Thanks so much for the feedback for this story. I'm really enjoying writing it. This chapter is a little shorter than the last one but I kind of needed to explain what happened to Morgan and bring Casey into the mixture. Anyway, I now have a plan for this story- it should be about 11 chapters.
Again, I'm British so while I tried to use American words and phrases, if anyone spots something I've missed, please let me know. Enjoy!
Pins and Needles.
"What do you mean, no?" Danny's voice shot across the desk, his eyes hard as they focussed on Mindy. Morgan had been sent out, white and shaking after half an hour with an irate Danny, and Mindy and Jeremy had entered to decide his fate with their fellow partner.
Danny sat in his usual chair, anger still present in every line of his face. His jaw was clenched and Mindy could see the tension in his whole body. Somehow, confusingly, it made her more aware of his strength, his masculine energy that always hung around his form but was now being broadcasted with everything about his demeanour. Mindy and Jeremy sat opposite in the chairs intended for patients, Mindy trying not to feel like a child in the principal's office.
Mindy was sitting up straight in her chair trying to be professional and not blurt out questions about Christina, or what was in that letter, or what cologne Danny was using and had he been working out? Her eyes kept fixing on his arms, on the biceps which were shown off by his arms folded across his chest.
Jeremy, as always, seemed incredibly relaxed and did not seem to even register the tension floating in the room.
"Okay, not 'no', just... You can't make this decision alone, Danny. Remember when you and Jeremy cut me out of all the decisions and we ended up losing half our patients to the Deslauriers?" She looked to Jeremy, who was reclining back on his chair as if he were on a sun-lounger, for support.
Danny huffed in annoyance. "You're not on the beach, sit up."
Jeremy ignored him, simply relaxing further into his seat, but fixed his eyes on the other man. "We did agree on a democracy." He spread his hands out in front of him. "Danny, make your case."
"What case? What else could I possibly say? Morgan broke into my office-"
Mindy held up a hand to stop him. "It's highly unlikely that he broke in, it's not like he picked the lock with a waiting room full of patients watching, is it?"
"He entered without my permission," Danny continued, a little louder while glaring at Mindy. "Went through my personal things and posted a private letter to my ex-wife. He has no respect for boundaries."
"So you think we should fire him," Jeremy said.
"There's no 'think' about it. Anywhere else on the planet, the guy would be fired. People can't get away with shit like this."
Mindy scoffed. "You've always hated Morgan."
"I have not!"
"You didn't want to hire him in the first place!" Mindy said in a rising voice.
"Okay then, since you are clearly desperate to keep him, why don't you explain to me why he shouldn't be fired?"
Mindy opened her mouth... and nothing came out. Danny smiled smugly and folded his hands together in front of him.
"He is a good nurse, Danny," Jeremy says. "Even with all his... idiosyncrasies."
"This is New York. There are plenty of good nurses."
Mindy shook her head. "No, there are plenty of drunks, thieves and Beverlys. Don't you remember how awful Beverly was as a nurse?"
A moment of silence passed in which each of the partners thought back to those dark days when there was a fifty-fifty chance they'd walk in in the morning to find someone had spilt the urine samples on the floor and not cleaned it up so the entire place reeked like a public toilet.
"I'm not saying we'd take Beverly back as a nurse," Danny said eventually. "We can interview again."
"No," Mindy whined, stretching the final 'o' sound. "I don't want to interview again. It was so bad last time. I probably have PTSD."
Danny closed his eyes. Something lifted in Mindy's chest the way it always did when she knew she was winning or saw a sale on shoes. It was a strange sense of weightlessness, as through everything inside her chest cavity had vanished and the space filled with air.
"God that was awful," Danny muttered, almost to himself. Mindy rubbed her nose in remembrance of the events of that day. She would swear her nose had never set quite right.
"If I can work with Beverly after she tried to kill me-"
"She didn't try to kill you," the men said in unison.
"Then surely Morgan deserves another chance too," Mindy finished, looking between the two men, trying to detect agreement in their faces. She soon gave up, thinking it was probably a good thing that she didn't play poker with either of them.
The office sat in silence for several moments.
"I think," Jeremy said. "That we can arrive at a solution that will satisfy everyone."
After several minutes, much arguing and compromising, Morgan was given three weeks' suspension and, as Jeremy had said, everyone was more or less satisfied. Danny, because the punishment was severe enough to fit the crime and Mindy and Jeremy because they recognised that Morgan was still an asset to the practice. Mindy felt sure that when Danny had calmed down a bit, he would see this too.
Leaving the office, Mindy looked around the reception area for Morgan to send him in to see Danny who would deliver the news. There was no sign of him. Behind her, Jeremy left as well and walked to the reception desk to pick up the files for his next patient. Betsy was sitting at her computer, fidgeting and darting looks around the room at nothing in particular. Jeremy said something to her under his breath that seemed to relax her a little. At least, she gave him a small smile.
