From Now Until Infinity (2) (19 page)

“I don’t think that it would do any good. But thank you for offering.” I change the subject. “I miss you.”

He sighs and says in a very quiet voice, “I miss you too. I’m counting down the hours until I see you again.”

“Me too,” I reply quietly not wanting to hang up the phone. “I have to go, baby. My first surgery is scheduled to start in a few minutes, and I still have to change.”

“I love you, Charlie. Remember to be safe.”

I reach up and touch my infinity necklace. “I love you too.”

This concludes one of the longest mornings of my life, and I haven’t even seen one patient yet.

Chapter Ten

I EMERGE from the operating room after performing four surgeries back to back. Phil greets me and escorts me back to the 34
^th
floor. I head straight to the locker room, shower, and change my clothes instead of my normal routine where I check in with Brad first.

I crack a joke to Phil that I was sure that he was going to follow me into the ladies’ locker room. Phil doesn’t even pretend to smile at my joke. I mentally take note that Phil doesn’t have sense of humor and isn’t a big talker.

Once I’m clean, makeup has been reapplied, and dressed, I walk out of the locker room expecting to see Phil. Instead of seeing the mountain of a man with no neck, I’m graced with Colin’s gorgeous appearance. I smile at him and throw my arms around his neck.

“Happy to see me, baby?” he asks while he kisses my head.

“Very,” I reply. He’s already sweaty. I have no idea what time it is but it must be after one o’clock.

“Do you have any patients today?” Colin asks.

“Nope. I just have a mountain of paperwork. Come to my office when you’re done with the trainers,” I instruct.

Colin walks back to the trainers who give me a wave. Phil quickly shadows me toward my office. I detour by the break room and grab some of the lunch that I paid for. Brad made a good choice. He had pasta and salad catered for the office. Hopefully, I’m back in the staffs’ good graces after the terse email that was sent out this morning.

Once I’ve got a full plate, I head to my office to eat. I instruct Phil to fix and plate, and he grumbles that he will in a moment. He’s certainly a man of few words.

Brad isn’t at his desk so I scratch him a note to come see me when he gets back.

I shut my office door leaving Phil on the outside and snuggle into my chair for some needed down time. I hit the play button on my computer and soft strands of Mozart fill my office. I’ve gotten to swallow exactly two bites of my pasta before Brad opens my office door and begins to rain on my parade.

He doesn’t say anything. He doesn’t have to. I can read his body language, and I know that whatever he has to tell me is bad.

“Sit down,” I instruct. “Any messages?”

“Your phone’s been blowing up, but it’s just reporters wanting a quote. I told them all that you didn’t have a comment at this time. That’s what Colin told me to say,” he says matter-of-factly.

“Okay, then. Why do you look so nervous to see me?” I decide to cut to the chase.

“I’m not quite sure how to put this,” he replies hemming and hawing around.

“Just say it, Brad,” I instruct putting my fork down and sinking further back into my desk chair.

“Okay… JT Reynolds called and cancelled his follow up appointment with you. As did all three of the other football players,” he states.

I exhale. I guess I should have seen this one coming. “Let me guess,” I reply. “When you called to find out the reason for the cancellation, they all said that it was because I’m dating Colin.”

He looks apologetically at me and nods his head in confirmation.

“This sucks,” I say with a little more venom than I had planned. I slump down a bit in my desk chair. “Did you explain patient/doctor confidentiality? Did you explain that it’s against the law for me to share their medical history or even reveal their names to Colin? Did you tell them I could lose my medical license?”

“Caroline, I’m so sorry,” he says. “I did, but they all said that they couldn’t risk it.”

I dump my plate of food in my garbage can. My appetite has suddenly made a run for the border along with my career. “Does my dad know, yet?”

“Fortunately, he’s playing golf this afternoon so Carmen hasn’t been able to reach him,” Brad informs me.

“Okay. Go play detective. Check with appointments and let me know if my dad’s professional football players are canceling on him also.”

Brad does some sort of convoluted military solute and leaves my office.

