The Best Medicine (23 page)

Rebound Pain

Lauren spent Wednesday trying to get herself together. She felt emotional and depleted. Her classes trudged by, and she found that she could scarcely concentrate.

Thursday brought the added bonus of a severely unsettled stomach. She didn’t feel sick per se, but she definitely didn’t feel well. She chalked it up to having to spend the day around Scott. By midmorning, she was sitting at her desk with her head in her hands, trying to calm the aching throb in her stomach and keep her nausea under control.

“Lauren?”

Just what I
don’t
need.
“What?” She sounded completely wrung out, but didn’t have the energy to sound normal to try to mask it.

“I just— Are you okay?”

“Sure,” she replied dryly. “Do you need something?”

“No.”

She heard Scott move and figured he’d left. Until she heard him speak again.

“If you’re not well, you shouldn’t be here.”

Despite her pain, she whirled around in her chair. “Don’t worry. I promise not to get close enough to infect any of your patients.”
Why did I waste my time on such an asshole?

His face softened slightly, which caused tears to threaten her eyes.
How dare he look at me like he gives a shit.

“That’s not what I meant. If you’re sick, then you should be home resting.”

Lauren turned back toward her desk. “I can’t lose the hours. I don’t want to spend a single extra minute here if I don’t have to.”

“I’ll still pay you for the hours.”

“I don’t need your charity.”

“That’s not—”

“If there’s nothing you need, I have some things I have to get done.”

Scott exhaled a long breath. “Okay, well, the offer stands.”

He scuffled away from her, and Lauren couldn’t help but think that the only pain worse than the one in her stomach was the one in her heart.

*   *   *

Scott was miserable. He’d been an incredible asshole but he didn’t know what else to do. He’d thought it was best for them both if they severed all ties, left no questionable feelings between them. A clean break was the easiest to heal from. But then he’d seen Lauren. She’d obviously been sick as hell, and it killed him that he couldn’t help her. She wanted nothing to do with him; that much was clear. And while he knew she wouldn’t let him examine her, he wished he would have at least
asked
her to allow
him to examine her. But he knew that idea would get shot down, so he hadn’t even offered. It had gnawed at him all night—not knowing if she was okay, not even having the right to ask.
How did shit get so fucked up?

Friday morning he walked into his satellite office and began looking over his calendar. He was thankful it looked like it’d be a busy day. “May as well get to it,” he said under his breath as he left his office and made his way toward his first patient.

By eleven, he had a brief break in his schedule. So he went into his office and took a seat. Scott immediately saw that his phone was flashing, letting him know that he had a message. He lifted the receiver and punched in his voice mail code. He was surprised to hear Pam’s voice.

“Hi, Scott. It’s Pam Hastings. I wanted to let you know I had to leave work early. The ER just called and said Lauren was just admitted with acute appendicitis. I’m sorry to be leaving a voice mail, but—”

Scott didn’t listen to the rest of Pam’s message. He flew out of his office, stopping only to give some instructions to the nurses as he took off for Trinity.

*   *   *

The bustle in the ER only further aggravated Scott. He stopped at the nurses’ station to ask what room Lauren was in, and then took off in that direction. He paused outside the curtain, trying to get his breathing under control. He ran his hand through his hair and took a few calming breaths before pushing the curtain aside and entering her room.

What he saw stopped him cold. Lauren was lying in bed, holding her mom’s hand. She looked pale and barely awake. His heart seized at the sight.

“Dr. Scott,” Pam said in a way that let him know she hadn’t expected to see him.

Lauren’s eyes drifted toward him, then darted away quickly.

Scott saw Mr. Hastings sitting on the other side of Lauren, looking at his daughter with concern. He hadn’t even registered Scott’s presence.

“They just started prepping her for surgery to remove her appendix,” Pam informed him. “It hasn’t burst yet, but it’s not far from it.”

But he barely heard her. His eyes were glued to Lauren. She looked slightly dazed, probably from the pain meds. But she was still able to give her mom’s hand a slight tug.

Pam bent toward her so she could hear whatever Lauren was trying to tell her. Her mom contorted her face in confusion. “Are you sure?”

Lauren gave a weak nod and shut her eyes.

Scott knew what Pam was going to say before she even approached him. “I’m sorry, Scott. But Lauren asked me to, um . . .” Pam looked back at Lauren.

Scott knew how uncomfortable she had to be. How do you tactfully kick your boss out of your daughter’s hospital room? Scott decided to let her off the hook. “She doesn’t want me here, does she?”

Pam looked back at him, concern written all over her face. “No.”

Scott nodded and started to leave. But when he reached the curtain, he stopped. “Just . . . when she’s out of surgery, just let us know how it went.”

“I will,” Pam assured him.

And with that, Scott left.

