Total pages in book: 95
Estimated words: 91504 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 458(@200wpm)___ 366(@250wpm)___ 305(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 91504 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 458(@200wpm)___ 366(@250wpm)___ 305(@300wpm)
My heels click across the room. I snap up a framed photo. Add it to the growing pile of things that have to go. My breath comes in fast, ragged bursts, but I only have seven minutes before my first patient in a year comes into this room and sits on my teal couch to pour her heart out. It’s nerve-racking, but things will be right once I’m working again.
They have to be.
Finally, I’ve removed all signs of you—the desk itself the one exception.
Four minutes.
I shove the box in the corner, behind the ficus that somehow survived my absence. Gerry, my temporary replacement, was able to keep it alive.
Unlike my practice.
No, my practice is not dead, just… waning. I exhale as the outer door squeaks open and closes with a thud. My assistant Sarah’s muffled voice greets my patient—a patient I’ve, thankfully, treated for years. One of the early ones. One of the handful who’ve stuck by me.
I sink into my desk chair. Most who remain probably don’t know what happened—the patients, I mean. I somehow managed to keep my face out of the papers and off the news. I shielded my face going in and out of my apartment, in and out of the services. It helped that photos of famous hockey players walking into a funeral parlor probably fetched more money than the partially covered face of a woman the media had never noticed before. My name made it into stories, but not the name my patients know me by. I’ve always practiced using my maiden name, something you weren’t fond of, but now I’m glad I did. It’s been my safety net.
I hear Sarah say something about new insurance and paperwork, and I close my eyes, grateful for a few minutes more. It feels like I’ve been waiting for this day for months, wearing out the soles of my shoes to pass the time until I could come back and have purpose in my life. But now that it’s here, what if I can’t do this anymore?
What if, after all that’s happened, I’m incapable of making a difference?
I pull out my phone to distract myself, my finger gliding automatically to my email, where a confirmation awaits:
Your ad has been approved and will run for another fourteen days—
I swipe the email away, disgusted. We’re running advertisements for the practice—like I’m a two-bit ambulance chaser—when previously, all my clients came from referrals. I should be grateful that Sarah knows how to do these things for me, instead of bitter about the fact that I must.
“You’ll get back to that,” she reassured me last week when I came to check in and expressed wariness about using ads. “But right now you’re down forty percent of your patients. You have to do something.” So I agreed. Now we’re placing ads and running discounts for people who pay out of pocket and all kinds of stuff I would have turned my nose up at not too long ago.
But it’s about survival.
The practice’s and mine.
Someday it will be about more. Someday people will come because they’ve heard good things.
I open a different icon, eyeing my door—I probably have another minute or two before my patient finishes updating her medical forms. A rush of nerves and excitement sends tingles down my spine when the dating app tells me I have New Messages.
Two of them.
One from a man five years my junior with sandy red hair, blue eyes, and a teasing grin. His name is Phil, and while I’m not usually attracted to his particular combination of looks, there’s something about his smile—it makes me think there’s more to him than meets the eye. It’s pure fantasy, of course. We’ve exchanged flirty comments, and he’s suggested grabbing coffee. I’m not planning on saying yes anytime soon. But I type out a quick message, because this is good for me. I’m getting my feet wet. Easing into the idea of companionship in the future. Plus, it feels safe, anonymous almost. I can say anything, mess up, or decide to stop responding without real repercussions, since I didn’t use my last name to create my profile and my photo is nothing more than a vague smile.
I tilt my head, chewing the end of a pen, and open the second message. This one is from a man I haven’t chatted with yet. Though we must’ve both hearted each other or he wouldn’t be able to send me a message. He’s handsome. Dark hair, dark eyes, and a dimpled smile that makes me think he’s adventurous. I read through his introduction. The first paragraph is filled with compliments, telling me he loves my smile and all of the things that caught his attention on my profile. It’s a good start. The second paragraph dives into details about him—attorney, thirty-eight, lives downtown. But things turn south when he gets to his hobbies. “I’m a hockey fanatic who played in college but didn’t have what it takes to get to the big leagues.”