Forever Love, Inc. - 5/12
5/REID
Reid Oliver sat at his table at the Mona Lisa and tried not to openly fidget. He had never been a fan of dating even in his younger years-generally preferring to meet men in places that left little doubt about both the goals and the limitations of the expected encounter-and the experiences he’d had with his last two dates had done nothing to improve his opinion of the practice.
In fact, earlier today Reid had very nearly said to hell with the whole plan and called to cancel his commitment for the evening… until he’d happened to stumble across Dave Carter and Bob Hughes, chatting together over lunch in the hospital cafeteria. Carter had been holding his wallet open to display a picture of some snot-nosed boy in a bright red baseball uniform, and Bob was chuckling with delight over the younger doctor’s tale of infantile athletic triumph. The sight was nauseating enough to make Reid actually think about not ordering his usual triple-meat club sandwich with jalapeño chips-but it also served to stiffen his commitment to see this temporary boyfriend scheme through to its desired conclusion.
“Are you Reid?” a man’s voice intruded into his reverie.
Reid looked up from his half-empty water glass to see a compact, muscular man standing before him, with long brown hair pulled back in a ponytail and a face with roughly the texture of old leather. He was dressed neatly enough in a crisp pair of gray slacks and a thin black top that had clearly been chosen to show off his physique, but the effect was undone somewhat by the almost unnaturally golden hue of his skin and the distracting mess of shell and leather necklaces wrapped around his somewhat over-developed neck.
Christ, Reid thought, examining the man bemusedly, Snyder’s set me up with an aging go-go boy.
Reid rose slowly to his feet to greet the newcomer, silently repeating the rules he’d set for the evening: Be pleasant. Go with the flow. Fake an interest in whatever pointless drivel spills out of the man’s mouth. It seemed a simple enough plan to execute. For the next few hours, he’d just have to take a second to consider his instinctive response to each situation-and then do the exact opposite. Reid wasn’t generally one to care about putting himself in a good light, but he reminded himself that keeping the hopelessly bush-league Dr. Carter from taking over as Chief of Surgery was worth even a sacrifice of this magnitude.
“Yes, I’m Reid,” he said pleasantly enough, extending a hand out in greeting. “And you must be…”
“Cal Greenberg,” the man responded, taking Reid’s hand in a positively bone-crushing handshake. “Good to meet you.”
Eyes almost starting from his head, Reid hastily saved his most trusted surgical instruments from being mangled within the Neanderthal’s sweaty palm. “Uh,” he chuckled uneasily, gently massaging the throbbing fingers of his right hand, “that’s quite a grip you have there.”
“Sorry!” the man said, though his bright smile seemed to indicate he was anything but. “Sometimes I forget my own strength. I’m a professional bodybuilder, you see.”
“A professional bodybuilder? What kind of stup-?” Reid stopped, cleared his throat. “What kind of… er, job opportunities does that involve?”
“Oh, no, no,” the man replied, with a chortle of laughter. “From 9 to 5, I’m an industrial architect. But that just pays the bills; bodybuilding is my life.”
Reid gave the man a broad smile, then-not really knowing how to respond to that explanation-he simply returned to his seat without comment. His date settled himself comfortably at the opposite side of the table, and there was a brief lull in their conversation as a uniformed waiter appeared to ask for their drink orders.
“So, Dr. Oliver,” the other man said, as soon as the waiter had departed. “That is right, isn’t it? It is Doctor Oliver?"
“That’s what it says on my paycheck,” Reid said, with another painstakingly friendly grin. “I’m a neurosurgeon.”
“A neurosurgeon,” Cal repeated, pondering the answer for a moment. “That means you know a thing or two about the nervous system, right?”
Reid’s smile wavered slightly. “A thing or two, yes,” he said brittlely. “Maybe even three.”
“Sorry?”
Reid cleared his throat again. “I said yes, I’m familiar with it.”
A look of relief crossed the man’s weathered features. “Okay, so listen,” he said seriously. “I got my pro card at the middleweight level, and I’ve been traveling that circuit now for years, but I’ve pretty much maxed out on my potential there-and let’s face it, heavy and light-heavy is where all the action is. All the action and all the big money, you know? So about a month or two ago, I decided I wanted to get serious about moving up into a heavier weight class-loading up on fat and calories, changing to a low-rep/high-weight workout, the works. You follow me?”
Reid nodded hazily, wondering what the hell was keeping the waiter.
