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“Unfortunately,” they both answered, staring at each other with a fire in their eyes. For the first time, Bailey said nothing more. Instead, she backed away from the raging couple.
Without taking his eyes off Alina, Dereck handed Bailey a Samsung cellular phone. “Here,” he said. “You forgot this in the office. How about you help your friend out before she jinxes the entire hospital?”
Alina’s head jerked back. “You can’t talk to me like that.” She waved her finger. “You are a doctor and I am…”
Dereck finished Alina’s sentence for her. “Not a patient.” He placed his hand in his pocket. “We are not supported by any kind of code here. You have no business here and I am wasting my time on unintellectual people.”
Alina’s hand rolled into a fist, but words evaded her. She turned away from her rival and stormed off, a rumbling sound escaping her.
“I’m sorry about that,” Bailey said, then raced after her friend. “She’s not usually like this. I honestly don’t know what has gotten into her.”
* * *
Bailey metwith Alina in the front of the hospital building, ready to pick her up. Alina had walked as fast as she could to get into her car – there are more than one good reason now not to spend a minute in this place.
“What happened there?” Bailey asked as she entered Alina’s car.
“He’s the obnoxious man I met during Taylor’s second birthday celebration. We didn’t get along at dinner.” Alina said as she began driving towards the exit.
“Oh, that’s unfortunate. But what are the chances you meet him again? It’s almost as if fate is trying to bring you two together.”
Alina glanced at Bailey, astounded. She couldn’t believe what Bailey had just said.
“Yeah? Fate is trying to annoy me,” Alina responded.
“It depends on how you look at it. I think there’s a reason you two meet again.” Bailey suggested.
Feeling insulted by Dereck, Alina couldn't help but let her irritation show. Despite her friend's opinion, she brushed it off and felt an overwhelming need to vent her frustration.
Soon after Alina dropped Bailey off and returned to her apartment, she couldn’t get the obnoxious doctor out of her thought.
“How dare he,” she roared, pacing her apartment. Then she suddenly dropped on her chair and opened her laptop to a blank word document sheet. Alina began typing furiously on the keys, filling up the pages. The entire time she mumbled to herself, “We’ll see which one of us is unintellectual.”
4
Alina stood back, tilted her head, and eyed the canvas. A multicolored portrait stared back at her with oddly familiar features. She had allowed her creativity to consume her like she often did when creating portraits, but this time it had gone to a place that she wasn’t certain of.
“Who does this look like?” She scrutinized the painting for about ten minutes and was still dumbfounded. Though the masculine face was an aura of colors, its eyes were distinctively gray and intense. The painting’s jawline was pronounced even though the rugged facial hair distorted it.
Alina sighed heavily and leaned back in the seat, tapping her fingers on her chin. Outside, she heard the increased honking of cars but ignored it. She lived along a busy street, so the constant noise of impatient drivers was something Alina had grown accustomed to. It wasn’t an ideal spot for a creative to work, but the apartment called to her in ways the others didn’t. Alina simply tuned out the sound of the raging city. At that moment, she had more pressing things to think about, like who her portrait resembled.
Without knowing the answer, Alina dipped a large brush into the white paint and slashed it across the painting. She may not know who it looked like, but simply watching it was increasingly annoying her.
Alina had hit a slump, despite the multiple motivational and inspiration pieces in the room. She looked up at the wall directly in front of her and read Charles Horton Cooley’s quote for the thousandth time.‘An artist cannot fail; it is a success to be one.’She sighed at the words. “Why don’t you tell my parents that.”
This was not working. At this rate, all she would accomplish, at the end of the day, is to waste even more canvas.
Unable to concentrate on work, Alina picked up the phone and dialed a number she had grown accustomed to. Taylor answered the phone in her usual cheerful tone. “Hello, darling. How are things?”
“Terrible,” Alina responded, wrapping her legs below her as she sat on the rectangular ottoman below the window. She kept her eyes fixed on the nearby building as she spoke. “I can’t seem to get any painting done. At this rate, I won’t be able to meet my deadline.”
Taylor shuffled through papers, creating a noise that could be heard through the phone. “I’m not worried,” she told her friend. “You say that every time and yet you always produce praise-worthy art.”
“But it’s different this time,” Alina objected. “Each time I pick up my brush, I end up painting the same thing, a man with piercing gray eyes and a rugged beard. But the painting irritates me, for some reason, so I keep splashing it with paint.”
Taylor paused, making a sound with her tongue and teeth. Then she asked, “does he irritate you that much?”
Alina scrunched up her chin. “Who are you talking about?”
