I is for Ian

At any rate, I figured I would be fine. Nothing to worry about when it came to storms. My bigger worry was the people that would need to come through the dangerous weather in labor.

Leaving the breakroom, I headed to the elevator again just to check and saw that it surprisingly didn’t have an “out of order” sign on it. Delighted, I hopped on and pressed the button for the third floor. Before the doors could shut, however, a hand stuck in and stopped them, pushing them back open.

I hit the button to open the doors, and as they did, I smiled apologetically.

“Sorry about that, I didn’t see you coming. What floor do you w—”

“Fourth, please,” Ian said.

He was grinning that stupid grin that he had when he was in his truck, winding me up about the parking space. Groaning, I hit the button for the fourth floor and scooted a few steps away, so I was in the corner of the elevator.

The elevator shook as the door shut and started going up. I stayed silent, waiting patiently for the little ding of the bell saying that it had reached my floor. But as it passed the second floor, there was a sudden screeching sound and then a large thunk.

“What the hell was that?” I asked.

“Umm. I think we’re stuck. Between floors.”

“Seriously?” I asked.

“Yeah, seriously,” he said. “We hadn’t gotten to the third floor yet. I think we were almost there, though.”

“You have got to be kidding me,” I muttered. “This is really great. You guys are doing a super job here.”

“Us? You think this is our doing?”

“The elevators worked fine before you showed up.”

“Lady,” he began.

“Doctor,” I corrected.

“Lady Doctor,” he said, and I rolled my eyes, “we’ve had the elevator out of service not because it wasn’t working, but because we were using it to haul shit to the fourth floor. But it broke down on us the first day. This elevator was a POS way before we showed up.”

“How convenient,” I said. “You show up and suddenly things don’t work, but it’s not your fault. Just like it’s not your fault that you just have to park in people’s spaces?”

“Oh, this again?” he said, laughing dismissively.

“Yes, this again. This whole thing is ridiculous, but what’s a million times worse is that they didn’t even bother to hire a real professional crew to do it.”

“Hey,” he said, suddenly adding some bass in his voice. The playfulness was gone, replaced by something darker. “I don’t mind you insulting me, but don’t insult my crew. They are the best of the best. And they are doing a hell of a job up there. It’s not their fault, or mine, that your hospital blows its entire budget on making a cranky old man happy rather than keeping up service on their elevators.”

I groaned in frustration, partially because I didn’t want to hear his stupid voice anymore and partly because he was right. The hospital financial board had forgone a lot of things we had petitioned for in recent years if they didn’t directly affect Dr. Sutton.

“That’s it,” I said. “I’m getting out of here.”

“How?” he asked.

“The door,” I said sarcastically.

I tried to dig my fingers between the doors and pull them apart. A few seconds of grunting and pulling and I felt a touch on my shoulder. I snapped my head around to look at Ian, who was gesturing for me to move out of the way.

“Here,” he said.

With one mighty pull, he yanked the doors open. The way his muscles flexed in his forearms as he yanked the door open would stick in my mind for a while, but I tried to shake it off.

As soon as the doors were open, I went to them and started to climb.

“Hey, wait,” he said. “That’s dangerous. Come down.”

“No,” I said, struggling. “If it cuts back on, it will go up, not down. I’m fine.”

“You don’t know that. What if it has an emergency protocol and drops down to the bottom floor. It will cut you in half.”

I hadn’t thought of that, but it was too late now. I was almost all the way in. Struggling and grunting, I made it all the way up and onto the floor of my ward, and just as I got to my knees, feeling satisfied and accomplished, the elevator suddenly kicked back to life and rose the extra three feet. A dinging sound rang as Ian crossed his arms over his massive chest.

He was grinning again.

“I don’t regret it,” I said. “It got me out of there with you.”

With that, I turned my back and scurried off as the door of the elevator closed behind me.

8

IAN

Arguing with Doctor Lady Fancy Pants was entertainment enough, even if she was incredibly annoying and bitchy, but she had a fantastic backside. Watching her wiggle and grunt as she tried to fit herself through the opening onto the floor of the pediatric unit was far more entertaining than anything else I had seen in my time in Ashford. Her scrubs left very little to the imagination as she crawled and wiggled through the opening.