“So I’m doing this new routine,” Cal continued, “and all of a sudden, I start to notice I’m not feeling so well. My neck and shoulders are tight like you wouldn’t believe, and I’ve got these terrible aches in my joints. And not just when I’m exercising, but all the time. So how do you like that, doctor? Pretty strange, huh?”
“You’ve been exercising a lot, and now you have muscle stiffness and pain,” Reid repeated slowly. His face twisted with befuddlement. “Are you a complete…?” Reid cut himself off in mid-thought and gave a small cough into his hand. “Are you completely sure those two things aren’t connected?” he finished weakly.
“Well, sure, that’s what I thought at first too,” the man said, a note of condescension creeping into his voice. “But lately whenever I do upside-down crunches, I get this weird tingling sensation in my hands and feet. And when I get up for my morning cardio, it seems like I’m always tired and I have trouble concentrating.”
“So you’re tired and unfocused in the morning? Are you… getting up earlier, by any chance?” Reid asked politely.
“Sure, but it’s way more than that, you know? And I’m trying to add bulk by drinking several protein shakes a day, but sometimes I have trouble keeping them down.”
“Imagine that.”
Reid looked rather desperately around the restaurant, and nearly wilted from relief at the sight of their waiter approaching. He almost snatched his glass of beer from the waiter’s hand and took a long, fortifying gulp of the foamy drink.
“So anyway,” his date went on, relentlessly, “I looked up this stuff online, and I found this site where you can type in your symptoms. And it’s run by the Mayo Clinic, so it has to be pretty good, right? And the closest match I could find was something called acute syphilitic meningitis. Have you heard of that?”
Reid nearly spat into his beer.
==========
“Are you insane?”
Reid held the telephone receiver away from his ear, wincing at the volume of Luke Snyder’s angry greeting. “In this town?” he asked impatiently. “Even if I were, who’d notice?”
The other man seemed unimpressed by the aside. “You told your date he has syphilis!?”
Reid rolled his eyes up at the white-tiled ceiling above him, cursing the poor timing that had carried him through his evening rounds just in time to step inside his office and catch the ringing phone. “Syphilitic meningitis-it’s a neurological complication arising in patients with untreated syphilis. And, nooo,” he added, somewhat belatedly realizing he should address the actual question, “I didn’t tell him he has syphilitic meningitis. I simply… agreed that nausea, muscle stiffness, and numbness in the extremities are symptoms of syphilitic meningitis. Which is true.”
“Dr. Oliver!”
Reid bristled at the distinct note of reproach in Luke Snyder’s voice. “Well, what did you want me to say?” he retorted defensively. “That he’s a muscle-headed halfwit who needs to leave the medical diagnoses to someone who can pass a third-grade reading exam?”
The other man gave an exasperated huff. “That’s better than telling him he has syphilis!”
“I didn’t tell him he has anything!” Reid shot back. “Anyway, you were the one who told me I should go along with things, be more agreeable, give my date a chance-remember?”
“I didn’t mean agreeing he has a sexually transmitted disease!”
“Well, then, you should have been a bit more specific with your instructions, shouldn’t you?” Reid snapped. He tossed himself down into his office chair, making a scowl that might have blistered the younger man’s skin, if he’d actually been there to see it. “It all backfired on me, anyway, since the idiot left halfway through dinner to go check himself for open sores, or something.”
“Gee,” the blond responded, with an audible sneer, “I can’t imagine why he might have thought the date was already a bust, once you told him you thought he had syphilis!”
“I never told him-Are you even paying attention, or do you just like yelling into the phone? Look, the guy was a complete bozo. He’d spent three whole nights researching his symptoms on the internet, and obviously that made him a bigger expert than a mere Harvard-educated brain surgeon. He was sure that’s what he had and he wasn’t about to be moved from that position, no matter how much I tried to point out the gaping flaws in his deductive reasoning.”
Reid waited for another snide rejoinder from the matchmaker, but when none was forthcoming, he took a calming breath and continued. “Anyway, I told him before he assumed anything, he should set up an appointment with our neurological disease specialist. I figure, he’ll go to see Brenner-who’s so risk averse she’ll run every test in the book just to confirm what anyone else could see in five minutes-she’ll diagnose him with what I suspect is a slight magnesium deficiency, complicated by chronic stupidity, and she’ll write him a scrip for some supplements and a referral to our sports nutritionist. He’s satisfied, she’s satisfied-and if the best you can manage for me is an over-tanned hypochondriac with the mental capacity of a lemming,” Reid shrugged, “at least I still have that option open, so I’m satisfied. End of story.”
