Stalled at a red light, she twirled her wedding ring around her finger a few times, barely feeling the gentle vibration of her cell phone.
She held it to her ear, grinning a little to herself. “Yes?”
“I thought I’d warn you before you came in.” Zuly’s voice was hushed and raspy, causing Natalie to wince, as though it would make her sound clearer.
“Huh?”
“The nurses are talking about you.”
“What do you mean?”
She quickly searched her brain for an answer. Sure, some of the nurses had a field day with her pregnancy, asking every single question known to Man. Otherwise, they left her to her own devices, more commonly known as the mounds of paperwork they made her responsible for.
Zuly’s thirst for gossip went unparalleled, propelling Natalie to roll her eyes at the thought of her friend’s ear to the wind, catching stray words of negativity sporadically.
“What you did for Dr. Lambert’s Mateo. And how you got invited to his house for a party. No one’s ever seen his house. And how you met his son...his gorgeous, brooding, green-eyed son.”
She scoffed audibly at the thought of it. Brooding was an adequate word to describe Dr. Lambert’s son. Brooding and...shit-faced...yes, shit-faced. After a relatively sloppy introduction, Bellamy Lambert stumbled off with the two giggling women under his arm. He didn’t even ask who Brandon was, as he stood next to her, grabbing onto her protectively. She’d barely taken the time to study his face for anything memorable, aside from the pale green eyes and exotically full lips he’d taken from his father.
“Bellamy.” She bounced her shoulders indifferently. “Yea, I met him. So what?”
“Well...apparently him and the Dr. Pierre Lambert, had a huge blowup a few years back and have barely spoken sense. Something over a shared woman or whatever...”
“My, you sure do get information quickly.” It was far too early to entertain her friend’s foolishness. “And how is this information even pertinent to me?”
“Just thought you’d like to know.”
“What? That the only connection the nurses can seem to drum up is me and my husband getting invited to Lambert’s house?”
“I hope you’ll share my same exuberance when you get here and have a cup of coffee.” The snarky tone in Zuly’s voice made her chuckle, but she refrained from responding.
Then, Zuly exhaled. “Speaking of which...how are you and the white guy?”
Tiresome, intimately-raw make-up sex aside, Natalie and her husband found a commonplace platform in forgetting the entire incident ever happened and moving on completely from it. She, being the person she was, kept some feelings on reserve and mulled over them for a couple of hours, until Brandon would grab her by the ass and carry her to the bedroom to find their rhythm again. He was reminding her of why they stood at an altar on a hot ass Saturday in Georgia and said their vows to one another. Made sense. She just needed to keep believing it.
And just a couple of evenings before, she found him reading on the front porch, spine curved in a quietly astute fashion. She internally remarked on how beautiful his hair looked with a stream of pale blue moonlight shooting through it. She sat beside him softly, aligning her head with his shoulder blade. She inhaled the familiar scent of him, and the tepid air outdoors and closed her eyes.
Enthralled by his nearness and his ability to understand her, she breathed, “I know you want to give me the world. But please allow me to live in it, too.”
And he gazed into her, blue eyes lucid, damning. The stare was far-reaching, impassioned, real. Then, he formed his lips into a gentle pucker and pushed them into her forehead.
She knew she’d gotten her answer.
ANY HOSPITAL EMPLOYEE WHO WASN’T AUTHORIZED to go into Banquet Room Three wasn’t even allowed near it. Any personnel caught peering into or tiptoeing nearby could face severe consequences.
This was all told through the lips of Head Nurse Wendy, who was on coffee cup number four and on her first day of a new twelve-hour rotation. One of the newest patients, a six-year-old named Renee, had given her and the other nurses considerable issues overnight. Not because she was actually quite ill - she and her parents were simply a “huge, fucking, low-grade pain in my ass”.
“Dr. Pierre Lambert is a highly respected, highly intelligent, incredibly wealthy surgeon who owns a third of this hospital. In attendance will be a number of the same. I don’t want any trouble out of any of you. Do you understand?”
The nurses and some of the nursing students from the local school exuded a collective sound of compliance, and shortly after everyone rose from their seats to began their rounds.
“Greene! Come here a second.”
The mere thought that Head Nurse Wendy might have to refer to Natalie by her God-given name had been beneath her since the day she’d signed her employee agreement.
