Page 8 of The Doctor's Simple Life

This guy is the worst, but right now, he’s ignoring me. Which means I don’t have to bother trying to like him.

“I’m sure Sienna is doing a great job of looking after you, but if you ever need anything, my office is on the second floor. I’ll be here for you if you need anything at all, just come by and see me.” Giselle smiles prettily, and I sigh.

Reece looks her up and down in response, and I see the slight downturn of his lips, the slight sneer on his face as he decides that Giselle isn’t good enough for him. That makes me hate him more. Giselle is utterly gorgeous. She has long, colorful braids and the softest skin I’ve ever seen, and her smile is totally dazzling.

If she’s not good enough for him, then nobody is.

“All right, I’ve got things to do, so see you around,” she says, then winks at me, turns on her heel and darts away. She’s just about to turn the corner when she looks back at us. “Feel free to page me anytime.”

“Page her?” Reece says, showing the most emotion I’ve seen from him so far, even if that emotion is despair. “Please don’t tell me you guys actually have pagers.”

“So what if we do?” I bristle, instinctively covering my own pager with my hand. “They work.”

“So does a phone,” he snorts. “Who’s still using a pager this side of the Millennium?”

I take a sharp breath. I will not argue with him. I willnotargue with him. He can rile me all he wants, but he’s not going to win.

We head down to the general care ward. This is where I work most of the time, with people in town who need a little extra help, or those who have come for checkups and blood draws. Personally, I love these little tasks. I love knowing I’m helping people on a real level. Though really, when it comes to care, there’s no such thing as a little task.

I give Reece a nudge and we head over to one of the women I often look after. “Mrs. Oakton.” I smile. “Welcome back. We’re going to be joined by a new doctor today. This is Dr. Westbrook. Is that okay with you?”

Mrs. Oakton is eighty-nine years old, with a shock of white hair and the most piercing blue eyes you have ever seen. She’s in here all the time needing something or another. I say needing. She doesn’t really need anything at all, but I think this is a way of getting out of the house for her. It’s almost like a social life.

And she acts mean, but I love her anyway. Last year for my birthday, she made me some cookies and brought them in. I don’t know how she found out that I love a toffee nut more than anything, but she did from somewhere, and that was the best gift I received that year.

“Sure is, honey,” she says, her eyes raking over Reece like a scanner reading a barcode. “As if I would ever mind being tended to by a handsome young man.”

I chuckle, and so does she, but Reece says nothing.

“Let’s go,” I say, and steer us off towards a room. I don’t pull out the special treatment for everyone, but Mrs. Oakton deserves it.

We head into one of the general visit rooms. As we cross the threshold, I hand Mrs. Oakton’s chart to Reece. He looks at it like I’ve just handed him a bomb, and then he realizes that, yes, out here in the country, we do still use paper.

To my relief, he doesn’t comment on it. Instead, he flicks through the pages with a frown on his face. “Mrs. Oakton,” he says, reading her name off the page as if he didn’t listen to a word I just said. “What’s wrong today?”

“Well, you see, I’ve been having this awful bad aching in my back, the kind of twinge that just won’t go away. I’ve tried?—”

“Don’t tell me you’ve tried any of that over-the-counter heat treatment stuff,” he sniffs. “Putting heat on it is just a Band-Aid to the problem. If you really want to fix it, you should try something better.”

Her mouth drops open. “Well, Nurse Sienna has always told me that the very best thing to do when it starts hurting is to take a painkiller and apply heat as soon as possible.”

“Nonsense,” he sniffs. “Let me look.”

He walks over to her and, without any delicacy, places his hands on her back. She grunts a little, tensing uncomfortably, and I almost want to bat him away and saybe careful.She’s not young. She’s strong as an ox, but she’s still elderly. She can still hurt.

“Yes, it’s just muscle tightness,” he says, standing up. “You’d be better off getting into a stretching routine. Pain pills and heat will only help in the short run,” he says as he walks over to the computer and turns his back on us.

Mrs. Oakton and I share a look, the kind that says,well, isn’t he a handful?And he is.

In the back of my mind. I’m kicking myself for slightly agreeing with Giselle. If he wasn’t a nasty piece of work, Reece would be kind of dreamy. But nice as he is to look at, I have a feeling I’ve got a long month ahead of me dealing with him.

The printer starts up, and he grabs a few pages off the tray. He stalks back over to us and shoves the papers at Mrs. Oakton.

“Here. These are some stretches you can do to help strengthen your back muscles.” He points to the page. “I’ve written comprehensive instructions so you don’t forget, but you should aim to do at least one set of all of these every day. If you can do it in the morning or in the evening, that would be better. Otherwise, I can’t see anything else wrong with you at all.”

He spins back around to walk back to the desk. A long moment of silence passes.

Realizing that he’s probably not going to say anything else at all, I force a smile back onto my face and say, “Thank you, Dr. Westbrook.”

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