“Room 9. Across the floor.” She paused and looked at his sweats. “You can change into a fresh robe. They’re in the room in the closet.”
He twisted around in his seat and stared at the closed door.She wants me to change into a robe? This is going to be fun. And potentially very embarrassing.
He found the room, and the robe, and waited in the chair with the paper covering down the center and the raised footrest.
When she walked in a few minutes later, she didn’t bother making eye contact with him and went straight to work. She pulled the ultrasound machine toward him, sat on a stool next to his chair, and flipped open the bottom of his robe to expose his leg.
“Whoa.” His hands immediately went to his crotch. He didn’t mean to smile so wide, but he couldn’t help it.
She never flinched at his reaction. Instead, she kept her head down and squeezed warm gel onto the ultrasound wand like a complete professional. As he stared at her tight bun, glasses, and minimal makeup, his mind kept going back to the flirtatious girl he met in the bar, not the no-nonsense doctor who sat in front of him. Dr. Morgan was still beautiful, but she was the complete opposite of Amber. And he wanted to know more about her. “Can I ask you a question?”
“With therapeutic ultrasound, energy is introduced to the body through—”
“I’ve had this hundreds of times. That’s not what I wanted to ask you.”
She still didn’t look up from moving the wand over his leg, nor did she prod him about his question. She just waited for him to continue.
“Is this your alter ego?” He waved his hand across the top of the room as if reading her name in lights. “Dr. A.C. Morgan. Superhero.”
She paused long enough to smile and met his eyes for a hot second, and that’s all he needed. If he were wearing a heart monitor, it would have gone off like a smoke alarm. His throat went dry, and he felt overheated in the thick robe. He wanted to take it off, but he only wore briefs underneath it. “Can I get a bottle of water?”
He could see the corners of her mouth curl, but she didn’t look at him as she put down the wand and ripped off her gloves. She left the room without a word and returned with a bottle of Poland Spring.
“Anything else?” she asked, handing him the water. “Do you need to use the restroom? Make a private phone call? Have a snack? Or can we continue?”
She was trying to keep a straight face, but he saw the edges of her teasing smile.
“No. Continue.” He took a sip of water. “My leg is feeling better already.”
This time, she couldn’t hide her smile. Even with the sheer, nude gloss, her perfect lips lit up her face.
“You never answered my question,” he reminded her.
“What question was that?”
“Is this your alter ego?”
She stared at him with a crooked smile while she gloved up. “What do you mean?”
“The glasses. The hair. The subdued personality.” He remembered the certificates displayed all over the walls. “Your initials instead of using your first name.”
“I’m a doctor. I want to look and act like one.” She returned to the stool and resumed the circular motion on his thigh with the wand.
Heat traveled up his leg, and he needed to take a big gulp of water. And think about something other than Amber’s hand less than a foot from his crotch. “Why don’t you use your first name. It’s beautiful.”
“Thank you. But Amber isn’t a doctor’s name. Amber is someone who’s fun and adventurous. Flirty and carefree. A doctor needs a serious name. No one is going to take me seriously with long blond hair and these lips.” She pointed to them. “These are mine. God gave me these sweetheart lips. It’s not filler, and they’re not augmented. I was born with these lips. I love them, but I need to downplay them and my appearance.” She waved her hand from her head to her feet. “This is Dr. A.C. Morgan. So, yes. I guess it’s my alter ego. But superhero? No.” She shook her head. “There’s the fun me. That’s Amber. Then there’s the professional me. My middle name is Catherine, and I thought about using it.” She paused and looked up, as if reading imaginary writing on the ceiling. “Dr. Catherine Morgan. It sounds professional but I chose to use my initials because it’s gender neutral. That way, no one has any preconceived ideas about a woman in sports medicine. They read my publications and my academic background and form an unbiased opinion without knowing whether I’m a man or a woman.”
The elaborate answer impressed him, but also left him with new questions. “That’s really an issue? You don’t think you’d get the same recognition for your achievements as a man would?”
“That’s always an issue. I’d like to think that in the 21stcentury it’s not, but it is. Most of the time. Not with everyone. But a woman still has to work harder. It’s just the way it is. On paper, Dr. A.C. Morgan doesn’t have to deal with that.” She pushed back from the stool, put the wand down, and wiped his leg with a bunch of paper towels.
His robe rode higher as she wiped up the gel, and he watched more and more of his upper thigh become uncovered. He should have pushed his robe down, or at least held it in place so nothing accidentally got revealed, but he wasn’t moving. Then he remembered what she said about having to work harder because she was a woman and dress conservatively to be taken seriously. She even chose to forego the use of her name because she thought it too unconventional for a doctor. So, he pulled the ends of his robe together and covered up.
“Stay here.” She ripped off the blue gloves again.
The sound, usually clinical and sterile, took on an extremely sexy quality, and Robert needed to remind himself that she was here in a professional capacity. But it was hard. And getting harder by the second.Oh. God. No.Thankfully, she left the room, and he had a few minutes to bring himself under control. Otherwise, he was going to run out of the building because he refused to disrespect her by sitting there with an erection.
The sound of metal wheels squeaking preceded Dr. Morgan into the room. Robert recognized the TENS machine, which delivered electrical impulses to the muscle, right away. None of this was new. He’d been through it all a million times, just like every other athlete. But he’d never had an insatiable attraction to his physical therapist before, or to anyone as smart and successful as Dr. Morgan.
