The Doctor's Cinderella

‘Thank you. I think you’re very kind to say something so sweet,’ Molly told the young woman who had fronted the desk. ‘I think you’re very pretty and I love your red boots.’

The young woman, just like Molly’s brother, Tommy, had been born with Down’s syndrome and just like Tommy, she appeared to be relatively independent, by virtue of her attending the surgery without a caregiver by her side. Molly noticed she was wearing designer jeans and a red jumper under her checked woollen overcoat that also looked as if it had been bought at a high-end store. Her short blonde hair was in a bob style and the flat red ankle boots completed the outfit. She was quite the young fashionista.

‘Thank you. Red is my favourite colour in the world.’

‘I must agree. Red is lovely,’ Molly told her, then continued. ‘May I have your name, please?’

‘Lizzy Jones,’ the young woman said. ‘My boyfriend likes red. He didn’t like red before he was my boyfriend. Now he likes red.’

Molly smiled at the thought of the young man changing his favourite colour to match his girlfriend’s taste. Young love was so sweet and naive and something to be treasured as it rarely stayed that perfect. When the rose-coloured glasses came off the real man was rarely as perfect as he once seemed. She hoped for Lizzy’s sake her boyfriend remained as lovely as he was at that moment.

‘Do you have a boyfriend?’ Lizzy asked, breaking Molly’s train of thought.

‘Um...no, no, I don’t.’

‘You should have a boyfriend. It’s nice. You can share lunch and hold hands.’

‘I will give it some thought,’ Molly said politely, all the while thinking quite the opposite. Boyfriends, fiancеs, they were all the same. They brought heartbreak and disappointment and she was not going back there. Not ever.

‘My dad doesn’t know I have a boyfriend.’ Lizzy giggled then covered her mouth with her hand. ‘I will tell him maybe next week or maybe at Christmas.’

‘It’s a long time until Christmas,’ Molly told her with her eyebrow arched slightly.

‘Mmm...maybe next week. I don’t know.’

‘That might be a good idea to let your father know you have a boyfriend. He might like to meet him. I’m sure he’s very nice.’

‘Shh,’ Lizzy said with her fingers at her lips and looking a little anxious. ‘You can’t tell when you see him.’

‘Don’t worry, I won’t, I promise,’ Molly replied with a smile, wondering if Lizzy’s father was parking the car or running late to meet her. Whatever the case she hadn’t hesitated to reassure the young woman. She had become visibly agitated and needed reassurance that her secret was safe. Molly could see no purpose in announcing to a complete stranger that his daughter had a boyfriend when it might be nothing more than puppy love. And none of her business.

‘Okay,’ Lizzy said before she crossed the room and made herself comfortable on a waiting-room chair.

Molly sensed Lizzy was quite at ease with being in the practice, almost as if it were a second home to her. She checked the appointment schedule. Forty-five minutes had been allocated for Lizzy Jones, which was unusual considering the pace of the morning, and there was no reference to patient notes available online. She wasn’t listed as a new patient but she wasn’t in the records management system either. Molly found all of it unusual and decided she would raise it with Ryan later.

There were no other patients waiting as they had been running early and the previous patient had just left. Molly glanced up periodically and noticed Lizzy had taken off her overcoat and neatly placed it on the chair beside her. She was happily swinging her legs and glancing around at the paintings on the wall. Sometime in the ensuing minutes while Molly was processing correspondence Lizzy made her way back to the reception desk.

‘Are your shoes red?’ Lizzy asked excitedly.

Molly jumped with the surprise of having the young woman upon her again without warning. Then she cringed at the thought of her mismatched shoes. As a knee-jerk reaction to feeling more than a little self-conscious she placed one foot on top of the other. Quite purposely squashing the solo bow on her left foot.

‘Umm...’

Before she had a chance to finish her reply a deep male voice came from somewhere close behind her.

‘Well, Lizzy, I’m looking at them now and they’re definitely not red. Actually, it would appear that Miss Murphy couldn’t quite decide whether to wear blue or black shoes today...so she chose one of each colour and threw in a bow of sorts...but only on one of them.’

‘That’s funny,’ Lizzy said with a wide grin that further lit up her happy face.

‘Well, funny’s one way to describe it,’ the male voice countered. ‘Another would be odd. Quite literally.’

Molly didn’t turn. She was only too well aware it was her boss of four hours. The far too perfect Dr Ryan McFetridge. Charcoal-eyed, raven-haired, six-foot-two, sole general practitioner to the wealthy and privileged who happened to need a temp office manager at the same time that Molly needed a job, any job. It was her only option to ensure she and Tommy were not evicted by the week’s end. And that morning as she had stood in the rain watching the bus pull away a tiny part of her had feared that might happen.

‘Do you like to mix it up?’ the deep voice continued, bringing Molly back from her unsettling thoughts.

Molly drew a deep breath, plastered on a smile and spun to face her boss. His perfect smile made the picture even more ridiculous. And made her feel even more self-conscious. She was bedraggled and he was standing so close with his leading-man looks, not to mention a voice as smooth as melted chocolate. She knew the type. He had playboy written all over him. But he didn’t impress her. Not in the least. Molly Murphy had sworn off men...and nothing was going to sway that vow.

‘Or was it a case of dressing in the dark?’ he continued as he stepped to the side a little and, opening one of the filing cabinets, began sifting through old hard-copy case notes. After finding what he wanted, he returned his gaze to her but said nothing.

‘Actually, you nailed it,’ she responded without expression in her voice or on her face. ‘I did dress in the dark this morning, quite literally.’