Sauntering toward her supervisor slowly, Natalie shoved her hands in her pockets, preparing to be reprimanded for her conduct with Zuly in the back of the break room. Yes, while mildly immature, she couldn’t help herself. She was having a great morning.
Still, without thought or any of her innate Southern decorum, she blurted out, “I’m sorry”, though it was very clear in her face that she didn’t mean it.
“Sorry for what?” Head Nurse Wendy, who had been glancing over a clipboard, now glanced up. “I’m relieving you of duty today, Greene.”
“Excuse me?”
“Dr. Meyer wants you to work with her again today. She’s attending Dr. Lambert’s charity function in Banquet Room Three. She wants you to attend with her.”
Natalie paused, pursing her lips pensively. “Beg your pardon?”
“I didn’t stutter, Greene. It’s last minute, sure, but did you bring a change of clothes?”
“You mean...these green scrubs I’m wearing aren’t suitable for a charity luncheon?”
“Don’t get smart with me, Greene. The luncheon starts in three hours. You have an hour to get home and get changed, understood?”
“Uh, yea. I’ll be right back.”
SHE PHONED BRANDON ON THE DRIVE BACK HOME.
He’d started a new project that morning - something involving a children’s cereal or medicine. She wasn’t sure.
“Are you serious?” And he sounded busy, as though she’d disturbed him. But she couldn’t stop talking; it all came out at once, and the exuberance rattled her voice.
Once she’d finished, she realized that he was talking to someone else in his office. “Yea...that’ll work...sure...sure thing...okay, I’ll get to it...what were you saying, baby?”
She held her breath. “I see that you’re busy. I’m sorry.”
“No, no. Baby, I’m sorry. I’m happy for you. We’re just trying to finalize these plans for the New York trip.”
“New York trip...?”
“Yea. Our team is flying to the client’s office in New York to pitch our idea next month. We’re scrambling over these storyboards. Didn’t I tell you?”
“No.”
“Shit. I’m all over the place. I’m sorry. Can I call you back in a few?”
“Don’t worry about it. I’ll see you at home.”
She disconnected the line before he could respond.
Shuffling the brush-off she felt from the call with her husband, she rummaged through the clothes in their closet for something suitable to wear. She’d been meaning to take a moment to complain to Brandon about the amount of shit he’d accumulated since they’d moved to Portland, that neither looked like him nor fit in their closet anymore. His side of the closet now appeared as though it belonged to some hipster with thick, black-framed glasses, who drank Starbucks, idolized his MacBook and barely showered in protest of some rant for green technology.
She only sighed, fixating on a mint green sheath dress, which delicately curved around every inch of her slim figure. Sliding it over her head, she gazed into the full-length mirror. Gracing the tips of her fingers over her abdomen, she wondered how long she could get away with not looking pregnant. She thought of her sister, Sidney, who’d gained thirty or forty pounds over the course of nine months, and could barely stand five minutes without her ankles or back giving out on her.
The only thing that reassured her of her baby’s progress was her visits to the doctor. The ultrasounds and the murmured tempo of her baby’s heartbeat were just enough to prove everything real. Still, she’d only gained two or three pounds and appeared as though she’d had a heavy meal or one too many beers.
And she didn’t feel like a mother yet. When exactly did that happen?
Giving the baby an identity would make it a little easier, she figured. But Brandon wanted no parts of knowing the sex of the baby prior to, and she had to respect it.
Still...would her attitude change for a boy or a girl? And what the hell would they name it?
It. How primal? Something that she and her husband had created, had been reduced to the ill-fitting moniker of “it”.
Brandon needn’t know about Harper. She didn’t want him to take it away from her.
She fastened nude pumps to her feet and pulled her hair back away from her face. Her sisters were always encouraging her to try a little makeup here and there, but she could never warm up to it. And Brandon never really seemed to notice or care.
Hmm.
Still, for this occasion, she dusted her high cheeks with a touch of blush and applied a dab of gloss to her lips.
Now, she looked alive.
DR. CARRIE WAS WAITING FOR HER, just outside the doors of Banquet Room Three. There was a lot of chatter on the other side, and for the first time, Natalie felt her heart thump.
