Chapter Six
On my second day off in a row, since my husband was still working, I couldn’t resist the opportunity to join my mom on a shopping expedition to help Heath redecorate his condo.
I’m not sure what was more fun, getting our trio back together again or mercilessly teasing Heath about some of the great possibilities he had open for redecoration.
“Why did I let you two drag me to IKEA of all places?” he said grumpily as we made it down yet another aisle full of ridiculous room suggestions.
“Because putting together the furniture based only on badly drawn pictures is so much fun,” I quipped.
“It’s to give us ideas, Heath. Color schemes, lighting, adding knickknacks,” Mom said.
“Isn’t that what Pinterest is for?” he asked, still unconvinced.
“I like looking at three-dimensional models. It’s more inspiring.” Mom stopped to snap a pic with her phone of a lamp she liked.
“Only if you like Danish modern, which I don’t.” His eyes narrowed.
I faux-punched him in the arm. “How are we going to get ideas for your hot pink steamy love den without looking around a little? I can see it now, big fuzzy pink couch—”
“Fuzzy? From what? Mold?” He arched a blond eyebrow at me.
“Faux fur,” I scoffed.
He snorted. “That will go so well with the black and gray dungeon themed bedroom.”
I made a whipcrack sound. “I think you should pick shades of gray...like maybe 40 or, dare I say, 50 Shades of Gray?”
We both dissolved into laughter while my mom scowled. “You two stop being so silly. You’re interrupting my inspirational flow.”
I raised a brow at her. “Inspirational flow, Mom? That sounds a bit...woo woo.”
“So?” she arched a brow at me. “Artistic endeavors sometimes need a bit of woo woo.”
I waggled my eyebrows. “Not to be confused with all the woo hoo that will be happening on Heath’s fuzzy pink couch.”
“Woo hoo? So, we’re playing Sims now?” Heath said. “Do I need to put you in the swimming pool and take out the ladder?”
“Whatever, dude. You are so getting a furry pink loooove couch for your front room.”
He scowled. “Very funny. Pink is not my color.”
Later, after the grand tour of the display rooms, we went upstairs for lunch. Apparently as much as he liked to diss the furniture, Heath did love the IKEA Swedish meatballs.
“So, tell us about the residency. What’s it like actually being a doctor?” Heath asked between enthusiastic bites of gravy-soaked mashed potatoes to go with his meatballs.
“Fun, exhausting. Fulfilling. It’s pretty much all over the place. The schedule can get grueling at times. But working with patients is very rewarding.”
“But the hours are long,” Mom prompted.
“Yeah, well. Mostly you get used to it, though long call makes my eyeballs cross.”
“Long call?” Heath asked.
“Thirty-hour shifts. It’s purgatory.” I rolled my eyes. “Though it would be a lot better if my senior resident wasn’t such a jerkface.”
“Isn’t that Doctor Jerkface?” Heath smirked.
“Dr. Jerkface. I like the sound of that.” I nodded. “Fitting.”
Mom frowned, clearly concerned. “What’s he doing?”
I recounted our rough first day where he got his back up because I pointed out his sexist choice of words. “And it all went downhill from there. He’s super defensive and hyper critical. Makes comments about my chart notations, saying they’re too precise and therefore I’m spending too long on them, which is a waste of valuable time. My attending physicians have said they like my charts, by the way. But this guy also calls me out a lot, pointing out mistakes in front of fellow residents, voluntelling me for stuff on the floor. And the worst part is that since he’s in charge of assigning rotations, he has me on the same one as him. So, I have to put up with him every day and I can’t even tell myself that next month, I won’t have to work with him. Over the next few months, I have three straight rotations in a row scheduled like this. Another intern said it’s because he thinks I’m no competition for him so it’s making him look better to our attendings. Nice, huh? It’s really starting to piss me off.”
“Huh.” Heath blew out a breath, shook his head and shoved some more food in his mouth.
“What’s so funny about that?” I glared at him, mildly irritated.
“To me, it doesn’t sound like he’s out to get you. Sounds like he’s into you.”
