CH 22
Mindy stood in the doorway to her office, her hand laid reassuringly on the arm of her last patient for the day, Mrs. Camponelli. "Kelly, I know this is your first pregnancy, and you're really anxious, but you have to understand that it's far too early to feel any movement. You're only ten weeks along." She smiled reassuringly.
Kelly was one of Mindy's youngest patients. Married and expecting her first child at twenty-two, Mindy always felt a little surge of jealousy when dealing with the willowy blonde. She was everything Mindy wasn't, but she was professional enough to lay that feeling aside to ease the young woman's fears. "Rest easy. Everything is going swimmingly."
Kelly rested her hand over her still flat stomach. "It's just, I read all these things on the internet. Did you know that ten to twenty percent of pregnancies end in miscarriage, and eighty percent of those occur before twelve weeks?" Her eyes were wide.
Mindy gave her a little squeeze in comfort, pointing her free hand to the name plaque beside the door. "OBGYN, Kelly, that's what it says beside my name. I know all the statistics, and I still say don't worry. I have a good feeling, and I'm sure you do too."
Mindy felt the apprehension drain out of the young woman. She smiled down at Mindy and breathed out a sigh of relief. "Thanks, Dr. Lahiri. I know I obsess over things, and I spend way too much time on WebMD." She gave her a hug and made her way out of the office.
Mindy stood in her doorway for a few seconds, smugly congratulating herself on her amazing rapport with patients. She was pulled out of her meditations by Danny's voice coming from the secretaries' desks. "You know there is no way to tell if it's going well or not at this point." He was leaning forward on the desk, flipping through a file. "It's usually chromosomal abnormalities when miscarriage happens that early."
Normally this sort of conversation set Mindy's back up pretty quickly, but she decided to take a different approach. "Of course I know that, but what good is it to tell her something like that? There's nothing she can do one way or the other, why not let her be happy right now? Worrying about things that probably won't happen can't be good. Living in the moment has certain advantages."
She turned around and reentered her office without waiting for his reply.
She sat down at her desk, shutting Kelly Camponelli's file. Her own words circled in and out of her brain. Living in the moment. She smiled to herself. Sometimes she gave herself the best advice. She set the file aside and called out into the office. "Oh Danny, could you come here. I need a consultation on a patient."
To her surprise, Danny was in her doorway before she finished her request. "What are you doing? Lurking outside my door, or something?" She got up and pulled him the rest of the way into her office, shutting the door behind him.
Danny looked from Mindy to the door in confusion. "Lurking? I mean, I was walking by and you called out." He looked around her office, then back at the door. Mindy found his bewilderment endearing. He put one hand on his hip and reached with the other to rub his temple. "A man hears his name, well, he's curious about it…"
Mindy reached up and pulled his face down to hers, stopping the stilted flow of words with a hard kiss, sucking greedily at his lips. She withdrew. "Lurk all you want, Castellano, I like having you at my beck and call."
Danny reacted instinctually, threading his arms behind her, clutching at her. Her perfume surrounded him and he inhaled deeply. He could devour her smelling of soft vanilla spice. She made an inarticulate noise and pushed him up against the closed door. His back slammed against it with an audible thud. Mindy stepped back, reaching up to grab his collar. "I wish you were wearing a tie. I lead you around by it, just like in movies."
Her words brought him back to the present. He reluctantly tore himself away from her lips, breathing heavily. "Mindy, shhh." He held her at bay for a moment, one ear turned to the door, listening carefully. He was whispering now. "This is inappropriate. We're at work. Someone could hear."
The swiftness with which Mindy stepped back from him surprised Danny. He'd honestly thought his words would fall on deaf ears, and things would continue down the same path, maybe a little quieter. He frowned at the bereft feeling permeating him. This isn't how it was supposed to be. He didn't like how empty his arms felt when she stepped away. He was supposed to be the voice of reason, and she was supposed to completely ignore him and drag him along into her impulsiveness.
She glared up at him. "Afraid someone will hear?"
He found himself unable to backtrack. His sense of being technically right overrode the sinking feeling in the pit of his stomach. "No, yes… Well, I mean, Betsy and Morgan are only a couple steps outside that door, and Jeremey and maybe patients. Wouldn't you be, like, embarrassed or something, if you were caught pouncing your coworker in the middle of the day?"
He wiped his sweaty palms on his thighs and looked at her in searchingly. "Embarrassed? So that's what it is." She shook her head and crossed her arms in front of her. "You know, I thought we were being secretive because you were a private person, not because you were embarrassed."
She stepped back to her desk, smoothing her hair down and straightening her blouse. When she was satisfied with her appearance she walked back up to Danny, placing her hand on the door knob behind him. "You can go now. I wouldn't want you to be embarrassed."
Danny opened and closed his mouth. This conversation was spinning wildly away from where he wanted it. Why was it so hard to say what he really meant? "What?.. No, that's not… It's just that I don't care for people to know who... It would be the same with anyone else."
The moment the words left his mouth he knew they weren't the right ones. Her expression hardened and she swung the door open, calling out loudly into the office. "Sorry, Danny, but I don't have time to help you find a suitable antiperspirant. You should probably consult your general physician."
She ushered him out of her office and shut the door. He was left standing alone, unsure of what to do. Betsy walked up to him, giving him a confused expression. "Dr. Castellano, did you get a haircut? It looks different, kind of messy."
He reached up and felt his hair sticking out at odd angles. Mindy's fingers had threaded their way through it when she'd pulled him in for a kiss. "A haircut, yeah sure." He angrily smoothed his hair down and stalked back to his office.