*   *   *

Scott knew that if he didn’t stop pacing, he’d likely wear a hole in the carpet of his office.
What the hell is taking so long?
He checked his cell phone again, making sure his ringer was turned on.

Pam had promised she’d call, but Scott wasn’t sure which phone to wait by. Would she call his cell or the office? He’d said let
us
know, which maybe made it seem like she should call the office. But obviously he’d be the most concerned, so maybe she’d call his cell. All of his employees had his private number in case they needed to call in sick or anything. So, since Scott didn’t know where Pam would call, he did the only logical thing he could think of: he holed up in his office and stared at both phones.

It had been almost four hours since he’d been politely told to get lost, and he still hadn’t heard from her. Scott was trying to respect Lauren’s wishes by staying the hell away from her, but she wasn’t making it easy. He was even tempted to call down there to see what information he could get out of the nurses.

Twenty more minutes passed before his cell phone finally rang. “Pam! How is she?” he blurted out before he’d even gotten the phone to his ear.

“She’s doing well. They removed her appendix laparoscopically, so she should heal pretty quickly. I was just waiting for her to wake up before I called. The doctors think she can resume school and work in about ten days, depending on how she’s feeling.”

“Good. I’m glad to hear it.” Scott hesitated a second before adding, “Would it be okay if I talked to her for a minute? I won’t keep her long.”

Pam was quiet on the other end for a beat. “Sure, Scott. Let me see if she feels up to talking. Hang on a second.”

He heard the phone being jostled and then a groggy voice croak, “Hello?”

“Hey, it’s Scott.”

Silence.

“I just wanted to tell you that I’m glad you’re doing better. You really scared the shit out of me.” He didn’t care what that admission implied. It was the truth and he wanted her to know it. “Take care of yourself. Plenty of rest and fluids. And make sure you take the pain meds. They’ll make you a little loopy, but that’s better than being uncomfortable.”

“Am I going to receive a bill for this conversation?”

Scott couldn’t help how her comment made him feel—like absolute shit.

Before he could say anything else, Lauren spoke again. “I’d better go. I’m really tired. We can talk more about when I’m going to make up the hours I’ll owe you after I get out of here.”

“You don’t owe me anything,” he said.

And he meant it.

Relapse

Scott had been nearly monosyllabic since he’d arrived. He had things he wanted to discuss,
needed
to in fact, but he wasn’t sure how to bring them up. So he sat back and barely engaged as he waited for Gwen to figure out why he was there. Was it immature? Yes. But he felt like he needed as much time to organize his thoughts as possible.

“How have things with the practice been going?” Gwen asked.

“Good,” he replied. Scott thought of Lo for the tenth time since he’d sat down. Or maybe he hadn’t actually
stopped
thinking about her. He had to find a way to stop thinking about her constantly. If he didn’t, he feared he’d eventually go crazy. And he was in therapy to
not
go crazy, though he didn’t think it was working.

Gwen looked down at her tablet. “How was your Thanksgiving dinner with your brother?”

“Nice.”

“How did he look?”

“Sober.”
Damn it! That was two syllables.

“He’s been clean for a long time. That must make you feel proud—seeing his progress.”

“Yup.”

Gwen sat back in her chair and set her tablet on the table beside her. “Scott, why are you here?”

“What?”

“You heard me. If you’re not going to participate in your therapy session, then why even come?”

Scott straightened slightly, adopting a more challenging tone. “Before you were encouraging me to come whether I had anything to talk about or not.”

“But you do have something to talk about. You’re just refusing to discuss it.”

He almost argued, but then decided it was pointless. If he delayed any longer, he’d have wasted his whole session and not gotten his head on right. But what did he say? That it was driving him nuts to see Lauren at work, to know that everything there had been touched by her,
infected
by her
.
He couldn’t look anywhere without thinking about her, and it was starting to piss him off. Why couldn’t he just move past her? It didn’t make any sense. “I stopped seeing Lauren,” he blurted.

“The girl working in your office? You didn’t tell me you were seeing her.”

“Sure I did,” Scott insisted.

“No, you said you were friends with her, but you never said you were
seeing
her.” The distinction seemed important to Gwen, though Scott couldn’t figure out why.

“In my life, there isn’t a big difference between the two. I don’t have friends who are women, so I expected that you understood what I meant when I said Lo and I were friends.”

“You have a nickname for her?” Gwen looked surprised.

“Yeah. Why?”

“Just seems very personal.”

“Do you want me to talk or not?”

“I want you to talk, but I want that talk to be the truth. What is Lauren to you exactly?”

