Don’t Fall for the Doctor by Lacey Bolt
Chapter 16
Michael paced his office like a trapped animal.
What just happened? He thought she wanted the kiss. And like a fool, he tried to give her one when she clearly did not want it.
He had lost his mind. That was the only explanation for his behavior.
Pacing the office wasn’t helping. The walls were closing in on him, and the room was getting too hot. He needed to escape before the panic attack set in.
He grabbed his sneakers and walked out of the office, hoping that he wouldn’t see Ashley again. He’d be lucky if he wasn’t called back in to see Dr. Evans tomorrow for accusations of workplace sexual harassment.
How could he be so stupid as to risk everything by trying to kiss her? At work! His career and reputation would go down the drain if she filed a complaint or told anyone about what just happened. There was no excuse for his behavior. The only thing he could say to defend himself was that he thought she was about to kiss him.
He stalked to the staircase at the end of the hall and yanked the heavy door open. He paused only to change out of his dress shoes and lace up his sneakers. He threw his shoes to the corner and started jogging upstairs.
Had she even said that she was going to give him another chance? He started to jog faster up the steps as he replayed their conversation. She had every reason to be angry with him when they started talking. He should have let her know that he recognized her the other night, and he definitely should have treated her better at work the other day. But those were just two small incidents. They saw each other all the time at work.
His heart was pounding, and he broke out in a sweat as he reached the top floor landing and turned around, ready to jog down the ten flights.
He thought he’d been nice to her all the times he helped her clean up a mess or tried to stay out of her way. Did she have no idea how many times he wanted to ask her what she was thinking behind her deep, serious eyes? How many times he had thought about how to get her away from prying eyes and ask her on a date? How many times he wanted to wrap her up in his arms and forget about the rest of the world?
This was the last time he was ever going to take advice from that patient, Henry. The old man had no idea how far Ashley had crept under his skin over the past two months since he first started taking notice of her.
And now, he had blown all of his chances with her by pretending he didn’t know her at the bar.
He reached the third-floor landing and turned around. He needed the challenge, the pain, of running up the steps instead of down.
Was he so consumed in his work that he only made up his attraction to Ashley? How many times had they actually talked, had a real conversation? What did he really know about her?
He ran up and down the ten flights of stairs for another twenty minutes until sweat soaked through his button-up shirt, stopping only when his phone buzzed.
The delivery man was about to pull up to the front of the hospital with dinner for him and Kelly. He’d been so busy today that he forget to cancel their weekly restaurant order.
He jogged down the remaining flights of stairs and went to the main hospital entrance. The delivery car was just pulling up, and a minute later, Michael had his food. He walked back towards his office.
There was too much food for just him. He and Kelly started their routine of Wednesday night dinners together just a few weeks after he started working at the hospital.
If only he hadn’t ruined his chances with Ashley, he could be sharing the food with her tonight instead of eating alone.
He approached the entrance to the hallway lined with cardiologist offices and paused. He did not want to make the situation worse by running into Ashley again. On the other hand, maybe if he did see her, she would let him apologize. Maybe he could even convince her not to file a complaint against him for sexual harassment.
No, it would be better to leave her alone. Give her space. Anyway, he deserved to be raked over the coals by Dr. Evans. Months ago, his therapist had reminded him not to jump to conclusions. There was the possibility that Dr. Evans would just give him a formal disciplinary action but not fire him.
He opened the heavy door that blocked the hallway of offices from the main corridor of the hospital and let it slam behind him. He took a few steps into the hallway and then coughed loudly. He stomped his feet for extra measure. Surely, Ashley would hear him and either avoid him or confront him, but at least he wouldn’t accidently sneak up on her again.
Her cleaning cart was at the end of the hallway, three doors down from his office. He watched as the office door closest to her cleaning cart closed quietly from the inside.
Message received; she did not want him anywhere near her.
He sighed and walked into his office and turned on his computer monitor to review some charts while eating.
The food tasted like cardboard in his mouth. And he couldn’t focus on the chart when his mind kept wondering if the noises he heard were Ashley.
There was no point in staying in the office tonight.
He stood up and looked at the container of food holding Kelly’s order. Grabbing a piece of paper, he wrote a short note. But he crumpled it up and threw it away, then grabbed another piece and wrote an even shorter note. Ordered extra food by mistake, left it in the break room fridge in case you are hungry. Sorry about earlier.
He grabbed his work bag, placed the food in the break room fridge, and then walked quietly down the hall until he reached the office that Ashley had last been cleaning. Her cleaning cart was still in the hallway next to that door, which was slightly ajar. Michael placed the note on top of her cart, where she would hopefully notice it, and then hesitated.
The door was open about two inches, but it was silent inside. He inched forward and tried to peer inside the crack. He couldn’t see anything.
