Page 48 of A Doctor for Daisy

What Dale didn’t know and many weren’t aware of, was that he’d be having office hours one day a week in New Haven starting the first of the year.

He couldn’t say no. He was here doing surgeries when needed anyway. Coming here once a week to see patients would only help his career and the one-hour commute wasn’t the end of the world.

He hadn’t told anyone yet, not even his father or his sisters.

In his mind it didn’t matter.

It was funny that he wanted to tell Daisy but hadn’t.

What they had was still new and there was no reason to get into those details when they didn’t get to spend much time together.

He moved to his next patient and would get on with his day.

With any luck he’d be out of here by six, on the road and home by seven.

He felt his watch go off with a text and glanced at it. It saved him from reaching into his pocket all the time to see if the text was important or not.

He saw the text from Daisy and pulled his phone out to read the whole thing.

Just wanted to say how much of a great time I had yesterday. Hope you have a good day.

He smiled. Part of him wanted to reply right then but decided not to. She knew he was in surgery all day and there was no reason to get her into the habit of assuming he could be reached.

By nine that night though, he was getting ready to watch TV in bed. All his notes were typed up for the day, his calls made to patients that needed to be and he was going to try to crash. This was actually early for him for once. There were plenty of times he was still typing his notes at ten or later at night.

He debated texting Daisy. He hadn’t gotten back to her and felt bad, but he was still in work mode and could finally turn it off.

After a few minutes, he sent off a text saying he had a great time too and it’d been a long day, that he was sorry he was getting back just now.

She replied fairly fast and said she was in bed watching TV.

He hated to text and wondered if she could talk or not. He texted to find out and she said sure, but she’d be talking quietly.

He called her and she answered on the first ring.

“Hi,” she almost whispered. He could hear the TV in the background.

“Is it a bad time?” he asked.

“No,” she said. “Heather and I are both in bed watching TV. I mean our rooms are across the hall from each other. Or the doors are. But our beds are still on opposite walls. I don’t think she can hear me.”

“Okay,” he said. “We won’t talk long. Just wanted to say I had fun too. How was your day?”

“It was good,” she said. “Busy. I have a ton of orders to work on and we are getting there. Rose isn’t around as much so I’m trying to get done what I can. Most of the wholesale orders for the holidays will be done by the end of the month and then shipped.”

“That’s early,” he said. It was only the second week of September.

“Stores order early and get their stuff in. It won’t be shipped for a few more weeks in case orders change. But did you ever notice that Christmas decorations are out before Halloween now?”

“I don’t think I paid that much attention to things,” he said.

“They are,” she said. “Orders for the holidays are normally placed during the summer or late summer and completed and shipped by early to mid fall. The biggest order will be done in a few weeks, then shipped. There are a few more other ones, but a lot of the pieces can be made at the plant.”

“I’m not sure how that all works,” he said. “What do you do?”

“Rose does designs and I’ve given them some ideas too. With something new there is a mold. Some pieces are done on the equipment there, others by the staff there. There are three full time and one part timer that work solely on the jewelry at the plant. Rose manages all that. She’s showing me how she does it so I can keep up with it while she is out, but I think Lily will deal with it more.”

“Does that bother you?” he asked.

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