Alexandra blinks at me. “You want to meet this afternoon?”
“Yeah. The sooner we tell them the better, and I operate all day tomorrow.”
“You think they’ll be available?”
“Probably. I told them it was important. I can text you when I hear back. Or you can log in to my email and check for a reply.”
“Right.”
“Ideally we should meet with them together, but if you have other plans I can do it myself.”
“I can come,” Alexandra says resolutely. She looks like she’s agreeing to a root canal, or something equally unpleasant.
“Great. I’ll meet you in my office when I’m done in the clinic.”
My phone pings, and I pull it out to read the message. “Heather says she’ll be there.”
All of a sudden, Alexandra’s expression lightens. “I wish I’d seen the look on Heather’s face when she got your message,” she says with a chuckle. “Dr. Malone, asking for a meeting!”
“The irony isn’t lost on me,” I say dryly.
“She’s probably worried that someone hacked into your email or something,” she teases. “And the message isn’t really from you.”
“Very funny, Alexandra.”
I walk Alexandra back to my office before heading to the clinic.
Celine’s already behind the reception desk. “How was coffee?” she asks innocently.
“Great.” I can tell she’s dying to ask about Alexandra, but I send her a look that shuts that down. It’s bad enough that I have to meet with Bernie McGregor and Heather Larkin; I don’t want to have to explain it to Celine too.
“Where are we at?” I ask.
“Your resident’s in room two with the first patient,” she explains. “Second patient’s in three.”
“Thanks, Celine.” I walk to the workstation at the back and take a minute to collect myself. I need to get my head in the game before I start seeing patients.
Fortunately, this afternoon’s patients are pretty straightforward. I make it out of the clinic in good time, and walk to my office to meet Alexandra.
She’s sitting behind her desk, eating some sort of sour candy, and she looks nervous.
“Ready?” I ask. “Bernie McGregor replied to say he’s available too. We’re going to meet in his office.”
She swallows hard. “Okay. Gummy worm for luck?” she offers, holding the package out towards me.
“We won’t need luck, Alexandra,” I tell her, but I take a gummy worm anyway. “Bernie and Heather won’t have a problem with the fact that we’re dating.”
“Pretending to date,” she corrects quickly.
“Pretending to date,” I agree. “But since that would be harder to explain, we should probably tell them it’s real.”
“Yeah. Of course.” She pauses. “Did you tell them why you wanted to meet?”
“No, just that I needed to discuss a personal issue. I figured it would be better to spring it on them in person.”
This was partly strategic, because a request to discuss a personal issue is rarely good. They’re probably expecting me to say I need a leave of absence because of an illness or a family emergency. Or maybe that I’ve decided to resign as the chief of surgery, which would mean a complex recruitment process and a lot of work for them.
So compared to what they’re probably thinking, the fact that I want to date Alexandra should be good news.
