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Carly screwed up her mouth and wrinkled her forehead as if she were about to object, but just then a couple more cars pulled up to the cul-de-sac, and she gave in. “Will you take me to the beach after?”
“Don’t push your luck.”
Caleb went the wrong way into town. She felt obligated to tell him. If he’d taken Granger to Shady Hill and then come around the back side of the hospital, it would have been faster.
He didn’t thank her for the advice. He was too busy driving and ordering around the lanky guy who worked for him.
Every time she twisted to look out the back, the conga line of idiots following them was a little shorter, though, so she let it go. Caleb could handle these douche bags. He’d driven Hum
mers in Iraq. Katie had shown her pictures once of him in fatigues, with a helmet on his head and some building out of Aladdin behind him. He’d been smiling that breezy Caleb smile as if there weren’t people waiting to kill him just outside the frame.
There had been, though. During his deployments, she’d never quite managed to forget it. No matter how invincible his smile, every time she heard about casualties in Iraq, she would wonder if this time he’d bit it. So she’d gotten into the habit of ragging on him unmercifully for being a jarhead.
Everybody had their coping mechanisms.
Caleb somehow magically managed to make a barricade appear at the hospital. They pulled inside it, and he got a big OSU umbrella out of the trunk, which he used to shield her from view as they walked into the lobby. He was good at this security guard stuff. It didn’t exactly surprise her. He’d always been smart, though school wasn’t really his thing.
Her phone buzzed in her pocket. They rode the elevator to her doctor’s office on the third floor. Caleb glanced over at her and gave her a trademark smirk, probably trying to put her at ease. He looked particularly heart-throbbish today in a black button-up and black slacks. “Nice parasol, Buckeye,” she said.
“Thanks, Munchkin.”
Her phone buzzed again, letting her know she had texts piling up. She ignored it.
When it was her turn to go into the examining room, Caleb rose to his feet, clearly intending to come with her.
“You can stay in the waiting room with the husbands and boyfriends,” she said. “I don’t need an escort.”
“Too bad. You’re getting one.”
So he tagged along as she got weighed and had her blood pressure taken, and then he posted himself outside the exam room door, which meant that the whole time the nurse was asking her the same sixty-seven tired questions somebody asked every time she came in for a checkup, Carly had an image of Caleb in her head, lounging in the hallway and charming the pants off the staff.
An image that made her angry, because she wanted Caleb to be Jamie, joking with the receptionist or sitting with her in the exam room, holding her hand.
And she wanted herself to stop wanting that.
The doctor arrived and asked her the sixty-seven questions over again, same as always. Carly’s phone buzzed for the third or fourth time. The Wombat kicked her hard in the bladder.
Back off, Buddy. It’s probably just Nana wanting to know if I’ll bring her bing cherries and bikini wax, or some other god-awful combination of things.
The Wombat gave her another sound punt.
Fine. I’ll check the damn phone. You happy now?
When Dr. Gordon’s back was turned, Carly slid the phone out of her pocket. Every text was from Jamie.
JCallahan: R u OK?
JCallahan: TMZ sez u r @ hospital.
JCallahan: Call me.
JCallahan: Srsly. Call me.
She turned the phone off.
Dr. Gordon sighed. This was nothing new. Dr. Gordon was something of a freak of nature, built like a linebacker, with the bedside manner of a clinically depressed clown. She had the clown feet, too, tricked out today in the longest pair of sad beige flats Carly had ever seen.
But she was good people. She’d received the Nana stamp of approval.
