Ch. 16 – Layla
L ayla made sure to snag the bathroom first this morning before Alanna had even emerged from the guest bedroom. It helped that Fridays were a rest day from running. It gave her body a chance to recharge before her long runs on Saturdays.
Alanna had only started her first round of yelled threats through the bathroom door when Layla emerged, hair fully dried, brushed, and braided. After pulling on a white knitted tank top patterned with sequined butterflies and rose-colored slacks, she’d tossed a bagel in her bag, kissed Garbo and a grumpy Garland goodbye, and headed out the front door.
She drummed her fingers on the wheel as she drove. Her nerves buzzed. Had Hilda made it through the night? Sleep had been a fitful companion as she’d worried incessantly about the pig. In the past, whenever she, Dr. Goldman, and the vet techs took shifts to care for a struggling pet, they’d update the group on the pet’s condition at the end of every watch.
With Dr. Dhawan, it’d been radio silence.
Layla reminded herself that she’d had a good feeling about Hilda last night. But internal animal radar wasn’t perfect. She glanced at the clock on her dashboard again. If Hilda was struggling, Dr. Dhawan might need her help.
Assuming he’d admit that he required help from anyone, she thought wryly.
Before reaching the clinic, Layla made a quick pit stop at YHAR to drop off the diamond tennis bracelet, the gift bag of fancy soaps, and the latest addition to Cal’s apology tour, a fancy bottle of perfume from someone named Clive Christian. All of the items would make excellent donations to the animal shelter’s annual charity auction. Gathering the things in her arms, Layla smirked. She’d had to practically pry Alanna’s fingers off the perfume box when it’d arrived on the doorstep yesterday swathed in a fancy white silk bow.
“It’s for the animals,” Layla had reminded her sister.
“Cats don’t need No. 1 for Women, ” Alanna had countered. “I do.”
Normally, Layla would love to linger and chat with Val Tanner, her good friend and YHAR’s director, but she made the visit stop short and sweet. She had a pig to check on.
Back in the car, she’d just caught sight of the small clinic a few blocks away when her phone chirped with an incoming text. Then, another text pinged through. Then another and another.
Worry gathered in her chest.
Was Cal reaching out again? No, couldn’t be. She’d blocked his number. Was he calling her from a friend’s phone? Or had something happened to her mother at the plant nursery where Dede worked?
Layla turned into the clinic’s small parking lot a little fast, twisting crookedly into a spot. Ramming the shifter into park, she grabbed her phone, not even bothering to turn off her engine.
Everly: Everyone up to Ch. 12? Cause I got thoughts!!! [Fire emoji] [Shocked face emoji]
Tess: [Hand raise emoji]
Alanna: So embarrassed to admit this. [Hand raise emoji.]
Jax: Not yet
Willow: [Hand raise emoji]
Everly: @Jax, go away. @Layla where u at?
Jax: [Eye roll emoji] I’m out
Layla smiled and quickly typed.
Layla: Only on Ch. 8
Everly: Sigh. Come on, girl, keep up! But you also need to go away.
Layla: Not looking.
It was an itsy bitsy fib. Layla loved romance book gossip, even if it did come with a heavy side of spoilers.
Everly: So Edwin has a fiancé???? Where did this bitch come from? And y didn’t he tell Joey?
Tess: GF was in London for a private equity merger the last month.
Willow: Edwin and Joey aren’t dating [Shrug emoji.]
Bubbles immediately appeared next to Everly’s name. Layla held in a laugh as she waited. After a long pause, the text dinged through.
Everly: What about that magical, amazing night when she was sick and they stayed up for hours spilling their [heart emoji] [heart emoji] to each other??? When Edwin was dishing on his life story he didn’t think it was relevant to mention a fiancé?
Alanna: Unrelated question. How does Edwin find the time to get his pilot’s license, speak fluent French, and be a virtuoso on the violin while also running a multi-billion $ tech business?
Willow: Insomnia?
Everly: Adderall.
Tess: Romance novel.
Everly: Can we get back to the evil fiancé? She treats Joey like [poop emoji]. Makes Joey walk her horrible toy poodle and can’t even remember Joey’s name. This bitch has to go, right?
Alanna: Almost forgot, he’s also a master of jiu jitsu. Does Edwin even go to work? Maybe his half-brother was right to try and kick him out.
With a reluctant sigh, Layla tapped out of the conversation and turned off her engine. At this rate, she could be sitting in the parking lot all day while the women bickered about the book. She needed to check on Hilda.
Grabbing her purse, she unlocked the back door to the clinic and made her way inside.
“Dr. Dhawan?” she called.
From the other side of the building, Sunny responded with several long, insistent meows but nothing from Dr. Dhawan. Layla entered Exam Room 1. “Hello, my big girl,” she cooed as Hilda raised her head and snuffled happily.
