Attending Physician Read online

  “Awake enough to drive home?” I asked. She was very close. Definitely inside my personal bubble.

  “Sure,” she was cavalier. “You?”

  “I hope so,” I yawned, “because that’s where I’m going after I kiss the dynamic trio.”

  “How ‘bout a kiss for the doctor?” she dared, her eyes sparkled with mischief.

  “I don’t kiss doctors who’ve never kissed me,” I defaulted to Femme Rules. Code: Prim.

  “Well, I’ll have to remedy that, won’t I?” She leaned down and brushed my lips with hers so gently that if I hadn’t seen her do it, I might have missed it. “Mission accomplished,” she said gently. “Thanks for the healing.”

  I hadn’t expected her to kiss me.

  It had been a long, long, uh, long time.

  Chapter 6

  Another couple of hours elapsed before I left there since Jase’s parents had arrived, and Rosie’s sister and brother-in-law. A lot of details needed sorting. Jase walked me to the door.

  “Did she ask for your number?” he teased.

  “No,” I admitted, “but she did ask me if she could take me out for dinner.”

  “She did? Cool.” Then he inspected me more closely. “You said yes, right?”

  “Yes, it is, and yes, I did,” I agreed. “I guess she’ll figure out how to get my number.”

  “She better,” he said.

  “Or what?” I giggled.

  “Or I’m going to have to stalk her and give it to her!” he threatened.

  I left for Somerville after three in the morning, meeting three cars on the way. Then I fell into bed barely making time to walk under the shower and put on a nightgown. Two days of labor is a long time. Even for a Labor Attendant.

  My last waking thought was to wonder if she’d call to ask me out to dinner.

  My first waking thought was to wonder what the hell that ringing was and would it please stop.

  I raced to the squawk box in the front hallway of the condo to buzz in whoever had insisted. When I opened the front door, a huge spray of exotic flowers greeted me over a pair of legs with a distinctly accented, “Flowers, ma’am.”

  “I see,” I said. “They’re gorgeous.”

  “They are,” the voice agreed, transferring the surprisingly heavy vase. I walked them into the living room, and reappeared at the door to sign his slip.

  “Thank you,” I called as he scampered down the burgundy carpeted stairs.

  In the living room, I gazed at the arrangement as I yawned and stretched, noting the time on the cable box. Four o’ the clock, teatime, according to my lights. I sashayed into the kitchen to put the cherry red kettle on and readied my favorite pink tea cup for the Earl of Grey and his special bergamot blend. Taylors of Harrogate are tea makers to The Queen, and my ab fab favorite.

  I stared out the windows of the kitchen, which overlooked the sweet porch on the back of the flat. The trees had started to slip toward yellow, and random leaves were beginning to cascade to Earth. Fall is my favorite season. My birthday was a month away. I was a month from forty-nine—in real time.

  Once I’d steeped my tea and doctored it with hazelnut cream, I repaired to the living room to investigate the riot of flowers. A card waved gracefully on a pronged skewer.

  The florist was from ton-y Newbury Street in downtown Boston, quite well-known. Winston Flowers. I’d heard of them, and I was a native New Yorker not a Bostonian. Just visiting here for a rough ten or so years of a marriage that didn’t work out. And still hurt.

  I perched on the pink sofa drinking my tea with the card resting in my lap, staring idly at the windows that faced uphill where I lived in the 1889 gentlemen’s hotel that became condos in the late nineties. That would be nineteen-nineties. I drank my tea, smelling the luscious roses in the arrangement, relatively unconsciously. It had been a long, long time since anyone had sent me flowers.

  I could/should/would open the card, but savoring the anticipation was half the fun. I guess maybe that’s a femme thing. Or maybe a girl thing, or a woman thing. I was in no rush to discover who’d sent me flowers. No matter what, it would be a surprise; I’d been single for a long while. Maybe I was single during my marriage—there’s a sobering thought.

  The last ones I’d gotten were from the parents of a client—as a thank you for helping the daughter they adopted from Russia make peace with some rough stuff from her past. I’d been a psychologist in private practice for twenty years. So nice to receive gratitude for work that was so rarely acknowledged.

