6. Dr. Beckett Whistler
Dr. Beckett Whistler
“Dr. Whistler?” Peony, the charge nurse, walks into the small room just as I’m about to take a bite of my sub sandwich.
I’ve worked with Peony for a while. She’s close to my age, twenty-seven or twenty-eight.
Most importantly, she’s quiet, but competent.
She doesn’t annoy me the way most of the newer nurses do.
“We need you immediately. There’s an older woman who fell. ”
I sigh and put the sandwich back in its wrapper, then toss it in the tiny fridge. “What do I need to know?”
“She’s a frequent flyer here, so I think you two have met.” Peony says it drily, and I’m immediately concerned about which one of our accident-prone E.R. regulars now requires my attention.
Peony hands me a folder with a chart. I flip the file open.
June MacCord.
Immediately, a swoop of alarm hits my stomach. “What’s wrong with her?”
“She fell. She seems cognizant, and isn’t in too much pain on her injured foot, but we’re concerned about an injury to the other ankle. She’s definitely got some swelling. Said she had a hankering for cookies and fell off her scooter.”
I scrub a hand down my beard, tugging on it with irritation. Cookies? At two in the morning? And how did she fall off the scooter? I brought it over for her so that she wouldn’t fall. It was supposed to be June-proof.
“What room is she in?” I grit out through clenched teeth.
“Seventeen.” She starts to walk away, but calls over her shoulder, “Good luck, Doctor.”
I’m tired. I’m hungry. And now I have to deal with June. Will my neighbor ever cease being a source of annoyance?
My footsteps are heavy as I paste on what I hope is a passably professional face. I knock twice on the heavy wood door before opening it. My eyes take in the room, and everything stops.
June MacCord sits on a hospital bed, a warm blanket across her lap and her feet elevated.
Standing next to her, staring at me, is June MacCord’s granddaughter.
I haven’t seen her since early yesterday when I creeped on her and her boyfriend’s goodbye.
She doesn’t wear wedding rings, so the guy isn’t her spouse—yet.
Their goodbye was weird. It was a long hug, and I swore I would leave when they started kissing, but they never did.
She was not dressed then as she is now, but I was still distracted by her. She’s pretty.
And now she’s here. In front of me. Wearing bright pink pajamas with a button-up shirt and matching pink shorts.
Our gazes lock. I am frozen. I cannot move. Why is this woman here in my E.R. and dressed like this? Why do I like it so much?
June cackles. “I knew you’d take care of me!”
The granddaughter scowls at me, and I turn my attention to June. She is my patient, even if the toned arms and hint of legs on her granddaughter are distracting.
“June,” I grumble. “What now?”
“Well, do you want the long story or the short version?”
“Which one will help me know what we need to do to get you back home and out of my hair?” I quip.
The granddaughter opens her mouth as she watches my exchange with June. She might be about to speak, but June butts in.
“That would be the long story.” She pats her granddaughter’s hand. “But first, would you get Brookie Cookie here a chair? She insists she won’t sit until I’ve been seen by a doctor.”
Brookie Cookie? I hope against hope that this is a nickname, and that the attractive woman who is currently my neighbor wasn’t born to insane parents who love rhymes.
But June is her grandmother, so absolutely nothing is off the table.
And wait, didn’t June say something about cookies being the reason she’s here?
Does Brooke have anything to do with this?
I turn and grab the chair from beside the door.
“He’s very attractive, don’t you think, Brookie?” June whispers loudly enough that everyone knows I heard her.
I take a moment before turning around and pretend I didn’t just hear a seventy-six-year-old woman ogle me.
When I place the chair by June, I catch a glimpse of Brooke’s face. It’s mottled red.
June pats the chair. “Come on. Sit down, Brooke, and then I can tell Doc here all about what happened.”
Brooke shuffles around the bed and sits in the chair, her eyes on anything but me. I, however, cannot look away from her legs—they’re tan and muscular and end in fluffy pink slippers.
“It all started when I was watching that baking show Brooke likes,” June starts, breaking my leg-induced trance.
I look at Brooke, fixing her with a stern glare. She should know better.
Brooke’s eyes widen, and she opens her mouth, then shuts it again.
“Yep.” June nods. “She left it in the DVCR. The one on Netflix about cake that looks like real things.”
“Meemaw,” Brooke interjects. “You’re making it sound like this is my fault.”
