“Whatever.”
Lauren feigned a stern expression. “Stop distracting me. Just because Dr. Stanford left and my morning clinic is over doesn’t mean you can heckle me about my love life. Go see your patients and let me finish my notes.”
Their conversation paused when Dr. Patel entered the room and set a paper chart next to Kiara’s keyboard. She rambled off instructions and Kiara rose to discharge the patient.
“I keep trying to convince Dr. Stanford he doesn’t need you for myeloma,” Dr. Patel said to Lauren as she sat in front of her computer. “But he’s not falling for it.”
Lauren just smiled. She’d loved being in the leukemia and lymphoma clinic, but she needed a well-rounded residency education.
Emma swiveled in her chair to face Dr. Patel. “Would you like me to see one of the next ones, Dr. Patel?”
“Please.” Dr. Patel unlocked her screen and pulled up the schedule. “Could you see Mr. Bishop? Zeke Young is here, and that will be a difficult conversation.”
Lauren perked up. Her first thought was Andrew’s here? followed by What happened with Zeke? Zeke was a forty-year-old man with non-Hodgkin lymphoma, and was the first patient she’d seen when she’d started in Dr. Patel’s clinic. He’d completed his chemo regimen and gone into remission, and without the need for medication, Lauren hadn’t been involved in his follow-up visits. But she thought about him often. He was a farmer and had always been accompanied by his parents, and all of them had been such kind, soft-spoken people.
She technically shouldn’t ask what was going on, since she wasn’t part of Zeke’s care team anymore, but it was hard not to care. She’d followed him for months. Thankfully, Emma seemed as surprised as Lauren was and voiced the question in her mind.
“Why?” Emma asked.
“His surveillance bone marrow biopsy came back. His disease relapsed.”
Lauren felt the word relapse like a punch in the gut. “Oh no.”
Emma’s face was stricken. “He was doing so well, I really hoped…”
Dr. Patel nodded solemnly. “Me too.” She took a deep breath. “We’ve still got options for him, that’s the important thing. But I’m worried about how today will go. I called him with the results yesterday, and he was very upset. He refused to speak to me, but his mother called back. I asked if she thought he’d come talk about his options in person, and she said she’d try to get him here.”
The room was quiet for a few seconds, and Dr. Patel looked at Emma. “All that to say, I’ll take that one and you see Mr. Bishop. He’s here to follow up after his first chemo two weeks ago and will get day fifteen today as long as there are no issues.”
“Of course.” Emma turned back to her computer. “Did he get labs done?” she asked no one in particular.
“Yes,” Kiara said as she reentered the room. “They’re good. Want me to print a copy to take in there with you?”
“Sure.”
Dr. Patel stood up and left as Kiara went to the printer to retrieve the papers. She handed them to Emma, while Lauren did her best to focus on her own screen.
Suddenly there was a loud bang in the hallway, like a door had swung open and slammed into the wall.
“I don’t believe you,” a deep voice bellowed.
Lauren and Emma looked at each other with wide eyes. They both went to the doorway. Lauren stepped into the hallway to find Zeke a few doors down, standing with his fists balled at his sides. His dark hair was in disarray, and even from several yards away Lauren could see his eyes were bloodshot.
His parents came out of the exam room, but he moved away from them. “Don’t touch me,” he yelled.
Dr. Patel remained in the exam room doorway, speaking in soothing tones. “Zeke, please calm down. I don’t want to call security, but I will if I need to. Come sit down and let me talk about your options, okay?”
“I’m sorry, doctor,” Zeke’s father began. His voice trembled. “I think he’s been drinking. He seemed subdued when we picked him up, but I didn’t think…”
“Shut up, Dad!”
Zeke’s mother flinched and gripped her husband’s arm.
“What should we do?” Lauren jumped at Emma’s whispered voice in her ear.
“I don’t know. I’ve never seen him like this,” Lauren said.
