Page 3 of Anatomy of a Meet Cute
“Yeah?” he said, a barely masked irritation riding his tone. Sam almost changed her mind. Almost. The Hippocratic oath saiddo no harm, didn’t it? She couldn’t lose her nerve, even if this doctor was a jerk. She’d made a promise.
“I could use your help. I’m not a doctor.” Sam flailed her hands and rushed to finish as his eyebrows shot toward his hairline as if she might be as high as the man they were trying to help. “I mean, I’m a doctor, but I’m a community health research fellow. I recently finished my residency, and I haven’t spent time in emergency since med school.”
Dr.Sexy Not Ambien took a deep and seriously overtaxed breath before exhaling an “Oh.” Rubbing his eyes, he straightened up again and walked back toward her. Giving her a once-over, he gestured to the man and said, “Proceed.”
Somehow, Sam had expected him to be less professorial and more, you know, helpful. Sam nodded, looking from him to Man Bun, who was loudly patting his cheeks.
“Can you tell me your name?”
“Mark von Erik.” He wiggled his eyebrows at her like his name should mean something to her. It didn’t.
“Well, Mark. Can you tell me when your face started to ...” She looked over at Dr.Sexy, who quirked an eyebrow but said nothing.Thanks, Doc.“Pixelate?”
Wrong question. Mark’s eyes got wide as saucers. Filling up his lungs with good old-fashioned plane air, he shouted, “Is it still doing that?”
“No. No. It’s stopped,” Sam said, holding her hand out to try to stave off another round of shouting and pulling at his clothes. Dr.Sexy pursed his lips but said nothing.
“I’m not sure you’re telling the truth.” Mark looked down at his hands.
“Can you tell me what medications you are taking?” Sam asked, trying a change of subject.
“I don’t take pharmaceuticals,” Mark burst out before pulling on his belt buckle.
Sam looked at the not-so-good doctor and shrugged, telegraphingWhat do I do?with her eyes. For his part, Dr.Sexy smirked before breaking down and asking, “Have you mentioned nonpharmaceutical substances to him?”
Whipping her attention back to the man, she asked, “What about anything plant based?”
At this, Mark looked up, giggled, and said, “You don’t strike me as into mushrooms.”
Bingo! Sam smiled as her ears popped. Judging from the tiny window to the outside, she had about seven minutes of flight time to keep this guy calm. She could do that. It was unlikely he was going to die in the next seven minutes, but it might be helpful to have a sample of what he’d taken, or at least the name of what he thought he’d taken, once he was off the plane.
“Do you have mushrooms on you still?” Sam said.
“Oh, you’rethatkind.” A lewd smile cropped up on Mark’s face. Next to her, Dr.Sexy snorted but turned it into a cough when Sam shot him a dirty look. “I guess I’d share with you.”
“I want to know what it’s called,” Sam said, forcing a smile on her face.
“God’s tea.”
In hindsight, expecting him to use the plant’s formal name might have been asking too much. Sam looked over at the other doctor, who shook his head as if to signal that he wasn’t familiar with it, either, before asking her, “How else could you find out the name?”
Sam almost strangled him. The last thing she felt like doing was playing twenty questions with a distracting and obtuse doctor when they had a man they needed to keep calm and ten thousand feet to go before their wheels blessedly touched the ground.
Sighing, she turned back to the man and asked, “Where were you when you got God’s tea?”
Mark opened his mouth, and Sam prayed he wouldn’t answerMars. “Cows, dude. Canadian cows.”
The synapses in her brain fired, connecting the dots, her grin spreading with them. She knew what this was. Turning to Dr.Sexy, she whispered, “Psilocybe fimetaria.”
“You know mushrooms?” he said, his smooth forehead wrinkling with surprise. Daggers shot out of Sam’s eyes—just because she had a hard time figuring out which indoor-sunglasses guy needed help didn’t mean she was totally useless. Dr.Sexy must have read her irritation, forcing him to attempt a botched recovery with, “Surprised is all. Good work.”
Good work, no thanks to him. Sam opened her mouth to say as much when a flight attendant interrupted them. “Doctors, we are going to be landing shortly, if you could brace yourselves.”
“Why don’t you sit in my seat? I’ll stay with him and function as the attending for the medical team when we land.” Dr.Sexy put a gentle hand on her upper arm, and Sam almost jumped out of her skin. It was a brotherly gesture, but her body did not respond to it in a brotherly way. Sam looked down at his hand, checking to see if the tingling feeling in her arm meant he was actually melting her skin away. Nope, still there. Taking a deep breath, she looked up at him. Dr.Sexy’s gaze mirrored her movements, and heat crept into his cheekbones as he let his hand drop away.
Swallowing the lump in her throat, Sam stuffed her bodily response in the “To Understand Later” file and nodded as if her head were filled with cement. “I’ll do that.”
Without another word, Sam walked past him down the aisle. Reaching his seat, she picked up his sweatshirt, then buckled herself in. Still reeling from whatever inexplicable reaction her body had decided to have to Dr.Sexy, Sam looked down at the sweatshirt in her hands and back up at the man who owned it. He had tucked himself against the galley barrier wall and the man’s chair and bent down so he was eye to eye with Mark the Man Bun, holding on to his wrist.
