Chapter 5
FIVE
ALLY
The next morning, I show up to work at seven forty-five, just in time to catch Dr. Malone coming out of his office.
“Miss Parker,” he says curtly, moving to walk past me. He’s wearing scrubs again, and the mint green color suits him. His dark hair’s a bit rumpled, like he’s been running his hand through it.
“Wait!” I blurt. “I brought your lunch.”
I’m pretty proud of my first lunch effort: there’s a kale salad with grilled chicken and goat cheese, a Greek yogurt, and a square of dark chocolate for dessert. He said he ate pretty clean, but dark chocolate’s one of the healthier dessert options. Maybe it’ll sweeten him up.
I pull the insulated navy blue lunch bag out of my purse. “Should I leave it in a fridge somewhere?”
“I’ll take it.” He takes the lunch, then gives me a quizzical look. “You bought me a lunch bag?”
“Well, I used your money, but yeah.”
His eyes crinkle at the corners, just a little. “Right. Thanks.”
He takes off down the hall before I can ask him what he’d like me to do today.
I can’t help but notice how good he looks from the back. Broad shoulders, cut triceps, and a really nice ass. It doesn’t seem fair that Mother Nature blessed this man with the brains of a neurosurgeon and the body of a GQ model. One or the other should have been enough.
I walk into the outer office and find that Celine hasn’t arrived yet, but a second desk has appeared in the corner. It’s a battered wooden thing half the size of Celine’s, but it still feels like a victory. I’ve also been given my own computer, chair, and phone.
I dump my purse into the bottom drawer of the desk and log in to the computer. Heather Larkin has sent me calendar invites to a number of meetings, as well as an email titled Important Meetings.
Hi Alexandra,
I hope you’re settling in well with Dr. Malone! I’ve sent you several meeting invites to add to his calendar. The most important is the multidisciplinary strategic communication meeting next Wednesday. If this date doesn’t work, please suggest some alternate dates that would suit him.
Kind regards,
Heather
Okay. This is not ideal. I wasn’t lying when I told Dr. Malone I didn’t think I could persuade him to do anything he didn’t want to do. But Heather definitely expects me to get him there. She’s even willing to move the meeting to a time when he’s free.
And as Dr. Malone pointed out yesterday, Heather’s the one who hired me.
As I’m considering this problem, Celine sweeps into the office and greets me with a nod.
“Good morning, Celine,” I say brightly. “Thanks so much for getting me a desk.”
“No problem,” she says briskly as she turns on her computer.
“I was thinking of grabbing a coffee,” I say. “Can I get you something? And maybe a muffin?” If I’d been smart, I’d have picked up coffee for Celine and Dr. Malone on my way in.
Well, herbal tea for Dr. Malone. I still can’t believe that man isn’t a coffee drinker.
“No, thanks.” Celine barely looks up from her monitor.
“Okay.” Strike one on making friends with my office mate. And now I have no excuse to make a coffee run.
Celine’s phone rings, and she spends the next half hour on the phone with patients.
“I’d be happy to help answer the phone,” I offer, when she finally gets a break. “I could help book appointments or make reminder calls, whatever you need. I used to work reception at a family medicine office.”
“I’m good, thanks,” Celine replies.
Strike two on making friends with Celine. But maybe she’s one of those people who are slow to warm up.
“Let me know if you change your mind,” I say pleasantly. “And Celine, when you have a minute, I was hoping you could fill me in on how Dr. Malone’s schedule works? So I can make sure his administrative responsibilities don’t conflict with his clinical work?”
Celine purses her lips as though she’s sucked a lemon, but she answers.
“He’s in the outpatient clinic Monday afternoons and all day Friday,” she explains. “Tuesdays and Thursdays he’s in the OR all day.
“Okay.” That actually doesn’t sound too bad. It’s less than a forty-hour week. “So he might be available for a meeting next Wednesday, then?”
Celine gives me a pitying look. “We keep Wednesdays clear,” she explains. “He’s on call most Tuesdays, and he often has to operate in the night.”
“Right.” I guess I can’t begrudge the man a day of rest. “So he’s off on Wednesdays—”
“Oh, no,” Celine interrupts. “Unless he operates all night, he uses Wednesdays for research.”
“So the best time for a meeting would be a Monday morning?”
Celine’s brow wrinkles. “Probably not. He spends Monday mornings reviewing charts for the patients he’s going to see in the clinic that week. He also does teaching sessions for the residents sometimes.”
“Got it. I guess I’ll have to ask him for a time that would work.”
“Yep.” Celine turns back to her computer.