A door opened between where Lauren stood and Zeke’s family congregated. Andrew’s head poked out into the hallway. He surveyed the area, his eyes finding Lauren, and then turned in the opposite direction to the other occupants. Lauren heard Jeni’s voice and Andrew replied to her quietly in a firm tone. He stepped fully out of his exam room, closed the door behind him, and stopped in the middle of the linoleum floor.
He stood three feet in front of Lauren, his back to her and his body slightly in front of hers, facing the distraught family. “Is everything okay?”
“Who the fuck are you?” Zeke asked.
“I’m Andrew.” He held out his hand and took a step forward. “I’m just a patient.”
Zeke just looked at him, then swayed to the left, and slumped his shoulder against the wall.
“Zeke, honey…” his mother began.
At the sound of her voice, Zeke’s face crumpled, and in an instant he transformed from a defensive, angry man to a fearful, forlorn son.
The hallway was silent, and it suddenly felt intrusive to be there. Zeke’s father approached him and put an arm around his shoulders. For a moment they looked like a father and child about to head out to the back porch for a long talk about life. “Let’s go, son.”
Zeke allowed his father to lead him toward the waiting room as his mother trailed behind them, sniffing and dabbing at her eyes. She turned and mouthed, I’m sorry before she went through the doorway.
It seemed like everyone in the hallway exhaled at once, like they’d all been holding their breath.
“I apologize for the disturbance, Mr. Bishop,” Dr. Patel said. “My PA will be right in to see you.”
“No problem,” Andrew said. He turned and passed a glance at Lauren before he went back into his room and closed the door.
Emma poked Lauren in the ribs, startling her again. “That’s the hot patient everyone’s been talking about, huh?”
Lauren gaped at her. “After what just happened, that’s what you’re thinking about?”
“Zeke’s not the first patient to show up drunk.” Emma shrugged.
He was the first one Lauren had ever encountered, but she didn’t comment, noticing Emma’s dress for the first time. It was perfectly professional, but accentuated Emma’s tiny waist and petite, curvy body in all the right places. Emma started toward Andrew’s room and Lauren frowned, darting into the workroom and back out again, a knee-length white garment in her hand.
“Emma? You forgot your coat.”
Lauren found herself in the infusion center after lunch. She liked to walk through occasionally and check on the patients she knew, and chat with the nurses she’d become friends with.
Her eyes definitely weren’t searching the chairs for a specific patient.
And if she was, it was purely out of professional interest. Per Emma’s report to Dr. Patel, Andrew had done well after his first treatment and didn’t need any changes to his regimen. Lauren wasn’t convinced, though. ABVD was a nasty chemo combination.
He was young and healthy, sure. Strong and…virile, even. But you never knew with chemo, and the common phrase “everyone’s different” was 100 percent true. They could give the same chemo to an eighty-year-old woman and a nineteen-year-old man, and the former could waltz through it while the latter landed himself in the hospital with fever and dehydration.
There was no way to know. He might have a medication question that he forgot to ask Emma, and maybe Lauren could help.
So. As she said…professional interest.
As she passed through a
nursing station, her phone buzzed, and she fished the device from the pocket of her white coat. She’d received a text from a number she didn’t recognize.
Hi, do you remember me from McNellie’s the other night?
Lauren frowned at the screen. She considered not responding, because it had been two weeks since Emma had given Lauren’s number to that guy at the bar. Either he was too busy to be dating, or he was playing games. Both were equally unappealing.
Lauren: Kind of…it’s been a while. Logan, was it?
Logan: Yeah. Sorry it’s taken me so long to send you a message.
He offered no additional explanation. Lauren locked her phone to put it away, but it vibrated against her hand.
Logan: I’m not an asshole, I promise. I had a family emergency I had to deal with.
Logan: Forgive me?
Lauren: It’s fine.
Logan: What are you up to?
Lauren: I’m at work, so I can’t really talk right now. Can I text you later?
