Page 35 of Doctor Daddy Dilemma

Bored of the game shows and reruns, I began flipping through the channels and numbing my mind so it didn’t start to wander. It was a tactic the drug and alcohol counselor taught me, to focus on something external until my mind was quiet enough to pick up on one thing internally at a time that was manageable. I found myself doing this way too much, but she said I had to start somewhere.

However, I’d finally gotten to a point with this process where I was able to bring up a thought that was unpleasant about Charlie and be able to push it away without ruminating on it. It was slow progress but any progress toward my sobriety and health was a good thing. Besides, I was deeply ashamed to be suffering any of this to begin with. If the tabloids heard about it, I’d be ruined. I’d never practice again. My staff was so gracious to help me privately and stick with me even when I was a nasty old man to them.

The TV Guide Channel showed little that interested me, so I opted for a news broadcast. The local Wake Up California program was about halfway over. I hadn’t watched the news in ages, and I did want to know what the weather was supposed to be today. So, I selected that channel and rolled over in bed, cramming the pillow under my head to prop myself up. I watched the field reporter talking about how a bay-area woman swam from the Golden Gate Bridge to the Farallon Islands. It wasn’t so interesting to me, but it was something to do.

When the broadcast shifted back to the studio, however, my heart stopped. It literally did a flip and I gasped for breath, pressing my palm to my chest. I thought for a second I was having another heart attack, especially when sitting up so quickly made my head spin. I blinked my eyes hard, not believing what I was seeing on the screen.

Charlie Martinez stood on set wearing a lavender skirt suit with her gorgeous dark hair unfurled and dangling around her shoulders. It had grown, now hanging across her chest, midway down her back when she turned to shake hands with the local celebrity who’d done the swimming. I couldn’t breathe. I struggled to see straight and my body started moving subconsciously toward my bag and clean clothing.

Charlie was here, in San Francisco? I didn’t believe it. I tugged on some slacks and reached for my phone. A very fast Google search showed me exactly where she was too, just a few miles from here. The show was airing live; I still had roughly half the broadcast to go, and if I got there just as it ended, I could still catch her. I had to catch her. My heart hadn’t felt this alive since the night I was going to propose to her.

I ordered an Uber and raced down to meet it, barely remembering to lock my things in the hotel safe properly. On the way across town I did a little Googling, which was a habit I stopped a long time ago. I couldn’t take the pain of searching and not finding anything. I knew a private investigator would tell me everything I needed to know, but part of me was still angry over the hurt she’d caused. I felt that if I knew where she was it would only encourage me to contact her and lash out.

But now? Getting sober? Following a near-death experience where I could have been gone forever, the only thing on my mind was getting to her. I didn’t care that she hurt me. I didn’t care that she vanished. I didn’t even care that she hadn’t even told me where she was or why she left. All I cared about was this gaping hole in my heart that somehow felt instantly filled again the second I saw her smile.

The Uber driver stopped his car outside the building and I raced in, prepared to do whatever it took to get to her. I knew the taping was in studio seventeen but this was a massive place. I had to ask a dozen people to find out which way to go and when I finally did, I was stopped by security.

“Please, you have to let me in. The woman I love is in there and I have to speak to her.” I leaned into the velvet-covered chain that divided the theaters from those visiting the studio as tourists. The security guard scowled at me and narrowed his eyes.

“Sir, if we let everyone who said that back here, we’d have a prison full of stalkers. I can’t let you go back. You have to purchase a ticket.” His thick biceps intimidated me as he crossed his arms over his chest.

I pulled my wallet out of my pocket, pulled out a few hundred-dollar bills, and thrust them out at him. “I’ll buy a ticket then. I want to see the taping of Wake Up California.”

He shook his head sternly and looked down his crooked nose at me. “That show is sold out for the next two months.”

“Please, you have to let me in.” I put the money back into my wallet and put it away then took out my phone. “See? Me and Charlie, uh Charlotte…” I pulled up a photo I had saved to my phone, one of the selfies we’d taken together. She looked different, but then so did I. Back then I had less silver.

“I cannot let you back here. Sir, please don’t make me call security.” His hand went for the radio clipped to his shoulder and I winced. This wasn’t going well at all. Until another man walked up and narrowed his eyes at me in curiosity.

“Did I hear you say, Charlie?” His head cocked to the side as I sucked in a breath to explain. Relief was already flooding me. Someone was listening.

“Yes, Charlie Martinez. She’s the host of Wake Up California. She…uh… We—” I had no way to explain what happened without getting dramatic. “I need to see her right away.”

My eyes pleaded with him to let me through, and for a minute, I thought he was going to tell me to buzz off like the security guard did. But he shrugged and nodded at the much larger man.

“I got him, Howie.” The second man whose name I didn’t know reached down to unclip the velvet rope and let me through. The bigger guy didn’t seem happy, but I could tell who had more authority.

I was just excited for the opportunity and I wasn’t about to back down now. I would get to see Charlie any minute now in person, and I didn’t even care if it wasn’t good for my heart—physically or metaphorically. The moment I’d been waiting for now for almost two years had finally come. I could finally get closure, and the last thing on my mind was confronting her. Now I wanted her back, especially when I stood a few feet behind the cameras, off to the side of the stage, watching Charlie interview the person in front of her. A psychologist who spoke to my heart.

This was a dream come true. Now if I could just talk to her without messing this up…

27

CHARLIE

The lavender skirt I wore rode up a little when I sat and crossed one leg over the other, so instead I tucked my crossed ankles beneath the chair and folded my hands in my lap. This entire day had been heavy after coming back to work. I was sick all last week and this was the Monday-est Monday I’d had in months. After Amy told me how well Lex was doing, I knew he had moved on and probably never even thought of me anymore. It was soul-crushing, but it should have been liberating. I was still mad at him, right?

“And, Dr. Slater, do you believe these methods work in all situations, in every relationship?” The man was hailed as a love doctor, a relationship genius, and this was probably one of the most daunting interviews I’d had to do. Following my revelatory weekend, it challenged me to keep a pleasantly calm expression on my face. I fought my emotions back because breaking down on camera wasn’t an option.

“Well, Charlotte, yes. I do. The keys to relationship building are laws that govern all relationships be they business partnerships, friendships, romantic interests, or even parental dynamics. You see, they’re basic building blocks that make relationships strong.”

He leaned in and continued on, talking about some of what he called the “pillars of intimacy”—things that made me wince as he laid them out. I was agitated, and I tried to blame it on the fact that I was still recovering from that bad cold, but truthfully it was all emotional. I knew this man was telling me the truth and I wanted to get away from him as fast as possible.

“But what if communication isn’t an option?” I asked, and I felt like I was nitpicking everything he said but only because of my guilt.

He gestured with his hands as he spoke. “When you communicate openly, you give your partner the option to be open with you. You put all the pieces on the table, and if trust is there, you both come to a healthy understanding and a compromise can be made.”

There were those words again, spoken for the hundredth time in this short fifteen-minute slot—communication, trust, understanding, and compromise. They left a bile taste on my tongue when I asked him about them, and even now as I listened to him knit them all together into one basic explanation of how these “building blocks” were the foundation of every human interaction, I wanted to vomit.

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