Chapter 6
SIX
DREW
On Thursday, I’m in a pretty good mood when I walk into the surgeon’s lounge for lunch. This morning’s case was a complex spine procedure that I thought would be tough, but it went a hell of a lot better than I expected.
And that’s despite the fact that I barely got four hours of sleep last night. The insomnia still hasn’t improved. Since today’s an OR day, I forced myself to go to bed at ten last night, even though I hadn’t made nearly enough progress on my research abstract.
But I couldn’t find sleep, or maybe sleep couldn’t find me. I finally got up and made a cup of chamomile tea, which was supposed to reduce stress and promote sleep. It looked like piss and tasted worse, but I’d be willing to put up with that if it worked as advertised.
But it didn’t work, and I still couldn’t sleep. If this keeps up, I may be forced to take Dr. Barrett’s advice and try a yoga class with my sister.
I grab my lunch from the fridge and join Luke Carlton and Austin Davenport at a table. Luke’s a general surgeon and Austin does plastics, and they’re two of my closest friends at the hospital.
I sit down and unzip my lunch bag, curious to see what Alexandra sent today. There’s a salad with chickpeas, avocado, corn and feta cheese. She’s also packed an apple, some roasted almonds, and a square of dark chocolate.
It looks a hell of a lot better than the cafeteria sandwich Austin’s eating. Luke’s got a homemade lunch too, spaghetti and meatballs in a thermos, and it looks pretty decent.
But my lunch looks better, and Luke and Austin are both staring at it with interest.
“Either you hired a personal chef, or you found a girlfriend,” Austin says.
“Nope,” I say with a smirk. I take a bite of the salad, which is seasoned with lime dressing. It’s delicious.
“So who made that?” Luke asks.
“My new assistant.”
“You got rid of Celine?” Austin asks.
“Of course not. Heather Larkin thought I needed a second assistant, so she hired me one.”
“To make you lunch?” Luke asks incredulously.
“No, to spy on me and pester me to come to meetings,” I reply. “But I agreed to let her stay in exchange for lunch preparation.”
“The salad looks decent,” Austin says with a chuckle. “Do you think she’d make lunch for me, too?”
“No,” I say firmly.
“I’d pay her, obviously,” Austin persists.
“No. Find your own assistant.” And maybe it comes out a little too quickly, because Austin and Luke look a lot more curious now.
“Is she cute?” Austin asks.
“She’s okay. Tall and skinny, with glasses.” It’s not exactly a lie, but it deliberately understates her appeal. Skinny’s the wrong word for Alexandra. She’s lithe and toned, and although her breasts aren’t big, they’re perfectly shaped.
Yes, I’ve noticed.
Oh, and those cat-eye glasses are sexy as hell. But obviously I’m not going to admit that to Austin and Luke.
“So does this assistant do anything besides lunch?” Luke asks.
“I put her in charge of my email.”
“Huh,” Austin says thoughtfully. “So if I want to hire her to cook for me, I can reach her through your email?”
“You can try,” I retort. “But I told her to delete any messages that no reasonable person would care about.”
Luke laughs, and Austin turns to him. “Do you think Melissa would make lunch for me?” he asks innocently. “Because your spaghetti looks pretty good, and—”
“No,” Luke interrupts, scowling at Austin. “She absolutely would not.”
That was a predictable reaction. Austin dated Melissa a couple of times back in the fall, before she and Luke got together.
This was before anyone knew that Melissa had been Luke’s high school girlfriend, and he still had a major thing for her.
Luke was jealous as hell, and apparently he even crashed one of Austin and Melissa’s dates.
Austin still likes to tease him about it.
“How is Melissa?” I ask.
“She’s great,” Luke says. “I moved in with her a few weeks ago.”
“Luke, on the other hand, is no fun anymore,” Austin complains. “He doesn’t want to do anything without Melissa, or talk about anything other than Melissa. And he’s always got this goofy look on his face, like he’s thinking about—”
Luke crumples his napkin into a ball and throws it at Austin.
Austin catches the napkin before it hits his cheek. “Unprofessional behavior, Luke,” he complains. “And in front of the department chief, no less.”
I roll my eyes at Austin. I get this sort of joking a lot, and it’s gotten old. I never wanted to be the department chief; I’m a surgeon, not an administrator. And I definitely never wanted to be the one policing the behavior of the other members of my department.
“What, you’re not going to do anything about this?” Austin persists. “Luke threw a napkin at me!”
“I can’t do anything without a written complaint,” I tell him. “Fill out an incident report.”
“Fuck, Drew, I don’t even know what that is.”
“Send me an email, then, to the hospital address. I’m sure Alexandra could use a good laugh.”
“That’s her name?” Luke asks. “Your new assistant?”
“Yeah.”
“That’s a good name,” Austin muses. “Maybe I’ll swing by your office, ask her about the lunch idea—”
I crumple my own napkin into a ball and hurl it at Austin, and watch with satisfaction as it bounces off his nose.
“What was that?” Austin asks, in mock outrage. “I thought you were supposed to be a role model, Drew?”
“I am a role model,” I tell him. “I’m hoping to start a trend.” Maybe if everyone starts throwing napkins at Austin, he’ll stop teasing people about their girlfriends. And their admin assistants.
Luke stands from the table and yawns. “Late night,” he explains sheepishly.
I wonder if he was working last night, or if he suffers from insomnia too. If he ever loses his focus in the OR.
“Something keeping you up at night?” Austin asks Luke with a smirk. “Or someone keeping you up?”
Luke rolls his eyes at him. “Shut up.”
“He moved in with Melissa,” Austin says with a shrug.
Right. Luke doesn’t have insomnia, he has a girlfriend. And Austin wasn’t wrong—Luke does look a bit goofy. He’s been with Melissa for over six months, but he still has the moony expression of man in love. And the satisfied look of a man who’s getting regular sex.
Unfortunately, that’s never been my experience with relationships.
I’ve only ever lived with one woman—Elyse—and that seemed to mostly involve regular nagging.
Elyse complained about the amount of time I spent at work, and the amount of time I spent working while I was at home, and the fact that I wasn’t ‘spontaneously romantic.’
Elyse wasn’t wrong—I was never spontaneously romantic, probably because I wasn’t in love with her. The whole thing felt like a lot of work; more work than my job, ironically.
I finish my lunch and wash the Tupperware and cutlery, then walk to my office to take the lunch bag back to Alexandra.
As I walk down the hall, I pull out my phone and reread the text she sent me yesterday.
Alexandra Parker (assistant).
It’s cute that she added ‘assistant’. As though I might forget who she is.