Page 21 of Will & Patrick's Endless Honeymoon
“Oh, yes she is.”
“I know, but…” Will squirms in his seat. “She’s my mother.”
“More’s the pity.” He zeroes in on Will now. “She got under your skin this morning, huh?”
Will squeezes ketchup over his fries and pops two in his mouth. “I don’t know how she does it, but she always manages to make me feel guilty. Like I haven’t earned the right to do what I want with my life.”
“You’ve more than earned everything you have.”
“I know. She just…” Will shakes it off, taking another bite of burger. “Let’s not talk about her. How was your day?”
Patrick makes a noise of disgust, shoves in more of his dinner, and shrugs. “Just another day in paradise.”
“How’d your morning surgery go?”
“Canceled. Patient popped a fever.”
“So that’s why you’re grumpy.” Will smiles. “Didn’t get to mess around in anyone’s brains today.”
Patrick lightly snarls. “I’ve got plenty of reasons to be grumpy. Your family is annoying and the nurses here are criminals.”
Will almost chokes on his laugh. “The nurses arewhat?”
“Criminals.”
“Okay, back up.”
Patrick wipes his mouth and launches into a long and irritated tale of a nurse he suspects of charting a dose of anti-seizure medication without actually giving it to a patient. The entire rant takes long enough for them both to finish their meal and move from the table to the cushy sofa in the living room.
The housekeeper came during the day, so the remote controls are lined up carefully on the broad coffee table and the TV screen and windows onto their wide, summer-green backyard shine dust-free and spotless.
“Her name’s Ruby something,” Patrick sums up with a glare, like the name means everything. He turns to prop his bare feet up in Will’s lap. “She’s new and a redhead. Never trust a redhead.”
“You and Connor are both redheads.”
“I bet she’s a Sagittarius too. I’d put money on it.” Patrick taps his fingers anxiously against his left leg even as he stretches out to get more settled on the couch.
“Patrick, has it occurred to you that you’re fixating on this woman?”
Fixation sometimes happens with Patrick’s autism spectrum disorder. His brain locates an “enemy” and he can’t let it go until he’s solved the problem or defeated the brain tumor or whatever else.
“Now you sound like Don,” Patrick grumbles. He wriggles his toes and Will gives in, massaging his feet. “Ah, that’s more like it.”
“So you talked to Don about the nurse?”
“Of course. Ruby what’s-her-face needs to get out of my hospital. Yesterday.”
Will digs into the arch of Patrick’s left foot. “Okay, so how did that conversation go?”
Don Knife is a big fan of Patrick’s, so Will’s betting it went reasonably well, but he’s also a fair man, so he isn’t going to let Patrick’s suspicions ruin a woman’s career untested.
Patrick rolls his eyes. “It went annoyingly, of course. I told him what I told you, plus I asked him how I’m supposed to feel comfortable leaving my patients for ten days when the nurses are charting medications they never gave.”
“What did he say?”
“Something about not getting ahead of ourselves and how we need to wait for the lab results on my patient’s urine. As if I don’t know what she looks like on five hundred milligrams of Keppra versus zero.” Patrick hisses as Will hits a tender spot on his heel.
“Don’s hands are tied until he has proof.”