I say a quick prayer that the fallout from my relationship with Colin’s just going to negatively impact my side of the practice and not my dad’s. I actually laugh out loud. Here I sit praying that only my career will be sabotaged? This is shitty. This is shitty on so many different levels.

I don’t bother to listen to my voicemail on my phone. It’s full. I hit the “delete all” button and wipe it clean. Then, I open my email and laugh at all the requests for interviews. There’re people that are pretending to be my friend hoping that I’ll give them some scoop. It’s pathetic. I’m a Harvard trained medical doctor. I’m above all of this tabloid garbage.

I sit at my desk for a long while with my eyes closed and think about my future. Every thought that I have includes Colin. I just wish that this chaos didn’t follow Colin like the dirt cloud around Linus in the Charlie Brown comic strip.

There’s a soft knock on my office door. “Come in,” I yell.

There he is - the man that has been starring in my daydreams, Colin.Fucking.McKinney.

“What’s wrong, beautiful?” he asks as he sits down across from my desk.

I decide to not beat around the bush. He needs to know about the fallout from our relationship going public. “It’s been my dream to transition my side of the practice to treat professional athletes like my dad does. From the Clay South event, I gained four potential patients that are professional football players. All four have canceled because they’re afraid that I’ll break my doctor/patient confidentiality oath and share their injuries with you. That’ll give you and Dallas an unfair advantage during the football season.”

There. I laid it on the line for him. I couldn’t have made it any clearer.

Colin shakes his head in disgust. “I’m sorry, baby.” He begins running his fingers through his hair. “Shit! I keep apologizing. I think that’s all that I’ve done since we got back together is apologize for one thing or another. Is there anything that I can do?”

I’m surprised at how calm I am. “No. There’s nothing that you can do. We just have to pray that this only affects patients seeing me and not my dad. His practice is about half pro football players. If he loses all of them, it would be a huge financial blow.”

The look on Colin’s face breaks my heart. The lines around his eyes deepen. His forehead wrinkles. I can tell that he’s thinking about the situation for a moment. We sit in silence. Finally, he says, “I’ll call Mark and Aiden and see if they have any ideas on what we can do to stop this from happening.” Then, as almost an afterthought as if he is talking to himself, he says, “I’ve already dropped the underwear campaign… maybe I can get out of the cologne contract too.”

“What did you just say? You’re no longer modeling tighty whities?”

He looks at me like a kid caught with his hand in the cookie jar. “Yeah. I decided to cut back on my endorsement deals when we got back together.”

Colin doesn’t elaborate. This’s exactly what I didn’t want him to do. He can’t completely change his life because I’m back in it.

“Do you care to continue explaining why you decided to drop an endorsement deal without discussing it with me, or do I have to use truth serum to get it out of you?” I ask trying to keep my anger out of my voice.

He crosses one leg over the other leaning back against my club chair. He looks relaxed and almost cocky. His body language is making me madder. “Well, you see, Charlie,” putting enough emphasis on my name that I know that he’s using its now double meaning for independence. “I no longer think that it’s a good idea for me to pose almost nude when I’m off the market, taken, etc. I wouldn’t want men looking at you in your underwear so I chose to not have women stare at me. Plus, I think if I’m less visible in the media that we might get some of our privacy back.”

I know Colin well enough to know that this is his way of making a concession so he can point out to me that he’s so serious about our relationship that he dropped an important endorsement deal for
us
. It’s a game of chess with Colin. He’s made a strategic move so when he asks me again to move my practice to Dallas, he’ll have more leverage. I’ve played this game before with him. This must have been what took him away from laundrypalooza. He told me when he saw me by the locker rooms the next day that he made this decision for us.

I guess in some sort of way his answer could be considered chivalrous. I choose to focus on the intention behind his decision and not on the fact that he made such a huge choice without first discussing it with me and after us only being together for such a short time.

“Wow! Colin, that’s a bold decision that you made. I can’t imagine that Mark and Aiden were pleased with your choice to walk away from what I can only assume was a multi-million dollar contract. I hope that you made it clear that it was your choice and not something that I was aware that you were doing.” I put extra emphasis on the words “aware that you were doing.”

