A Day in the Life of a Small-Town Doctor
or
What Was I Doing Again?
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Summary: Join me for an in-depth look into the day-to-day life of Dr. Alex of Flowerbud Village. Just don't be surprised if you have to tell him who you are. More than once. Relentlessly silly and unnecessary exploitation of the description of the doctor as "absent-minded".
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When Alex, the young doctor in charge of the Flowerbud Village Clinic, came downstairs to begin work that morning, he knew immediately that something was wrong. Mainly because he did so beneath three horrified feminine gazes: Martha, horrified and amused; Dia, horrified and annoyed; and Gina, just plain horrified.
Perhaps because her horror wasn't weighted down with spare adjectives, Gina was the first to recover.
"G-good morning, Doctor," she greeted her husband politely, cheeks flushing delicately pink. "Are—are you perhaps feeling a bit of a draft?"
"That's one way of putting it," Martha chuckled, and doubtlessly would have blushed, if she wasn't simply too old for such nonsense.
"Now that you mention it, I suppose I am a bit chilly," Alex noted thoughtfully, pondering this very carefully as he gave his pretty blue-haired bride an affectionate hug and kiss on the cheek.
"Where are your pants?" Dia finally demanded, horror evaporating and leaving only annoyance of the bluntest sort.
The doctor , who had been standing with his arm around Gina in all his doctor-ly glory and watching two colleagues and a patient in good-natured confusion, looked down.
There, beneath the fresh lab coat that Gina and Martha had conspired to bully him into, were the crisply ironed shirt that Gina made sure were always in his closet when he needed them, and his favourite pair of heart-patterned boxer shorts.
"Oh, goodness, that's embarrassing," he laughed pleasantly. "I'll just run upstairs and put on some pants."
"Please do," Dia said icily.
He nodded, and moved to do so, then paused.
"Er, Gina, which one was my pants drawer again?"
"I'll help you, dear," she offered absently, already taking his arm gently and steering him back toward the stairs. "I'm sure we'll find them eventually."
"Well! We ought to be thankful that he remembered his boxers, at least," Martha chuckled to Dia, who rolled her eyes. Then she sighed. "The man is brilliant, but so absent-minded. It's a good thing there's someone looking after him now."
Dia said nothing, but reflected that she and Martha were of two very different minds on the brilliant part.
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"Hey, when did this get here?" Alex was meanwhile demanded, looking bewilderedly down at the ornately carved dressing table bearing only a little bottle of skin lotion and several lengths of black ribbon in varying sizes.
Gina, who was busily rooting through the closet and trying to decide which pants would best match the shirt he had chosen – despite every shirt and every pair of pants the man owned being nearly identical – sighed.
"When I moved into your room a month ago after the wedding. It was a wedding gift from Dia; she said I would need something nice to compensate for the stress of being your—er, nurse. B-because nursing is generally a stressful profession of course," she finished lamely.
Gina was quite aware of her best friend's opinion of her husband, but it seemed that Alex possessed an astounding level of skill at missing that sort of thing. And if he did notice, Gina reflected with a sigh, it would take nothing short of a miracle for him to remember it for more than two minutes in a row.
"Alright, dear, I've found you some pants," she called, holding out a pair of dark dress slacks.
Alex scratched his head.
"Is that why we were up here?"
Gina sighed again.
"Yes, that's why we're up here."
"So, no sex?"he asked,crestfallen.
She whimpered sadly as a substantial portion of her mind urged her to take Alex up on his offer, and simply let the Clinic run itself for the day. Whatever the failings of his memory, he certainly had no trouble recalling all of her most sensitive areas, nor did he experience any particular difficulty in taking joyous and repeatedadvantage of them.
But this was neither the time nor the place for such thoughts.
Well, it wasn't the time, anyway, Gina amended, eyes lighting on the big, soft feather bed in the center of the room that they had been having such fun breaking in since Alex had purchased it and gotten rid of his old single bed.
"Sex this evening," she promised with a tranquil little smile. "Work now."
"Oh, right! Work," Alex repeated. "I forgot."
"Of course you did, dear," she sighed for a third time in one fairly short scene, following him out of the bedroom. Then she stopped. "Dear?"
He turned.
"Yes, sweetheart?"
She held out the garment still slung over her arm.
"Your pants?"
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"The operation was a complete success," the doctor stated in a tone of hushed thankfulness about three hours later, wiping a drop of sweat from his brow.
"Amazing," Martha breathed in awe.
Gina said nothing, overwhelmed by admiration from this man. To be able to remove the chicken that Syndi, the little farmer down the road (sweet girl, but not terribly bright) had somehow contrived to plunge deeply into her shoulder (cuddling accident, she had gasped before collapsing on the Clinic's doorstep), without extensive harm to either the farmer or the fowl, all with the insufficient supplies that any small-town clinic might possess…it was simply unbelievable!
"Alright; let's get her moved to the recovery ward," the doctor was meanwhile adding. "Martha, would you like to run our feathered friend back to Sparkle Rainbow Farm?"
Gina frowned. Was he trying to be funny? This was hardly the time for it.
"Um, Alex? Aren't you forgetting something?"
He stared at her blankly.
"What do you mean?"
With a tiny sigh as it became abundantly clear that he was not, indeed, joking, Gina tried to smile encouragingly.
"Well, don't you think that perhaps we should close the incision?"
Realization dawning, Alex laughed.
"Oh, yes! I suppose that might help if she's to make a full recovery. Goodness, where's my head today?"
