5. Maya
“What is wrong with me?”
Darby looked up from the box of fancy leftovers from Maya’s lunch in front of her and begrudgingly opened her mouth to speak instead of devouring the piece of steak she had just pierced with her fork.
“Are you asking to be psychoanalyzed or is this a rhetorical question?”
Maya grinned. “Both?”
As a psychiatrist-in-training, the line between friend and therapist was often blurred, especially while sitting in an empty hospital cafeteria at nine-thirty at night. With Darby in her scrubs and Maya sitting in the booth, back against the wall and legs across the seat, like she was laid on the couch at her shrink’s office, it was just too easy.
“Wanna talk it out? You usually have pretty good insight.”
She exhaled and relaxed into the wall. “Where to start? So we know that I’m the type A, only daughter of high achieving parents.” Darby laughed at this non-revelation. “I think I’ve just put so much work into getting this associateship and so much weight in what it means for my future that to have it go off the rails like this…well, it’s kind of making me feel like my future plans are going off the rails which makes me panic and do dumb things like ask my coworker if he has a girlfriend. At a bar. After knowing him for all of a day and a half. I am serious and focused, but this isn’t me.”
“That’s a good start. Also good is this steak, by the way,” Darby interjected. “Thanks for sharing.”
“No problem,” she said of the short walk across downtown from her office to the hospital for an impromptu late dinner date.
“Transference,” Darby said after swallowing a bite.
“What’s that?” Maya asked.
“You’re upset with your boss for changing the rules of your associateship, but you can’t and don’t want to be mad at him, so you’re transferring those feelings onto your co-worker.”
Maya chewed on her bottom lip as she mulled it over. “That sounds like some seriously misguided behavior.”
“It’s human behavior,” Darby said matter of factly. “You just recognize it and try to do better.”
“Yeah, I think I need to settle down. And start fresh. Again.” Maya dropped her head in her hands, realizing how silly it was.
“Third day’s the charm, right?” Darby asked. “Maybe once you get to know him, he’ll end up being your legal soulmate.”
“He can’t be. He doesn’t want to practice intellectual property law. He’s a criminal law guy.”
“Then maybe he’ll end up being Sydney’s soulmate. She is looking for a summer fling.”
Maya’s eyes widened in horror. “Darbs, no. That doesn’t leave this table. The last thing I need is Sydney complicating matters.”
Darby locked her lips and threw the imaginary key somewhere out in the cafeteria. Maya knew she could keep a secret given HIPAA and all that, so the tension in her upper back eased.
“Well, you’re not the only one who embarrassed yourself at work today. I almost vomited in the operating room.”
Maya covered her mouth to stifle a laugh. “What? Darbs, no.”
“Oh yeah. The senior resident nicknamed me Fifty Shades of Green. That one’s definitely going to follow me around for a while.”
Maya studied her face. Now that she mentioned it, her usual peachy complexion was looking a little sallow. “Aww, Darbs. I’m so sorry.”
“It comes with the territory. Have you ever heard the expression see one, do one, teach one?”
“No.” She slid her legs off of the seat and sat up, transitioning from patient to friend.
“They say it in medical training all the time,” she explained. “On my first day, I observed a chest tube insertion, so today they made me do one.”
“That’s awesome,” Maya said breathlessly. She had no idea what a chest tube was or what the procedure entailed but sticking something into someone’s chest sounded pretty major.
“Not to me. I was terrified, but I could see why you’d say that. You’d actually fit in well with the surgery residents. They’re super type A like you.” She smiled and chuckled to herself, leaving Maya to frown at the too true comparison. “I, on the other hand, have no business laying hands on living, breathing human beings.”
“Yeah, but you’ve always known that this was going to be something you’d have to get through during your first year before you got to focus on psychiatry,” Maya pointed out, recalling some of their late-night heart to hearts about their hopes for the future.
In her inner circle, Adam was family and knew her like no one else. Sydney appealed to her fiery, competitive nature and would always hype her up. And Darby was the sensitive soul she had deep, meaning-of-life kind of conversations with.
“Say that again?”
“Just that you knew it would be a necessary evil—” Maya repeated before slowing and stopping herself. “Oh. Right. I see what you’re doing here, Dr. Darby.”
