“Got a date?”
None of your business. “I need to study.”
“For what? You’re already a pharmacist.”
She’d explained this to him no less than three times. “My oncology board exam.”
“Oh.”
The familiar beep of a pump indicating a finished infusion sliced through the air, and Lauren prayed it was one of Gavin’s patients. Thankfully, he muttered something about catching up with her later and walked off.
Lauren resisted the urge to roll her eyes at his back and continued her circuit of the infusion center. She saw two of her other patients and stopped to check on them before moving on. Mandi’s section was the last she came upon, and Mandi looked up from her computer when Lauren approached.
“Hey girl.”
“Hey,” Lauren said. “Busy day?”
“Always.” Mandi returned her attention to the computer. “I saw Gavin talking to you a minute ago…still trying to get with you, huh?”
Lauren shrugged. “I think it has less to do with me and more to do with him thinking he’s God’s gift to women.”
“Based on his success rate with dating the nursing staff, most of them agree with him.”
Lauren was well aware of the rounds he’d made through the employees throughout the cancer center. “I don’t get it. He’s not bad looking or anything, but he seems like such…”
“An asshole?”
“I was going to say son of a motherless goat, but we can use yours.”
Mandi snickered. “You and your fake cussing. I’ll never forget the first time I met you, you hit your shoulder on the doorjamb and instead of shit or dammit, the words out of your mouth were Bob Saget!”
“I’m nothing, if not original,” Lauren said with a grin. “But really, it’s because of the kids.”
Mandi nodded. “I figured,” she said, and continued to type at the keyboard.
Lauren put her hands in her coat pockets and shifted on her feet. She glanced down the row of chairs in Mandi’s section.
“He’s not here.”
“What?” Lauren forced her expression to remain calm. She’d always been a terrible liar.
Mandi’s face remained expressionless, but her eyes were sharper than a twenty-seven-gauge needle. “Andrew Bishop. He just left.”
“Oh. I um, I wasn’t…”
The older woman’s face softened, and she shrugged. “I know he’s a patient of Dr. Patel’s, so I thought maybe you came to check on him. That’s all.”
Lauren nodded, probably too emphatically. She searched for something else relevant to say, but came up empty-handed. So she went with, “I’ll see you later, then.”
“Sure.” Mandi winked and waved her off. “See you in two weeks.”
…
Logan: Did you forget about me?
Jiminy Cricket. She totally had. She’d planned to text him when she got home from work, but now it was almost eight o’clock, and she’d holed up at The Grind House, studying.
Lauren: I had a family emergency I had to deal with.