"Today, he says," Martha commented mildly to Sadie the Severely Traumatized Chicken as they started on their journey back to the farm.
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"Oh! Hello, Ellen," Gina greeted, pleasantly surprised, when she answered the cheerful tap-tap-tappity-tap at the door of the Clinic to find the little brunette on the step. Ellen had been one of her best friends since she had arrived in Flowerbud Village. The two could have simply hours of fun together, arguing the point of whether or not a slice of cake everyday was really beneficial to a person's health, mental or physical. "What can we do for you?"
"Just dropping by to return your husband, Gina," Ellen giggled, stepping aside to let the doctor back into the Clinic. "I found him wandering around the Blue Sky Ranch, and when I asked him if he was looking for something, he said he had no idea – he couldn't remember."
"Oh, Alex, are you alright?" Gina asked worriedly, guiding him through the door and to the nearest chair.
"Don't worry, sweetheart, I'm just fine," he replied hastily, looking rather sheepish. "I could swear I went out for something, but I have absolutely no idea what it was!"
"You're back, Doctor," a matronly voice greeted from the stairway. "Did you remember the milk?"
"Ah! That was it!" he proclaimed triumphantly, standing. "Thank-you, Martha."
"I could go with him, if you want," Ellen offered mildly. "You know, make sure he doesn't forget again."
Gina smiled gratefully.
"Would that be alright?"
"Sure," the pretty brunette chirped. "I was going that way, anyway."
"Wait a second," Alex objected. "I thought you said you were going to the Callaway Cafe to visit Carl."
"Oh, sure," Ellen huffed, cheeks brightly red. "Now he remembers."
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And, for a time, all seemed well. Surely, with Ellen right there at his elbow, chattering merrily away in a manner that would prevent even the most talented at filtering out unwanted sound from forgetting where he was, it would be a matter of minutes before Alex returned with the milk.
But in this old world, counting on even a sure thing can often lead to disappointment.
For ten minutes passed.
Then twenty.
Then thirty.
Then an hour.
Finally, at the two-hour mark, Gina stood so suddenly that Martha and Dia jumped a simultaneous foot in the air.
"I'm going to find him," she announced decisively. "He could be out there somewhere, injured and alone--"
"Or wandering the streets aimlessly," Dia interjected under her breath.
"--and as his wife, I cannot simply sit here and let him suffer!"
"Good for you, Gina!" Martha said heartily. "Just don't you forget why you went out, or we may never see either of you again."
With an exasperated look in the elderly lady's direction, Gina moved to open the door, and nearly stumbled as it was yanked open at exactly the same moment.
There, on the doorstep, stood a slightly irritated old man – Mr. Saibara who made all those pretty pots and plates and vases for Lyla's shop, if she recalled, correctly – and next to him, an extra-sheepish, dripping wet Alex!
"Oh, no!" she moaned despairingly. "What happened, darling?"
Saibara, who had apparently either been nicknamed Darling by the other boys in school during his youth or was hard enough of hearing to mistake Darling for Saibara, answered.
"I hauled him out of the river for you, Miss. He was just meandering along, thinking about something, and it must've been important, because he didn't hear when I called to him to look out. I thought he would stop when he hit the river bank, but he just kept right on going."
"I was planning some improvements we might make next season," Alex protested. "And I think you'll find them as exciting as I do, Gina. The first is--"
"Alex! You're shivering, and your fingers are blue! We'll have all evening to talk about your ideas, after we get you into a warm bath and then some dry clothes!"
She began to pull at his drenched garments. Turning abruptly away lest Gina's nursing instinct reveal something to his eyes that he wanted desperately left obscured, Saibara cleared his throat.
"Well, then, I'll just leave him with you. And next time, young man, watch where you're walking before you end up somewhere worse!"
"Thank-you very much, Mr. Saibara," Gina called after him.
"Yes, thank-you," Alex added. "I found our conversation on the properties of clay very interesting.
Saibara shook his head as he left.
"Can converse like an expert on any topic, but can't keep his head out of the clouds..."
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"Gina?" Alex called tentatively as he wrapped a fluffy white towel around his waist on his way into the bedroom. "Is something wrong?"
Gina, seated before the mirror of the dressing table, sighed and set down the brush she had been dragging slowly and methodically through long, thick pale silvery hair, just now slightly wavy from being confined all day to braids.
"I'm surprised you noticed," she finally replied, slightly pettish from a long and stressful day.
"What is it?" he asked very gently, coming up behind her and resting his hands at her shoulders.
She shivered delightedly. He was still flushed from the heat of the bath, and his fingers burned pleasantly through the thin fabric of her nightgown to warm chilled skin.
Then, recalling why exactly he had beentaking a bath, she drooped sadly.
"It's just that...you could have easily gotten hurt today. Why do you have such a hard time paying attention to what's happening around you? Or remembering...well, anything?"
"I'm sorry, Gina. It's just the way I am," he replied helplessly. "But I think we make a very nice balance. Even Martha agrees that we're a good team."
She smiled, and snuggled back against his middle, a tiny part of her mind willing the towel to fall away. After a moment, she felt more than heard his chuckle, and looked up, sleepily curious.
"I was just thinking," he said in response to the question in her look, "at least I remember the important things."
"Such as?" she prompted gently, already blushing faintly.
He grinned.
"Such as, a certain promise you made earlier today about a certain amount of sex taking place tonight..."
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End Notes: Hee! This was fun. XD