“Your mouth didn’t, but your face did.”
Ouch! I didn’t realize I was so easy to read. “Well, what did it say?” I challenged.
“It said, ‘oncology, yuck. That’s cancer’.”
Okay shit. Maybe my face did give away everything I was thinking. Or maybe it was just her.
“I didn’t say yuck,” I protested.
“But you did scrunch up your nose.”
“You’re good at reading people,” I complimented her, noticing the way her cheeks turned pink.
“In my job, you have to be. Kids can’t always tell you what’s wrong.”
“So basically, it’s a guessing game?”
I was trying to keep things light. Charlotte was nice to talk to. It didn’t hurt that she wasn’t hard on the eyes either, but the thing I really liked about her was the fact she challenged me. She pushed and called me out. I wanted to keep talking to her.
“Something like that,” she replied with a smile, one that touched her eyes and made them sparkle and that’s all it took for me to know how incredible she was at her job.
Before I could say anything more, my phone rang, Franklin was calling me. “I’m really sorry but I’ve gotta run,” I apologized as I wiped my mouth on a napkin.
“No. No. Go. I should get back to my patients anyway,” she replied, already sliding out of the booth.
“It was nice meeting you, Charlotte …” I left it hanging hoping I’d get a last name.
“Rowe. Charlotte Rowe.”
“Nice meeting you, Doctor Rowe.”
“You too Luke …”
“Steele,” I finished for her.
“Luke Steele. I like it.”
And I liked the way it sounded when she said it.
I had to get moving. Together we dropped our trash in the bin and headed back the way we’d come. When we reached the corridor intersection, Charlotte was headed one way while I was going in the opposite direction.
“Thanks for …”
“Don’t even mention it,” I told her with a smile.
“And I’m sorry.”
“Sorry?”
“For the tears and the snot. It wasn’t my finest moment,” Charlotte confessed embarrassed.
“I’ve had worse.”
“I’ll see you around, Luke Steele,” Charlotte confirmed, turning and walking down the hallway like she owned the place. And with the way her ass filled out those scrubs, sashaying from side to side, it wouldn’t surprise me if she did.
Shaking off the fog, I started back toward the waiting ambulance trying to get my mind back on the job at hand.
It was hard.