“Not so fast, Dr. Doom,” the younger man responded. “Turns out your date saw your specialist for testing this morning-but when he didn’t like what she had to say about his symptoms, he decided to get a second opinion.” A note of almost spiteful amusement crept into the man’s voice as he went on, “He called to let me know he’s requested a temporary assignment to his company’s office in Minnesota, said he plans to use the time to visit the Mayo Clinic and see their specialists. He told me you were a total sweet potato, and that he’s sorry he won’t be around to schedule a second date.”
Reid almost choked on his own tongue at the news.
“Are you…? What the hell kind of…? He thinks he can get a better diagnosis at the Mayo Clinic?!” Reid bellowed, his skin prickling with outrage. “The only thing that hospital has going for it is name recognition; it’s been on the decline for decades! I have first-year interns on my staff who know more about neuroscience than their so-called specialists. Sweet potato, my ass! I can’t believe that stupid… that thick-necked…”
“Really, Dr. Oliver?” Luke Snyder cut in, his voice as dry as a lunar sea. “Out of this whole mess, that’s what you can’t believe? The fact that he disrespected your hospital?”
Reid gave a sniff of disdain. “That, and the fact that you set me up with someone so quick to assume he has a decade-old, flaming case of syphilis. Don’t you do any kind of screening on your customers?”
The other man gave a snort of laughter. “Apparently not, or I wouldn’t be talking to you right now.”
Reid bristled at the insult, but he decided to let it go in lieu of a more pressing concern. “Mr. Snyder, you do remember we’re working on a deadline, don’t you?” he sniped. “The hospital gala’s less than three weeks away now, and you haven’t even come close to finding me a suitable date. So what’s next in your ingenious plan to torture me? Cocktails with a traveling circus performer and his troupe of dancing bears?”
“Oh, no,” came the swift answer. “This time I’ve finally learned my lesson. There’s no way I can let you loose on another unsuspecting client without a serious intervention.”
Reid’s eyes narrowed with suspicion. “What’s that supposed to mean?” he asked warily.
“It means it’s time I took things into my own hands, Dr. Oliver. Your next date’s going to be with me.”
Reid blamed shock at the matchmaker’s bold pronouncement for the sudden leap in his pulse that caused his knee to jerk reflexively and smack against the inside corner of his desk. He gave a muffled grunt of pain and reached out to rub at the injured limb, his heart racing from a mixture of surprise and confusion, along with a strange sensation perched somewhere at the junction of fear and anticipation.
“Oh, I didn’t, I never considered you might, even if you were able-I mean, I thought you’d have some kind of rule about that, and aren’t you…?”
Reid broke off with a shake of his head, damning himself for uttering such uncharacteristically senseless babble. He gave a sharp cough to clear the tightness in his throat and to cover the momentary silence as he scrambled to collect his scattered wits.
“Don’t take this to mean I’m not flattered, Mr. Snyder,” he said finally, “but won’t your boyfriend object to you taking other people’s things into your own hands?”
This time it was the blond’s turn to be flustered. “Oh, I didn’t... That isn’t what I… I d-didn’t mean a real date!”
“Ah.”
Reid wasn’t sure whether the long exhale of air from his chest was a sigh of relief or of disappointment-but whatever it may have been, the sound seemed to have an even greater effect on the younger man’s composure.
“N-not that I don’t… that you’re not…” the man stammered painfully. “I mean, I’m sure I’d… if I didn’t…”
“All right, don’t strain something trying to spare my poor self-esteem,” Reid said, taking pity on the other man’s struggle. “I get it; you think I need practice dealing with the usual run of lunatics in this town, and you’re offering yourself up as a lesson.”
“That isn’t quite how I would have put it,” the younger man replied, the dry comment not entirely disguising the amusement in his voice, “but okay.”
“How does dinner at Toscana’s sound to you? Say, Thursday at 8?” Reid would have to do some juggling of his schedule to make the evening work, but the hospital gala was fast approaching-so the sooner he could get this ‘practice date’ done, the better.
If there was a small part of Reid’s mind that acknowledged the sense of eagerness he felt about the date… well, that was merely the anticipation of an evening spent trading verbal assaults with a worthy adversary.
“Perfect,” the blond answered. “Oh, and Dr. Oliver? Be on your best behavior.”
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