Page 43 of Love Bank
Seemed like this would be my new routine. Get in late to work due to oversleeping because I couldn’t fall asleep the night before with thoughts of Bain running through my brain. Compensate by drinking too much caffeine, which made my hands shake and my thoughts more scattered than acceptable when dealing with sperm samples all day long. I’d get lost thinking about something Bain said, the way he’d said it, and how he’d look while he said it, and then I’d mislabel a specimen cup, which wasn’t a good thing. Have you ever looked at a sperm sample? Pretty much unrecognizable from the one right next to it.
I smoothed over the third label in a row onto a specimen cup, this time finally getting the owner name and sample number correct, and groaned about my predicament. The hottest man I’d ever had the misfortune to meet had asked me on a date. I knew what most people would be thinking. Oh yeah, poor Lucille, attracting a handsome man. What a rough life.
But the thing is, I was stuck in a quagmire of indecision. I knew what my body wanted to do, based on the low ache in my belly every time I thought of Bain. Or the full-body flush that would steal over my skin whenever he was near. What I was feeling was desire on a magnified scale. Once I ruled out menopause with that blood test I gave myself a few days ago—ah, the beauty of being a nurse practitioner in your own lab—I realized it could only be desire.
My mind, on the other hand, had a laundry list of reasons why moving forward with a date or anything physical with Bain was a very bad decision indeed. For one, he was insufferable. Between not taking my issue with his visiting inmates seriously and his huge ego, he irritated me. Mightily. For two, I had a firm belief that men were more trouble than they were worth. To quote that hilarious movie I’d watched last winter when I came down with the flu, men were the devil, Bobby Boucher! I added my own twist there by calling men the devil, not women, but you got my point. For three, what the hell was a man like Bain, who considered himself God’s gift to women, doing with a woman like me?
I could keep going with my laundry list, but that was the gist of it. The most important reasons for this little date of ours to never happen.
I put the correctly labeled specimen cup in the fridge before I did something stupid and had to call the guy back in for another sample. Most men didn’t appreciate that. Not sure if it was because of the awkwardness of giving the sample, or because they felt their sperm was gold and should never have gone to waste the first time around.
Something caught my eye. A blank space where a specimen cup should have been on the far-right side of the refrigerator, two spots back.
“What the hell?”
I picked up the sample cups around it, making sure they were in their proper place and indeed they were. Slamming the door shut, I grabbed the printout off the front of the door that we kept in a plastic protective sleeve. Splatter happened at spank banks. It was good to be proactive.
Specimen #132 should have been in that slot.
I spun around and raced out of the room to find Keva. Maybe she had it for some reason or knew why it was missing. As far as I knew, it wasn’t to be sent for outside testing or used in a procedure, so it should have still been in that refrigerator. Then again, I was amassing a large number of sperm samples in my little clinic, so perhaps I misunderstood.
Ethel the cat walked right in front of me down the hallway as I charged out of the sample room. I tripped and nearly fell.
“Jesus, Ethel!”
She gave me a yellow-eyed stare that seemed to include choice curse words. A spank bank was no place for a cat, but I couldn’t get her to stay outdoors where the birds were. I could take her back to the National Cat Protection Society, but I felt bad for only needing her for twenty-four hours. Yedda had enough cats on her hands as it was.
I kept my eyes peeled for birds, cats, or any other animal that decided to terrorize me in my own clinic and made my way to the front, where Keva entered an appointment into our paper calendar. When she hung up the phone, I questioned her about the sample.
“No, I haven’t done anything with that sample.”
A line formed between her eyebrows and I wanted to tell her to relax before that sucker took root and became a permanent wrinkle. I would know.
Heartburn kicked in and made me wish, not for the first time, that I’d laid off the coffee today. We had a huge potential problem on our hands.
“Okay, let’s review yesterday’s appointments. Were any of the clients back there alone at any time?”
As soon as the words were out of my mouth, I realized how stupid they sounded. Of course the clients were alone at some point during the appointment. Was Keva supposed to stand by and watch them buff the banana? Oh no, that’s right, that’s whatIdid.
Keva gave me a wide side-eye, but thankfully didn’t call me out on my inane question.
I rubbed the ache forming on my forehead. “Let’s try this again. Do you recall any women being back there alone?”
Keva tapped her lip before she straightened up and jabbed her finger in the air.
“Nikki Quinnly! She was the only woman in here yesterday and went back there with her husband when I took them to the treatment room. She told me she had to use the restroom, so I stayed with her husband and explained the procedure while she went.” Keva gasped and stood up from her rolling chair.
I stared at her. “Are you thinking what I’m thinking?”
She stared back. “That Nikki, out of the goodness of her heart, let a woman in the back door to steal that sample because she was so desperate to get pregnant?”
I reared my head back. “No! That Nikki is a no-good, stealing, Jizz Whizz thief!”
Keva gasped again, slapped a hand to her head, and sat down, needing a moment to process the horror of stolen sperm. What this could mean for my clinic. What it could mean for Nikki and her husband. What it could mean to our town to know we harbored hardened criminals.
A truck I didn’t recognize pulled up at the curb outside our clinic, idling loudly.
I shook my head, annoyed at the loud noise when I had a very important decision to make. Did I turn Nikki in to Chief Waldo? Did I sleep with Bain?
