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June: Will call the imaging center when they open at 9. Will clear your sched.
I immediately blocked off his hours from two to five on Thursday, blowing out a relieved breath that he had either checked beforehand, or I’d gotten lucky and he had no patients booked that day.
The rest of the morning went by in a blur. Between all three doctors and their patients, sorting out their files and faxing off requests for records, and filing new patient paperwork, I was starting to really sweat under the cardigan that was less than appropriate for early June. I decided I was definitely going to get myself a cupcake for lunch. It was my birthday, and I wasn’t sure where I would find a single cupcake, but I would buy it. Because I’d earned it.
After giving a patient their stack of forms to fill out, I got another message from toned and tetchy Dr. Amos Brady.
Dr. Brady: Come to my office.
Katherine leaned over, her soft, wide cheeks sucked in with exaggerated concern for the drama unfolding on my computer screen. “Oooh,” she said, ending on a high pitch.
I gave her a manic smile. “It’s fine. Maybe he just wants to wish me a happy birthday.” Katherine snorted, rolling her blue eyes and turning back to her computer.
Dr. Brady didn’t wish anyone a happy anything. I constantly took complaints for his brusque bedside manners, and if he wasn’t the most talented spinal surgeon in the city, he’d probably never get referrals. But he was the best.
And the actual worst.
I re-routed my calls to Maxine and slumped off through the office door to the nurses’ station in the back. Dr. Brady’s office had been tucked away in the back with the other MDs, and I wound my way through the long hallways, past the lounge and exam rooms to where his door stood open to his modest-sized office.
He had a window overlooking the parking lot out back, and his desk, shaped like an L, took up a good majority of the office. He had his diplomas framed on the wall beside the window, and absolutely zero personal pictures or mementos anywhere to be found. I was absolutely certain he spent his weekends watching C-Span reruns and skinning helpless animals.
His looks told a jarringly different story, though. Even in a lab coat and dress shirt, the smoothly defined contours of his biceps strained against starchy, white fabric, as if begging to be free and rubbed down with tanning oil. His glossy, dark brown hair had been styled in a soft wave that flicked charmingly over his left ear, and his eyes, dark like coffee beans, stared at me under the hard, black slashes of his straight eyebrows. He had a little scar on his chin, just under his perfectly kissable, bronze lips, and I could sharpen my charcoal pencil on his razor-sharp jaw.
I knocked on the door frame and gave him my most winning smile. “Hey, Dr. Brady. What’s up?”
His square, million-dollar finger tapped a file on his desk. “Kauffman’s MRI.”
Dread thwacked me in the chest like a paintball to the ribs. “Ah. Right. I did call the office, but they said they’d have to get back to me.”
“And did they?” he asked. His voice tickled up my arms, low and deceptively soothing.
“Ah, no.”
“Did you follow up?” He leaned back in his chair and folded his hands over his stomach.
I tried to keep my attention on his face and not the tantalizing peek of his perfect body under the outline of his white shirt. “I didn’t.”
“June,” he said, scowling, “I can’t treat Mr. Kauffman if I don’t have his records.”
No shit, Sherlock.“I can follow up with them now, but—”
“But it’s 10:45 and the patient will be here any minute,” he finished, still scowling.
Patience, June. Patience.“Okay, well, faxing only takes a minute. I’ll get through to them and explain the situation. I can have it by the time you see him.”
“You hope,” he pointed out with a frown of consternation. “I thought the barrage of reminders I sent you this morning would be enough, but maybe I need to start writing things on your forehead. You can check it during the dozen bathroom trips you take instead of making calls.”
My mouth popped open. The voice in my head chantingpatience, patiencestarted to hiss,payback, payback.“How do you—I don’t take—”
“Spare me,” he said, rolling his eyes and standing from his desk before grabbing the file in front of him. “I have a conference call with UCHealth, and then I’ll see Kauffman. With his MRI.”
I pressed my lips together hard. “Maybeyoushould call the imaging center, Dr. Brady, if you’re that concerned.”
He laughed, a short bark that filled the office. “June, are you really suggesting that you’re so bad at your job, you need the MD to take over for you?”
You toad-skinned, limp-dick, maggot-brained—
“Do better or go home,” he added with one last contemptuous look before breezing past me in a cloud of woodsy cologne and antibacterial soap.
