Authors: Locklyn Marx
She took a deep breath and told herself to relax. Just because some guy she’d just met saw her in a towel didn’t mean she had to get al weird about it.
Once she was safely back in her room, she dressed quickly in her yoga pants and a fresh t-shirt, and then opened her laptop. She needed to find a job. She’d been a teacher in Pennsylvania, but the last thing she wanted to do was go back to teaching.
She’d never wanted to be a teacher. In fact, the only reason she’d ended up teaching was because of Leo. Thinking of Leo made her pulse pound and her head start to spin.
Don’t
think about him. Just focus on what you’re doing. Take it
one step at a
time.
Alexis was only licensed to teach in Pennsylvania, which meant if she wanted to teach here, she’d have to do a bunch of testing to get recertified. Plus, there was no way she was going to get a reference from her old principal. Not now. Not after what had happened.
She clicked around on monster.com, not real y sure where to start. What did she want to do? How did she want to do it? There were so many different job categories–
public relations, hospitality, publishing….there was even a category for aviation.
And the requirements! She had no idea how anyone could even be a candidate for any of these jobs. They al required you to have degrees and experience and speak foreign languages.
She shut her computer and looked around the room. It was defeating, looking for a job. Suddenly, she felt claustrophobic, like she needed some fresh air. Maybe she would go out and do a little shopping. She stil had her credit card. It was supposed to be for emergencies only, but didn’t this count as an emergency? She had no pants, for God’s sake.
The shower was stil going, so she knew there was no way she’d run into Reid.
She grabbed the key Jack had left for her, then took the elevator down to the lobby and out onto the sidewalk.
As soon as she walked outside, she felt better. It was early enough so that the summer morning was stil cool. She gulped air and raised her face to the sun.
After a moment, she looked around. The city was overwhelming. Al the people and cabs and cars and honking and yel ing. She didn’t real y feel comfortable hailing a cab, especial y since she didn’t know exactly where she was going.
She decided to stick to places that were within walking distance. There were plenty to choose from, and Alexis didn’t mind walking. In fact, she found it kind of relaxing.
She’d been so tightly wound when she’d left Pennsylvania that she needed the physical release.
She headed into the first shop she saw that looked remotely interesting, and fil ed her arms with pants. She tried them on and picked out two pairs of jeans, a pair of black pants, and a pair of grey leggings.
“Looks like you found something you liked,” the salesgirl said, giving her a smile.
“Wil that be cash or credit?”
“Credit,” Alexis said. But as she pul ed out her card, she started to get slightly nervous. Was paying with a credit card dangerous? After al , the bil went to her apartment in Pennsylvania. She could change the address, of course, even get a new card, but that would take at least a few days, maybe even longer.
Don’t worry about it. You’re just being paranoid.
But when she out of the store and back onto the sidewalk, her breath was coming in short bursts, and her eyes were watering. It was hot out, she realized suddenly, and she felt like she needed a drink.
There was a lunch truck up on the corner. If she could just get there, she could buy a bottle of water or something. But the pavement was starting to curve below her feet. Why was it doing that? Why was the street moving?
She looked around for someone to help her, but everyone was moving too fast, rushing by her, bumping into her as they passed.
She tried to open her mouth, but she couldn’t talk. She couldn’t speak. Her voice was caught in her throat.
The pavement continued to move beneath her feet, and the sound of car horns echoed through her head. She tried to take another step forward, but her legs felt wobbly, like she was trying to walk on cooked spaghetti.
“Are you okay, miss?” a woman asked.
Alexis tried to nod her head. She reached for the woman’s arm, but al she felt was the material of the woman’s shirt slipping through her fingers.
And then everything went dark.
***
“Look,” Reid said. “We’ve come up with a pretty good idea of what they want.
Now we need to work on coming up with a tagline and concept.”