Was
, he thought. She wasn’t anything to him anymore, and he hated it. “Let’s talk about the truth for a second.” Scott knew that he’d ignored her question, but he had bigger issues to discuss. “I don’t ask for much. Really, the only thing I require is complete honesty. And she couldn’t even give me that. She promised . . . She promised she wouldn’t fall in love. Now everything is a wreck, all because she had to go and develop feelings for me. Things were perfect as they were. We had a good time together, we each satisfied the other’s needs, and then she admits to loving me when I told her that wasn’t even a remote possibility for me.”

“Why isn’t love a possibility for you?”

“Come on, Gwen. We’ve been down this road a hundred times. It’s just . . . not for me. I don’t want to be tied down to someone forever. I don’t want to make a mistake that I have to spend the rest of my life paying for. Life’s too short for that.”

“Did you ever think that it may be an even bigger mistake to
not
commit to someone? That you may actually miss out on more by refusing to belong to someone else?”

Scott thought for a minute, turning her words over in her head. “No,” he finally stated.

She was clearly unimpressed with his answer. “What kinds of things did you and Lauren do together?”

“Just . . . normal stuff.”

Gwen hesitated before saying, “Like?”

“Like go to the movies, or dinner, or hang out at my apartment, or a bar, whatever we felt like.”

“Has she met any of your friends?”

“Yeah, she met Alex and Xavier. And Tim.”

Gwen had been reaching for her glass of water, but stopped abruptly. “You introduced her to your brother?”

“Yeah,” Scott replied uneasily. “Well, yeah, I mean she met him once by accident, and then one day she called and was bored, so I invited her to dinner—our Thanksgiving thing.”

She settled back into her chair. “Let me see if I have this right: she met all of the people closest to you, you hung out beyond the workday—frequently I presume?”

Scott nodded.

“You were engaged in a sexual relationship with her, you took her to one of the most special traditions you and your brother have together, and you’re angry that your friendship is over. All of that sound about right?”

“Sure. I guess.”

“Describe a girlfriend to me, Scott.”

Scott was confused. “What?”

“Give me your definition of a girlfriend. What kinds of things do you do? How do you act around each other?”

He saw what Gwen was doing. What she was implying. But she was wrong. Dead wrong. “Lauren was not my girlfriend. I’ll admit, we did a lot of relationship-y
things together, but we weren’t dating. Don’t get me wrong, I cared about her.
Care
about her. But I care about a lot of people—my friends, my brother. But I’m not
in love
with them. I know the difference.”

“But you’re sad? And angry that you’ve lost her?”

“Of course. We spent a lot of time together. She’d become a good friend. But now we can’t even be that because she’s going to want more. And I’m never going to be able to give it to her.”

“You’re not able to or you just don’t want to?”

Scott rubbed a hand over his face. “They’re the same thing,” he said impatiently.

“No, they aren’t. One is a choice and one isn’t. So which is it?”

“A little of both,” he said.

Gwen folded her steepled hands and rested them on her lap. “Scott, do you love Lauren?”

“What?” Scott was taken aback by the question. “No.”

“Why not?”

“What do you mean, ‘why not’? I just don’t.” He was beginning to wonder if Gwen needed a shrink herself.

Gwen studied him in that way only therapists could. “Is not loving her a conscious choice or is it just something that is? Something that happened?”

Scott didn’t know how to answer that. He had decided at the outset of all of this that he wouldn’t develop deep feelings for Lo. He also didn’t think he’d ever be able to love another person. Love them in the kind of way that made you think about them incessantly, want to spend all of your time with them, put their well-being before everything else. It was too risky. He’d seen the devastation relationships could cause, and he didn’t want to be
part of that collateral damage. So in that sense, it was a choice. But he also knew he just didn’t love Lauren. “It’s both.”

He and Gwen looked at each other, both seemingly waiting for the other to determine the direction the conversation would take. Scott gave in first. “Just tell me how to get her out of my mind. I can’t—” Scott took a deep breath. “I can’t keep feeling like this. I can’t be her friend. It isn’t fair to her. So I need you to tell me how to let her go.”

“I don’t think that’s a decision you can will yourself to make.” Gwen lifted her tablet off of the table. “Close your eyes, take a deep breath, and answer me this: when you picture yourself in ten years, who do you see next to you?”

Scott was annoyed that she’d ignored his question, but he tried to answer hers anyway. He expected not to see anyone in particular beside him. But he did see someone.
Of course I see Lauren. We just spent twenty minutes talking about her.
He’d picture anyone who was on his mind as much as she was. He was sure of it. Not willing to delve into a deeper examination of his hibernating “love” for Lauren, he replied to Gwen’s question with the only truth he had. “No one will be there.”

Gwen sighed, a brief look he couldn’t quite identify flashing across her face. Disappointment maybe? “That sounds awfully lonely, Scott.”

“Maybe to you. But I think we have different definitions of lonely.” He wouldn’t be alone, because he’d still be having exactly the type of relationships that he had enjoyed for the past few years. Lauren wasn’t
that
special. She was just like every other girl he’d been with.
And if Gwen didn’t believe him, well, then he’d just have to prove it.