“I’m not doing anything.” She grinned and picked up her fork again, then dipped it into the creamed spinach on her plate. “That’s really good advice, though. I’m going to keep it in mind. Every single morning when I’m on my way to work until this awful rotation is over.”
“What am I going to do when I have to start paying you for this kind of stuff?”
“You’ll never have to, but you can keep feeding me like this since you’ll have a real job soon, and I’ll be a poor resident for the rest of my twenties.”
“Deal. So how did your chest tube turn out?”
With a mouth full of food, Darby gave a thumbs up with a slight upturn of her closed lips.
“Badass,” Maya whispered.
Maya picked up the plastic fork she’d packed for herself and stabbed an already cut cube of steak. She popped it in her mouth, surprised to find that it tasted better than she remembered, but perhaps the company had something to do with it.
Of course she was going to show up tomorrow ready to work no matter what the assignment or circumstances were. She was Maya Hendricks, after all, and she didn’t know how to give anything less than her best effort.
* * *
“Do we even have a case?”
Maya leaned back in her chair and looked to her left to see Reed doing the same as he ran his hand over the fine, light brown stubble that covered the lower half of his face on this Wednesday morning. This case was simpler than she had originally thought, but it was theirs, and it was better than nothing. At least that’s what she kept telling herself.
“That’s what I’m wondering,” Reed said.
“Let’s play it again.” She reached for the mouse on his desk to hit replay on the security camera footage of their client, Clyde Johnson, a plumber from a small town south of Atlanta who, from all appearances, was guilty of assault and battery.
“Our client walks into the plumbing shop…” Reed said aloud, talking his way through the video to ensure they weren’t missing anything. “Has words with his former boss, Fred Prescott…throws the first and only punch…knocks him out cold…then takes off.”
“I’d be pissed off if I’d been let go from my job, too,” Maya mumbled out the side of her mouth.
“You don’t say.”
She should have been offended, but involuntarily snorted with laughter instead. Reed remained focused on the screen, but she noticed him biting down on his lip to keep from grinning at her reaction. He’d known her for all of forty-eight hours, but she’d earned that with the serious side she’d shown him so far.
“Well, it’s not okay to lay hands on someone,” he reminded her, shifting the focus back to their client and the case. “He’s lucky they didn’t get him for trespassing on private property, too,” he added as he hit replay again.
“You do know we’re supposed to be on his side, right?” she shot back. If he was gonna dish it out, so was she.
“And you do know it’s probably in all of our interests to be aware of any and all potential charges against our client. The courtroom is the last place you want to be surprised.”
Maya stared at him and coughed out a laugh. He had a legitimate point, but she wasn’t going to let him know that. “Of course I do. Just making sure you’re awake since you look like you just rolled out of bed.”
He glanced at her with questioning eyes, and she ran her hand over her chin to demonstrate his lazy scruff. He huffed a laugh and returned his attention to the monitor. “Damn, Hendricks. And here I was thinking you had blinders on—wait a minute.” He straightened up in his seat and leaned forward, reaching for the mouse to trace back a few frames. “Look right there.”
“Where am I looking?” She stared at the same scene they had watched at least a dozen times by now.
“The dark spot on the counter.” He tapped the spot on the computer screen.
“Okay.” She leaned in closer to focus on the screen as Reed played it, slowed down to frame by frame.
“Johnson moves his hand over it,” Reed pointed out, “and then it’s gone. Right?”
“Right. What do you think it is?”
“I don’t know.” He leaned back in his chair again. “Keys maybe?”
“Trespassing, assault, and theft? Yeah, I think you’ve looked at this enough.” She reached for the mouse to exit from the video player. “You need to remember you’re not a cop anymore. You’re his lawyer who’s supposed to be defending him.”
“I can’t help it,” he said with a grin.
When she realized she was full out grinning back at him, she bit down on the inside of her lip to rein it in. No. No, no, no. She was not going to indulge his southern charm and let him distract her so easily. She said it herself, they were here to work, and that’s what they were going to do.
She cleared her throat and straightened in her chair. “So plea bargain?”
“Yep,” he agreed.
“Have you ever done one?” she asked.
“Nope. You?”
“Not technically.”
