Page 108 of Auctioned to the Billionaire Surgeon

I nodded.

“I’m serious, Jelly,” he hollered after me, and I gave him a thumbs up.

When I got to the woman at the cash register, I asked for the clamshell full of scones. I kept a smile on my face and tried not to move my lips while I asked her how much it would really cost. I knew Otto was watching. She was used to this. She gaveme an answering smile with closed teeth as she told me, and I told her to charge me the full amount.

She gave me a genuine grin, and we settled up. I waved at a very suspicious looking Otto, ducked out of the buffet line, and headed for the coffee bar. As a perk, we got free coffee on the weekends. I loaded mine down with all kinds of flavorings and creamers, and then finally left the cafeteria.

On the way to my office, I said hello to several people, all of whom seemed to be looking at me a little strangely, and I started to wonder if I’d spilled something on myself. Or, more likely, they were just checking out the ridiculous number of scones Otto had packed into the extra-large clamshell. I would definitely be sharing scones with my department today.

I opened the door to the administrative wing for orthopedics with my butt, then laid the clamshell on the front counter. “Scones!” I yelled.

That’s all it took. People appeared from the woodwork. I grabbed myself one of each, then headed to my office.

“Thanks, Jelly,” several people said, mouths full of scone, as they walked past me.

“No prob, Bob,” I said grinning and teasing around with people until I finally came in sight of my office towards the back of the hall.

I stopped in my tracks, mouth open. “What the…”

I turned to see about twenty-five people behind me with their cell phones held up to record. “What the hell are y’all doing?”

“Open your office,” they urged.

I could tell from ten feet away that it was packed full of balloons.

I cautiously approached and pulled the door open slowly. Balloons still spilled out into the hallway. There were Mylar balloons of hearts, flowers, bears, dogs, cats, and, weirdly, SpongeBob. Then there were plain balloons of every possible color, all filled with helium. There had to have been five hundred balloons pushed in my office. And it wasn’teven that big. I grabbed a couple as they floated past.

I looked at the notes and couldn’t hide a grin. Each note that I turned over from the balloons read, “Please go out with me. I love you. Paolo.”

“Okay, y’all. I need your help,” I said. Everybody get as many as you can, remove the notes, and then we take them to the children’s wing.”

“Aw! You don’t want to keep any?”

“I’d like to keep one of each of the Mylar,” I admitted. “Unless there aren’t enough to go around in the kids’ rooms.”

We spent around thirty minutes getting that done, and I was thankful everyone had been willing to help me. It would have taken me at least four times as long to do it by myself. Probably longer.

I worked hard all morning, then swung by the cafeteria for lunch. Otto was off, having worked the early shift, so I had a salad of normal size this time. He normally loaded the equivalent of four normal sized salads into an extra-large clamshell container for me.

I still hadn’t decided for sure what I was going to say to Paolo, so rather than risk seeing him in the cafeteria, I decided to go back to my office.

I stopped about ten feet away again. Through the glass door, I could see flower arrangements everywhere. Literally everywhere. They were covering every surface. There were even some on the floor. My mouth gaped open.

“Hey guys,” I yelled and turned around only to see everyone in my department right behind me. “I think I need y’all’s help again.”

They all laughed and we did an assembly line where I took flowers and removed the cards, all from Paolo, all telling me he loved me and asking me out, and passed them down the line. I kept five of the prettiest arrangements. The rest we took up to the geriatric unit. Again, it took about thirty minutes, but the smiles and happiness of all the patients was so very worth it.

I wolfed lunch down, then went back out on my rounds.

I came back to my office just to grab the flowers and balloons I’d kept, only to find a ridiculous number of boxes of really fancy, really expensive Swiss chocolate all over my office. Again, all the notes were from Paolo. They all said the same thing, and by this point I realized I didn’t stand a chance against this onslaught. Especially when I actuallywantedto go out with him and see if there could be anything between us again.

“Okay, everyone. Come get a box of chocolates to take home. Just leave me like four or five, please. And the notes.”

“Thanks, Jelly,” they said as they hurried by with their fancy chocolate.

When they had all left, I looked around and wondered how I was going to get everything out to my car.

“Need help?”