His team groaned. They were al gathered around the conference table in the middle office of the Lawson Agency. Most advertising agencies these days had open concept spaces and relaxed atmospheres. A lot of them were decorated in modern colors, with oversized, comfortable furniture and big tables instead of desks. It was supposed to foster creativity. But not the Lawson agency.
Reid’s father, David Lawson, refused to redo the offices.
David’s belief was that if you relaxed things even a little, your work would suffer.
“I real y don’t think this is the direction that Vista Col ection wants to go in,”
Richard Muel er said from his spot on Reid’s left.
“And why’s that, Richard?” Reid asked, trying to keep the edge out of his voice.
The last thing he wanted to do was get into it with Richard.
Actual y, that wasn’t completely true. He did want to get into it with Richard, wanted to yel at him and scream at him in front of everyone.
But that would be unprofessional.
“I just don’t think the client is looking for something fun and whimsical,” Richard said now. “They seem like they want the brand to be more sophisticated.”
“Except they brought up the word ‘whimsical’ about ten times in the briefing, which you would have know if you were there.” Not that it would have mattered.
Richard loved to fight about everything.
The other people at the table exchanged nervous glances, wondering how far the two men were going to push each other.
“Look, al I’m saying is that sometimes you can get hemmed into one idea,”
Richard said. “One idea that makes you blind to other possibilities.”
What the fuck was he talking about? Reid was completely open to different possibilities. He opened his mouth to defend himself, but before he could, his cel phone buzzed on the table in front of him.
He looked down. It was a 212 area code, but a number he didn’t recognize.
“I have to take this,” he said, standing up and moving out of the room. He hoped Richard Muel er thought it was some kind of important business cal that didn’t include him.
“Reid Lawson,” he barked into the phone. It had better be a new client.
“Yes, hel o, is this Reid Lawson?” a timid woman’s voice asked on the other end of the line.
“Hence me answering the phone Reid Lawson,” he said. It never paid to waste time being nice to someone when you could tel they had no idea what they were real y cal ing about. He got a few cal s like this a week, usual y from someone who was starting some smal business and wanted to inquire about advertising. What these people didn’t realize is that the average cost of a Lawson Agency advertising campaign was half a mil ion dol ars.
They’d done work for Coke, Old Navy, The Gap, and Taco Bel . They certainly weren’t the kind of agency who worked on Mom and Pop’s New Pet Store. Although they would, if Mom and Pop had the money to spend.
“Yes, wel , Mr. Lawson, this is Mount Sinai Medical Center, and we have a woman here who was brought in by ambulance.”
“Who is it?” he asked. His pulse quickened and adrenaline pushed through his body. Could it be his mother? She lived in Connecticut with his father, but she’d been known to come to the city for a day of shopping. Maybe she’d fal en, maybe she’d been -
“Her name’s Alexis Castalano. We found your information in her purse.”
Shit. He rubbed his temples. “Is she okay?”
“I’m not at liberty to give that information out over the phone, sir.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“It means that I’m not privy to the patient’s condition, and even if I were, I wouldn’t be at liberty to discuss that kind of thing over the phone.” The woman, who just a second ago had seemed timid, was now starting to sound slightly haughty.
“So what you’re saying is that I have to come down there.”
“You don’t
have
to do anything, sir. I’m just fol owing proper hospital protocol by cal ing the patient’s emergency contact number.” The woman’s tone now conveyed that he’d be a total asshole if he didn’t drop everything and come down there immediately.
And it was true. Stil . He was in the middle of an important meeting and he hardly knew this girl. He’d just met her a few hours ago, for fuck’s sake.
“She didn’t have anyone else’s number on her?” he tried.
“No, sir.”
“And you can’t just tel me if she’s okay or not? Without getting into specifics?”
“No.”
Now the woman sounded real y annoyed, like she couldn’t believe she was stil having this conversation, that any sane person would have been on their way to the hospital by now.
“You know I don’t know this girl,” he said. “I just met her this morning.”
Silence.
“Okay,” he said, sighing. “I’l be right there.”
It took Reid’s cab fifty minutes to get to the hospital, then another ten minutes of actual y wandering around before he found Alexis.