"Betsy, where's Morgan? " Mindy said, coming up to stand beside Jeremy. Betsy looked around the open-plan area nervously once more and lowered her voice, despite the fact that there was only Beverly in sight and she was busy on he computer at the other side of the desk. Somehow she had not only mastered emails, using them primarily to send links to disgusting YouTube videos to everyone's work emails, but had managed to get around the office blocks on certain internet sites and had no qualms about browsing questionable websites in full view of the office.
"Beverly, please refrain from doing that at work," Jeremy called over to her, spotting her activities at the same time as Mindy. He then looked back at Betsy in time for her answer.
"He ran to the bathroom. I think he's..." There was a pause while Betsy searched for a way to put it.
"Throwing up?" Mindy volunteered.
"Becoming reacquainted with breakfast?" Jeremy put in.
Betsy looked ill at the thought of it and nodded once, sharply. "How's Dr. Castellano?" Clearly she was eager to be off the topic of the contents of Morgan's stomach.
Mindy looked back towards the door of Danny's office which Jeremy had forgotten to close. Danny was staring at his computer screen with stationary eyes and an unsmiling face.
Before Mindy could work out quite how to answer, the door to the bathroom opened and a green and moaning Morgan emerged, clutching his stomach and with a suspicious wet patch on the front of his top. Before Mindy could say a word, Danny called him into his office and Morgan walked in, swallowing back a heave. Mindy wrinkled her nose as the smell of vomit reached her. After all these years as a doctor, it was still the one smell she hated most. Betsy looked at her computer screen.
"Oh, your next patients are in exam rooms one and three. You should probably go."
Mindy thanked her and grabbed the file for her patient, heading towards the exam room as she flipped it open.
By the time Mindy was finished with Mrs. Dorchester (first pregnancy, no complications arising) Morgan had already left. To be honest, she wasn't sure if she should be relieved or not by that. She was a little annoyed he hadn't said goodbye but on the other hand, what would she have said to him if he had? What could she have said?
Midway through the afternoon, in a lull between appointments which she was using to get some of the paperwork which had piled up while she was in New Mexico done, her phone rang. She glanced at the caller ID.
Casey.
Dammit. No, wait. She didn't mean that. This was her hot pastor boyfriend who was all kinds of sweet and quoted the Bible in a sexy voice that made her feel dirty in a really good way. Just because she hadn't thought about him all day... Well there'd been a lot going on. It didn't mean anything.
She answered. "Hi!" She winced. That came out really high-pitched and weird. She lowered her voice and tried again. "How are you?" Great. Apparently she could either sound like a six-year-old girl or a middle-aged man.
"Mindy? Are you okay? You sound like you're coming down with a cold or something."
She cleared her throat. "No, I'm okay. Don't worry."
"Alright, babe. So how was Santa Fe?"
"The conference was good. Except Jeremy and Morgan made total asses of themselves. It was kind of funny to see actually."
Casey laughed. "Glad you had fun. And... Did you see your ex-boyfriend?"
Mindy made a disgusted sound at the back of her throat. "Ugh, yes. He's such a dick. Hey, you're on pretty good terms with God, right? Do you think you can persuade him to do a little smiting? For me?"
"I kind of tend to like thinking of God as a kind and merciful being not so much the wrathful vengeance thing."
"Not even one little lightning bolt?" In her head, God looked a little like Zeus from that Disney film, sitting on his cloud with a quiver full of bolts while winged horses flew around him. It was kind of cool. Casey's voice stops her from imagining the colour of horse she would choose if she could have a winged horse.
"Sorry." There was a short pause. "So it didn't go well?"
"Not so much. Turns out he was a bigger douche than I thought." Mindy's grip tightened around the phone, mind shooting back to Heather, and Anne and whoever else the bastard was banging when he was supposed to be busy falling head over heels in love with her and planning their perfect life together.
Casey made a sympathetic noise. "I really thought seeing him would help."
"I know. And I'm sorry I didn't call you sooner. There's been more drama around here than an episode of Grey's."
"I wish I knew what 'Grey's' was but it sounds stressful. Listen, I've got a Bible study class starting in a few minutes but how about you come over tonight and tell me all about it?"
Mindy smiled and agreed before putting the phone down. She felt better already.
It lasted about three minutes.
Leaving her office to go to exam room three where her next patient would be waiting, she happened to glance over at Danny's door. And stopped.
At his door, he was standing talking to a blonde woman. As she turned, Mindy recognised her in a stomach-dropping moment. Christina.
Danny's face was tight, angry as he stared at her. She reached out and brushed his arm. Immediately he tried to pull away but she clung on. He snapped something at her but she remained calm, looking up at him with those big round eyes. Mindy's papers crumpled in her fist.
Danny shook his head and then sighed. Waving Christina into his office, he closed the door behind them both. Mindy stared at the closed door with an open mouth. What was she doing back here?