The Secret Poet, page 3
“God, take those home with you,” I said to Perry, pushing the plate toward him.
“No way.” His mouth was full, and it came out more like nowo. Joanne had packed up and gone home a couple hours before, the patients had all been seen, and the phones had clicked over to the answering service, which happened automatically at five thirty if I didn’t do it manually first. It was just me and my brother left.
Perry dropped into Joanne’s chair, still eating a cookie, and I never really understood the phrase he chewed thoughtfully until I saw my brother do exactly that.
I swiveled back toward my desk and waited him out, folding invoices and sliding them into envelopes to go out with the next day’s mail.
Finally, he spoke. “Speaking of the cookies, I liked her.”
That felt a little out of the blue. “Zoe Blake? Yeah, she seemed nice.” I swiveled my chair so I was facing him again. His brow was furrowed and looked like he was thinking really hard about something. “What?”
He swallowed, pursed his lips as if trying to figure out how to tell me what he was thinking. “She was…” He shook his head, and I knew exactly what he was talking about.
“She really, really was. Wow.”
“Right?”
I smiled. Nodded my agreement. Grabbed another godforsaken cookie. My mom made fabulous oatmeal raisin cookies, but they didn’t come close to Zoe’s.
“She has piqued my interest,” Perry said, rocking back in Joanne’s chair.
I gave him a squint. “What does that mean?”
“It means, I like her.”
“You don’t even know her. How can you like her?”
He turned his eyes to me, and they crinkled at the corners as he grinned, held his hands out, and said, “Excuse me, but did you not see her? Are your eyes broken?”
“Oh, I saw her,” I said and mentally winced at the lasciviousness in my tone.
“Then you know what I mean.”
“Well, thinking she’s hot and liking her are two different things. You don’t know her.”
“No. But I like her.”
I groaned and tossed a foam stress ball at him. He caught it, and I noticed the weird expression on his face. Perry’s ten years older than me, but we’ve always been super tight. I know him as well as I know myself. But that evening, sitting there in his office, just the two of us, I’d never quite seen that look before. I shrugged and tried to keep it light as I said, “So get to know her.”
And just like that, it was like he decided he was being silly. Which he kind of was, really. He pushed himself up from the chair like he suddenly remembered he had somewhere to be. “I’ll just wait until she comes in again.” And she would. We both knew it. Probably soon.
“Good call.”
“Okay. I have to go check in at the hospital.”
“See you tomorrow.”
“When it’ll be Friday,” he tossed over his shoulder as he walked down the hall to his corner office. Then he did his weird fist-pump thing he always did that I told him was corny, and so I’m sure he did it for exactly that reason. I shook my head with a grin at my goofy big brother that I adored.
I took another half hour to finish up some last minute things, stamp the outgoing mail, and pop it into the tray for the mailman the next day. Then I got my things together. I took a last look around, part of my nightly routine, and made sure everything was in its place. I never left anything out on the desk. First of all, because we were a medical office, and there were very strict privacy laws around health care. I couldn’t just be leaving important files and info out in the open. Second, because I couldn’t stand for my work space to be cluttered or messy. I was good at my job for a reason—my organizational skills.
I loved to keep things orderly and easy to find, and Perry saw that in me right away. He’d hired me only a year or two out of college, and we’d been very tentative about entering into a working relationship, given our closeness as siblings. I dipped my toe, took careful measurements of how things were going, how they were working. For both of us. My first year working for Perry had been stressful, but only because we were both being so careful, while at the same time, he was cultivating a clientele.
I put on my coat, shouldered my bag, and hit the lights. I set the alarm—Perry was already gone out the back door—and locked the place up for the night. As I crossed the parking lot to my car, I noticed some of the spring flowers that were poking up, including a row of hyacinths along the building. One of them was an interesting, unusual blue.