“Do you think he’ll be back here at some point today?”
“No. It’s Tuesday, so he’s in the OR all day.” Her phone rings again, ending our conversation.
Since I don’t have anything else to do, I spend the rest of the morning scouring recipe sites for lunch ideas for the boss. When that’s done, I start scouring the web for job postings, since I’m starting to doubt I’ll last long in this one.
Celine steps out around lunchtime, presumably to go to the cafeteria, and I pull my lunch out of my desk drawer.
It’s the same lunch as the one I packed for Dr. Malone, except I have sour gummy worms for dessert instead of dark chocolate.
Unlike him, I’m a big fan of refined sugar, especially when it comes in the form of sour candy.
And I’m biting into a gummy worm when the door opens and Dr. Malone strolls in. He frowns at the half-eaten candy in my hand.
“You don’t like gummy worms?” I ask him.
He raises an eyebrow. “Do you know what’s in those things?”
“Well, sugar, I guess,” I reply with a shrug. “And gelatin, probably. They taste better when you don’t think about it too much. Want one?”
The shake of his head tells me he despairs of my approach to nutrition. “Try not to get sugar on the desk,” he says brusquely. “The last thing we need in here is mice.”
I glance down and see that a few grains of the sugar coating have found their way onto the scarred surface of my desk.
“Sorry,” I say quickly. “I’ll clean it up, I promise.”
He nods. “Lunch was good,” he says, handing me the lunch bag. “Thank you.”
“No problem.” I unzip the lunch bag, planning to rinse the Tupperware and cutlery, and realize everything’s already clean.
“You washed the containers out,” I blurt.
“There’s a sink in the lounge,” he says with a nod. He turns and leaves, and I realize that he came back to his office just to bring me back his lunch bag.
And I missed the opportunity to talk to him about going to the meeting.
I send Heather a vague reply, explaining that Dr. Malone is in the OR today but I’ll talk to him about the meeting as soon as I can.
The next opportunity comes the following morning. When I arrive at seven forty-five, Dr. Malone’s sitting in his office with the door open, glaring at his computer. His chin is covered with stubble, as though he hasn’t shaved this morning.
I knock nervously on the open door, and he looks up.
“Morning, Alexandra,” he says.
“Morning, Dr. Malone.” I walk to his desk and hand him his lunch. There are smudges of fatigue under his eyes, and I remember that he’s on call most Tuesday nights. Today’s Wednesday, so he might have had to operate in the night. Maybe he hasn’t shaved because he never made it home.
It’s probably not the best time to nag him about going to a meeting.
On the other hand, I’m not sure there will ever be a good time to nag him about going to a meeting, so I gather my courage.
“Uh, Dr. Malone, Heather Larkin is trying to organize a meeting about multidisciplinary strategic communication. Would next Wednesday morning work with your schedule?”
“I don’t have time for this, Alexandra,” he says wearily.
“Heather’s willing to reschedule to a time that works for you,” I try. “She says it’s important.”
“Heather thinks a lot of things are important,” he scoffs. “This sounds like an excuse to whine that doctors are bad communicators.”
“I’m not sure,” I say carefully. “But it sounds like something that would be good to discuss with Heather? Maybe at the meeting on Wednesday?”
He rolls his eyes. “No. I’m not going, Alexandra.”
Well, that’s fairly definitive. Dr. Malone seems like a pretty clear communicator, on this issue at least. I’ll just have to tell Heather he said no. “Okay. Is there any other work I could help you with?”
“I guess you could start dealing with my emails,” he says with a sigh. He gestures to a chair on the opposite side of his desk. “You can pull that chair around, and I’ll show you what to do.”
I move the chair and sit next to him, and get a subtle whiff of cedar and musk. I don’t know if it’s soap or cologne, but it smells damned good.
He angles his monitor so I can see the screen and types in his login information. “Here’s the password,” he says, clicking the eye icon so it’s no longer hidden. His password is StrawberryFields8!.
“Beatles fan?” I ask.
“I like the song,” he says with a shrug. He clicks through to his inbox, and I blink at the screen. He has a hundred and fifty-seven unread messages. No wonder Heather thought he needed another assistant.
“You want me to sort these for you?” I ask. “By urgency, or subject, or . . .”
His lips twitch. “No, Alexandra, I want you to deal with them. Delete anything that seems irrelevant.”
“I can’t delete your emails!” I protest.
“Sure you can,” he counters. “I’ll walk you through it. You just click on the icon that looks like a garbage can—”
I giggle in spite of myself. “I know how to delete an email,” I tell him. “What I meant was . . . what if I delete something important?”