‘Power outage?’

‘Of sorts,’ she replied, not liking the fact he hadn’t broken eye contact. For some unknown reason, despite her showing no emotion, he was unsettling her. It wasn’t his line of questioning. It was his proximity to her. Through his clothes and her own, she could almost sense the warmth of his body. It was as if her own body was adjusting its thermostat to his and she was enormously relieved when he stepped away.

‘That would explain a lot.’

Molly wasn’t sure what the comment alluded to but assumed it was her previously wet hair and clothes. Before she could take him to task on the meaning behind his remark, he popped the patient record under his arm and then asked Lizzy to follow him to the consulting room.

As the two of them disappeared, Molly was angry with herself. Why the hell was she reacting to him being so close? She should be angry with him but instead she felt a warm wave wash over her and suspected her cheeks might be flushed. She was appalled and surprised.

Molly had met Ryan briefly when she had first arrived, flustered and rushed. She accepted he was an extremely good-looking man but their meeting had been brief, and from a distance across the office as he’d taken an early arriving patient into his consulting room. She had been more interested in settling into the job with the assistance of the young nurse, Stacy, who was there arranging influenza shots and bloods. Molly just wanted to stay under the radar and unnoticed herself, rather than noticing too much about her employer. But suddenly, now, she had noticed far too much about him.

The handsome medico was dressed straight from a men’s designer store, the kind of store filled with expensive leather shoes and every imported suit hanging an equal distance from the next on the rack, all covered with shoulder protectors, and assorted silk ties dressing shirts that were housed in open mahogany display cabinets. She knew the stores only too well. A year before, she and her fiancе had been regular customers of them. Her fiancе was quite the clothes horse and she had unwittingly been footing the bill. Ever since, the stores and the people who shopped there had held no appeal to her.

And there was Dr McFetridge’s elegantly decorated consulting rooms in one of Adelaide’s most affluent eastern suburbs. The leafy side streets were lined with large, opulent, double-storey homes with return driveways and at least three imported cars while Molly’s home had no driveway, which was fine as she had no car to park in one anyway. She had sold it along with her jewellery to cover the bond on her home and buy some simple furnishings. And she could get by just fine without it. Except for this morning, when a car would have been very handy.

Everything about Ryan was impeccable. She assumed his designer underwear would match his socks too. Black and more than likely the finest imported woven silk...

She stopped mid-thought and shook herself mentally. What had got into her? And why on earth was she even thinking about her employer’s underwear? It had to have been the knock to her head. Or perhaps being celibate for a year was affecting her reasoning, she decided. But it hadn’t until that moment. The need to have a man in her life was below the need to match the colour of the bin liner to the trash can. Of no importance and not worth a second thought. And a man like Dr McFetridge was not on her wish list; no man was.

Perhaps it was the significance of the day that was making her react. That had to be it, she told herself, and the next day would be different. She wouldn’t be having the melancholy thoughts and she wouldn’t give her boss even a second thought.

But she begrudgingly admitted to herself that she did like his cologne. The fresh woody fragrance was still lingering. Fragrance had not been her priority that morning. She was lucky to get close to soap and nothing about her lingerie matched. Molly’s stomach dropped and she moved in her seat to confirm in her rush she had remembered underwear. She breathed a sigh of relief when she could feel the elastic of her knickers. Thankfully she had grabbed one of the three pairs pegged to a coat hanger to dry over the bath the night before. She cringed momentarily.

If they had not been hanging in her line of sight would she be wearing any?

Just as quickly yet another unsettling thought swept into her mind. She pushed it aside. They were on and she didn’t need to dwell on what might or might not have been. It had been a ridiculously rushed start to her first day but with a smidgen of Irish luck, from her father’s side, she had made it with five minutes to spare. Although after seeing the consulting rooms she wondered just how long he would keep her on staff. It was only too obvious to Molly that appearance certainly counted with him. His dress sense, his rooms, all of it was immaculate.

And she was not. Well, not at that time. She had previously dressed well and taken pride in her hair and make-up, but equal amounts of money and sleep deprivation meant both had gone to pot. And nothing much about that was going to change overnight. But she was clean and efficient. Like the pitch to sell a small imported car, she thought.

Her mind was jumbled and she had to stay focussed. It couldn’t be that difficult. He was just another tall, dark, good-looking man and she was not interested in men, tall, short, dark or fair; she was not interested in being used and lied to again. And stripped of her faith in humanity...and her worldly possessions...in one fell swoop.

She opened her eyes just as quickly and, looking around at everything, she was reminded that, while she no doubt looked out of place in Ryan McFetridge’s practice, her skills should ensure she stayed put as long as possible and enable her to meet the rent and avoid Joel’s advances.

Despite her decision not to bite back too fiercely, Molly could not roll over and let another man think his looks would allow him to act in a way that was just wrong in her book. While it was only her shoes, she had to put a line in the sand and retain a little dignity. She had made it to work on time and he had no idea what she had been through to get there. So what if her shoes didn’t match? As if it mattered in the scheme of things—her feet were hidden behind the desk and it didn’t make her less competent, she reminded herself, all the while feeling quite ridiculous and uncomfortably exposed. Although she did not truly feel the level of bravado she was trying to exude, she would do her best to let her temporary employer know where she stood.

Twenty minutes later, Lizzy and Ryan reappeared. He placed the notes on the reception desk, and Molly couldn’t help but notice he patted the dog-eared records almost affectionately. She was even more confused.