“Look who’s bright-eyed and curly-tailed today,” Layla said, scratching Hilda behind her floppy ears. The pig looked miles better than she had the night before. The morphine and IV drip were only half-depleted, and the table had obviously been cleaned. That meant Hilda had probably had a bowel movement overnight. A good sign.
“You might be able to go home tonight,” Layla told the pig. “Your family is going to be so happy!”
Dropping her purse behind the reception desk, Layla searched for Dr. Dhawan. He wasn’t in the breakroom, and the bathroom door was open. Maybe he’d gone home after all, but she didn’t think it likely. Hilda’s IV had been changed only a short while ago.
She stuck her head in Dr. Dhawan’s office and found him asleep at his desk, head in his arms over an open veterinary journal.
Layla smiled. “We would’ve helped,” she said softly.
Hilda seemed comfortable, and the clinic didn’t open for another hour, so Layla decided to let the exhausted veterinarian sleep.
Sunny meowed again.
“I know, I know,” she answered him. “Let me just get some coffee, and then I’m at your service, Sir.”
In the break room, she started the coffee pot and pulled down her favorite llama-shaped mug. Dr. Goldman had brought it as a gift for her when he’d taken his family to Peru several years ago. Layla turned the mug in her hand, petting the ceramic llama’s head and reading the faded words across the side. Come to llama.
When the coffee was ready, she added generous helpings of sugar and half-and-half. It wasn’t a crime to get her caffeine and sugar fix at the same time, was it?
Layla took two steps toward the kennels, the delicious scent of coffee wafting from the mug, then paused as a thought occurred to her. She turned and made her way into Dr. Dhawan’s office where she carefully set the mug on the corner of his desk. He’d need the caffeine hit more than her.
On his desk stood Dr. Goldman’s once-a-day Animals Being Derps calendar. Sheets from the previous days sat in a tidy pile next to the calendar. Layla smiled, remembering how Dr. Goldman would leave the sheets scattered across his desk, mixed in with patient files, unopened mail, and old copies of National Geographic.
Dr. Dhawan’s desk was nearly empty save for a graduation picture in a simple wooden frame and a small ceramic horse. He kept all his patient records online and quickly worked through any mail that came into the clinic. Layla gently touched the brown ceramic horse with the tip of her finger, then studied the graduation photo.
Dr. Dhawan stood in his cap and gown, flanked by a tiny woman wearing a beautiful green wrap and a round-faced man in a pressed suit with a snow-white beard. The photo always confused and dismayed Layla. The two older people were clearly his parents. They should have been thrilled for their son. Proud and joyful of his hard work and success. Yet, none of them smiled in the picture. They stood rigid, no hands or shoulders touching, staring stoically into the camera. It seemed so strange. So cold. Pity welled in Layla’s heart.
Looking away from the photo, she leaned over the desk and tore yesterday’s sheet from the calendar, revealing today’s image, a pig grinning beneath a wide-brimmed straw hat. A bright pink tutu stretched across the animal’s rotund middle.
A pig! Was it a sign? Dr. Dhawan might not think so, but it felt like good luck to Layla. She laid the torn calendar sheet on the pile. She meant to turn and leave, but when she looked at Dr. Dhawan, sparks of heat lit inside her belly. The cowlicks were more pronounced in his mussed hair. In sleep, his face lost years of worry and stress.
He looked so young.
Handsome, too.
She longed to trace his strong jaw and those thick, blunt brows. Had he always had such thick lashes? They trembled with his dreams, and she wondered what stories played through his mind. A lock of hair had fallen from his usually neat styling and now hung between his brows. Layla reached out, needing to brush the errant lock off Prem’s forehead.
Prem?
Her hand froze, hovering over the desk. When had she started thinking of him by his first name? She’d never, ever called Dr. Goldman by his first name.
Layla snatched her hand back, confusion searing through all the tickling wings in her stomach. One didn’t just brush back their boss’s hair no matter how much it begged for it. She turned, her cheeks burning with embarrassment, and hurried out of the office, closing the door gently behind her.
*
Twenty minutes later, Layla was just wrapping up Sunny’s rehab when a creaky voice spoke behind her.
“Thanks for the, um, I assume it’s a heated milkshake?”
She smiled and turned to see Prem… Dr. Dhawan leaning against the wall behind her, his black hair still adorably mussed and the llama coffee mug in hand. His eyes were tired, but the soft smile looked good on him. So did the layer of dark stubble on his jaw.
“I like a lot of cream and sugar,” she said, turning back to Sunny so Prem—darn it! Dr. Dhawan—couldn’t see her blush.
“Why am I not surprised? How’s our boy doing this morning?”
Our boy? Those words thrilled her. As if Sunny’s rehabilitation was their special project.