  The sky was still light when I reached forward to the glass coffee table to set down my empty tea cup. I was awake for real. The Earl of Grey will do that to a girl.

  I flipped the card over. Whoever had sent these had not written the card. I flipped the flap out of the envelope and opened the surprisingly elegant card. Heavy white paper said For you ... in fancy script.

  Thank you for your healing touch. I’d like to feel that again. When shall we dine? Raven

  My belly did a flip-flop in just the right way.

  Oh, my.

  Well, she did promise to ask, and ask she did. I wondered if she knew that I would never seek her number and call her. Ever.

  I flipped the card over thinking maybe she’d included her phone number, but no. Even if she had, I would never have called it.

  And then I wondered how she knew where I live. Or how she found out.

  Then I got it that if she’d done that, she’d likely be able to get a number to call me.

  I said, out loud, “Raven, these are gorgeous! Thank you so much. When do you want to dine, darling?”

  I was fully aware she couldn’t hear me, but you never knew what floated through the ethers by intention. Regardless, I meant to let her know that I was available for her call. At the very least, on a cosmic level. Now we’d see if, no, when, she’d get it together to do so.

  I hoped for soon. Whatever that meant.

  Late Sunday afternoon. I had a full day the next day. I used my front room to see my patients. It worked for me. In fact, I’d always liked working at home—long before it was “done.” I was grateful that Nate had chosen a weekend for his marathon labor and delivery. It meant I had the evening to myself—a rarity in my life. I booked myself solid so that I didn’t have to touch the creeping loneliness that threatened to engulf me any time I got quiet.

  Shaking off the chill of the setting sun, I put on a fleecy robe and brought my phone out with me to sit on the porch and enjoy the last of the late afternoon. I checked my schedule for the week, confident I was booked, and I was. Relief is what allowed me to relax. As I finally closed the calendar, the cellphone rang.

  I let it go to voicemail. My ex. She was one of those I-always-keep-my-ex-lovers-as-friends types. I was not. Or I never had been. So far. I didn’t want to deal with her that evening. Sometimes I managed it, but the aroma of the flowers—so sweet—had brought me to an interiorly bittersweet place.

  I’d known Shelby for eleven years and been married to Shelby for ten of those years. On paper, we were compatible in every way. We had lots of common interests. We knew people in common before we knew one another. We’d met in transit, on a runway in Chicago, connected, and I’d moved from Sedona to Boston within months. A year after we met we’d bought the condo in Somerville and gotten married on that postage stamp of a back porch on Halloween.

  I’d stayed way too long at the fair, giving it every last chance to work, and it hadn’t. Then the divorce negotiations were fraught, painful. She was so angry. I defaulted to hurt. I refused to let the lawyers negotiate it. Or write the documents. No-fault divorce in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts is a no-brainer. A baboon could fill out the paperwork. I did every speck of the work to get it done, and I’d asked for very little.

  Ultimately it morphed into being easiest for me to keep the condo, for which I was alternately dazzlingly grateful and colossally annoyed. In fact, I wondered if staying in Boston was the right thing for me. I couldn’t go
anywhere without it reminding me of something Shelby and I had done together. Eleven years is long enough to form habits, believe me.

  As I was working myself into a lovely lather, the phone rang again. This time Rosie and Jase called from the hospital with a cooing Nate, and Jase’s parents. They had decided to ring me to tell me how grateful they were that I had been there with them. It had gotten cold as they face-timed me to the bambino so I went inside and we had a grand old time. I disconnected beaming. There’s nothing like new life to chase away the blues of an old one.

  And then the damn thing rang again.

  Chapter 7

  “What’s the L. for?”

  She held a stunned silence and then amusement gusted out of her. Finally a sober voice said, “Does it start with an L. on the caller-i.d.?”

  I nodded, like my great grandma used to do on the phone. She never did get that it worked voice-to-voice. “Uh-huh,” I finally said.