My glare sharpened. “Please.”
Mom raised a brow and nodded her head slowly. “Sounds like it to me, too.”
“What? No. I’m married.” I gestured to my left hand. “Like you could miss this rock? It’s not even a little bit subtle.”
“Doesn’t even matter, Mia,” Heath countered, having come up for air from his pile of mashed potatoes. “He could be telling his little self that you’re just waiting for something to tip the scales to bail out of your marriage and he might just be that someone to... tip your scales.” He gave me a sly grin and a wink.
I made a gagging noise. “Are you saying all this to get back at me for the pink fuzzy couch comments? Because you’re truly making me nauseous right now.”
Mom shook her head. “Mia, you should at least be careful. This might develop into something you eventually have to take to human resources. If I were you, I’d document everything that happens that makes you uncomfortable. The date it happened, the time, the location, whether there were witnesses, and all that. It might amount to nothing, but if it ends up becoming something, then you have the incidents to back it up.”
I bit my lip. She had a point. As for what had already occurred, it had only been a few weeks, and I could list out most of the stuff so far from memory.I made a mental note to sit down and do that tonight.
“I’ll take that under advisement. For right now, I think I can handle it, but you never know, he could get intolerable. Whether he likes or hates me, the motivation behind his actions isn’t my problem or concern. I’m not there to make him happy. I’m there for my patients and my attending physicians. Who cares what his reasons are?”
“The reason is he wants to get naked with you.” Heath waggled his eyebrows.
I threw a French fry at him, and fortunately he took the hint and shut up.
Nevertheless, let’s just say I wasn’t overly excited for my next shift at work.
Ultimately, the senior resident wasn’t my boss. My bosses were my attending physicians and those were the ones I was striving to learn from and impress.
In the ensuing days, things didn’t get much better. Dr. Iverson became even more critical about my charts and scheduled me for extra time to review my peers’ charts—under his supervision.
It was totally uncalled for, as my current attending had specifically complimented my chart notes. Iverson, however, required this one-on-one activity that lasted at least an hour after a shift. I was starting to wonder if Heath’s suspicions didn’t have a bit of truth to them.
I wrote everything down, and after that first week, made sure to dip out at the end of my shifts before he saw me. If he wanted to complain to my superiors about my refusal to meet with him, then I had ammo to throw at him in return.
After a week of ignoring his requests to meet, he dropped it.
In November, the holiday party gave me an opportunity I hadn’t anticipated, since everyone brought their significant others as a plus one. I was willing to take the opportunity to find out once and for all if Heath might be right. Why not turn a boring social occasion into a fact-finding mission?
I wore my finest dress, black, strapless with a hem above the knee, and the most stunning arm candy. I wasn’t one to turn down a chance to flaunt my ridiculously gorgeous husband to the world.
The party was a lovely affair at a hotel just over the city border, in the Anaheim Resort area. There was live music and great food and a humorous white elephant gift exchange which—I soon discovered—when combined with the average doctor’s humor made it downright hilarious. Everything from duck-themed “quack” mugs to a t-shirt that read, “As a great doctor once wrote....” followed by lines of illegible squiggle.
I predicted that joke wasn’t going to last many more generations before dying out, as most doctors nowadays documented their work and sent prescriptions electronically. I was no different.
“That explains so many things about why I can’t read your love notes to me,” Adam whispered into my ear.
I laughed and turned to him. “Aside from the fact that I never write them? The only way to your heart, mister, is through your phone.”
He put a hand on his chest. “You wound me.”
I leaned in, playfully touching the tip of my nose to his. “I’m sure it takes a lot more than dissing your phone to wound you.”
He cracked a devastating smile. “The three of us have many happy memories together.”
“From a certain point of view...” I arched my brow. “Definitely not mine.” He made a faux pouty face and I laughed, leaning in to kiss him. “You aren’t dying of boredom, are you?”
He shook his head. “No. It’s interesting. I’m seldom outside of my own geeky gamer bubble to socialize with normals.”
