“Where is my chair?” she asks. Her voice is dangerously quiet. “The one with the squeaky wheel. The one I sit in to eat my soup.”
“The squeak was a cry for help,” Sven explains foolishly. “I banished it.”
Mama Ortiz drops her lunch bag. It hits the floor with a heavythud.
“You banished my chair?” she repeats.
She takes a step forward. She is five-foot-two. Sven is six-foot-three. Sven looks terrified.
“I… I can retrieve it,” Sven stammers, backing up against the counter. “I can… re-integrate the furniture.”
“You have three minutes,” Mama Ortiz says. She checks her watch. “If my chair is not back in this corner, and if this…brujeríasmoke is not gone… I will call security. And I will tell them you are trying to steal the narcotics.”
“That’s a lie!” Sven gasps.
“I am the Charge Nurse,” Mama Ortiz smiles. It is a shark smile. “They will believe me. Go.”
Sven runs. He actually runs, his kimono flapping behind him like a cape of failure.
I watch him go. I look at Mama Ortiz.
“My mother,” I explain. “She thought the Feng Shui was off.”
Mama Ortiz walks over to the espresso maker. She pats it affectionately.
“Your mother has too much time,” she says. “But she has good taste in drama. Now, make me a coffee. I have to go threaten a man in a kimono.”
“Yes, Mama.”
I start the grinder.
“And Preston?”
“Yes?”
“Tell your mother if she sends another wizard to my floor, I will send her a bill. For ’EmotionalDamages.’”
“I’ll put it on the company card,” I promise.
She nods, satisfied. She picks up her soup.
“Good boy.”
Chapter 10
Hostile Negotiations
PRESTON
The air between Luke and me has been… complicated.
Since the "To Be Continued" incident in the hallway—where we barely began our kiss only to be rudely interrupted by the nurse on duty—we have been dancing around each other. It’s a lot of intense eye contact over patient charts and accidental arm brushing that feels increasingly like arson.
But Luke is a professional. He’s the Chief Resident. He can handle sexual tension.
What he cannot handle is my mother.
It happens on Tuesday in the cafeteria.