  “Laurel.”

  “Laurel Raven Lange?” I queried.

  She cleared her throat. “Actually, Laurel Ravenal Lange.”

  “M.D.,” I said, like the name of a television show.

  “M.D.,” she agreed. “I still love the sound of that.”

  “New, is it?” I asked.

  “Oh, no. I’ve been a physician for more than twenty years.”

  I couldn’t help myself. “What were you doing working an eighteen-hour shift in the hospital like an intern?” I asked.

  “In fact, you will recall, that was my second eighteen-hour shift, and I was covering for a good friend.”

  “Are you an obstetrician?”

  “Yes. Properly, an OB/GYN.”

  I let that sit between us. Then I changed the subject.

  “Raven,” I breathed, “the flowers are gorgeous.”

  “So are you,” she rejoined, her voice dropping.

  I swear she had to have heard my blush.

  “You populated my dreams, Dr. Verity. I took that as an unmistakable message that dinner needed to be on. And soon.”

  Did you hear that soon that I’d hoped for?

  “Your dreams?” I echoed. “Huh.”

  “So, milady, when may I take you to dinner?”

  I decided to take a risk. “Well, good sir, I’ll need to check my calendar.” Then I giggled.

  “Your calendar makes you laugh?” she asked.

  “No, my uncontested status as a Luddite amuses me.”

  “Because ...?”

  “Because I have to check my calendar, and my calendar is in my phone, and I’m not exactly certain how to do that and not disconnect you unless I have my Bluetooth in, and I don’t so I’m sure I’m going to hang up on you unwittingly if I switch to my calendar, and I don’t want to do that.” I said it like one long word, no breaths, gigging madly all the way.

  “Dr. Verity,” she said, “I’ll wait. Go get your Bluetooth.”

  “You can come with me while I get it, Raven. And you can call me Verity if you want.”

  “Verity, let’s go get your Bluetooth. Is it far?”

  “No, only down the hall to my desk.” I was there by the time we’d said our lines. “I have to put down the phone otherwise it’ll get tangled in my hair. Just a sec.”

  I know I heard her wish to get tangled in my hair, and I blushed again though she hadn’t said it aloud.

  “There,” I said. But, she couldn’t hear me because I had to choose the damn Bluetooth. I got it done, flipped to my calendar, and did not disconnect her. “Are you at the hospital this week?”

  “No, I’m seeing patients during the day but dinner is usually an evening activity so it shouldn’t be a problem.”

  I want to say, Tonight. Tomorrow, at the latest, but instead I said, “How’s Tuesday?”

  “Tuesday’s perfect. I’ll pick you up at ... seven?”

  “I’ll give you my address—”

  “No need,” said Raven. “I have it.”

  “You do?”

  “I sent the flowers?”

  I went to the living room to sniff them. “If you can, when you get here Tuesday, please come and see them, they’re spectacular, and they smell heavenly.”

  “I will.” She made it sound like a promise.

  That made my heart ouch.

  Then she said, “Did you think I’d get there and honk for you?” The mirth was ready to tumble out of her. She also sounded a little outraged. Very good butch signals.

  I didn’t respond. No way she would have honked for me. Jeez. I chose another tack.

  “Raven?”

  “Hmm?”

  “Do you want to tell me where we’re going?”

  “No.”

  Full stop.

  “No?” Well, then my high femme self kicked in. “Well, darlin’,” I said in my best sassy, “then you’ll have to tell me what to wear, won’t you?”

  She held a slight pause. “I suppose I will, milady.” She thought. “Business dressy.”

  “Done,” I said. My voice softened, “I’m looking forward to it, and I’m so very glad you called.”

  “As am I,” she said. “Goodnight, Verity.”

  “Goodnight, Raven.”

  And it managed to be just that. A good night. I nuked some leftover Chinese, read a bit of a novel, and tumbled early into bed. Monday was comin’, and my Mondays were a nonstop yowzapalooza.

  I wakened smelling the roses all the way down the hall and into my bedroom, which was at the porch end of the house. That made me smile, which, I suppose, is why butches, or at least smart ones, send their femmes flowers. So we’ll think of them.

