Page 12 of Daddy to Go
“Earth to Dr. Rivington,” Jack laughed. “You seem like you’re on another planet. What’s up?”
I shook the daze from my head. “Nothing man, just a ton of patients. That’s all really.”
Jack raised an eyebrow. “Yeah, ok. I call bullshit. I have personally seen you work natural disasters with no breaks for days and not look out of it. There’s something else.”
My eyes glanced back at the screen of my phone and I sat down in a chair to my left. “I guess I can’t lie. Something happened yesterday. Something beyond even my hustle skills.”
I launched into the story. I told him every detail from the moment I entered the room with Abby, to the way her hips curved, and to the moment she wandered from the room dazed. He stayed quiet for a minute, just listening.
“Did you just have a stroke?” I asked jokingly.
Jack swung his head back and forth making a humming noise with his loose lips. “Dude. Not only did you break your own rules, but now you’re obsessing over a chick. A chick you metonetime. You did the deed once. You know what you’re doing right?”
I furrowed my brow. “No. What?”
“You’re sabotaging yourself,” he said. “You just got back from visiting your sister, and you’re having family fever. Dude, it will pass. Don’t go messing up your head over some girl. Mad props to you though, that is fucking ballsy. Even I would think twice before doing something like that.”
“It wasn’t on purpose,” I groaned. “It was like I had no control over myself. She’s gorgeous, and I had to have her.”
Jack’s eyes moved off screen as he nodded to someone. When he looked back, I could tell there was some girl calling for him. “Here’s the deal. You have the life you always dreamed of. You better think long and hard before you go messing that up. But listen, I’m gonna jet. Got a hottie and her best friend getting in the hot tub. Gotta go try to get my threesome on. Don’t make any crazy decisions without consulting me first though. I don’t trust this phase you’re going through.”
The girls were calling for him and I laughed. “Get out of here man. I’m going to go to bed. I’ve got a lot of patients tomorrow, and I won’t go run off and get married, promise.”
Jack put his fist up and I did the same, symbolizing our normal fist bump. The connection cut and I laughed to myself. One thing that always pulled me back to Earth was having Jack on speed dial. He was a dose of reality, that’s for sure.
I connected my phone to its charger and grabbed a shower to wash the day’s dirt and grime off of me. I dried off really good and climbed into bed naked. I loved the way the cool expensive sheets felt on me, and there weren’t very many times I went to bed clothed anyway. Sleeping naked had become a habit.
I laid on my stomach, bunching a pillow under my head.Jack’s right,I told myself.I am living the damn dream. I can’t let myself be derailed. This girl is amazing but I’ve got lots of other fish to fry. Single and free. Remember the motto.
My mind convinced itself pretty quickly, and yet I drifted off to sleep with dreams of a special curvy girl in my head.
* * *
“Doctor,so glad you came in a little early,” Alex chirped, walking beside me into the office. “So, as of yesterday we had back to back patients scheduled. Problem is, something happened to the system and our appointments were all erased. We’ll be pulling files manually as patients arrive today and stacking the ready ones at the nurses’ station with their room number on them. We are going to be grabbing and going today.”
I shook my head with a laugh, feeling much better than the night before. “Gotta make things exciting or we would get bored, right? And if you say full schedule, that means I have an overbooked one.”
Alex grinned knowingly. “You are already catching up. Your nine am never showed and the 9:15 is already on the counter.”
I tossed my keys on the desk and stretched my arms up, yawning. “Sounds good to me.”
The folder had a sticky note over the name, but I wasn’t concerned. I’d meet my patient soon enough, and strode down the hall, feeling lighthearted with a spring to my step. Little did I know, but a surprise awaited me behind the door of Exam Room 6; someone I thought I might never see again was waiting with an innocent smile and a full heart.
7
Abby
Trying to come up for a metaphor to describe my morning was difficult. My stomach had nerves like when I was a kid, excited but at the same time dreading the first day of school. My stomach was grumbling the entire car ride to the office, so I hit the drive through for a few donuts and a coffee. The caffeine was a bad idea because my nerves were already through the roof.
There I sat, in the parking lot of the doctor’s office again, with donut sprinkled over myself. Great. I’d gotten dressed with especial care for today’s appointment, but now with crumbs everywhere, what was the point? Clearly, I was nervous. My hands clung to the steering wheel, and my knuckles were turning ghost white again.
“You can do this, Abby. Get out of the car. You can do this,” I whispered to myself.
Closing my eyes for a moment, I let visions of Ryder filter through my conscious thoughts. While in the past, that would have only made me more nervous, it was having the opposite effect now. With every pass of his radiant smile in my head, courage bloomed in my chest. Before I knew it, my hands were releasing their death grip, my shoulders were relaxing, and my tongue removed itself from the roof of my mouth.
I took a long deep breath and slowly let it out until my lungs were empty. The sounds of birds chirping outside made me smile a bit and the warm sunshine lifted my spirits. I opened up the door and set my black stiletto out onto the asphalt. I hadn’t worn those shoes since Missy Grave’s shotgun wedding a year before, but I remembered how confident they made me now.
My wide legged black dress pants draped down to the tops of my shoes, and my shirt followed the lines of my waist and hips. Even with my aversion to mirrors, I was pretty happy with how I looked. I pulled my rarely used black purse over my shoulder and locked the door of my car, taking a deep breath.