Page 81 of Doctorshipped
“This?” she asks, looking down and pulling the fabric away so she can clearly read the caption.
I nod.
“It means what it says, Doctor Peppers.”
“Hmph.”
“You wanted to talk to me about Fiona?”
“I did.”
I go into some concerns I have about Fiona keeping up with the pace of the assignments in her class. At first she’s reluctant and guarded. But, when I bring up the reading specialist, Jayme bubbles on about how exciting it is that a woman of her caliber is coming all the way from Columbus to our school, and how she imagines the school arranged that provision just for Fiona. Then she informs me of her latest observations during her tutoring sessions with Fiona.
By the time her synopsis wraps up, we seem to be back on track, as I hoped we’d be.
When I bring up my goals for Fiona this year, Jayme answers, “I think you have to take each day as it comes.”
She’s smiling warmly, obviously committed to her carpe diem philosophy.
“That’s what I tell Fiona. I encourage her not to look down the road too far. Every new day is a blank page. You get to write on it what you will.”
I look across my desk into the chocolate brown innocence of Jayme’s eyes, wide and somehow unscathed by the evils of the world.
“If I get a blank page? I’m writing,Stay out.”
She laughs hard, the sides of her eyes crinkling and her cheeks becoming full and round with her laughter.
“You made a joke!” she declares.
She’s got me there. I did. I still would write,Stay outon any blank page possible, but I’m glad she could tell I was joking. Making Jayme laugh does things to me. The rush feels better than passing my MCAT, or solving a particularly challenging patient issue.
“Your choice. Your blank page. You write what you will,” Jayme says after her laughter subsides. Then she smiles and winks.
She winks. At me. While we’re alone in the house with no one to keep me from doing what I’m nearly obsessed with doing to her.
Instead, to help keep my libido on a short leash, I say, “You are the most pollyanna, pie-in-the-sky idealist I’ve ever met.”
“Thank you.”
“It wasn’t exactly a compliment,” I mumble.
Jayme beams back at me, carefree and unaffected. I’m afraid she’s starting to see past my grumpiness into the heart of this man. She’s never been intimidated by me, or if she has been, she’s never shown it. But she’s different now. It’s as if she knows me and doesn’t mind the grumbly, jagged pieces of my personality. She almost seems to enjoy them in some twisted way.
Her sweetness reminds me of easier times when life wasn’t complicated by responsibilities and disappointments, when I believed in dreams and possibilities—before I recognized optimism as the undetonated grenade it is.
Now, a dose of hope would tempt me to forget reality—the truth of how one person can wreak havoc on your life and leave you so mangled you no longer recognize yourself.
If it weren’t for Fiona, I might never have come out of my personal prison of pain. Even with her, I’m only a disfigured remnant of the man I was before hope had its way with me.
And Jayme keeps entering my office and my life like a woman armed with her own personal hope cannon, shooting off blasts of delightful possibilities at regular intervals. Her joy rains down like confetti, leaving an equally messy aftermath in her wake every single time. If it weren’t so ultimately endearing, it would be downright irritating.
“By the way, my Dad is coming for a visit for a few weeks,” I add before Fiona interrupts us and dominates Jayme’s time and attention for the afternoon.
“Oh! How fun!”
“Yeah. Fun.”
“Is it not fun? Do you have a difficult relationship with your dad?”
