Page 162 of Forbidden Billionaires: Vol. 3

“James, take off your shirt,” Penny said. Her voice was so stern that there was no room to argue.

If being examined by this lunatic was going to put her mind at ease, then fine. But I wasn’t going to listen to anything he had to say. He was a whack job. Hopefully Liam’s doctor was actually good. We had met him last night and he at least acted and looked normal. Now I wasn’t so sure. Maybe Penny had accidentally looked at a list of doctors recently diagnosed with insanity.

I pulled my shirt off and went over to the exam table that Dr. Young was patting way too enthusiastically.

“Great, now just lie back. We’re going to do the EKG first so that the gel has more time to warm up. Don’t want to send your whole body into shock.” He took my shirt from my hand andtossed it toward Penny. It made it only halfway there and landed on the floor.

This guy was bad at everything. I slowly lay down and he started attaching the little stickers and wires all over my chest. I’d had plenty of EKG’s done and they usually went just like this. At least he seemed like he knew what he was doing here. But when he leaned over to attach a few of the wires his long beard tickled my skin, throwing any confidence I had in him out the window.

“What do you do when you have a surgery?” I asked and nodded to his beard.

“Oh. I tuck it into my shirt.” He dropped the rest of the cords down on top of me and proceeded to unbutton the top of his shirt.

“You don’t have to…”

“No, it’s fine. I should have done it earlier, it’s just strange to introduce yourself with tucked beard, you see.” He shoved his whole beard into his flannel shirt and then re-buttoned it to ensure that everything would stay in place. “Better?”

“Sure.” I tried for it to not come out as a question, but I couldn’t help it. In a way, I did understand what he said. Introducing yourself with your beard tucked into your shirt would be a ridiculous thing to do. But at the same time, ever doing it in the first place was probably more ridiculous. Tucked beard really shouldn’t be a phrase ever used by anyone.

“Let’s just finish this up.” He attached the last few wires and turned on the machine beside him. He watched it for a fewseconds before turning back to me. “Can you take a few deep, slow breaths for me?”

I closed my eyes and inhaled slowly before exhaling. For some reason, it caused me to yawn.

“Keep doing that for me.”

“What? Yawning?”

“No, silly.” He patted my shoulder like he had been patting the exam table a few minutes ago. “The deep breathing. Try to relax.”

Relax?Yeah right.How was I supposed to relax when I was more worried about Liam and Penny’s health than my own? I hadn’t even agreed to this test. I had come here for Liam. And Penny should have been on this table instead of me. I wanted to know how her heart murmur was.

“Hmmm. Well. Okay then.” He switched off the machine and started pulling off the stickers.

The words that had just come out of his mouth weren’t at all comforting. But before I could ask him a question, he started talking again.

“Does that hurt?” He pulled another sticker off a little faster. “I never remember whether I should go slow or fast.”

“It doesn’t hurt.”

“Fast it is then.” He pulled off the rest of the stickers.

“So…how were the results?” I asked.

“Fine. Not great, but fine. Your heart is functioning normally which is good. But I might have been wrong about your brain.”

“Excuse me?”

He tapped the side of my head. “I told you to take a few deep breaths. And you only gave me one medium breath. I should have taken your vitals before I wasted my time with a fast-breathing EKG.” He wiped his stethoscope off on the front of his plaid shirt again and then pressed the dirty thing to my chest.

“I was taking deep breaths.”

“No, you were most certainly not. Try it again for me.”

I breathed in slow and exhaled even slower. Then another. And another.

“Medium. Medium. Medium.” He looked so disappointed in me. “Are you stressed out about something?”

“Of course I’m stressed out.” I swiped his stethoscope away from me. “My wife was in a coma for weeks and then didn’t remember me when she woke up. My son was born too early and can’t breathe without all these machines attached to him. We don’t even know if we’ll ever be able to bring him home.”