“Natalie.” Dr. Carrie’s hair was down and in winding coils around her face. It nearly reached the lower part of her back. Dorsum. Dorsal. Lumbar. Lumbar area. Shit.
Her cream-colored dress was a little longer and more conservative. But her make up gave her a puerile freshness. “You look incredible.”
“Same to you, Dr. Carrie.”
“Shall we enter? Dr. Lambert mentioned that our seat assignments were closer to the podium.”
“Dr. Lambert had something to do with this?”
Dr. Carrie nodded. “Yes. Apparently you made quite the impression at his home the other evening. And you saved a child’s life, of course. That’s worth mentioning again.”
“But I...”
Her voice trailed off anyway. She tried to recall what made the evening so important - aside from the obvious, of course. Dr. Lambert’s son sure did know how to make an everlasting first impression.
She trailed behind Dr. Carrie, sliding past throngs of people to the left and right of her. They were all of the well-dressed, well-scented sort, quite similar to the lot who had been invited to Lambert’s mansion on the hill that evening.
Dr. Carrie halted their progress, leaning into her. “I hate going to these things.”
“Oh?”
“All a bunch of pretentious, arrogant, silver spoon-fed doctors and their wives. You know the type...they don’t understand why female doctors exist. We’re a waste of space to them. Still, we get invited to these bullshit functions to drain us of every single one of our hard-earned dollars for some poorly planned charity we’ve never even heard of. I haven’t even paid off all of my loans for Christ’s sake.”
Natalie giggled. She was very close to remarking on how grateful she had been to Duke University’s offer to pay all of her tuition the first year.
It paid to be smart, right?
But she quickly reminded herself, and tightened her lips. They don’t know. Nobody knows here. It’s better this way.
Seated at a round clothed table just to the right of the podium, Natalie and Dr. Carrie found themselves in the company of Dr. Gill Sharma, a plastic surgeon from La Jolla and Dr. David Siegel, a dermatologist from Austin, and his wife, Evie, proud housewife and mother of three. And seated right next to Dr. Carrie, was Dr. Celia Ross, who looked otherworldly in a navy blue number.
It didn’t take Natalie long to realize that this was Dr. Pierre Lambert’s inner circle of well-bred, extraordinarily highbrow, cerebral physicians.
Dr. Ross leaned into the table. Her svelte physique marveled any woman half her age. “It’s nice to see you again, Mrs. Greene.”
“You as well, Dr. Ross.”
“Call me, Celia, please.”
The purr in her voice and her general disposition immediately reminded Natalie of Anne Bancroft as Mrs. Robinson. The resemblance from then on, was quite uncanny. In a previous life, she could’ve been a dancer or a painter’s muse. Yes, Natalie mused, something exotic, sensual, ethereal, even.
“My apologies,” Natalie smiled. “Celia. Pleasure, as always.”
“Natalie was quite the stunner at Pierre’s home the other evening. Her and that gorgeous husband of hers.”
Natalie chuckled. “Yes, he gets that a lot.”
“Are you a close friend of the Lambert family?” Dr. Sharma proffered this question, thwarting Celia’s efforts to elaborate on her observations of Brandon.
Thank God.
Natalie rattled her head from side to side in disagreement. “Not particularly. I’m more of a...”
The overhead lights faded and everyone scrambled to their seats. Natalie felt saved once again.
“She’s more of my father’s pet.”
She quickly looked into the eyes of Bellamy Lambert, who returned a snarky, sinister gaze in return, highlighted perfectly by a cheeky, inscrutable grin.
“Oh.” Dr. Sharma diverted his attention quickly to avoid the sight of impending bloodshed.
Bellamy Lambert adjusted the gray blazer around his shoulders. “Mrs. Greene. Nice to see you again.”
She pursed her lips. “It’s nice to see you as well. Sober, I hope?”
“Not sure. Nearly hit a street lamp on the drive over. I’ll let you know when this is over.” He then turned his attention to the others seated at the table. “Dr. Sharma, Dr. Siegel, Evelyn, Dr. Carrie...it’s a pleasure. And Dr. Celia Ross...still fucking my father, I see...?”
“Maybe you’re just bat-shit crazy.” Natalie muttered this as softened music cued, drowning out her audible observations.