  She wasn’t my butch, nor was I her femme, but things might have been canting in that general direction. I started at seven with my first patient, had a half hour in the middle of the day, ideally to eat, but more often to breathe, and ended at nine in the evening. See what I mean about Mondays? But, truthfully, I loved my work, and I’d done it for twenty years, and I had no intention of stopping although lately it had taken on a more spiritual flavor which I enjoyed immensely.

  Rosie had started out as a patient of mine, and I suppose she still was, but the relationship had morphed when she’d started calling me her godmother. One day she’d dissolved in tears, no, more than tears, sobs, and had choked out that she wished I had been her mother.

  Her heart was broken because of the things her biological mother had done to her. My heart was broken because of my son, and my marriage. We both moved toward healing by allowing one another into the broken places. That’s how I’d landed my role in her hospital room for her marathon labor. Rosie was an unusual circumstance. Between us, the ordinary rules of therapy did not apply, and had not applied for some time. One of the rules of good therapy is knowing when to break the rules without hurting either oneself or one’s patients.

  Rosie straight up asked if it were possible to break the rules. I responded that as long as we made and kept agreements concerning them I didn’t see why not. She was, in essence and in fact, one of the spiritual daughters I’d hoped for when I long ago decided to have a family. Circumstance intervened and that became impossible, but the longing for children never left. Rosie spontaneously gave me a completely appropriate title. She asked if I’d agree to be her Fairy Godmother.

  It so delighted me when she’d said it that I’d burst into tears—of joy.

  “Yes,” I’d said, “yes, darling, of course I will.” That was when she’d told me she was pregnant and she wanted me to be one of her labor coaches. The glory of the request kept me smiling for weeks despite the misery of my own circumstance.

  Chapter 8

  Tuesday morning and I wakened with butterflies low in my belly, the butterflies of anticipation, yes, but also arousal. I grinned before I opened my eyes as I recalled that I had a date with a hot butch for dinner that night. Raven.

  I’d checked my schedule the night before and Tuesday was as booked as Monday. It ended earlier, thank Goddess. Regardless, there would perhaps be only a bri
ef time to freshen up but not enough to shower and change before our date so I had to dress for our date first thing in the morning. Not ideal for a femme, but what could I do? It is what it is, as the kids say today.

  I snorted as I got out of bed. When did I get old? I asked myself. As the kids say???

  I punched on the closet light and knew immediately that I was scared so I had to wear black. Business dressy is what she’d said. It had to be a skirt, of course—I don’t go on dates in slacks unless specifically requested. I chose my favorite light wool black suit. It had a pencil skirt with a vented slit up the back, a peplum jacket with black velvet piping, and it fit me like a glove. I felt sexy and powerful in it, and those were precisely what I needed to feel on this date.

  I’d fluttered in and out of the butterflies-in-my-belly state all day long. I’d smooth my skirt under my thighs, trying not to be too wrinkled for that evening, and give myself a shiver of can’t-wait, thinking of Raven. The thought of her was enticing. I enjoyed the anticipation immensely, and discovered that I was happy in unexpected places during my sessions. More than one patient had gandered at me askance. Poker is not now and has never been my game.

  Finally I was through at 6:45. I had enough time to redo my up-do, spritz on some Angel, and do any damage repair to my standard face make-up. I wouldn’t have worn evening make-up during the day anyway. My patients would have been aware—every one of them, and some of them would have straight-up asked me. Not being very good at lying goes with being a dismal poker player.

  Ten minutes later I was more fluttery but I was ready. My first real date in ... let me see, thirteen years, was it? Lordy, where had the time gone? No dates (appreciably) since I was thirty-five? Argh. Then I became aware that my cellphone was ringing.

  I scampered down the hallway—as much as anyone can scamper in three-inch heels—to locate my phone, and nabbed it as the person was on the verge of being kicked into voicemail.

  “Hello?”

  “Dr. Verity,” said that lovely baritone.