I immediately flashed to the color of Zoe Blake’s eyes. That arresting blue that I bet turned heads wherever she went. Once in my car, my brain tossed me an image of her from earlier, striding into the office—that air of authority, that gorgeously tailored suit, that smile.
And that element of sadness that floated just below the surface, clearly there, but also maybe something she didn’t want others to see. I wondered about that as I drove. I was curious.
What was it about Zoe Blake? I had no idea. I shook my head and told myself to stop being silly. Who cared what her deal was?
It wasn’t like we were going to be BFFs or anything.
Chapter Three
Rainy Mondays suck.
They just do. You have to go to work, and you have the entire week left still. You’ve slept in and stayed up late for the past two nights, and now you’ve got to answer to an alarm waking you up at o-dark-thirty. And on top of that, it’s gray and wet and gross outside.
I always parked at the far end of the parking lot, leaving the closer spaces for our patients, many of whom were elderly or mobility challenged in some way, and that day, I definitely needed my umbrella for the walk from my car to the door of the office. I unlocked the door and went inside, shook the umbrella off, popped it into a holder near the closet, and shed my coat as a full-body shiver ran through me. Spring in upstate New York could be all over the board as far as temperature went, and that day was much closer to cold than warm.
My routine is the same each day, and I like that. I’m a very routine person. I don’t like my plans to change or my world to be altered. I thrive on order. So every morning in the office of Northwood Medical, I wake up the computer, turn on the Keurig so it warms up, walk down the hall where the three exam rooms live to flick on the lights, and check the supply of toilet paper in the restroom. There were other supplies in the restroom that were for urine samples, but I left the restocking of that sort of thing to Martha and Diane, Perry’s nurses.
I really liked being the first one in. There was something about the silence of the office then, the stillness in the air that anticipated the day to come. It might sound silly, but I thought of the office as my domain. I get that, in reality, it was Perry’s, but I liked to look at it like this: Perry was the star and I was the manager. So while people actually came to see the star, the manager was the one who made sure those visits ran smoothly. I was the one who actually ran the show from behind the scenes, while Perry dazzled from the stage. And those early morning moments were like getting to walk around in the empty theater, before anybody was there, getting to walk out onto the stage and just…listen. Just soak it all in, the space, the scope, the anticipation of the show. Or in my case, the day’s patients.
Yeah, it was corny. I know. But I loved my job. Everything about it.
At seven thirty sharp, I switched the phone over from the answering service to my desk. Both Perry and Martha would be in at eight, Diane at nine, Joanne at noon.
The first call rang through at 7:32.
Showtime.
✥ ✥ ✥
By the time noon rolled around, I was ready to either pull my own hair out or grab my things and just flee. Yeah, yeah, I said I loved my job, and I did. I do. But just like any other job, there were days. And that Monday was a day.
Perry was really good about sticking to his schedule. He had to be if he wanted to avoid being at work until nine every night. Once in a while, though, he’d have a day where a handful of appointments took a handful of extra minutes. Or he’d get stuck on a phone call, which would bump everything by ten, fifteen, twenty minutes. Or, worst of all, the first appointment of the day would take up extra time, ask a ton of questions, not understand something and need more time for explanation, insist on more tests. Perry would never turn somebody like that away or hurry them out. He was good with his patients that way. He took the time and he listened. And because of that, the entire remainder of the day would run late. There were any number of reasons why his timing could get thrown off, and he’d become a pro at avoiding those things.
Most of the time.
That Monday was not one of those days. His very first appointment with a woman named Mercy Drummond knocked his entire day out of whack. Mercy wasn’t a hypochondriac, but she was a self-diagnoser. We saw her at least once a month, and when she came in, she was certain she knew what was wrong with her. Gallstones. Irritable bowel syndrome. Hypoglycemia. Hashimoto’s. She hadn’t been right yet, and the majority of her appointments—and the general reason they always ran long—were spent with Perry convincing her that she was wrong. She’d show up with printouts from Google or WebMD or wherever she did her research. Luckily, she ultimately listened to Perry. If he promised she didn’t have ankle cancer, then she accepted that she didn’t have ankle cancer. But those conversations were rarely quick.