*   *   *

As Scott sat alone in the small booth at The Curveball after work Friday, he was thankful for the peace and quiet that the night out provided. He normally didn’t go out alone, but after the previous night’s therapy session, he needed time by himself to unwind. Needed time to just be Scott. He took a long drink of his beer and settled back comfortably into the leather booth.

Scanning his eyes back and forth among the patrons, he noticed some people he knew from the hospital. There were too many familiar faces to allow his mind to fully wander.
Why did I come
here
looking for a random lay?

But three beers and one quarter of the Wizards game later, he’d successfully been able to relax and let go of some of the thoughts that had plagued his mind since he’d broken things off with Lauren. He leaned his head against his closed palm as his elbow rested on the table. His other hand toyed with the silver dollar he’d removed from his pocket as he watched it flip back and forth between his fingers.

“Anxious about something?”

Scott instantly recognized the voice and allowed it to pull him out of his mindless trance. He raised his face to a doctor he’d once known intimately, though he hadn’t seen her since she’d left Trinity over a year ago. “Not anymore, actually. Just kind of spacing out. How ya been, Mel?” Scott was instantly soothed by the reminder that Lo wasn’t the only woman he’d had an “arrangement” with. The few months he and Mel had spent together were easy.
No talk of love. No messy feelings. And though his current anxiety was none of Mel’s business, the fact that she could read him—knew his expressions and idiosyncrasies—comforted him.

“May I?” Melanie motioned to the seat across from Scott and he gestured back, letting her know that she could sit.

Scott watched Mel as she slid into the booth and downed the last of the clear liquid in her glass. “Another Seven and Seven?” he asked, pointing to her nearly empty glass.

Mel smiled. “Please.”

Scott got up to head to the bar and returned a few minutes later with another round. They sat quietly for a few minutes, neither knowing exactly what to say.

“So how’s the practice going?” Mel asked, relieving Scott of any obligation to start a conversation.

“It’s good. Nothing much has changed.” He took a sip of his beer before continuing. “Tell me about yours. How’s everything working out at Inova?”

Mel’s face lit up. “It’s great, really great. Different from Trinity, but I love the practice. Everyone there’s great.”

“So it’s great?” Scott asked.

They both released awkward laughs, and Mel propped the side of her head on her palm. “Yeah, I guess I said that a few times, didn’t I?”

Scott smiled. “Just a few.”

They fell into easy conversation from there. She told him about her sister’s new interior design business and that Mel had taken up baking as a hobby after agreeing to help her niece with a school fund-raiser. Scott talked
about the only thing he knew: sports. It was all superficial and comfortable. Exactly what Scott was looking for.

“So are you seeing anyone?” he asked out of nowhere.

Mel looked surprised at first, but then smirked slowly. “No. You?”

“No.” He tried to ignore how bitter the word tasted as it left his mouth. “I’m not looking to either. Just . . . enjoying the single life.” He gulped down the last of his beer and inwardly acknowledged the cheesiness of his last line.

Mel reached across and grabbed his hand. “Being single has definite advantages.” Then she stood, slinging her purse over her shoulder. “Walk me home, Scott.” The gleam in her eyes told Scott what she wanted from him. And it just happened to be exactly what he needed.

*   *   *

The walk toward Melanie’s apartment was more awkward than Scott had anticipated. Despite the fact that their conversation in the bar had been natural, it seemed that they’d used up all of the topics worth discussing. But once they got to Melanie’s apartment, there would be no need for talking. Especially not in bed. That was something Mel never liked. But he didn’t need that. What he needed was some relief, relief that he’d been craving since he’d broken things off with Lo.

He turned to look at Mel, gauging her expression before he spoke. She appeared . . . relaxed. And the way she bit back a smile told him she’d been thinking similar thoughts. Instead of speaking, Scott grabbed Mel around the waist, spinning her a bit until her back pressed against the brick wall of the apartment building they’d
been passing. She inhaled a sharp breath before Scott pressed his mouth to hers, needing to feel a physical connection. His tongue explored the inside of her mouth as if it hadn’t been there a thousand times before.

But the familiarity he’d felt earlier had dissipated as soon as he’d kissed her. Instead, it felt . . . empty. It felt wrong. What he was doing with Mel wasn’t going to make his world right again. It would only make it worse. Hers wasn’t the touch he wanted. It wasn’t enough. And the look in her eyes as he pulled away told him his touch would never be enough for her either. “I can’t do this,” he said, an unmistakable hint of apology in his voice as he pulled away and started to leave.

Mel let her gaze drift to his face for a moment before it moved downward to follow the hand that he’d slid around the coin in his pocket. “I know,” she said softly.