Before he can answer, Brad walks into my office without knocking. The look on his face says it all.

“Brad and I need to discuss some patients now. I’ll see you at home where we can finish this conversation,” I say dismissing him from my office. I’ve got a feeling that I know what Brad is about to tell me, and I don’t want Colin to hear it. I need time to think.

Colin’s not pleased with his brush off. “What about our run this evening?” he asks reminding me that I promised to do cardio with him this morning. I need to run by myself before I deal with him. I don’t want to be mother henned today.

“I’m sorry. Why don’t you do your cardio now? That way we can have more alone time tonight.” I fake a sexy, lustful look. In my head, I’m screaming at him to leave. Brad’s almost pushing Colin out of my office.

Colin gives me a rather tentative look and walks around my desk to kiss me goodbye. I do my best to fake a passionate kiss back. I must succeed because he leaves without saying another word.

Once my office door is shut, Brad sinks into the chair that Colin just vacated. “How bad?” I ask.

“Shitty bad,” Brad replies while shaking his head.

I let out a sigh. “Does Carmen know?”

“Yes. She still can’t reach your dad,” he replies. “She’s pretty upset.”

I lean back in my chair and begin to massage my temples. I feel a migraine coming on. Strangely enough, it’s been years since I had a migraine. Removing Colin from my life cured them last time. I reach into one of the only occupied drawers in my desk and pull out two Aleve and dry swallow them. Hopefully, they’ll stop this headache from going nuclear.

“Give me the facts,” I state much more calmly than I feel.

“All of your father’s wait list of current professional football players have asked to be removed from the list, destroyed, and kept away from you. His current patients that are players are in full panic mode. Carmen’s doing her best to reassure them about our strict privacy practices. There’s even talk of lawsuits if their injuries become known.”

Brad’s right. This is shitty bad. I, of course, would never divulge any information to Colin about our patients. However, one of the football players could go to a bar. Meet a girl. Happen to say that he has injured ribs. She sells the story to the media. Boom! It’s now presumed that I shared the information with Colin, who told his coaches. and they leaked the news to the media. My reputation is gone as well as my bank account.

Brad continues, “Carmen has already contacted the practice’s attorneys. I think that it would be best, if you went home for the day. Your dad’s going to freak when he hears about this, and you two need the distance from each other.”

I know that Brad’s right. However, I’m almost thirty-years-old and a highly accomplished adult. The last thing that I want to do is hide from my father like a scared little girl.

“Thanks Brad. You’re the best assistant in the whole world. I think that I’m going to finish up my notes from the surgeries today, run, and then head home. I can’t hide forever from this disaster,” I state much more confidently than I feel.

As Brad stands up to walk out my office, he pauses and turns to me. “I love you Caroline. Whatever happens, I have your back. Day. Night. I’m in your corner. There are other jobs, but I only have one best doctor friend.”

His words were just what I needed to hear. A smile as big as Texas breaks out on my face. “I know that you have my back, and that means the world to me.”

Chapter Eleven

I’M NOT sure how I got my notes on all four surgeries recorded, but I did. By the time that I finished my last sentence, I knew that I had to go home. My migraine medication, which I’ve kept “just in case,” is in my medicine cabinet. I need to get to it quickly because the Aleve has only slowed down the parade of rhinos on my skull not stopped them.

I grab my purse, phone, and then suddenly remember that I didn’t drive to work today. So I grab Phil and tell him that I’m ready to leave... Like Now! We once again exit through the loading dock avoiding the reporters outside.

While I have a few minutes in the car, I message my therapist letting her know that I need to see her sooner rather than later. Today, so far, has been the worst day of my professional life. I know my history, and my history says that today’s drama is a strong trigger for me. I’m losing control of my professional life, and my personal life is on a platter for the whole world to scrutinize. There must’ve been at least ten times today that I considered running until I felt in control. I guess this migraine has been a blessing in disguise. At least it has so far kept me from relapsing.