“Who said that? Because I didn’t.”
Brooke’s cheeks flush, and she stares me directly in the eye. There’s a fire there. It’s intriguing. “I can assure you that I was not intending for this to happen. I watched an episode of Is it Cake? and went to bed. I didn’t think I’d need to log out of Netflix to prevent a problem.”
Ok, she has a point. This really isn’t her fault .
“Then what?” I ask gruffly.
June pats Brooke’s hand again. “Then I decided I needed to have a treat and teach those hooligans a lesson.”
What hooligans? And what lesson?
“At two in the morning?” I inquire.
June’s blue eyes pin me with their glare.
“If those young people can bake such ridiculous contraptions, surely my cookies are worth a prize. I was going to bake them and mail them to the show. Teach those hotshot bakers that real food doesn’t need to masquerade as something else.
It can just be food. Your generation is so full of overcomplicating everything.
It’s like when people slide into DMs on that internet business.
Either you’re sleeping together or you’re not. ”
Brooke’s hand flies to her mouth. I cram my eyes shut at June’s bluntness.
“Ok, then.” I blow out a breath. “I’m still not sure how you fell off your scooter.”
“Oh, well, I couldn’t reach the ingredients, so I stood on it.”
“You stood on the scooter? The scooter that rolls? You stood on it?”
“Well, I couldn’t very well get a stool to stand on with this ball and chain.” June gestures to her cast-clad foot.
“Yeah, and common sense is a flower that doesn’t grow in everyone’s garden,” I retort, but regret it immediately when Brooke’s blue eyes snap to mine in indignation at my tone.
June cackles. “Your meemaw taught you that?”
I shrug before I drag my eyes away from the challenge in Brooke’s. “Let’s take a look at what we’re dealing with.”
I gesture to June’s legs while sliding gloves over my hands.
“Swollen,” I announce as I run my hands over her ankle. “Are you in pain?”
“Not really. It hurt like the dickens at first, but I drank some moonshine before the ambulance people took me away from my home.”
I scowl as I glare at Brooke. “You let her drink moonshine?”
“I stopped her as soon as I could, but it wasn’t easy to pry the bottle away.”
“Yeah, well, now we don’t totally know what we’re dealing with, so that’s not helpful at all.”
Brooke’s fists clench at the sides of her pajama shorts, drawing my attention back to her legs.
She stands up, and I’m amazed at her tiny stature but giant personality.
“I don’t think it’s your job , Doctor Beckett Whistler, to tell me that I’m not enough.
It is your job, Doctor Beckett Whistler, to help my grandmother get better.
Do no harm—the Hippocratic Oath. Any of those ring a bell? ”
My hand is on June’s shin, but my mind is backfiring. Brooke said my full name. And I really liked how it sounded coming from her lips. I didn’t like the anger directed at me behind her voice, but my sarcasm and poor people skills make it my own fault.
June coughs, and I move my hand. “I’m ordering X-rays. They’ll wheel you back in a bit. I don’t think you’ve broken your non-surgically repaired ankle, but we need to be sure. You can follow up with your surgeon tomorrow if the X-ray shows anything. Good night, Miss June.”
I escape the room before either of them can say anything else.
Peony stops me in the hall, where I lean against the wall. I’m breathing hard and heavy after that because it’s the middle of the night and my cortisol just skyrocketed. And, also Brooke. I can’t get her out of my mind.
“Dr. Whistler?” Peony asks, leaning on the handles of an empty wheelchair. “You alright?”
I let out a heavy sigh. “Yeah. Miss June’s my neighbor. And she’s … a lot.”
Peony laughs, and the sound is nice. I study her face for a moment. She’s pretty enough, with long brown hair, deep brown eyes, and a smile that quirks up on one side, but when I look at her, nothing is there. No flare of attraction, no desire to interact with her on more than a professional level.
“That’s one way to put it,” Peony replies before opening the door to June MacCord’s room and bringing the wheelchair inside.
I watch as she sashays around me, her strides athletic and long, and her movements graceful.
And it does nothing . Objectively, Peony is attractive.
But I have no interest. I was hoping that my interactions with June MacCord’s granddaughter were a fluke.
That my brain and body are just experiencing biological urges after four years of nothing.
The fact that I feel attraction around Brooke and no one else is very, very bad news.