People Like Us Part III [MxFxM]

01

AUTHORS NOTE: Good things come to those who wait. And by good I mean a complete clusterfuck of drama and tension. With some medical stuff. Because, you know. One of the characters is a doctor. 

This has been a really long time coming, but here we are! This is the final installment of the People Like Us trilogy, and, for now, the Nathan and Varian series. This book reverts back to the perspectives of Nathan and Varian, so we'll be closing out the series with these guys again. Chapters are going to be uploaded on a weekly basis (Sunday).

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For the third time, maybe even the fourth, he couldn't remember too well, Nathan was trying to get ahold of a certain doctor. A certain doctor who, it seemed, didn't know when to answer his fucking phone and was busy doing God only knows what, half a country away. He certainly wasn't answering Nathan's calls, that was for damn sure. Nathan was sitting in his office at his desk, holding his phone to his ear to listen to the increasingly frustrating ringing on the other end, hoping he'd get an answer. The last few times he hadn't had any luck, and had been trying periodically from the first call, every twenty minutes or so. Nathan didn't spend a whole lot of his time in his office, mostly using it only for calls or paperwork or if another doctor came to talk to him. Which meant there weren't a lot of personal things in it, aside from a picture of the kids on his desk. There was the desk itself of course, which took up some room, and a few chairs and the couch, but other than that the office didn't have much in it.

In one of the drawers somewhere, buried under pens and paper and various odds and ends, there was a little bright yellow stress ball with a happy face on it Corin had given him at one point a few years ago, saying something about Nathan probably needing it. At the time it seemed kind of stupid because Nathan wasn't usually stressed, but as the ringing continued through the phone he was beginning to see the appeal of squeezing something as hard as he could.

"You've reached Dr. Grant Nhik, I'm not in my office or available at the moment, if you're calling about an appointment, please call back in an hour. If you're calling for a referral, contact the next department head. If you're calling for any other reason, please state your name, number, and situation and I'll get back to you as soon as I can. Thank you."

"Dr. Nhik needs to answer his mother fucking phone." Nathan muttered, clearing his throat when he heard the following beeping sound after the answering message. "Dr. Nhik, this is Nathan Vogel, I'm aware we haven't spoken in a while, but I would appreciate it if you could get back to me as soon as you can, it's an emergency," he said into the phone, just barely managing to sound professional instead of as irritated and tired as he felt.

Nathan left the number of his phone as well as the number for the lab just in case, before he hung up. He didn't mention that he'd called about three or four times figuring it would probably show up on some sort of call list. He turned his phone off and brought it down, tapping it against his chin a few times as he exhaled. Varian said he was pretty sure Grant would be helpful, but the man could only help if he picked the phone up. Nathan had a dying child, he didn't have time to fuck around with this. With that thought in mind, he pocketed his phone and stood up moving out of his office and back into the lab.

He'd always liked the lab in Tillamook, probably because he'd been there so long and he was used to it. Could probably be because he was the head of it, if he was being honest with himself. It was a big area, and it was nice and bright and clean and he didn't even have to leave his station for coffee if he didn't want to. A perk of being the boss and probably the only one he might abuse just a little bit. Fortunately his team learned that a Nathan without caffeine was about as approachable as...something very unapproachable. It was hard to come up with analogies when you were stressed.