Mindy laid her head down on her desk and thought seriously about sprawling out on the floor in front of her desk. What had she been thinking? She should have expected Danny's reaction. There had been this niggling thought in the back of her mind. She'd felt his hesitancy with her. She'd attributed it to him being uptight, but now she couldn't stop thinking about how she'd never seen him with someone like her.
She raised her head from the cold surface and stared at the door. She nearly jumped out of her skin when a knock sounded from it. She took a deep breath, composing herself before she said come in.
Projecting an air of nonchalance, she pretended to be pouring over an ultrasound. "I suppose you've come to apologize." Without looking up she waited for a response.
"I guess I could apologize, yet again, but I hardly think I've done anything recently that warrants it." Mindy jerked her gaze away from the paper in her hand when she heard the familiar dulcet voice. Brendan was standing in her doorway clutching a stack of mail.
She cocked her head to the side. She hadn't spoken to Brendan in weeks, aside from a few only slightly awkward encounters in the elevator. "Deslaurier, what are you doing here? Come to paper the office with midwifery propaganda?" She pointed to the mail under his arm.
He smiled and took one of the chairs in front of her desk. "Now that you mention it, I do have some pretty interesting articles it might behoove you to look at, but no. I'm just here to drop of some mail that was inadvertently delivered upstairs." He pulled out the stack and gingerly set it on her desk. "What's with the angry red aura?" He waved his hands in the air, gesturing in her general direction. "Trouble at the practice?"
She furrowed her brown, tamping down the urge to glare at him. "Not that it's any of your business, but things are going quite well here. People come in my office and immediately their 'auras' become a calm and pleasant shade of blue, especially when they see my medical doctorate hanging on the wall."
He raised his hands in defeat. "I wave the white flag." He leaned back in the chair, making himself comfortable.
She eyed him suspiciously. "What do you really want, Brendan? You could have just dropped that mail off with Betsy." She pushed her frames up the bridge of her nose.
He shifted a little uncomfortably. "For someone who is often unperceptive you're extremely observant today." His normally serene and overly confident demeanor slipped a bit. "I've been thinking a lot about you and me. I know I've already apologized to you for my behavior, but I don't get the feeling that you've really forgiven me. It weighs heavily on my conscience and disrupts the flow of my chi."
An expression disbelief mingled with annoyance contorted Mindy's features. She fought the urge to curl her lip in distaste. "Oh, please. We're cool. No need to rehash the awkwardness that was Mindy/Brendan." She waved her hand dismissively.
He leaned forward in his chair, placing his hands on her desk. "No, Mindy, really. I pride myself on being able to read people. I should have known you weren't the kind of person who would thrive in a no-strings-attached arrangement. I feel like I did you a disservice, and now that I've gotten to know you better, maybe I did myself a disservice too."
Mindy took a deep breath. This was all very strange to her. A couple weeks ago she spent all of her time off sitting on the couch watching old episodes of Sex in the City, just hoping someone would call her, and today she'd already had a lover's tiff with Danny, and Brendan was basically asking her out.
Mindy was lost in her thoughts. She didn't realized Brendan was waiting on her to reply, until he cleared his throat uncomfortably. "Look, I guess what I'm asking is a bit selfish. I want to assuage my guilt, and knowing that we are in fact 'cool' would help with that. What do you say we go out for green tea or something after work and talk about it?"
Mindy's first thought was a vehement and unyielding no, but just as she was about to give it to Brendan, Danny strolled by her office. Distracted by the sight of Brendan, he didn't watch where he was headed and walked right into Morgan, dropping the files in his hands. She stood up and rounded her desk, perching on the corner. She leaned forward, placing a hand on Brendan's forearm. "Well, I suppose, if it'll get your chi in balance or whatever."
She surreptitiously glanced out where Danny was kneeling, picking up his papers. He looked over his shoulder at her and quickly turned back to the mess in front of him. She smiled to herself.
Brendan rose from the chair and headed toward the door. "So, we'll meet in the lobby at five. See you then, and thanks Mindy." He leaned forward and gave her a swift peck on the cheek, squeezing her upper arm slightly.
She leaned on the doorframe to her office and watched him leave, only pushing away from it when the doors to the elevator shut. Strolling over to the Betsy's desk, she propped her arms up on it and glanced down at the secretary. "Bets, can you call Maggie for me and let her know I'll have to push back our plans for tonight?" She looked down at Danny, still shuffling through files on the floor. His movements stilled at her words, and she felt a small sense of satisfaction.
Betsy looked up in confusion. Danny picked the last of the files up and thumped them down on the counter. "She's not your personal assistant, call Maggie yourself." He picked up one of the files and perused it with total concentration, pointedly not looking at Mindy.
At Danny's words, Mindy turned to face him, resting one hand on her hip. Betsy looked back and forth between the two, a line of worry creasing her forehead. "No, it's ok Dr. L, I can call her. Just give me her number and also… Who is Maggie?"
Mindy tossed a lock of hair back over her shoulder, turning back to Betsy. "No, hon, I'll take care of it, thanks anyway."
She pulled out her phone and was scrolling through her contacts when Danny chimed in yet again. "Could you do that in your office? Some of us are trying to finish up their paperwork."
Mindy stared at him for a few moments, her mouth open in disbelief, temporarily at a loss for words. She blew out an irritated gust of air, regaining her ability to speak. "Oh, sure, Danny. Wouldn't want to disturb you." She turned and went back into her office, stopping briefly to look at Danny one last time. He was still bent over the file, single mindedly look at each page before turning to the next. "That file might be easier to read if it weren't upside down."
Danny looked up just in time to see her office door swing shut. He released a sigh of exasperation and snapped the file shut. Leaving the pile for Betsy to deal with, he marched back into his office.