“Ready?” Jon asked the first-time mother, holding the lubricant above her extended belly. She nodded, a smile poking through her tired expression.
He squeezed the tube, and the sound of a ketchup bottle filled the room.
“Oh, it’s warm,” she said, her smile widening.
“Fancy new tech we got here,” he joked, nodding to the lube warmer resting under the ultrasound monitor. He pressed the probe to her stomach, smoothing it around until the baby made an appearance.
Boy. Little guy was spread eagle, loud and proud.
“You see that?” he asked, smirking at the unmistakable body part.
His mother squinted at the screen. “Is that the head?”
“One of them.”
The father snorted, then pumped his fist. “Yeah! A boy, doc? It’s a boy?”
“No doubt about it.”
“Woo!” The father let go of his wife’s hand just to dance—quite horribly—in the small space between the medical bed and the wall. The patient blew out an exasperated breath, like she already had a boy and didn’t need another one.
It really was the best part of the job—reading out the gender. It’s why he preferred to do it at the end of the day so he could go home in a good mood. The mother wasn’t always too happy, considering they couldn’t use the bathroom until after the appointment. This particular patient booked it out the door the second he said they were all set to go.
“Well, he looks happy,” Jon’s nurse, Rebecca, said as he slipped his gloves off and tossed them. Jon followed her gaze to the father who was now telling everyone still around about the boy coming in just another twenty weeks.
“A bit.” Jon laughed.
“Should I tell him that boys are little shits?” Rebecca kinked an eyebrow, an evil glint in her eye.
“Nah, let him enjoy it while he can. Poor bastard.”
Her shoulders lifted in silent laughter, and she closed down her computer for the day. A picture of her kids—Jack, Thomas, and Dennis—sat next to her mouse.
“Any fun plans for the weekend?” he asked as she pulled her jacket on.
“Two basketball games tomorrow morning, hosting the lunch after, then archery lessons at five, and hopefully booze around eight-thirty.” Her eyes flicked over her shoulder. “You?”
“Nothing nearly as exciting.”
“Skipping the office party tonight?” A snort billowed from her nose and rumbled her lips. “Probably a good idea.”
“Are they that bad?”
“I will never look at Julie the same after last year’s.”
He grinned. “Sounds like I should steer clear.” Though, he probably needed out of the mundane. His career was anything but boring, but his personal life, on the other hand… Well, it was not his fault he’d lost his best buds. That was completely on them. Getting married and having kids and shit. The only long-term relationship he’d had was with his doctorate.
Rebecca clicked off her desk light and deflated. “Guess I better go home to the little hellions. See you Monday.”
“Tell them good luck at their games.”
“If Thomas goes five minutes without traveling, it’ll be a good day.” She let out a laugh and hiked her oversized purse up her arm. He watched her follow his excited patients out the door, and the receptionist locked it behind them and flicked off the lights. There was a bunch of paperwork to do, but… home sounded so good right now. He could at least do it in front of his 70-inch and Finding Dory.
He ducked into his office, logged out of everything, and jetted out before the other docs had a chance to make him feel guilty about it.
“Hold it, please!” he called to the closing elevator doors at the end of the hall. A dainty hand with chipped nail polish and bitten-down nails darted out and knocked the door open.
“Thanks,” he said with a smile, eyes locking on the Marvel girl from the billing office—though she wore a Wonder Woman jacket. Maybe she wasn’t strictly a Marvel person.
“You got it, doc,” she said with a dorky finger gun. It was pretty darn adorable.
The elevator jolted down, making the grinding noise that grated on his ears and jostled his stomach. One look at the billing girl’s face told him she felt the same.
“If we weren’t on floor five—and I wasn’t so prone to falling on my butt—I’d take the stairs.”
He nodded. “Amen. Think there’s a plan to fix the… unreliability of this thing?” He made to lean against the metal railing that ran across the walls, but thought he better not trust it.
She let out a loud, “Ha!” then knocked the door with her knuckle. “It’s been making that noise for about a year and a half, so I doubt it.”
“Hmm.” Did he have some pull with the building owner? He supposed that sort of thing would run through the office manager, Kami, and he mentally put it on his to-do list. Dying in an elevator was not the way he wanted to go.
The doors creaked open, and they both rushed off, laughing slightly at their synchronized hurry. Marvel Girl tucked the fallen strands of hair behind her ear, her ponytail hanging lower than he’d seen earlier. Maybe it was all that dancing around the billing office.
They walked to the parking lot in mostly silence, Jon’s mother’s car parked in his spot. She needed his truck to move a piano, and so he’d traded her that morning.
“So,” Marvel Girl said, pulling her keys out as Jon stopped at the car, “see you tonight.”