She was sitting up in one of the emergency room beds, reading a magazine.
He looked her over. There were no bandages. No scratches. No IVs or other medical instruments hooked up to her arm.
When she saw him, she shut her magazine. “Took you long enough.”
“Took me… ” he trailed off. Was she giving him attitude?
For not showing up quick enough? “What the hel happened?” he asked her.
“I fel .” She shrugged. “And then they didn’t know if I had head trauma or not, so they made me wait until someone could take me home.” She rol ed her eyes, like she couldn’t believe how ridiculous it was.
He pul ed up the tiny stool that was against the wal and sat down. “Where’s the doctor?”
“I don’t know. She’l probably be back in a minute. She said when you got here she would ‘brief you on my condition.’”
when you got here she would ‘brief you on my condition.’”
Reid glanced at his watch. He hoped “brief” was going to be the operative word.
“Did you just look at your watch?” Alexis asked.
“No.”
“Yes, you did.” She shook her head. “You know, I didn’t even want them to cal you. But they said they had to. They said someone needed to be here with me.”
Talk about being ungrateful. Like he real y wanted to leave his big meeting to come down here. Especial y for a fal .
They couldn’t have told him that over the phone?
That she’d fal en? It was probably just a skinned knee.
“Hel o,” the doctor said, walking into the room. “I’m Dr.
Snyder.” She was tal with long dark hair, and under different circumstances, Reid would have turned on the charm. But now he just wanted to get the hel out of here.
“Hi,” Reid said, nodding.
“You’re Alexis’s…?” the doctor trailed off.
“I’m her roommate,” Reid said. God, that sounded strange.
“But only for a few more days,” Alexis chimed in. “And then I’m leaving.”
“Okay.” The doctor’s eyes moved from Alexis to Reid and back again. She seemed suspicious, like she couldn’t decide what exactly it was that was going on here.
You and me both.
“So what happened?” Reid asked.
“Wel , it seems as if Ms. Castalano was out walking when she had some kind of panic attack, and then fainted.”
He looked at Alexis. She was staring down at the floor now, al traces of bravado gone from her face. “You had a panic attack?” he asked. He knew about panic attacks.
He used to get them in col ege, right before a big test or before an interview. He’d learned how to manage them over the years, and he hadn’t had one in a while. But he remembered how horrible they were. Your throat felt like it was closing up, your heart pounded in your chest, and you felt like you were going to die.
He also knew that panic attacks didn’t just come out of nowhere. They were usual y triggered by something –
stress, worry, or anxiety.
“It wasn’t a panic attack,” Alexis said, and rol ed her eyes. “I just got a little hot and dehydrated, that’s al .”
The doctor ignored her. “She’s going to need to be observed for the next twenty-four hours. When she went down, she hit her head and got a slight concussion. Her MRI is clear, but we need to watch her. If she starts vomiting or starts to have a headache, she needs to come back to the hospital.”
Great. Now he was going to be on baby-sitting duty. Or roommate-sitting duty.
This was worse than that time last month when Jack adopted a kitten and then disappeared for three days, leaving Reid to take care of it.
“I’m fine,” Alexis said. But her voice sounded wobbly.
“I’l take care of her,” Reid promised the doctor. He was going to miss his meeting. But what choice did he have?
Alexis Castalano,
he thought, shaking his head.
I haven’t even slept with you and you’re somehow fucking
up my life.
***
And she wasn’t. She’d just started feeling thirsty.
People fainted al the time from being dehydrated. It used to happen to her students constantly. One too many minutes rehearsing for the spring show in the auditorium or playing on the playground on a hot day, and wham! They would drop like flies.
She’d tried to tel Dr. Snyder that, but had she listened? No.
She thought she was so smart just because she had a medical degree. Then, they’d cal ed Reid because they’d found his number in her purse! They’d gone through her things, and cal ed him because it was hospital policy. Talk about an invasion of privacy.