“Don’t hold back. I don’t want any disturbance in my consultation. 40 seconds now.”
A chuckle burst out of his mouth. It looked even more human now.
“Be careful of the seconds you are losing. If you say anything obnoxious during the consultation, I will show you the door.”
“I know where the door is,” he pointed behind his back.
“You can make those step-sisterly faces when staring at somebody but don’t have the words to back it?”
“Step-sisterly?”
“You know what I mean.”
His eyes went down to her waist.
“Up, up,” she commanded. And they whizzed up.
Ritu raised her eyebrows at him — “Words.”
“I…”
“Last two seconds.”
His mouth fell shut.
“And one. Done. Your time’s…”
“Doctor, you…”
“Up, I said. Your time is up. Now quiet,” she raised her finger at him in warning. “It’s my turn to…”
“Doctor, you are wearing your pants inside out.”
Ritu froze.
His hooded eyes widened, half-amused, half-scared. “I wasn’t staring at anything else… I was trying to figure out how to inform you about it.”
She didn’t want to. She didn’t want to in front of him. But what if he was messing with her to get one up? Ritu glanced down at herself, and balked inside. The fine stitch-lines of the lengths of her scrub pants were visible down the sides of her thighs.Fuck! How many procedures had she performed like this?
“Sit,” she ordered him. “I will be back.”
Without looking back at him to see if he had followed her direction, Ritu walked into the bathroom and quietly shut the door.
————————————————————
When she emerged, he was sitting. His reports were on the desk in front of him. He did not look like he was going to say anything cutting, insulting, obnoxious or even teasing. Which was good. She could forget it happened and move on.
“Let’s start with your BP today,” she began to pull up the machine pole. “How have you been feeling, Mr. Patel?”
“Where is your one minute?”
“Excuse me?”
“You said you will take one minute to say whatever you want to me.”
Ritu glared at him.
“Fair is fair,” he pointed out.
