– Harlow
“Well good,” I say, as I help Whitney off the desk. “I was hoping you had some dirt on him.”
I pull up my pants as she does the same and then goes to sit at her computer chair.
“Can you please hold off on the official business for a minute?” I ask her. “I just need a moment to sit here and bask in how hot that sex was just now.”
“It was amazing,” she says, smiling.
I had waited for what felt like a really long time, without really thinking I would ever get to be with her again. But as soon as I was with her, my body knew just what it had been needing. I finish getting dressed and then I sit down at the chair across from her desk.
“I think the signs were always there for me with Dr. Davis. I just didn’t want to see them,” I tell her. “But the more I thought about it, the weirder things seemed. What I’m the maddest at myself for, though, is not trusting you. I know you would only ever have my best interest at heart. I just couldn’t believe it because I’m not used to being in a relationship.”
“So we’re in a relationship, are we?” she says, grinning.
“You’d better believe it. And you’d better remember it if you keep wanting wild office sex.”
“About that…”
Her grin turns into a slight frown.
“Yes?”
“I think we should cool it at work. Seriously. Dr. Davis said that he received a call informing him that you and I are having a relationship at work.”
“What?” I ask, astonished.
“Yeah, and the funny thing is that at that time we hadn’t even had sex! And I wasn’t even your physical therapist. But of course, Dr. David blackmailed me with that, and a bunch of other things. He said that he would report us if I didn’t stop working with you.”
“He must have really thought it would work,” I tell her. “Because he told me you wouldn’t be contacting me. But you sure did.”
“I sure did,” she says, smiling. “You can’t keep a crazed woman down.”
“You needed some more of those orgasms, didn’t you?” I ask her, and I love her mischievous, flirty smile she flashes back at me.
“Yes I did. But I decided not to be worried about him anymore, and instead of to figure out what was up with him. But still, it’s probably not a good idea to be doing this in the office in the future— and giving anyone any evidence to back up his claims.”
“So someone reported us?” I ask, still stunned at that news.
“It was obviously Tony,” she says, waving a dismissive hand as if he was so last year’s news. It’s an adorable gesture. “I saw a mutual friend of ours when we were at Apothecary. She’d always had a crush on him so she must have told him she saw me out with you.”
“Poor girl,” I joke. “To have a crush on someone like Tony.”
“I know, right?” She says. “Someone like that must have really high aspirations in life.”
We both laugh and it feels good to be together, relaxing, talking.
“So, I agree that we shouldn’t do anything to get either of us into trouble,” I tell her. “But there has to be some kind of loophole. Aren’t physical therapists and patients ever allowed to date? To have sex? On top of that, you’re not even my physical therapist any more. Lance is.”
“I know,” she says, with a sigh and a shrug. “And at the time, I was thinking it didn’t matter since you weren’t my patient and then we weren’t together anymore.”
She looks down at the floor, and I still feel so bad for leaving her like that. I reach out and take her hand.
“Lance had originally mentioned something about I could lose my internship over being with you,” she says. “So, I kept meaning to go look up the rules about that. In the HR policy. But then everything changed and plus I was focused so much on discovering the truth about Dr. Davis that I didn’t have time to worry about my own problems.”
She laughs.
“But now that we’re back ‘on,’ which I’m really happy about of course, it could mean danger at work, because they might assume we were together during that time period where I was your patient. Especially since Dr. Davis will tell them that. So I do need to look at the policy to see where we stand. But it’s probably best to just keep things on the downlow for a while.”
“But I don’t want that little twerp Tony to win,” I protest. “If people can’t know we’re a couple, then he’ll get his way. It would suck to have to sneak around with my own girlfriend.”
“Whoa, hold on, back up,” she says, laughing her amazing laugh. “Girlfriend?”
“Well, of course I want you to be my girlfriend,” I tell her. “I just told you I love you. I guess I just assume those two things go hand in hand, but, I don’t know, since, just like you’d never orgasmed before you were with me, I’ve never told a girl I loved her before just now.”
“Awwww,” she says, leaning over to kiss me.
Then she backs up and we both realize at the same time that she hadn’t said it back.
“I love you,” she says, kissing me all over my face. “I love you, I love you, I love you. And yes, I want to be your girlfriend. I just think we should keep it on the downlow for a while, because… there’s some other news I have to tell you….”
She looks so excited that I can’t possibly think of what it could be.
“What?” I ask her, curiously.
“I’ve applied to medical school.”
“That’s great! Whitney, really? All because of what I said?”
She shrugs.
“Well, it’s something I always wanted to do. You had a point. And I didn’t see a future here for me anyway. At the time anyway. But now I do. Of course. But back then, I thought that the best thing to do was to move on, and to take part of you with me— your advice.”