I was on hold with a lab, and I glanced up at the waiting room. Let me describe our office setup. So, as I sat at my desk, which was L-shaped, I could look over the counter through the Plexiglas into the small waiting area. It had about ten chairs, a couple small tables stacked with magazines, likely out of date, and a toy corner for occupying little ones. To the left of my desk was a door, and if you walked through that, that’s where patients paid their bills, made their next appointments, or had me get referrals for them on their way out. To the left of the office’s front door was a door that led to the exam rooms. So when it was somebody’s turn, Martha or Diane would open that door and call the patient back, and when they’d been seen and were all done, they’d come to my counter, take care of business, and leave through my door that led back to the waiting room. As I sat on hold, the nurses’ door opened, and Martha called for Mrs. Lopez just as Diane came up to my counter on the left and handed me a file.
“Mr. D’Agostino is going to need a referral for blood work.”
I nodded my understanding, took the file, and added it to my inbox.
Diane leaned her elbow on the counter and blew out a heavy breath. She was in her forties, broad-shouldered and solidly built. Her chestnut brown hair was pulled back into a ponytail, as it always was, and she shifted her weight from one foot to the other, having recently recovered from a bout of bursitis in her heel. She focused her rich brown eyes on me. “I’m starving,” she whispered, just as the woman on the other end of my phone call finally returned, and the front door to the office opened at the same time.
Like some unexpected angel of mercy or a genie from a magic bottle, in walked Zoe Blake. She was carrying a big tray, and as she got closer, both Diane and I could see it held an array of sandwiches.
“Well, hello there, new best friend of mine,” I heard Diane say as she straightened up, and I grinned. She opened the door to let Zoe back to my desk and get her out of the waiting room.
I admit I had a hard time focusing on my phone call, as Diane has one of those voices that can boom if she gets excited, and apparently, those sandwiches excited the hell out of her. I squinted as I listened to the woman in my headset—Why do we do that, anyway? Squint while we listen harder. Does that help somehow?—then jotted down the info I needed and hung up with relief.
Diane turned to me with a huge grin. “I don’t know if you’ve met my new best friend Zoe, but she brought lunch, and so she’s the queen of all things as far as I’m concerned.”
Zoe’s startling eyes landed on me, and she gave me a shot of those high cheekbones when she smiled, adding a humble little half shrug.
“Your Highness,” I said by way of greeting. “Good to see you again.”
“Same. Thought maybe you could use some lunch around here. Mondays can be rough.”
“You have no idea,” Diane said, grabbing half of what looked to be a turkey sandwich off the tray. “Thank you so much for this.” She held up the sandwich, then took a bite, turned on her heel, and headed back to her desk, I assumed.
Zoe watched her go, then shifted her gaze back to me. “So. Hi.”
“Hi,” I said as I felt little butterflies fluttering around in my belly and wondered what that was about. “How are you settling in?”
“Pretty well. I’m finally unpacked. Which is a sentence I didn’t think I’d ever get to say.” She laughed softly then, a sweet, slightly musical sound that made me smile in return.
“Moving is rough even when you’re moving in the same town. I can’t imagine how much harder it must be coming from somewhere else.” It was true. I’d never lived outside of Northwood, so I had no idea.
“It was…an adventure. Let’s put it that way.” Zoe was wearing black pants and a black-and-white striped button-down top that day. She looked a little more casual than her last visit when she wore a suit, but there was still something classy and elegant about her.
“I bet.” I looked up as Diane opened the nurses’ door and called Sarah Park back. “Listen,” I said, turning back to Zoe, and I felt a weird catch in my lungs, something that would become a regular occurrence later. “I know you want to sit down with Dr. Thompson, but I’m afraid he’s running behind today.” I rarely felt bad turning any kind of rep away. It was nothing personal—it was the nature of the business, and they all knew that. Their chances of actually getting five minutes with Perry were often slim, and they were aware of that the second they stepped in the door.
