Page 266 of The Doctors Will See You Now

“Mom.”

“She listens to Christian music, for Pete’s sake.”

“Linda is a nice lady.”

She scoffed. “Nice. Exactly. I don’t trust it.”

“Well, trust it or not, they’ve been married for fifteen years now. It says so on the invitation.”

She gave me a mocking smile and patted my cheek a little too roughly to be loving. I grabbed her hand to stop the assault and trapped it between both of mine.

“Look, if you’re well behaved, I’ll let you go with me.”

“I’ll go on my own.”

“Mom,” I chastised.

“Fine. I’ll be good. Whatever the hell that means. But you have to give me some kind of a reward.”

That sounded a bit like blackmail…

I quirked an amused brow. “A bribe, you mean?”

“Don’t mock the bribe, Scott.” She winked. “I did it all the time with you.”

“Fine. What do you want?”

“The party is Saturday, and I have no plans for tomorrow night,” she said quickly. Too quickly.

My eyes narrowed, and the hair on the back of my neck stood up. My mom was notorious for trickery. Honestly, I blamed myself for not seeing this one coming.

“So, by no plans, you mean you’ve made plans for both of us without my knowledge, and now, in exchange for also escorting you to a party where you will, in all likelihood, not behave, I get to take you somewhere else I’ll hate.”

“You doctors are smart.” She grinned like the Cheshire cat. “All that schooling. It must be good for something.”

I sighed and smiled at the same time.

“So where are we going tomorrow night, dearest Mother?”

“Kinky Boots.”

“Kinky Boots…the Broadway show?”

“I’ll meet you at your place at six forty-five,” she said by way of answer, scooping her purse up from the desk and walking straight out the automatic doors.

I looked around, and set after set of eyes jumped away.

Good Lord, my mom knew how to make an entrance and an exit. That woman was hell on wheels, and I’d rejoice the day she found a man who kept up with her feisty ways.

With no choice but to give in to the fact that I’d be seeing fucking Kinky Boots tomorrow night, my mind wandered to an irritatingly recurrent thought, and I decided there was something I had to do before I got consumed by the exciting—and oftentimes bloody and gross—world of emergency medicine.

“I’ll be back in just a minute,” I told the ER charge nurse for the night. Beverly nodded. She was a lot more lenient than Deb, the slave driver.

Against my better judgment, I stepped around the corner, scrolled through my recent calls, and clicked one to dial. It rang back in my ear as I waited.

“Heeello?”

“Harlow?”