“Smart move.” I wink at her. “And I’m sure you were also taking awesome memories of how I fucked you silly and made you come for the first time.”
“Of course. But seriously, now we really have to be careful,” she says. “I don’t want anything to ruin my application. I need this internship to still be active when they look at it.”
“Or, we could find a loophole,” I tell her. “Why don’t you pull up that HR policy or employee handbook or whatever it is, so we can find a way to be together for real? I want to show you off. Let the world know how hot my new girlfriend is.
She laughs.
“Okay, okay. But after I fill you in on what’s up with Dr. Davis. So now can I tell you what I’ve found out?” Whitney begs, obviously anxious to spill the beans.
“Sure. I’ve sufficiently recovered from our knock-down drag-out sex session.”
“Okay, here’s a print-out of all the patients Dr. Davis has treated,” she says, reaching to retrieve a piece of paper from her printer, and handing it to me. “I’ve redacted their names and any other identifying information for patient privacy sake, but, the important thing to look at is the colors I’ve used to highlight them.”
“Little Miss Type A,” I say, impressed.
I look at the sheet of paper but it’s not very helpful since I have no idea what I’m looking at. It’s full of red and green highlights, so it vaguely reminds me of the different flavors of chile. Or a Christmas decoration.
“The red color represents all the patients that Dr. Davis has treated initially but never went any further with. The green color represents patients that he’s continued to treat, and referred to physical therapy.”
There are only three green names.
“One of those is you,” Whitney says.
“Is the other one named Alex Crenshaw?”
Whitney looks surprised.
“I can’t say. HIPPA laws.”
She shrugs, still the rule-follower despite the fact that she just let me fuck her on her desk. But her reaction gave it away. One of them was Alex Crenshaw.
“But the other two are recent post-surgery patients. They were in traumatic accidents but, like you, they recovered rather quickly.”
“I guess the other one isn’t Jesse Morrow?” I ask, already knowing the answer since Dr. Davis had told me, but hoping that he somehow still made it through.
“Have you talked to Jesse Morrow recently?” Whitney asks, her eyebrows raised.
“You know Jesse Morrow?” I ask, wanting to know the answer to her question first.
“I did a little recon,” she says, her cute cheeks blushing a shade of rose.
“Very nice,” I tell her.
“Let’s just use him as an example,” she says. “Since both of us are familiar with his situation. He’s an average service member, wounded in the line of duty, with some pretty major injuries and a lot of work that needs to be done.”
I nod.
“He’ll probably never end up back in active duty— but still, very few do— and he could benefit from intense physical therapy and further treatment, probably with an integrated approach. Occupational therapy, counseling, and some sort of guidance or transition as to what he should do with this future.”
“Sure,” I say, nodding my head. “Jesse Morrow deserves that. They all deserve that.”
“You know…”
She begins, and I can tell she almost thinks better of telling me whatever she was about to say.
“What?”
“It’s just, when I was talking to Jesse, he mentioned that he’d asked you to come to his surgery, and had never heard another word from you. I mean, he was really understanding and nice about it, and I knew that you had gone to visit him because Lance told me he saw you there, but I didn’t say anything because I wasn’t sure…”
“Fuck,” I say. “Fuck fuck fuck.”
“What?”
“Damn Dr. Davis. I did go to see Jesse but his surgery had just finished and he was too doped up to recognize me. I left a card for him. Dr. Davis acted hella sketchy, which makes perfect sense now. He said he would make sure he received it, and would let him know I dropped by.”
“Well, lo and behold, Dr. Davis didn’t live up to his word. Shocker,” Whitney says, and I nod.
“How can I get in touch with him? I need to explain what happened.”
“I may be able to get you some contact information from his file,” she says, with a sly smile.
“Awww. You’re the best. I knew there was a reason I was into you.”
And I knew she’d bend the rules when the right situation presented itself.
“Very funny,” she says. “But let’s get back on track. We are using this patient as an example, correct? He deserves further treatment, correct?”
I nod.
“But Dr. Davis doesn’t want to work with him,” she concludes, marking a big X next to his redacted name. “Or him, or him, or her, or any other average service member.”
Soon her X’s line the page, and it’s obvious how angry she is. And it’s touching to see how much she cares.
“So, this is where I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but it affects you.”
“Okay. Shoot. I’m ready.”
I’ve been on such a roller coaster ride since meeting Whitney— or since my helicopter crashed, actually— that I shouldn’t think it’s possible for me to be surprised by anything anymore. But I never expected her latest revelations, and I know I can’t be sure of what’s coming down the pipeline. I just want her to tell me, so that we can deal with it together.