“Life of a pharma rep,” Zoe said, her tone good-natured. She lifted the lid on the tray. “How about you? Have you had lunch yet?”
✥ ✥ ✥
Zoe Blake was excellent at shifting into Sales Mode. It was subtle and seamless, and I didn’t even realize we’d gone from talking about her new house to talking about her company’s new migraine drug until I’d asked my third question about it. She was that good.
“I forgot to get your card,” she said at one point, and I handed one over, then took a bite of the chicken salad sandwich I’d snagged off the tray. I noticed her hands. Pretty. Clear polish on the neatly filed nails. Probably a manicure.
She glanced at my card, then did a double take. “Morgan Thompson? Is Dr. Thompson your husband? I had no idea.”
“Gah, no,” I said, shaking my head like a cartoon character and making a face like I’d eaten something sour. Then I laughed. “No. He’s my brother.”
“Really.” Zoe cocked her head. “I don’t think I’ve ever met siblings who work together. How did that come about, if you don’t mind me asking?” And just like that, she’d slid back into Regular Person Mode.
“I mean, the short version is that Perry was just starting his own practice after working in another for a bit, and I was having trouble finding a teaching job, so the stars kind of aligned. Of course, this was supposed to be temporary for me.” I made an oh, well face.
“How long ago was that?”
I scrunched up my face, did the math in my head. “Nine years?”
“That’s a long temp job.” Zoe’s tone held no accusation, no judgment. She put that last bite of her turkey sandwich into her mouth.
“I liked it way more than I ever expected to.”
“Yeah? Not many people can say that about their job.”
“Can you?” I asked, honestly curious now. I liked that time with her, just the two of us in the break room. It was my lunch, so Joanne had taken over the phones. Everybody else was busy. Only Zoe and I sat at the round table, the big sandwich tray between us, Diet Cokes from our fridge popped open and covered in condensation in front of us.
She didn’t hesitate. In fact, she nodded before I’d finished my question. “Absolutely. I love the freedom this job gives me. I believe in our drugs. I love that I’m part of the chain that helps those who are sick. I love meeting cool, new people.” Those cheekbones sharpened as she smiled, focused those eyes on me. She began to clean up. “Well, let me get out of your hair. Thank you so much for taking the time, Morgan. I know how busy you are, and I really appreciate it.” We both stood, and she held out her hand. “I’ll come by next week, and we’ll talk samples.”
I took her hand. Warm. Soft. “Hopefully, you’ll get to see Dr. Thompson next time.”
“Maybe.”
I tried to picture her with Perry as we left the break room, tried to decide how that would work. They’d make a striking couple, that was for sure. I let my gaze roam over her as she walked in front of me. Stopped on her very shapely ass. Stayed there until I had to force myself to look somewhere else.
I slid behind my desk and gave Joanne a nod that I’d take over the phones. Zoe smiled that smile at me, rapped her knuckles once on the counter, then gave a wave as she pulled the door next to my desk open.
“Thanks for lunch, Zoe,” I said as the phone rang. I put my headset on, hit the proper button. “Northwood Medical, this is Morgan, how can I help you?” My gaze never left Zoe’s form until the front door closed behind her.
Chapter Four
“Are you trying to hurt me? I thought you invited me for drinks because you missed me, not so you could rip my heart out and stomp on it.” Stefan gave a dismissive hand-wave flourish, picked up his appletini, and sipped.
“You are a walking, talking stereotype, you know that, right?” I grinned with affection. He might have been annoyed with me, but Stefan had been my best friend since we were sophomores in high school, and we’d known each other for a good ten years before that. I could honestly count Stefan as my longest relationship outside of family members.