Logan: Sure.
“Hey, Lauren.”
She cringed internally when she heard the voice behind her. She turned around.
“Hey, Gavin.”
He wore black scrubs today, the top way too small for his bulky frame. Either he was clueless when it came to shopping, or he was attempting to show off the muscles he seemed so proud of.
“Heard you had a crazy patient in the clinic this morning. You okay?” His ice-blue eyes barely connected with hers as he spoke, which drove her crazy. Did he think she wouldn’t notice the way he watched her mouth or looked at her chest? He leered at her when he spoke, but then when she responded he often glanced around aimlessly, like what she had to say was less important. And yet, he had repeatedly heaped useless flattery upon her and had asked her out on multiple occasions.
She assumed it was an ego thing, because she always turned him down.
He didn’t know a thing about her, and his current display of concern for her well-being was almost laughable.
Instead of laughing, Lauren stiffened, feeling protective of Zeke. “He’s not crazy. He’d just received terrible news and didn’t handle it well. He’s not a bad guy.”
“Coming here wasted off his ass is pretty crazy, if you ask me. But okay.” He ran a hand through his wavy blond hair. “A bunch of us are going on the Plaza this Saturday. You should come.”
“No, thanks.”
“Got a date?”
None of your business. “I need to study.”
“For what? You’re already a pharmacist.”
She’d explained this to him no less than three times. “My oncology board exam.”
“Oh.”
The familiar beep of a pump indicating a finished infusion sliced through the air, and Lauren prayed it was one of Gavin’s patients. Thankfully, he muttered something about catching up with her later and walked off.
Lauren resisted the urge to roll her eyes at his back and continued her circuit of the infusion center. She saw two of her other patients and stopped to check on them before moving on. Mandi’s section was the last she came upon, and Mandi looked up from her computer when Lauren approached.
“Hey girl.”
“Hey,” Lauren said. “Busy day?”
“Always.” Mandi returned her attention to the computer. “I saw Gavin talking to you a minute ago…still trying to get with you, huh?”
Lauren shrugged. “I think it has less to do with me and more to do with him thinking he’s God’s gift to women.”
“Based on his success rate with dating the nursing staff, most of them agree with him.”
Lauren was well aware of the rounds he’d made through the employees throughout the cancer center. “I don’t get it. He’s not bad looking or anything, but he seems like such…”
“An asshole?”
“I was going to say son of a motherless goat, but we can use yours.”
Mandi snickered. “You and your fake cussing. I’ll never forget the first time I met you, you hit your shoulder on the doorjamb and instead of shit or dammit, the words out of your mouth were Bob Saget!”
“I’m nothing, if not original,” Lauren said with a grin. “But really, it’s because of the kids.”
Mandi nodded. “I figured,” she said, and continued to type at the keyboard.
Lauren put her hands in her coat pockets and shifted on her feet. She glanced down the row of chairs in Mandi’s section.
“He’s not here.”
“What?” Lauren forced her expression to remain calm. She’d always been a terrible liar.
Mandi’s face remained expressionless, but her eyes were sharper than a twenty-seven-gauge needle. “Andrew Bishop. He just left.”
“Oh. I um, I wasn’t…”
The older woman’s face softened, and she shrugged. “I know he’s a patient of Dr. Patel’s, so I thought maybe you came to check on him. That’s all.”
Lauren nodded, probably too emphatically. She searched for something else relevant to say, but came up empty-handed. So she went with, “I’ll see you later, then.”
“Sure.” Mandi winked and waved her off. “See you in two weeks.”
…
Logan: Did you forget about me?
Jiminy Cricket. She totally had. She’d planned to text him when she got home from work, but now it was almost eight o’clock, and she’d holed up at The Grind House, studying.
Lauren: I had a family emergency I had to deal with.
Logan: Ouch. Sounds like someone didn’t forgive me after all.
