Page 46 of Doctor Daddy

MARK

“Good morning,” I said as I walked into the building and approached the information desk. I made eye contact with Brooke, she immediately turned away from me.

She had somebody standing at her desk, so I didn’t pursue it. The entire elevator ride up to my office, I couldn’t help but wonder what that look had meant. Ever since the weekend at the lake she hadn’t been returning my texts. She hadn’t smiled at me once when I saw her in the mornings.

I wasn’t sure what I had said or had done, and she wasn’t being forthright with why she was ignoring me.

I met my morning appointments, nothing unusual there, and took advantage of a cancellation, to get down to her desk before the lunch rush. Hopefully, I could have a minute of her attention between the last patients of the morning, and the exodus of medical workers leaving for lunch all at the same time. I stood by quietly as she dealt with a few patients.

I couldn’t help but notice she looked tired. Her hair was pulled back into a ponytail that looked like it had barely been brushed. She had taken minimal effort with her makeup. Something she always excelled at. Not today. Now that I thought about it, not all week. She had dark circles under her eyes and she wasn’t even offering patients her usual smile.

Once no one else was waiting for her attention, I expected her to turn her smiling face to me. Instead, she completely ignored me and picked up her telephone and began speaking to someone, it sounded like her manager. I wasn’t sure.

“I need to get off early,” she said. “I’m not feeling well. Okay, thanks.” She hung up the phone.

“You’re not feeling well?” I asked. “Are you alright? Is that what’s going on here?”

She didn’t look at me. She leaned over, pulled something out of a drawer, picked up a water bottle, and put up a little paper sign on the counter portion of the desk. The sign said, “will return shortly,” in neat block hand lettering someone had written with a black marker. And then she left.

“Brooke!” I followed after her.

She completely ignored me and began walking faster. In two quick strides, I was by her side. I slipped my hand around her upper arm and pulled her to a stop, making her turn to face me.

“Brooke, would you give me a minute?”

She closed her eyes and pursed her lips. She took a deep breath before she began speaking. “Take your hand off my arm, or I will call security and tell them that you are harassing me.”

She stared at me long and evenly. I dropped my hand from her arm, uncertain of what had just happened. I wasn’t harassing her. I was trying to speak to her, and she was ignoring me. That wasn’t like her. The second my hand was off her arm. She turned and began walking away. I took a step to follow her.

She spun on her heel and pointed at me as if she had caught me doing something bad. There was a lot of indignation in that finger. “One more step and I’m calling security.”

I stopped moving and held my hands up in defeat. “Okay, okay.”

I started to slowly back away. I still didn’t know what exactly was going on. Or why Brooke was so upset. Whatever it was that was going on with her, I figured she needed some time to cool down.

I stopped at her desk a few days later. “Miss DeBoise,” I started.

She closed her eyes and looked as if the fact that I was talking to her caused her physical pain. She slowly pivoted and looked up at me.

“How can I help you, Dr. Bryant?”

I hated that tone of voice. I hated her calling me Dr. Bryant. She had never called me Dr. Bryant. I had always been at least Doctor Mark, and then just Mark. I felt the change in her reception of my presence like indigestion, vaguely uncomfortable in my gut.

“Could I have a moment of your time to talk about this?” I asked. I absentmindedly tapped on her desk.

She looked up at me completely blank, as if she had no clue what I was talking about. There was no play of emotion on her face. She was a completely different woman from the Brooke I had been enjoying my time with.

“I don’t think there’s anything to discuss. You’ve made your decisions.”

“What decisions?” She wasn’t making any sense.

At that moment the phone rang, and she turned to answer it. I hung out at her desk waiting for her to get off the phone. She had suddenly been inundated with a rush of patients. I didn’t want to stand around looking desperate. I decided I would try again later.

Later meant shifting my appointments around so that I could be there based on her schedule. It meant leaning on her car waiting for her to get off work in the middle of the afternoon.

She saw me leaning against her Toyota. With a shrug, she turned and started to walk in the opposite direction.

“Go away!”

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