2. Rook
Chapter two
Rook
Rule #1: Get married.
M y photographic memory was out to get me.
Ordinarily, having an eidetic memory—as it is more scientifically referred to—was an asset to me in my line of work. I didn't suffer from the "I'm so bad with names" phenomenon a huge chunk of the population seemed to suffer from. I remembered everyone's faces and their names with perfect clarity. The pregnant patient with a bad case of rosacea and anxiety about pre-term labor? Ava. The peri-menopausal mother of three with messy hair? Megan. I remembered them all, and usually, that was something that my patients appreciated. They weren't just a name on a chart. They were people to me, and my brain refused to forget that fact.
However, this morning, it was working against me.
Try as I might, I couldn't seem to get her out of my mind. The image of Gemma Daise's startled expression staring up at me from the elevator, the smell of lilac and coffee clinging to her ribbed blouse, the way her breasts had nearly spilled out of her top when she'd reached her hand down her shirt and taken her bra apart—all of it was seared in my brain. The images of her swishy blond hair and those dark, denim blue eyes looped on repeat in my mind. Goddamn that woman.
Shaking thoughts of the haphazard gremlin out of my head, I turned my attention back to my patient who sat in a gown across from me. She was young, twenty-two, with two streaks of bright green in her dark bob, a septum piercing in her nose, and a determined gleam in her eyes. "I want my tubes tied."
I glanced down at her chart, although there was no point. I'd already memorized it. "Do you have any history of cancer in your family, Ivy?"
"Nope." She leaned back, staring me down.
A hint of amusement warmed my thoughts. I understood why she had come in as a new patient armed for battle. Many OB/GYNs would refuse to perform a tubal ligation on a woman so young. "Okay," I said, closing her file. "I'll have our surgical center give you a call this week to schedule the procedure."
Her eyebrows, both pierced, rose up high. "Wait, that's it?"
"You're healthy, you have had your required physical exam, your bloodwork looks good, and you have expressed that you feel certain about the procedure." I stood slowly, unhurried. "Our surgical center staff will be happy to answer any questions you have about the procedure. Is there anything else, Ms. Ramirez?"
She blinked twice. "Uh, I guess not. I didn't think it would be that easy."
"It's not easy," I replied calmly. "It's a permanent, serious procedure to choose tubal ligation at your age. But then again, if you're here and looking as determined as you are, I trust that you've thought through those implications already."
The hard set in her round features returned. "I am. I've thought it through backwards and forwards, and I know what I want."
I shrugged. "There you have it, then. Is there anything else I can do for you?"
"No." She gave me a baffled stare. "My sister said you were really amazing. I think she was right."
Discomfort stabbed at my chest, but I breathed it away. "Thank you, Ivy. I'm happy to help. I'll touch base with you on the day of your procedure. Take care."
I left the exam room, sliding her file into the file holder outside the door for the nurses, and then I made my way to my office. I only had five minutes to look over the next patient's chart before the next appointment, and I'd already moved well into my lunch hour to see as many patients as possible.
It seemed like every year, I'd had a bigger caseload of patients while fewer residents were coming out of the hospitals to help with the burden. One of my colleagues retired at the age of forty-five after getting burned out after the COVID-19 pandemic, and I couldn't blame him. I'd been a fourth-year resident when the pandemic hit, and I'd barely escaped with my sanity intact. I knew it was the same for everyone in our field.
I grabbed a protein bar from the drawer of my cluttered desk, glancing over the piles to make sure I hadn't forgotten something I needed to do. A quick look over each stack confirmed that today, Tuesday, was a practice day, I had no surgeries scheduled, and there were no consultations elsewhere. One of the stacks of paper listed off to the side, sliding out of place. Ignoring it, I turned and left my office to get the file for the next patient.
People seemed to assume that I might be some kind of neat freak because I had a quiet personality and exacting standards. I found organization to be a tedious waste of my time when I could just memorize things quickly and move on with my life.
As I walked through the white and cream hallway, which had been decorated with portraits of nature, I rounded the corner to the walled-off nurses’ station. Many OB/GYN practices displayed pictures of babies and pregnant mothers, but I served clients who had a wide range of conditions, including infertility. I kept things neutral to ensure that every woman in my practice felt safe.
Madison looked up as I entered the tidy space, her eyes landing on me briefly before returning to a file she had open on the desk. A small clip kept her pixie-cut hair out of her eyes, which was usually a sign that she had become harried over the course of the morning. "You taking lunch?"
I was pretty sure Madison would strangle me if I left her with a queue of patients so I could eat a quinoa bowl. She had a stocky, strong frame bolstered by her daily weight-lifting routine, and I didn't want to test if my routine was better than hers. She had spunk. It was scary. I held up my dark chocolate health bar. "I'm good."
She nodded like that was the right answer and looked back down. "You'll need to sign the pre-op paperwork for Ramirez. And you have another new patient for a yearly exam next." She handed me the file. "She looks kind of nervous."
The intercom crackled on, and our receptionist, Gabriel, spoke with some hesitancy in his voice. "Is Dr. Rook there with you, Madison?"
