lie, but it wouldn’t solve anything. “There’s a fine line between love and hate. It’s been blurred for a long time. They are both strong enough to control everything in life. I’m not sure what they are currently.”
“You don’t know if you hate me?” he asked.
“I don’t hate you at this moment. I hate what you did. It’s not a secret.”
“So if there is a fine line and you don’t hate me, then maybe there is a chance you still have some love for me in there.”
She was afraid she did but wasn’t going to admit it. “I guess time will tell.”
And it was time to put that conversation back in the closet. If they were trying to start over, always talking about the past wasn’t going to get them anywhere other than back in the dark hole of a room where she’d been hiding for so long.
“So let’s talk about your case that you mentioned.”
He sighed. “Can we finish dinner first before my appetite is ruined?”
***
Dinner was done, cookies were gone, and the dishes were all cleaned up. They were sitting in the living room again, in front of the fireplace, staying toasty warm. He knew his time was limited, as she had to go to work tomorrow and would want to leave soon. He’d have to resign himself to talking about work and take it as a step in the right direction that she showed up tonight without being asked, even if those cookies were somewhat of a bribe.
“So Randall called me right before you showed up. I don’t have much information other than a patient is suing their doctor. They’d gotten weight loss surgery and didn’t get the results they were expecting. They were led to believe it was a guarantee.”
Dena snorted. “This is why people don’t want to go into medicine. Why they don’t want to be doctors. The cost of malpractice insurance is through the roof as it is and then lawsuits like this make it worse.”
“Is that why you stopped at a PA?”
“Partially. Less school. Fewer student loans and not the liability. It’s sad though that so many talented people don’t want to take the risk because lawyers are out for a quick buck.”
“Lawyers get a bad rap a lot of times.”
“Usually with reason,” she said, laughing.
“I won’t argue with that. I guess I want to be the type of lawyer to right a lot of wrongs.”
“You seem to be wanting to fix a lot of things lately,” she said.
He felt his face flush. He was sure it wasn’t said to be mean, petty, just a statement of fact. “So I don’t have the files yet to know anything else about this case other than there are witnesses and statements from the patient herself that she hadn’t changed her diet. That she continued to eat what she wanted and when, just in smaller portions but more frequent. That she felt that would be enough. She doesn’t like to exercise and doesn’t want to.”
“Yet she thought she’d lose weight. I wonder how much she thought she’d lose compared to what she did.”
“Not sure yet,” he said. “I’ll know more when I get the file.”
“So do you have to go back and try this case?” she asked, curling one leg under her hip. He loved when she got comfortable doing that. Like she was settling in to stay.
“No clue. At this point, I’m just doing research. My guess is the patient is looking for a quick settlement.”
“And the problem with that is, if this doctor settles, then his insurance rates go up again. It might even be a mark against him. Too many marks can cost a good doctor his job or insurance so high he can’t even afford to practice. So his choice is to shell out money to fight this, or let his premiums continue to rise.”
“I get the feeling that he wants to fight it. That the cost in the short term is worth the savings in the long run.”
“Or maybe a doctor finally wants to take a stand. Finally wants to set a precedent that this has to stop. Don’t get me wrong, Matt. Accidents happen. Doctors make mistakes. There is cause for lawsuits, I’m not saying there isn’t. But it’s gotten out of hand too.”
“I agree. I think this is one of those times. I’m good at research. So I’ll be looking into other cases similar to this and the outcomes. What it will cost to settle and what it will cost to fight and so on. Even what the patient is hoping to gain.”
“Money,” Dena said. “Isn’t that what most people want who sue?”
“Usually. Some want justice, but I don’t see it in this case.”
“It sounds like someone who wants an easy payday. They couldn’t lose weight on their own for whatever reasons. Maybe it was a medical reason, maybe it was pure laziness, maybe they are happy in their life and it was all a scam. I hate to make judgments,” she said, “but based on the facts you’re saying, it sounds like she just wants to do what she wants, damn the results. Don’t we all. We all have to be held responsible for our actions and decisions.”
“Are we still talking about this case or us?” he asked.
“Maybe a little bit of both.”
He reached his hand out to hers and then pulled her closer to him. Almost on his lap and she didn’t fight it. His hand slid through her hair, his lips hovering over hers. She didn’t pull back so he leaned in a bit more and kissed her softly.
“I take responsibility for my actions. Starting right now.”
Her arms came up and wrapped around his neck, holding on and kissing him back tentatively. What he wanted her to do was yank him in like she had the other night, but she didn’t.
Her tongue slid into his mouth and her nails started to bite into his neck. They were dueling back and forth, reminding him of when they’d sit and make out on the couch as kids.
They weren’t kids anymore though. They were adults who had a history. Who had a past. He wanted hi
s hands on her so badly. More now than when they lost their virginity together.
He wouldn’t push though.
“You’re really good at that,” she said. “But you always did kiss well.”
“Same goes,” he said back.
“Kissing doesn’t mean I’m ready to jump in bed with you again, no matter how much I’m tempted.”
“That’s just wrong,” he said with an unsteady breath.
“Oh well. Back to taking responsibility for our actions,” she said, climbing off his lap now.
He was missing the heat of her body and knew their time for the night was coming to an end. “You’re going to leave now, aren’t you?”
“I should. When I say I’m tempted it could be because I remember how good we were together. Or it could be because I haven’t had sex in longer than I care to admit.”
“I’m not sure what reason I want you to have.”
Dena stood up, so he did the same. She grabbed her jacket and made her way to the door and slid her boots on. “I’m not sure either.” Once her jacket was on, she wrapped one hand around the back of his neck and yanked him in just like he’d been hoping for. “But I will do this one more time before I go.”
This time it was hard and fast and exactly what he wanted. It wouldn’t help him sleep tonight, but it did give him hope.
“I’ll talk to you soon, Dena.”
“I’m sure you will.”
He shut the door behind her and made his way to the bathroom for an ice cold shower.
Not So Confident
A few weeks had gone by and he hadn’t seen Dena nearly as much as he’d hoped he would. But she’d been on call last week and that explained it.
They talked a few times, texted even more, but the most he got was a lunch date of sorts. They’d met at a deli, had some quick sandwiches and she was back to work.
Meanwhile, he’d been working on several cases and spending hours throughout the day doing stretches and rehab. He was getting stronger, he knew, both mentally and physically.