Dr. Dhawan moved to the exam table, and Layla glanced at him from under her lashes, noting that his limp was more pronounced. Funny, she barely ever noticed it anymore.
“He’s getting more comfortable with the sling,” Layla said, quickly turning back to her patient. “I think he’s putting a little weight on his back legs.” It wasn’t much, honestly, but she tried to focus on the positive. “Hilda looked great this morning.”
Dr. Dhawan nodded. “I got a good helping of the critical care mix into her last night. Her digestive system is working. Never been so happy to clean up shit in my life.”
Layla laughed.
“I want to keep her here at least through the morning,” he continued. “Perform another endoscopy, but I’m hopeful. I think she’s going to come through this.” He appraised her. “You called it last night.”
Layla suddenly felt his closeness. The sparks grew hotter in her belly. They almost felt like…Layla refused to believe it. They couldn’t be unicorn sparkles. She only ever felt unicorn sparkles for Cal.
“It was all you,” she insisted quickly. “I think your sheer stubbornness pulled her through.”
He shook his head and swept back the loose lock of hair she’d ached to brush away. “I did what I could. The rest was Hilda. I think she just didn’t want to disappoint her family. Or, maybe it was the banana toy. Who really knows?”
He sipped from the mug and grimaced.
“Let me guess.” Layla set down the sling and stroked Sunny’s head. “You take it black. No sugar. No milk.”
“Coffee is merely a caffeine delivery device,” he answered. “I’d give myself a straight IV if it were socially acceptable.”
Layla rolled her eyes then refocused on the orange tabby. “You want to try the chair for a few minutes while I clean your cage?” she asked Sunny.
Dr. Dhawan glanced at his watch. “Forty minutes until open,” he muttered to himself. “I’d love to run home. Grab a shower and a change of clothes.” He dragged a hand across his jaw. “And a shave.”
Layla almost pouted. But I like the stubble.
Out loud she said, “Dr. Goldman used to keep an extra pair of clothes in the office and a toothbrush and razor, too.”
“Good idea,” Dr. Dhawan answered. “I should be able to make it back in time, but if I don’t, could you hold down the fort? Maybe distract the first clients if they show up early?”
“Of course,” Layla said as she walked to the physical therapy closet and exchanged the sling for the mobility cart.
“Appreciate it.”
“Deja will be here soon, anyway,” Layla added. “She can start the intake when the customers get here.”
Dr. Dhawan snorted into the llama mug. “If Deja ever got here on time, I’d die of shock, and you’d have to use the defibrillator on me.”
And there it was again. The cynicism. The judgment. Weeds of disappointment shivered to life in Layla’s chest.
“Deja’s a single mom,” she told him, bringing the mobility cart back to the table. “Her life is really hectic. She always tries her best and stays a little later if she can’t get in on time.”
Dr. Dhawan stared at her with his rich, chocolate eyes. Layla noticed a thin ring of gold around each pupil. “You really do see the best in everyone, don’t you?” he asked.
“Why not?” she pushed back. “It’d be better than assuming the worst.”
He snorted again and opened his mouth, most likely to offer a skeptical retort, when his phone rang. He pulled it out of his pocket. Glancing at the screen, his entire demeanor transformed. His brows came together, his lips pressed tight, and his shoulders rose. Tension rippled off him almost like a physical force.
“Is it April?” Layla asked. Maybe his girlfriend was upset or worried that he hadn’t come home last night. Though, surely, he would have called or texted her.
Dr. Dhawan ignored her, turning away from the exam table. He put the phone to his ear. “What is it?”
He listened, and his shoulders slumped in defeat. “How long ago?” he snapped. “What’s the… Okay. I’ll be there in 20.”
He hung up and when he turned back to Layla his eyes had gone dark. Emotion thrummed from him. Anger. Frustration. Rage.
Layla took a step back.
“I need to go.” His voice was gruff. “Can you—”
“Move your appointments,” she finished for him. “Of course. How long will you be out?”
He tore a hand through his hair. “Two hours at least. Maybe four. Cancel everything this morning. If anyone wants to come in this evening, reschedule. I’ll stay open late.” He was already looking over his shoulder toward the back door.
“Okay, yes,” Layla said. Fear beat in her chest. What was going on? How could a single call change her grumpy boss into a fuming, almost feral stranger?
Dr. Dhawan wasn’t about to explain. He set the llama mug down on the exam table and stalked into his office. A moment later, he reappeared, a set of keys in his hand. His steps, hitching on the right side, ate up the space between his office and the back door.
Layla watched him go, frozen with unease.
Dr. Dhawan shoved open the back door, then paused and glanced over his shoulder.
“Thank you, Layla.” For a moment, the anger ebbed in his eyes. “For everything.”
And then he was gone, the door banging shut behind him.