He’s your boss. And a dentist.My inner voice reminded me of what he was, and it was like cold water running down my spine.
“Don’t you have somewhere to be? A patient to numb? Or a root canal to finish?” I said, grabbing a disinfectant wipe and trying to look very busy.
He left the room to see his next patient, his faint chuckle echoing down the hall.
The morning went by in a blur, and before long Macey was switching out with Tyler. They were both wonderful assistants—probably the best I’d ever worked with—but I kept telling myself there was no way it would last long.
I passed Jay a couple of times during exams, but after that first patient, he mostly didn’t say much to me. He was quick, never making me wait longer than ten minutes for an exam, which was a little surprising. In the past, I’dwaited thirty to forty minutes on average for a doctor to come in at Sunshine Dentistry.
He spoke to patients in a calm, soothing voice that seemed to put them at ease, even as he told them their teeth were decayed and needed to be replaced at a cost of thousands of dollars. Somehow, they still left smiling.
The women especially seemed to bat their eyelashes at him and giggle at his every word. It was blatantly obvious they found him attractive.
Despite fighting the constant urge to roll my eyes and accidentally dropping an instrument tray on the floor at one point, I made it through the morning unscathed. I even started to allow myself a few moments to think the impossible.
Maybe this could work?
It wasn’t until my very last patient that things took a turn for the worse.
Melva McMullin. Age seventy-two. Medical alerts: high blood pressure, arthritis, and a latex allergy.
Tyler took her X-rays and kept up pleasant small talk. Everything was fine until I stepped into the room.
“Mrs. McMullin, this is Hope,” Tyler said cheerfully. “She’ll be taking care of you toda?—”
The woman squinted at me with intense scrutiny and a hint of what appeared to be disgust.
“I’m sorry, but who are you?”
Tyler went silent, his jaw falling open, clearly not expecting the sudden outrage in her voice. I hadn’t expected it either, and I hesitated before answering.
“I’m Hope, the hygienist here today. I’ll be cleaning your teeth?—”
“No, you won’t,” Melva snapped, backing away fromme as if I had the Black Plague. “Where’s Brooke?” she demanded, turning to Tyler.
“Brooke is no longer here, Mrs. McMullin. She moved to Texas,” Tyler explained quickly. “Hope is our newest hygienist, and she’s wonderful.”
“I don’t want to see anyone but Brooke,” the older woman said angrily, her voice loud enough that I was pretty sure the rest of the office could hear everything that was going on.
“I assure you, Mrs. McMullin, Hope is just as good as Brooke?—”
She rudely lifted a hand to stop him, her ugly leather purse hanging from the crook of her elbow. I worried she might try to injure one of us with it if things escalated any further.
“Don’t you try to assure me, young man. I don’t want to get my teeth cleaned by anyone but Brooke. She’s been cleaning my teeth for seven years. Why did no one bother to call me and tell me she was replaced?”
“We left messages for all of our patients in case they wanted to reschedule, but some never returned our calls,” Tyler tried to explain.
Melva looked ready to continue her rampage when Jay stepped into the room.
“Excuse me. Is everything all right here?”
Melva didn’t skip a beat. She turned on him immediately.
“I was uninformed about Brooke leaving, and I refuse to see this girl,” she said, gesturing to me with a sharp wave of her hand, practically spitting the words.
I flinched, my fingers starting to tingle and my tongue going numb. I hated confrontation. This sort of verbalattack brought back memories of Dr. Pike and my father all too quickly.
“Mrs. McMullin, I’m going to have to ask you to leave,” Jay said firmly. “You’re insulting my staff and making my other patients uncomfortable.”
