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“If you want to.” He pulled the scrub top off over his head. “It doesn’t matter. I’ll find you wherever you are.”
After two more kisses, and a long lick of her lips, he changed in the office’s bathroom and headed to tend to his patients.
* * *
The man he’d been hoping to see waited in the exam room, his last patient for the day. His most reluctant client, Osman, sat with his shoulders hunched, his face and head covered in curly, silver-black hair. Usually, they had a standing appointment every two weeks, but it had been over two months since they last saw each other.
Lucas stood in front of the door, arms folded. “Ozzie, my man. It’s good to see you. Do me a favor and let me see you walk around a bit?”
Ozzie walked from one end of the room to the other, clearly trying to hide a limp. However, any conversation about a hip replacement usually ended with Ozzie refusing to follow up with his appointments because no one was going to “cut” him “open.”
“Good, good. That hip still bothering you?”
Ozzie mumbled a response and climbed onto the exam table. They’d been meeting for years, and although there could sometimes be long breaks between those meetings, he understood the older man’s mumbles about as well as his plain language.
They first started meeting under an expressway. A year later, he convinced Ozzie to come to the clinic. The hope was to eventually get Ozzie set up in a rehab shelter, but the absolute dream was to reunite him with his family.
Ozzie mumbled a question.
“I can’t complain,” Lucas said. He held up his left hand. “And yes, I did. You noticed that very quickly.”
Ozzie mumbled something else.
“I’ll have you meet her. Maybe you can tell her that.” He retrieved a light from his pocket. “Now, you’re taking your meds, right?”
Ozzie grunted.
“And what about the hallucinations?” He checked both eyes, timing Ozzie’s breaths at the same time. “Are they still happening?”
“No.”
“When did they stop? Do you remember?”
“Little after our last appointment.”
“So that’s, what? About a month?” He checked Ozzie’s joints and noted that the whites of his eyes were turning yellow. “Still drinking?”
A series of mumbling followed.
“We met over a year ago, at a conference,” Lucas said. “Lie back for me, Ozzie?”
As he continued the physical examination, including checking Ozzie’s hair for fleas or lice, he spotted Raina through the window in the door. Their eyes met, and he held her gaze for a few heartbeats before turning all his attention back to his patient.
“Is that her?” Ozzie asked.
Lucas nodded. “Yes, that’s my wife.”
“Beautiful.”
“Very beautiful. Now, how’s the chest pain?”
“Better.”
“Are you still smoking?”
“Mmm.”
“Ozzie, your father died of a heart attack, and you told me your grandfather died of a heart attack. Both were smokers. Based on everything we’ve discussed, and your labs from last time, you’re what we could consider high risk.” He rolled a stool near the exam table and took a seat. “There’s medication that can help lower your cardiovascular risk. That means—”