“Well, I am shocked, Hendricks.”
“Shut up, Stanton.”
“Looks like you two are having fun!”
They looked up from their spots side-by-side at his desk to find Lauren standing in the open door to their office, leaned against the frame with her arms folded across her chest and a curious smile. She was really going for it, huh? While Maya stupidly inserted herself into this situation yesterday, she was starting over and backing off today. Whether something developed between them or not, she was going to give her best effort to her assigned case with hopes of closing it and joining the arts case within a few weeks.
“We’re just working on our case,” Maya explained, resuming her all-business demeanor as she used her feet to push her chair away from him and create an opening for Lauren.
“Must be more interesting than mine.” Lauren pushed herself away from the doorframe and started walking towards Reed’s desk where all the action seemed to be happening. “What do you have?”
“Not sure yet,” he answered.
Maya’s eyes narrowed on him. They knew exactly what they had, so it was interesting that he chose not to share. What was more interesting, though, was how he kept his eyes level with Lauren’s as he spoke to her, not letting them linger over other parts of her body that were at eye level considering how she was perched on the corner of his desk.
“You two aren’t working at all, are you?” Lauren asked.
“We are,” he insisted.
“Well, I just spent the last half-hour shopping for a dress to wear to this wedding I have next weekend,” Lauren confessed in a faux whisper. “Oh, don’t you look at me like that, Reed.”
“I wasn’t,” he stammered.
To his credit, he honestly hadn’t moved a muscle or batted an eye, but what the hell, Stanton? Where was the grin? The loaded look? The flirtatious come-back? She knew he had it in him, but he was falling flat on his face.
“What are you two doing for lunch? We should go out.”
“I brought my lunch today,” Maya said quickly to get herself out of another lunch since she still hadn’t recovered from yesterday’s awkward social outing.
“Reed?” Lauren asked, looking down at him with an arched brow. “There’s a great Thai place around the corner.”
“I really shouldn’t, but thanks for the offer,” he said politely. “We’ll have to check that place out some other time.”
“I’ll hold you to that.” She gave him a flirty smile as she pushed herself off his desk. “Don’t work too hard, y’all.”
Maya waved goodbye, watching Lauren walk out of their office with a puzzled expression. Yeah, no kidding, girl. She shook her head as she watched him at his computer, already busy opening up some files that came along with the case.
“You could have gone, you know.”
“Yeah, I know,” he said, typing away on his keyboard.
His reaction to that encounter was so much more mysterious than their case. “I think she wanted you to.”
“Yeah, I know that, too,” he answered in that lazy drawl of his. “So what’d you bring for lunch today?”
She was caught off guard by his question and him turning to face her as he awaited her answer. “I brought a…”
“You didn’t bring anything and now you can’t go downstairs to grab something because Lauren would see you and your cover would be blown.”
She rolled her eyes as she raised both hands. “Yes, Officer Stanton. You caught me, but you didn’t want to go either, so spare me the judgment.”
“No judgment here. I was just going to offer to pick something up for you when I go down.”
“Oh.”
“Yeah. Oh.”
“Well, I’ll take a turkey sandwich on wheat, then. Hold the mayo.” She opened her desk drawer to grab her purse, and he walked over and reached out to accept the five-dollar bill in her hand. “Thank you,” she said quietly.
“You’re welcome.” He grinned as he slid the money into his back pocket. “That’s ham with extra mayo, right?”
She groaned and rolled her eyes at the joke that he had just wasted on her. Where was this two minutes ago? She was about to turn back to her desk, assuming he was on his way out the door, until she heard his voice.
“So I was thinking we’d come up with our terms for the plea bargain today, run them by Al tomorrow, make any changes we need to, then drive down to Corinth to meet with the client on Friday. Sound like a plan?”
She found herself nodding slowly, a bit stunned that his plan was identical to the one she was going to propose to him after lunch, and even more so that he’d beat her to it.
“Yeah. Sounds like a plan.”
“Great. Be back in a few.”
“Yep.”
She watched him leave their office, absolutely dumbfounded. Their case? A bust. Her plan to start fresh? Pretty good. Reed Stanton? No clue, but there seemed to be more going on in that head of his than she had given him credit for.