Chapter 5 #2
“Can I be honest with you, Olivia—can I call you Olivia?”
“Everyone calls me Livi. Or Liv. Some people back in university used to call me Vivi,” she rambled without taking a breath. “It’s rare someone ever uses my full name, except my mother when she is trying to be assertive.”
“Livi.” It felt too right, too strangely perfect rolling from my tongue and touching my lips. “Back to your stress levels—”
“What about you? Do you have a nickname?”
“Unfortunately, no one ever gave me a nickname. I’ve been plain and boring Elliott Dade since the day I was born.”
“Elliott is quite a hard one to shorten without making it a girl’s name.”
“Anyway, back to your—”
She tapped her chin and hummed, “What about Dr. D?”
My eyes widened behind my glasses as she burst into a fit of wheezing laughter.
“Shit, sorry, I didn’t mean to give you a porno name!”
I frowned. “A porno name?”
She grabbed at her chest as another strangled breathless laugh escaped, the corners of her eyes glistening with tears. “You know, Dr. D is here to give you some of his D.”
Despite the fact that I was likely never to see her again, I couldn’t shake off the rush it gave me hearing her laugh. The lightness of it, the way it worked itself into my sternum and lit a small fire in my chest.
It was like being dealt three aces.
I tapped my pen against the chart, fighting back my own smile. “Let’s get back to what’s important here. Looking at your X-ray, I have no doubt that your bloods will sing from the same hymn sheet. You didn’t have a heart attack, Livi. I’m almost certain you suffered an anxiety attack.”
That was one way to kill her laughter.
She blinked slowly, her tongue rolling along her bottom lip. “But I don’t suffer from anxiety.”
“Anxiety attacks are the body’s way of telling you to stop when you’re overwhelmed. Were you feeling overwhelmed before the attack?”
“Maybe a little.”
“Want to talk to me about it?”
Her gaze dropped to the bedsheet contorted around her legs. “How much time do you have? I mean, where do I even start?”
“Anywhere you feel comfortable. I may not be able to fix what is overwhelming you, but I can help you find ways to handle those situations that don’t result in you feeling like you did before.”
She exhaled slowly. “My sister fucked my ex-boyfriend behind my back, oh, and now they are getting married. But everyone just wants me to be okay about it, as if it wasn’t the biggest fucking betrayal of the freaking century.”
“I see.”
“My biological father is sick. He has no one left in his life, only me, and now I feel responsible for him even though he doesn’t have a clue who I am anymore,” she continued.
“The client I am working with at the moment is driving me insane, but I can’t walk away, not when she could ruin my entire career. ”
“Anything else?”
“Don’t forget about my mother. That woman would make a nun swear.
If she isn’t ruining the job I’ve always dreamt of doing, then she makes it her life mission to make underhanded comments about my appearance.
Oh, not to forget, cause she is technically my boss, she’s forcing me to plan my sister’s wedding.
But that was right after she tried to set me up with a creepy old man to help me ‘get over my ex’. ”
Fucking hell, I thought I had family problems. The Garcia family were about to put the Dades to shame with this sort of soap-opera shit.
“Right before the...episode, I lied and said I had a boyfriend. I needed her to stop talking, to stop trying to make what my sister and Daniel did okay by setting me up with pensioners.”
“That’s...a lot.”
“Tell me about it.” Her lips rolled together. “Everyone expects me to keep it all together. To be okay with all the shit they keep throwing at me, to grin and bear it.”
“Honestly, with that much on your plate, it would be abnormal for you not to be stressed out.”
Slowly, her tear-filled gaze found mine. “I think I’ve been trying to hold it together because I didn’t want to give them the satisfaction of seeing me fall apart, you know?”
Just as I opened my mouth, Dr. Lorenzo appeared around the curtain, shielding the bed.
Fuck. Busted.
“Sorry to interrupt,” she said with a fake sweetness that would have rotted teeth. “There is an urgent call for you at the nurse’s station, Dr. Dade.”
A lie, and if she didn’t hold my job in the palm of her hands, I would have called her out on it in front of the patient.
But I needed my job too much to risk it.
“Dr. Lorenzo is going to take over your care now, Livi,” I said, handing Zara the chart.
Livi’s brow creased. “Oh, can’t you stay?”
“No,” Zara answered on my behalf. “Dr. Dade has somewhere else to be right now.”
Livi offered a small smile. “Well, thank you for helping me, Dr. D.”
Zara placed herself directly between the bed and me. Behind the professional smile, a fire that threatened to scorch me alive burned in her gaze. “I’ve got it from here. Go. Now.”
Glancing over Zara’s shoulder, I took what was likely my last glance at Livi, unable to stop myself from sketching the shape of her eyes and the curve of her lips to my memory, before storming out of the hospital.
It was almost impossible to ignore the two not-so-subtle security guards tracking me until I was outside. Once I was no longer being followed, I bypassed my usual gambling hole and went straight home.
Well, almost straight home.
First, I bought a bottle of vodka as a reward for avoiding the casino. Plus, it was the perfect mixer for Xanax to drown out whatever little hope still lived inside me.