“These are definitely not normals. These are geeks of a different persuasion. Instead of gaming, they read big fat boring medical journals and talk shop about weird diagnoses, bizarre symptoms, and hypochondriacs.”
His gaze flicked past me and then returned to mine. “Tell me why that one dude over there keeps staring at us. Do you know him?”
So as not to be obvious, I turned to follow who he was indicating while reaching for something in my purse. When my gaze met Dr. Iverson’s, my gut twisted. The minute our eyes met, he looked away, back at the emcee who was currently directing the white elephant exchange.
My eyes narrowed and I watched him for a moment, but his head didn’t move again. I turned back to Adam. “He was staring at us?”
“Off and on, for a while. He attempted to disguise it a few times when I tried to pin him down.”
“Hmm.” I faked ignorance. “Maybe he’s a hardcore gamer or something.”
Adam rolled his eyes. “I have trouble believing that even the hardest core gamer would be able to recognize me on sight in a random nongamer setting like this.”
“Well, it’s either that or he finds you incredibly hot.” I grin. “If that’s the case, then I have to say he’s got excellent taste.”
He arched a dark brow at me, undeterred. “Are you sure you aren’t the one he finds incredibly hot? And ditto the sentiment.”
I swallowed but didn’t say anything and endeavored to change the subject before Adam asked me if I knew him.
But my mind was on that for the rest of the night, unable to get what Heath had said out of my head. Why else would he be staring at us if it wasn’t some sort of weird hope that he might have a shot with me? Once the idea was there, I couldn’t get it out of my head.
The only thing that distracted me? When Louisa’s husband pulled out his phone to show us their latest ultrasound. I examined it, expanding the image out to have a good hard look at it. I gave a little smile the second I saw it—the baby’s gender. However, I had no idea if Louisa was avoiding looking at it so she wouldn’t see.
We’d learned how to read these things during our OB/GYN rotation in medical school. “Uh, so are you keeping the gender secret or don’t want to know yourself?”
Louisa smiled. “No, I was just testing you to see if you could tell what it’s going to be. We’re not having one of those crazy-ass gender reveal parties or anything, don’t worry.”
I laughed. “I’m thinking that the doctor equivalent of doing a gender reveal would be just passing around the high-res ultrasound for everyone to look at.”
She grinned. Maybe that was her low-key plan.
Adam had pulled out his phone, only half paying attention to our conversation—or maybe hiding his own discomfort about the subject of the conversation.
“So,” I asked quietly so as to not spoil their news for everyone else. “What’s his name?”
“We have a shortlist. Will let you know when we decide.”
I couldn’t help noticing how she kept rubbing a hand over her rounded belly. “Is everything okay?”
“He’s kicking a lot right now.” Then she grabbed my wrist. “Here...feel this.”
And almost as if on cue, the baby kicked right under my hand. That entire side of her belly twitched, and I gasped with surprise. How cool. I smiled.
“He’s going to need a playmate, you know,” she said to me with a sly grin and a pointed glance at Adam.
I could tell Adam was paying attention, though he wasn’t looking at us, because the minute Louisa said that, he froze like a proverbial deer in the headlights.
I immediately leaned over toward him and nudged. “I’m parched. Can you grab us some more drinks?”
“Sure.” He immediately popped out of the chair.
Louisa watched him go with a frown. “I hope I didn’t say anything wrong. If I did, I’m so sorry.”
I smiled and turned to watch Adam go, hoping he didn’t think I’d staged that to push my agenda.
I laid a hand on her upper arm. “You’re fine. But we’re not in that place yet.”
Louisa grimaced. “Sorry. I won’t do that again.”
“Tell you what, I’ll forgive you if you let me feel him kick again.”
Her mouth split in a wide grin. “Sounds like a deal.” She grabbed my hand and put it on her belly, and I was rewarded in no time.
I had to admit, if only to myself, to the twinge of envy. Maybe, at times, more than a twinge. But I reminded myself that there would be a time for us, too. I just had to keep believing it.