I thought I could handle it at first. I honestly believed that his simple gestures of buying me coffee in the morning, offering to buy me lunch, or allowing me to sit in on sessions would eventually wane on me, but every night when I lay alone in my bed, my fingers found their way beneath my panties and all I could think about was him.
I was doing my best to avoid being around him one-on-one because it didn’t take much for him to turn me on, but with every second glance he gave me and every bite of his prized Twizzlers, I was reminded that I truly, truly wanted to feel him deep inside of me.
“Whoa.” Shannon stood up from the table as her pager beeped. “This is one of my interns. I’ve got to go.”
“See you at home later,” I said. “But wait. Tell me, is the residency at Manhattan Medical everything you thought it would be? Is it as great as we used to dream about?”
“Absolutely not.” She smiled, lying like a good best friend. “It’s absolutely awful and I think you’d totally hate it.”
“Thank you.”
She gave me a hug and left the café.
I took my time drinking the rest of my latte, deciding to head into work an hour early to do some additional work for Dr. Ashton. The second I walked into “our” office, I immediately noticed the set up was different.
He’d moved my desk into a corner, and he’d placed two bookshelves next to it that were filled with files. Not only that, but he’d installed a folding screen that separated my side of the office from the area where the patients sat on the chaise. Oh, and he’d taken away the two vases of “Thank you for being a great resident” Twizzlers he’d just given me yesterday. He’d moved them to his desk, giving him six candy stashes to my zero.
What the hell is going on?
“Good morning, Dr. Madison.” He hit the lights as he walked into the office seconds later. “You’re here early this morning.”
“Yeah, I wanted to come in and do some work on the Letterman chart before we met with him today.”
“We won’t be meeting with him,” he said, his voice clipped. “It’ll only be me. You’ll need to leave my office when he comes and do your work in the break lounge until the session is over. You’ll need to leave my office whenever I’m meeting with a patient for the rest of the week.”
I blinked, utterly confused.
“Also,” he said, pointing to the bookshelves. “Do you see those files that I’ve placed over there?”
I didn’t answer. I just nodded.
“I need all those categorized by the end of the week, so I suggest you get started with the patients who are the most current on sessions. It’ll make your job a lot easier. Any questions? It looks like you have something to say.”
Are you bipolar?
“Um ... Did you by chance forget to take any med —” I hesitated to continue when I noticed him narrowing his eyes at me, daring me to complete that sentence. “With all due respect, Dr. Ashton, I need to practice something. That’s kind of the whole point of a residency. I can’t just file papers all day.”
“That’s exactly what you’re going to do all day.”
“No ...” I crossed my arms, hating the fact that even in the midst of him being an utter jackass, he still had the ability to turn me on. “The program that you and your team graciously put together said my first three months would be spent working directly with you and learning about better ways to handle cognitive therapy. It didn’t say anything about reading over charts and files all day.”
“Are you defying me?”
“I’m warning you.” I wasn’t going to let him push me over, no matter how wet my panties were right now. “I don’t mind doing the files in order of importance, and I don’t mind working overtime hours to get them done.”
“I’m not paying you overtime hours.”
“Regardless,” I said, narrowing my eyes right back at him. “I don’t mind doing those files in order of importance, but if you think that you’re going to hinder my career in any way because you’re having a bad day and haven’t taken your meds, you have another think coming, Dr. Ashton.”
“Is that so, Dr. Madison?”
“Yes, that is so.” I looked right into his gorgeous blue eyes. “That is very so.”
“Hmmm ...” A slight smirk crossed his lips, but he didn’t let it stay. “So, what you’re saying is that you were promised a certain type of outcome for the residency and you expect me to show up and honor exactly what you were told, correct?”
“Yes. That’s precisely what I’m saying.”
“So, the idea of me suddenly changing my mind at the last minute and not honoring what you originally agreed upon would be, how can I put this ... Fucked up?”
“Um, yes ...” I wasn’t sure where he was going with this. “Yes, I guess you could say it would be ‘fucked up.’ Does that mean you understand where I’m coming from?”
“No.” He glared at me. “No, the fuck it does not. It means that you are indeed a resident. That means you report to me for this part of your program and you do exactly what I tell you to do, whether you think it’s important to your career or not.”
I bit my tongue before the words, “Who the hell do you think you are?” could leave my mouth.
“I even did you a favor,” he said, pulling a small sheet of paper from his pocket and handing it to me. “I wrote down the most important files for you. The top twenty I need completed by tomorrow morning at nine o’clock — specifically the Yarbrough family files. No exceptions. Are we clear?”