Bedside Manner (Love Under Lockdown)

“Would you like us to call you a cab?” I asked her.

“That would be wonderful. Thank you, Dear.”

After paying for a cab from the hospital back to her place, including adding a bit for a tip, I returned to the staff lounge to take a brief break while I waited for my next call.

The rest of my shift passed without major incident. Mostly people were coming in for tests, which usually came out negative. Everyone was also wearing some form of PPE, which was refreshing, particularly compared to some of the stories I’d heard from elsewhere in the country.

Finally, Dr. Smith told me that Julia and I were free to leave, and that I should drive her home, because his notes said that she took the bus to work.

She met me by the main doors, and we walked in silence to my car. The PPE wasn’t the only distance between us. And I feared what kind of old animosities might be dredged us with her staying at my house, even if she was fucking hot as sin.

Chapter Five - Julia

The car hummed under me like a big cat purring as Jake drove me home to grab my clothes and then to his house. That was only fitting, really, considering that it was a Jaguar.

I was impressed at his display of wealth. I knew Jake must have been rich, but I figured it was regular doctor rich— not industrialist super-villain rich. Yet things were looking increasingly that way.

Out of the corner of my eye— not that Jake would notice, let alone care, whether I was looking at him— I took another glance at him. His handsome face was illuminated almost celestially in the lights of the dashboard. Night had already fallen before we were allowed to leave the hospital.

It could have been the exhaustion, but I was fairly certain that I was seeing a different side of him now than I had back in medical school. My new opinion was informed somewhat by the call I’d gotten from Grandma after she’d gotten home safely. She had gone on and on about the nice, handsome doctor she’d seen, and asked me why I didn’t know anyone like that.

I didn’t have the heart to tell her that I did know someone like that— in fact, I had known that very doctor, Jake Booth himself, since medical school— but that I mostly hated his guts, albeit for reasons that were starting to seem somewhat silly in retrospect.

In some ways it was envy, really. He was always with all those other girls, and never me. Not that I was looking for a quickie, anyway. It was just the fact that he’d never even looked my way, as if I’d forgotten to turn on the Bluetooth for my vagina, making me feel like I was invisible.

That wasn’t a great thing for an already self-conscious girl who had always considered myself to be more brains than beauty to feel. And he just had this reserved demeanor, as if it pained him to talk to people, and when he did, he was so damn cocky that I couldn’t stand it. He knew he was smarter than me at exams and had to walk around with a swagger as if he wanted me to know he knew it.

Still, I was thinking better of him now. The distaste was still there, mostly from the memories I had of him, but it had begun to thaw, at least a little bit, as I was confronted with the current version of Jake Booth.

“Wow,” I couldn’t help but blurt out, as we pulled up to his house.

Dr. Smith hadn’t been kidding when he’d said that Jake had plenty of room for people to stay with him. His house really was one of the biggest I’d ever seen. I thought for a moment that it might be divided into apartments like how big houses were sometimes done, although not in that part of town, and certainly not for houses that had only one driveway.

It was his, alright— the whole thing. He could have inherited it— it certainly looked old enough— but he also seemed a bit young to be an orphan. My parents were certainly doing fine and, unless his were considerably older than mine, there was no reason to think they might be gone to a better place. Unless one counted Florida.

“This is a nice house,” I said, feeling stupid.

“Thank you,” he replied, without a hint of his usual arrogance. “Family money. Plus doctor money that was necessary to keep the family money.”

“I see,” I told him, but really, I didn’t.

I just didn’t want to be nosy and ask more about his family’s history, especially since I had been forced upon him as a guest, and because we had always hated each other.

After easing the sleek vehicle into the garage, he cut the engine. As the garage door rolled back down into place, Jake got out and, like a proper gentleman, came around to my side and opened the door. We were both regularly tested for the virus thanks to work, and knew it was relatively safe to be near each other, even without masks.