A Doctor In Her Stocking

“If I win,” Seth said, “then you have to do something nice for somebody.”

Reed threw his friend a look that he knew must be ripe with suspicion. Because suspicious was exactly how he was feeling at the moment. “I have to do something nice for someone? That’s all?”

Seth barked out a laugh this time. “That’s all?” he echoed incredulously. “Listen to you. You act like it won’t cost you anything to perform an act of selfless kindness for someone.”

Reed’s suspicion compounded at the statement. “It won’t,” he told the other man.

Seth smiled, a smile that was knowing, confident and a bit sad. “Then how come you’ve never done something nice for anyone before?” he asked softly.

Reed opened his mouth to reply but realized, much to his dismay, that he had no idea what to say. He hadn’t ever done anything nice for anyone before, he thought. Had he? He tried to remember. But he honestly couldn’t come up with a single incident where he had committed an act of selfless, unprovoked, unpremeditated. niceness.

It wasn’t that he had anything against gestures of goodwill, he tried to assure himself. He just didn’t trust them. And he wasn’t a bad man. He was just a…a thoughtless man? An uncaring man? No, surely not, he told himself. He was thoughtful. He was caring. He thought and cared about…stuff. Sure, he did. It had just never occurred to him to.what was it that bumper sticker said? Commit Acts of Random Kindness and Senseless Beauty? But the reason for that was simply because he wasn’t one much for bumper-sticker philosophy, that was all.

Wasn’t it?

“I…” he began. But no more words were forthcoming.

“You what?” Seth cajoled.

“I…” Reed tried again.

“What?”

“I…I accept your wager,” he finally finished lamely. “If I lose-which I won’t,” he hastened to add, “I’ll even throw in a bottle of The MacCallan.”

Seth nodded, and Reed got the feeling the other man knew something he didn’t know himself. But all he said was, “Good. Then let’s eat.”

Two (#ulink_fbcbaa77-2adb-5d9e-a4f0-737678db76e0)

Mindy had never been more exhausted in her entire life than she was as the dinner rush began to wind down. Boy, the first trimester had been bad enough, she thought, had had her nodding off at the worst times, in the strangest places. She’d once fallen asleep while riding the elevator to the OB-GYN’s office. She recalled reading somewhere that women were supposed to have a burst of energy in the second trimester. They were supposed to feel strong and animated and invincible, like some kind of prenatal Wonder Woman.

Mindy, however, felt more like Washer Woman.

“Order up, Mindy!”

She sighed heavily, hoisting herself up from the chair behind the counter where she’d collapsed in the hopes of stealing a minute or two off her feet. Then, when a rush of wintry wind blasted her from the door that was opening ahead of two more diners, she hugged her sweater more tightly around herself. She was almost as cold these days as she was tired. She hadn’t felt warm for five months now.

She stood up on tiptoe to pluck the Reuben sandwich and fries from the kitchen window, settling them onto her tray before reaching up to retrieve their mate, a chicken salad on whole wheat. And as she crossed the diner to present both plates to their rightful owners, another patron lifted a hand, indicating he wanted to place an order. Mindy nodded as she took care of one table before approaching the other, tugging a stubby pencil from beneath her by-now-dismembered ponytail as she made her way to the newcomer.

She smiled as she stopped by his table, so much did he resemble Santa Claus—a really skinny Santa Claus, anyway. But where Santa’s dapper red suit looked plenty warm, this guy’s attire was neither red nor dapper, nor did it look in any way warm. His tweed jacket was threadbare, his gloves more hole than wool. A knit cap covered his ears, but she couldn’t believe the man received much warmth from it.

Poor thing, she thought. It must be in the twenties out there tonight—so far, December had been unseasonably cold—and he probably didn’t have anyplace else to go. She thanked her lucky stars again that she wasn’t out on the streets—yet—and conjured the most winning smile from her arsenal.

“What can I get for you?” she asked the man.

He smiled back at her, and although he may have been cold on the outside, he certainly radiated warmth from within. “I’m celebratin’,” he said without preamble.

Mindy chuckled, so infectious were his high spirits. “Good for you,” she told him. “What’s the occasion?”

“It’s my birthday,” he replied proudly, his voice sounding rusty from disuse but happy nonetheless.

“Hey, congratulations. Is it the big three-oh?” she teased, because, clearly, it had been decades since this man had seen thirty.

He laughed and shook his head. “I’m eighty years old today, missy. Eighty! What d’ya think about that?”

“Get out!” she exclaimed, nudging his bony shoulder playfully with her elbow. “And here I thought I was going to have to card you if you asked for a beer.”