"I'm here," I said, absently flipping through the new patient's file. It was sparse, but that was because she was barely eighteen and coming in for her first exam. These kids who had started high school at the height of COVID were something else. Sometimes they found my unruffled exterior soothing, and sometimes they took offense to me right off the bat. It really depended on how their social skills had been handled once they'd returned to school.
"Your mom is here," Gabriel said simply.
I lowered the file, closing my eyes in resignation. "Oh."
"Should I tell her to come back?" Gabriel asked it like a question, but we all knew the answer was a given.
"Yes. I'll meet her in my office." I handed the file to Madison. "Put Chloe in exam room one and I'll be there shortly." Exam room one was what we called our "comfort room," with soothing lighting, comfortable chairs, phone chargers, and a mini fridge stocked with water bottles. The number of patients who needed an extra safe space was a mile long—an expecting mother whose pregnancy wasn't viable, a biopsy patient who received devastating news, a hopeful couple who had discovered their road to pregnancy would be next to impossible. I couldn't take credit for it, but I had hired the best team available in our area. They had made my practice desirable and safe, and we'd even won an award for it last year.
I left the glass-encased nurses’ station, heading back through the hallway to my office. When I got there, I looked around with a critical eye. Mom was going to say something about the piles of papers. I just knew it. Not that I could be bothered to do anything about it, but my parents and their impossible standards had been a thorn in my side my entire life. It didn't matter how successful I'd become—valedictorian, top of my undergrad class, graduated with honors from the OHSU medical school, opened my own practice—they would find something lacking.
My mother entered, followed by a cloud of designer perfume, her light red hair swirled into a chignon and her trim, black coat buttoned right up to the strand of pearls around her neck. It wasn't even October yet, but she pulled off a dainty pair of leather gloves as she entered my office. She was always cold. It was like the icy blue of her eyes had injected her veins with the chilly detachment she was so quick to exude. It wasn't that my mother wasn't capable of being caring or kind—it was just that she preferred not to be. "Knox."
"Mother," I replied, sliding my hands into the pockets of my white coat.
Her gaze traveled over stacks of paper, scattered manila folders, partially opened packages that had come in the mail, and the growing collection of books I kept on every available surface. Her forehead folded like an accordion. "What happened to you?"
I didn't even bother to look around the room. "I'm quite busy and I have a patient waiting. What is the reason for your visit?"
"Well, I assumed you would be taking lunch," she sniffed.
I took the protein bar out of my pocket and unwrapped it. "I am. How can I help you?"
Censure boiled to the brim beneath her surface, and clearly, she was at war with herself over whether to say something about my degenerate lifestyle or not. But she knew me as well as I knew her. Cutting words did nothing to dissuade my actions. Yelling did even less. "Have you made an appointment with Kiss-Met, yet?"
Ah. The matchmaking agency. I debated telling her that I had spoken with a matchmaker this morning. Only, it had been about her bra, and it was for my own amusement more than anything romantic. Needling Gemma Daise was quickly leaving the "rare treat" territory and approaching "new hobby" status.
"I have not." I took a bite of the date-based, nut-filled bar and chewed slowly as I watched my mother's reaction to that.
Her tight, thin lips made a puckered line, and her anger crested and then rapidly fell as she appeared to control herself. Control. It should have been engraved over our family crest for all to see because it was control that my parents valued above all else. Who needed affection when they could simply will their emotions to be baseline? That had been their parenting philosophy, anyway.
"Knox, I thought we agreed that you would do everything in your power to settle down. Just look at Jayla's boy. Callum found a match with an actual matchmaker at that agency." She clutched her leather gloves in her thin hands, eyes fervent. "They have an eighty-two percent success rate!"
I swallowed the mouthful of dark chocolate-flavored nutrients. "Eighty-six, actually."
Testing the bounds of Silvia Rook's patience never ceased to amuse me. She pulled in a breath through her nose, flaring her nostrils like a prim dragon. "Eighty-six, then."
"I'm well aware, but as I've told you, I have no interest in being romantically attached to anyone. I appreciate your concern, but you might have an easier time convincing Arabella to find a partner." I knew very well that there was no chance of my sister finding a partner. Like me, she had grown up with a sour taste of the word "relationship" left in her mouth.
The hidden arguments. The passive-aggressive insults. The petty bickering and backstabbing they did, all to avoid getting divorced and bringing shame to the Rook family name. And all the while, they'd drip-fed their poison to Arabella and me until we'd been so sick to our stomachs over the thought of family , there wasn't a chance in hell we'd make any of our own.
"Then, I will go see them," she said stiffly.
I gestured to the door with my health bar. "By all means. I hear there's something supernatural about the place. I wish you luck, Mother."
"Knox, when did you become so—so—" She grappled for the right word, her gaze fluttering away in frustration.
"Independent?" I supplied. "I believe you taught me that."
Silvia Rook stared me down with a mixture of irritation and resignation in her gaze. "You will continue the Rook name, Knox."
Like hell, I would. "If you say so," I murmured.
"I'll be in touch, son. When you are happy and settled, you will thank me."
I was happy and quite settled, but I didn't bother to tell her that. I took another bite of my bar and watched her leave with clacking heels and a rigid spine. Sighing, I chucked the health bar into the waste basket to my right. Nothing made me lose my appetite faster than talking about love.