Lauren: *shrug*
Logan: Can I make it up to you? What are you doing?
Lauren: I’m studying, probably won’t be home until late.
Logan: Studying for what?
Lauren: If you’re going to ask me out, shouldn’t we save that for date conversation?
Logan: Planning ahead. I like it. Dinner on Saturday?
Lauren: I can do Saturday. I’ll meet you, just tell me when and where.
Logan: There’s a new grill called Republic on the Plaza. 7:00?
Lauren: See you then.
Logan: Have fun studying.
Lauren released a sigh and set her phone facedown on the table. She attempted to focus on her work for several minutes but had trouble concentrating.
She was trying to put herself out there because Emma was right. It had been two years since she’d been on a date. But she didn’t particularly want to go out with Logan. He’d been smooth and charming at the bar that night and was attractive in a boy-next-door kind of way, with curly blond hair and blue eyes framed by laugh lines. His approach had been confident and flattering, and he’d clearly been interested in Emma at the start. But Emma had claimed that she had a boyfriend—she didn’t—and to his credit, Logan hadn’t seemed disappointed to shift his attention to Lauren. He said he was in marketing, which was a perfectly respectable career.
So why wasn’t she more excited? Why did she feel indifferent toward him, and the prospect of getting to know him better? Was it ridiculous for her to think she’d one day feel that spark…that sudden, unexplainable attraction, to someone? Like she’d felt when she’d run into Andrew, in this very room?
Lauren closed her eyes and laid her forehead in her palm, her elbow propped on the table. She couldn’t stop thinking about him, and it was becoming a problem.
Andrew’s eyes.
Andrew’s smile.
Andrew’s hands.
She ground her teeth together in frustration. This was bad. Very bad.
He was a patient. He was off-limits. Right? Even if she wasn’t directly over his care anymore, she was a provider at the cancer center where he was receiving treatment.
Plus, as previously discussed, he was too attractive. Even if he hadn’t ended up in her clinic that d
ay, she still wouldn’t have been interested.
Shouldn’t have been, anyway. She couldn’t even convince herself—no wonder Mandi had given her the side-eye.
Stop it. Focus. You’re here to study, and you’re going on a date with someone else. Everything is F-I-N-E.
Pep talk complete, Lauren lifted her head and opened her eyes, to find herself looking right at a smiling Andrew.
“Hi.”
Lauren blinked.
He was still there. Still smiling.
“Andrew? What are you doing here?”
“I’m here to study.” He held a laptop and notebook in one hand. “What are you doing here?”
“Same.” Lauren’s pulse sped up and she pulled at her ponytail, a nervous gesture she’d picked up in her teenage years.
She took him in, standing tall before her, wearing fitted jeans and the same blue hoodie as the first time they’d met. Square shoulders and rounded biceps filled out his upper body, and his pushed-up sleeves revealed muscled forearms. A light, scruffy layer of facial hair covered a perfectly symmetrical jaw and his thick, chestnut hair was still very much present, the chemotherapy not having ravaged that part of his body yet.
His brown eyes scanned the tables that surrounded them. Lauren knew they were all full, as she’d hovered for ten minutes for a couple to leave before she’d snagged the one she currently sat at.
“You can sit here,” she offered. She was alone at a four-top table. “There’s plenty of room. It gets packed here on Friday nights.”
“You sure?” At her nod, Andrew set his stuff down diagonally across from her. “Thanks.”
Lauren had spread out all over the table and pulled her materials closer to her corner. “If I remember right, your sister said you’re soon to be a mediocre attorney…that must mean you’re in law school?”
“Yep. I’m in my third year.”
“What kind of law do you want to practice?”
“Criminal justice.” He opened his laptop and leaned back in his chair. “What are you studying for?”
“The oncology pharmacy board exam. It’s an optional certification, but if I get a permanent job at the cancer center after my residency, they’ll expect me to take it.”
Perfect Distraction Page 6