“Oh… I’m not going to the party. I don’t really have a costume.”
A small chuckle floated from her lips. “Come as a doctor,” she teased. The corner of his mouth twitched up. Guess it wasn’t a horrible idea, but he wasn’t up for hanging around the office staff. He was the new guy, and he’d learned quickly that being the doctor meant everyone treated him differently. Like he was either a god or too good to talk to them or that he was some scary guy who would snap his fingers and have them fired. In all honesty, he wanted a real conversation with someone without the label.
“I’ll keep that in mind.” He unlocked the car. “Have a good weekend… Um… Sorry, I’m still learning names.”
“Cassidy.” She tilted her head and opened her car door. “But Marvel Girl works, too.”
A ten-minute drive and shower later, Jon was sitting pretty on his sectional, feet kicked up on the coffee table he’d taken from his college roommate seven-years-ago, a gooey slice of meatlover’s pizza hanging from his mouth. Baby Dory was attempting to play hide-n-seek with her parents and a gut-filled laugh shook his stomach. Maybe he’d get a Dory to add to his collection—he had plenty of other secondary characters inked on his body, but Dory had missed the cut.
Eh, she had her own movie now.
His phone buzzed across the coffee table, and he had Alexa pick it up since his fingers were greasy
“Hello,” he answered.
“Happy Halloween!” his mom’s delightful voice rang out from the echo unit. He shook his head and checked his Fitbit for the date.
“Halloween isn’t for three weeks, Mom.”
“We can celebrate all through October, silly.” Mom was a big fan of the holiday, and the house he grew up in attested to that fact. The second the calendar was turned, his house would turn into an advertisement for mechanical zombies and skeletons. Jon spent most of his childhood jumping out of his skin whenever he turned a corner.
He chuckled around his last bite of crunchy crust and took a sip from his Corona. “So, what you up to?”
“Brett’s working on that piano again. Darn thing keeps knocking keys loose every time we move it.”
“You want me to take you out?” His mom’s boyfriend was handy, but his sense of time was off. An hour job to him was three in real time. And people said doctors were bad.
“You’re eating already, aren’t you?” she asked. He wiped his mouth and looked at the six slices still in the box.
“No.”
“I got a chicken quesadilla in the fridge I can heat up. Don’t you stuff yourself silly just because you’re bored.”
Damn that mother intuition. He let out a sigh and stretched his toes. Dory was starting to remember her family on the screen. “I could help Brett out.”
“With what? Asking what tool does what?”
“Cutting me real deep, Ma.” He might know tools in a hospital, but anything else was a foreign language to him.
“Well, what did ya move to the city for? To hang out with your mother or meet people? Pull up your big boy pants and go meet someone. You’re a doctor for pete’s sake.”
An OBGYN. Not every woman fell face over feet for a man who looked at vaginas all day long.
He grabbed another slice of pizza and dug in. “There’s a Starbucks down the street a bit.”
“Starbucks? Oh, Jon. You need help.”
Of course she’d say that. His mom found men online, in bars, while grocery shopping, everywhere. Brett’s lasted the longest at just over a year now. He was nice enough, so Jon hoped he’d seen the last of finding his mom on Tinder.
“There’s an office party tonight.”
He could actually hear his mom’s head perk up like a prairie dog coming out of a hole in the ground. “Reeeeeeally?”
“Big Halloween thing.”
“And there will be lots of young, single girls?”
The OB office alone could fill the room with them. “Probably.”
She clapped her hands. “Yay! You find a girl, bring her here, and then marry her.”
He chuckled around his pizza. “I’ll get right on it.”
They chatted a bit more about how much she wanted grandkids—like he hadn’t heard it already a million times—and how she was going to die of boredom if Brett didn’t get the piano fixed within the hour. Jon hung up as soon as he was done with slice number five. Dory was saying goodbye to Hank as he dumped her into the Open Ocean exhibit. He always loved that part. Maybe he’d get a Hank tattoo instead. The octopus would look great next to Flounder.
Bored, he took out his laptop and finished his paperwork. What else was there to do, really? He was completely new to the city—living there; he’d visited his cousin and mother a few times. Being the doctor at the office built a barrier between him and the other staff members. He was as personal as could be, but everyone treated him like he was the pastor of a church or something. He could only imagine going to the party with no one wanting to drink around him or joke or simply have a good time.
Like he was a saint. Maybe he could go in a mask.
A light bulb shot over his head, and his back straightened. A slow smile spread over his face, and the wheels in his head turned round and round. The perfect solution rested in the back of his closet—a costume he bought last year that he was sure would still fit.
In a split second, his mind was changed. After all, he’d seen Dory a million times, and there were only so many opportunities for a night of anonymity.