24 Visits

Visit Four

VISIT FOUR:

Reason: Check up

Symptoms: None

Time in: 10:45 am August 17th, 2014

Jennie walked into the room already preparing for the annoyance that was Rosie Park. She’d even had an extra shot of espresso today.

She got the chart from Suzy, seeing no notable difference in weight. Her blood pressure was closer to normal than the last visit, and according to what Suzy gathered from Rosie, there were no real symptoms. It should have been a quick and easy visit.

But this was Roseanne Park.

Jennie walked into the office to find Rosie already on the examination table, her ankles crossed and hands behind her. She had on shorts and a blue and pink-striped blouse that cut off just above the navel. After two visits to her office, Jennie would think that Rosie picked up on the fact that it was almost always freezing. And it wasn’t like Rosie couldn’t bring a sweater into the office to cover up, Jennie had patients that went as far as to bring in blankets.

It had to be some attention-seeking thing, and Jennie wasn’t going to play into it. She would not look anywhere but Rosie’s eyes.

“Ms. Park,” she greeted.

Rosie glanced at Jennie and hummed before looking down at her hand. Was she seriously going to do this boring act again? Hadn’t this same situation happened the first visit at her practice? Jennie suppressed her eye roll.

Whatever, Rosie pretending to be bored was better than Rosie being completely annoying.

“How are you feeling?” Jennie asked.

Rosie looked up, gave a small smile. “Good, thank you. Those medicines have really worked, I think.”

Jennie paused, her mouth opening as she fished for a reply, but closing when she realized she didn’t have one for that. Rosie wasn’t supposed to be polite. She was supposed to be irritating, pompous, entitled; literally anything but polite. Jennie squinted, pressing her tongue against the inside of her cheek.

Jennie set up her stethoscope, readying the bell over Rosie’s heart. “Deep breaths.”

Rosie’s heart was still faster than it should be, but a few pills can’t fix everything. “Have you experienced any dizzy spells? Nausea, fever? Things like that?” She asked, moving the bell over to Rosie’s back.

“No. And I haven’t been as tired lately either.”

“Deep breath,” she said, her body craned around Rosie. Jennie listened to the quickened thump thump thump, breathing in herself as she did so. She could smell something sweet, almost like apples. It was soothing, but then Jennie realized what she was smelling was Rosie’s hair, and opted on holding her breath.

Annoying people didn’t get to smell nice, and no matter how Rosie was acting, she still was an annoying person. Completely irritating and Jennie would still look nowhere but her eyes.

As Jennie reached back around she fumbled, her hand brushing over the skin of Rosie’s mid drift. Very soft skin, but Rosie’s skin. Jennie jumped back, then let out a slow sigh.

When Jennie looked up at Rosie, there was no real telling expression on her face. And for once Jennie wished that she would just smirk, or smile or something.

“I, uh--” Jennie breathed in through her nose. Next time she was tripling that espresso. “Your heart is still going a little fast, so make sure you’re taking care of that. But other than that, you’re free to go. Though you should be getting another round of blood work done soon.”

“Of course, Rosie will do anything the good doctor says.”

Jennie narrowed her eyes, her teeth set in a straight line.

Rosie was at the door by the time Jennie went through the words 5 times in her head. She pressed her hand against the frame leaning into it. “And by the way, Jennie,” Jennie’s head jolted up at her name coming out of Rosie’s mouth, the J dragged out slow between pressed lips and the N said with an absurd, unneeded flick of the tongue, “since I’m going to be a regular patient now, please call me Rosie.”

With that, she walked away.