He laughed some more. “No, ma’am. I don’t touch that stuff. But I think I might like to sample some of that chili I hear they do so good here.”

Mindy nodded as she scribbled down his order. “It’s the best,” she assured him. “Evie’s special recipe, passed down through generations. What else can I get for you?”

The man’s smile dimmed some. “Maybe just a glassa water. That oughta do me.”

She started to object, started to remind him that it was his birthday and that he was entitled to celebrate with more than just a bowl of chili, then she realized that a bowl of chili was probably all he could afford to buy. And heaven only knew how long he’d been saving to manage even that for a birthday feast.

So she smiled once more, tucking her pencil back into her hair, and said, “I’ll be right back with your water.”

Among other things, she thought. She rattled the change in her pocket as she strode toward the carousel over the kitchen window. She’d had a good night tonight, considering the fact that it was Monday. Thanks to the nearby mall and hospital, Evie’s Diner always had a nice, steady stream of patrons, both from people who worked in those places and the people visiting them. Heck, Mindy had probably cleared almost twenty bucks this shift, in addition to her—very tiny, granted—wages. Still, there was no reason she couldn’t spring for a little birthday present for someone who was marking such a major milestone.

She made a few more notations to the man’s order, then clipped it onto the carousel and spun it around to the kitchen. “Order in, Tom!” she called to the cook. Then she went to the coffeepot to fill a cup of hot birthday cheer for her customer.

“The club sandwich looks good.”

Reed mumbled something in agreement to Seth’s gourmet analysis, but his attention wasn’t on the plastic-coated menu in his hand. It was on the blond, pale, exhausted-looking—and slightly pregnant—waitress on the other side of the diner, the one who seemed to be this close to falling over if one more stiff wind from outside hit her. Involuntarily, his gaze skidded over to the main entrance as two more diners strode through. He had to force himself not to shout, “Hey! Close the damned door, will ya?” or jump up to close it himself.

Fortunately, when he looked over at her again, he saw that the little blond waitress had moved behind the counter to sit down. Reed mentally willed the newcomers to take a seat in somebody else’s section and glanced down at the menu again.

Hmm…The club sandwich did look pretty good. Of course, at this point, he was so hungry that a rubber chicken with a wax apple stuck in its mouth would look good.

“No, the French dip, I think,” Seth was saying.

But again, Reed’s attention had been diverted, because wouldn’t you know it, those two idiots who had just come in had indeed sat down at one of the exhausted-looking waitress’s tables, and she was making her way toward them now.

He felt he could honestly say that he’d never met a weak woman in his entire life. Never. The doctors and nurses of the feminine persuasion who surrounded him at the hospital were in no way fragile, in no way weak. On the contrary, they were the hardiest, sturdiest people he knew, both physically and emotionally. And the women in his family, both Atchisons on his father’s side and Thurmons on his mother’s side, had been uncommonly stalwart. Strong-willed, strong-minded, strongtempered.

Which maybe explained why he couldn’t take his eyes off of the waitress who seemed to be none of those things. She was an alien creature of sorts, a fragile female. And something inside Reed—something he had never felt before in his entire life—surged up out of nowhere, nearly overwhelming him. A desire to protect her, he marveled. To take care of her. That was what the something welling up inside him was. She was a total stranger, he tried to remind himself. And probably not quite as fragile as she appeared.

Still…

He shook off the incomplete rumination as he watched her. In spite of her obvious exhaustion and her faintly rounded belly, she moved with certainty and purpose. And even though she looked ready to collapse, she stood firm—even smiled a little—as she scribbled down an order on her pad and moved away from the table. She joked with the elderly man seated in the booth across from Reed and Seth, and her laughter sounded robust enough as it warmed the room around her.

And still Reed couldn’t quite take his eyes off of her. Still, he felt compelled to do something—he had no idea exactly what—to ease her fatigue.

He told himself it was because she was pretty, in a pale, fragile kind of way, and any man worth his weight in testosterone would just naturally respond to that. But there must be something else, too, he mused. Because he’d been around women who were prettier than she was, women who wore much-more-attractive outfits than a yellow polyester waitress uniform and sneakers. And they hadn’t come close to capturing his attention the way this woman had.

She was pretty, though. And she smiled a lot. And even though she seemed fragile, there was something about her that indicated she probably could take care of herself just fine. That maybe she had been taking care of herself for some time now. He supposed looks could be deceiving. And after all was said and done, she really was none of his business.

Still, he thought, she was pretty.