Dr. Forget-Me-Not

He lowered the stethoscope. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

Melanie proceeded to take his sentence apart. “Well, no is pretty self-explanatory. I refers to me and can’t goes back to the first word, no,” she told him glibly. “What part of those three words are you having trouble with?”

“The part that involves you.” He spelled out his question for her. “Why are you still in the room?”

“Because you don’t have a pocket-sized nurse with you,” she answered, following her words with another glib smile.

Did this woman have some sort of brain damage? Why was she here? Why wasn’t she committed somewhere? “What?” he demanded.

“You can’t examine any female without another female being present. You usually have a nurse present when you conduct your exams in the hospital, right?”

Mitch frowned. He wasn’t about to argue with her because she was right, but having to concede to this woman irritated him nonetheless.

Taking a second to collect himself, Mitch barked out his first order. “Make yourself useful, then.”

He expected an argument from her. Instead, the woman surprised him by asking, “And how would you like me to do that?”

The first thing that flashed through his mind was not something he could repeat and that surprised Mitch even more. So much so that for a second, he was speechless. He was stunned that he’d had that sort of a thought to begin with under these conditions—and that he’d had it about her, well, that stunned him even more.

“Take notes,” he said, composing himself.

“Do you want me to use anything in particular in taking these notes?” she asked.

She really was exasperating. “Anything that’s handy,” he answered curtly, turning his attention back to the patient—or trying to.

Melanie opened the center drawer and took out a yellow legal pad and pen. Stepping back and standing a couple of feet to his left, holding the pad in one hand, she poised the pen over it and announced, “Ready when you are, Doctor.”

Mitch spared her one dark glare before he began his first exam.

Like a robot on automatic pilot, Mitch saw one patient after another, spending only as much time with each one as was necessary.

Most of what he encountered over the course of the next three hours fell under the heading of routine. Some patients’ complaints, however, turned out to be more complicated, and those called for lab tests before any sort of comprehensive diagnosis could be reached. The latter was necessary before any sort of medication could be dispensed.

Those Melanie marked down as needing more extensive exams.

Three hours later, feeling as if he had just been on a nonstop marathon, Mitch discovered that he had barely seen half the people who had initially lined up to be examined.

This really was like war-zone medicine, he couldn’t help thinking.

“Do you have to go?” Melanie asked him as he sent another patient on her way. Granted she’d done an awful lot of writing in the past three hours, but she was keenly aware of the patients who were still waiting. The patients who were going to have to accept a rain check.

Mitch hadn’t said anything about leaving, although he was ready to pack it in. He looked at the woman beside him in surprise. At this point, he was ready to believe she was half witch.

Maybe all witch.

“How did you know?” he asked her.

“Well, you said you were going to give us an hour and you’ve already gone two hours past that. The math isn’t that challenging,” she told him matter-of-factly.

Mitch frowned. They were alone in the so-called “exam room” and part of him was dealing with the very real urge of wanting to throttle her. The other part was having other thoughts that seemed to be totally unrelated to the situation—and yet weren’t.

“Anyone ever tell you that you have a smart mouth on you?” he asked.

He didn’t pull punches, she thought. A lot of people kept treating her with kid gloves and maybe his way was more like what she really needed—to get into a fighting mode.

“It goes with the rest of me,” she answered flippantly, then got down to business. What was important here were the children and their mothers, not anything that had to do with her. “When can you come back?” she asked him.

Caught off guard, Mitch paused. “I hadn’t thought about that.”

In all honesty, the only thing that had been on his mind was getting through this session. As far as he was concerned, he’d fulfilled his obligation. He’d agreed to come here, as his mother had asked him to, and here he was—staying longer than he’d either intended to or wanted to. But apparently, that didn’t seem to be enough.

“Maybe you should,” Melanie was telling him. And then she added with a smile that appeared outwardly cheerful—but didn’t fool him for a minute. “We’re available anytime you are.”

Mitch sighed. “I’ll check my calendar.”

“Why don’t you do it now?” she suggested, pushing the issue. “This way, I can tell the director and your new fans out there,” she nodded toward the door and the people who were beyond that, “when to expect you.”

“Definitely a smart mouth,” Mitch muttered as he took out his phone and checked the calendar app that was on it. His frown deepened when he found what he was looking for. “I can possibly spare a few hours Friday morning,” he told her grudgingly.

She met his frown with nothing short of enthusiasm. “Friday works for us,” she assured him. “I’ll get the word out.”

His tone was nothing if not dour when he said in response, “Why don’t we wait and see how things gel?” he suggested, then qualified, “Things have a way of cropping up.”

Her eyes met his and there was a defiance in them he found both irritating beyond words—and at the same time, oddly intriguing.

He supposed that maybe his mother had a point. He could stand to get out more. Then people like this annoying woman would hold no interest for him.

“Why don’t you write the shelter into your schedule anyway?” she said. “Having a commitment might make you more inclined to honor it.”

“Are you lecturing me?” he asked point-blank.

“I’d rather think of it as making a tactful suggestion,” she replied.

She could call it whatever she wanted to, Mitch thought. But no matter what label she put on it, they both knew what she meant.

Chapter Four (#ulink_f0d9cb95-3a20-5168-941e-241f30d1aad4)

Melanie looked at her watch. It was the old-fashioned, analog kind which required her brain to figure out the exact time.

Right now, the second hand seemed to be taunting her. As it moved along the dial, hitting each number one at a time, she could almost hear it rhythmically beating out: I told you so. I told you so.

A deep sigh escaped her.

It was Friday. The doctor should have been here by now.

She supposed, giving the man the benefit of the doubt, he could have been held up in traffic, but it would have had to have been a monumental traffic jam for Dr. Stewart to be this late. After all, it wasn’t like this was Los Angeles. If anything, Bedford was considered a distant suburb of Los Angeles, located in the southern region of the considerably more laidback Orange County area.

Granted, traffic jams did have a nasty habit of popping up in Orange County, but when they did, they had the decency of doing so between the hours of six and nine in the morning or four and seven in the evening, otherwise whimsically referred to by the term “rush hour,” which was a misnomer if ever she heard one.