A smart man would have stopped and left Ashley alone. An even smarter man would have realized that he was walking on thin ice. First the unwanted kiss, and now trying to spy on her while she was working.
But he wasn’t smart. He was desperate.
No other woman had this effect on him. He’d never spent weeks thinking about a woman he barely knew. She was right about that. He knew almost nothing about her, only what Kelly told him on occasion. But he’d been very careful about asking Kelly too much about her. He didn’t want Kelly to get suspicious. He didn’t even want to think of the consequences if rumors started around the hospital that he was chasing after a housekeeper, or any other member of the staff at the hospital.
He didn’t even know what he was going to say to her if she caught him trying to catch a glimpse of her before he left.
There was no sound coming from the office. The only sound in the hallway was the thumping of his heart.
He nudged the door gently with his foot, moving it slightly. He did it twice more. There were still no sounds coming from the office.
He opened the door far enough to step in and heard a quiet moan. He scanned the room for the source of the noise.
Lying on a couch, sound asleep, was Ashley.
He should back away before she woke up and caught him staring at her. But she looked cold and vulnerable. He snuck out of the office, walked down the hall to the supply closet, and returned with a blanket.
He carefully placed the blanket on top of her, not daring to breathe. His hands ached to touch her, brush the hair back from her face, or lie down next to her and embrace her while she slept.
That would definitely get him into more trouble than he was already in. No hospital would want him if he was fired for trying to kiss another employee and then watching her sleep. He wouldn’t even want to be around himself if he acted like that.
Using all the self-restraint he had, he backed away once again and turned off the light to the office. He closed the door gently behind him and backed right into Ashley’s cleaning cart.
“Umph . . .” He groaned in a whisper and grabbed his hip, which had taken the brunt of the force from her cart.
He should have grabbed that stupid cart instead because it toppled over, sideways, from just the impact of his body.
This was great. A bottle of liquid hand soap was leaking onto the floor, and there were no towels to be seen to clean it up. Not to mention that this noise was loud enough to attract the attention of anyone within a five mile radius.
He froze. How was he going to explain this to Ashley? He grimaced, thinking about how her face was going to look when she saw what he did. He might as well say goodbye to any chances he had with her and clear his schedule for the long meeting he was surely going to have with Human Resources and the chief of cardiology tomorrow to reprimand him for his actions.
Unless . . . he dared to turn around again and glance over his shoulder. The light in the office was still off. The only noise was his own breathing. Maybe . . . He gently opened the door a crack, just in time to hear a quiet snore coming from the direction he’d last seen Ashley. Could she actually have slept through that noise? Either she was exhausted beyond belief or just a very heavy sleeper. Either way, this meant that he could still fix the situation.
He grabbed a cloth towel from the cart and mopped up the spilled hand soap as best as he could, which was not good at all. Now there was a film of soap going halfway across the width of the hall, a very sticky cloth towel, and his pants were covered in soap. He turned to the cart and picked up the mop. Maybe that would work better? He glanced around but didn’t see a bucket. The mop would probably work alright without the water, though. He started mopping up the hand soap. Now it was even worse than before.
He frowned. Maybe there was something else on the cart to clean up that mess. The cart was still on the floor, and he lifted it by the edge to put it upright again. The cart wobbled dangerously, even while upright. Holding it carefully, he looked at the bottom of the cart. One of the front wheels was almost entirely off the cart, and the back wheel was angled awkwardly. No wonder this cart fell over; it was moments away from falling apart completely.
How did Ashley get any work done with this broken mess? It was hard enough to get it to stay upright on its own. And all along, he’d thought she was the cause of all the spills. He’d thought that she was just nervous around him because she liked him too. He’d read her completely wrong. She wasn’t jumpy around him because of any crush. She just had a broken cart, and he was too full of himself to realize that maybe she just wasn’t interested in him.
Well, he was just going to have to work harder to show her that he wasn’t the entitled doctor that she thought he was.
He reached into his pocket and pulled out his cell phone. Desperate times called for desperate measures. Not that Kelly would mind helping him out, but it could lead to awkward questions about why he needed her help cleaning the clinic in the first place.
Two hours later, Michael did one last walkthrough of the offices. Everything was freshly clean. Well, at least marginally cleaner than it was two hours ago. His back ached, and his arms were tired. How did Ashley do this every day?
He crept to the closed door where Ashley was taking her nap, pulling the cart behind him until it was placed next to the office door. He gently removed any breakable bottles from the cart and placed them carefully on the floor, trying his best to make it look like they had fallen after the cart fell and not placed there intentionally. He cautiously opened the door, barely daring to breathe. With the other hand, he gave a gentle push to the cleaning car.
The cart fell predictably with a loud crash. Ashley turned slightly in her sleep but was still asleep. Michael’s stomach tensed. He flicked on the lights, and she bolted upright. Michael took off at a sprint to the exit door, letting the door slam shut behind him.