The Runaway Bride

Six(Edited)

Edited ✓

VI: Welcome Sweets & Sticky Situations

SIMONE WAS SURPRISED BY THE AMOUNT OF NOISE OUTSIDE HER OFFICE. It was not even a hour since they had opened that the once-empty waiting room was filled to the brim. Even more peculiar was their reasons for making a doctor's appointment.

Every patient Simone received today claimed ridiculous injuries and far-fetched symptoms. Dozens of patients came in and out of her office with everything from a mild stomach ache to bumped elbows. Simone hated to admit it, but unless River Falls harbored all the hypochondriacs in the Southeastern side of the United States, Theodore Thornton had been right.

Susan O'Donnell, which he had warned Simone of, was the town's residential gossip. Susan knows everything about everyone, and the topic of Simone's new employment was no exception. Word of her arrival quickly spread and now half the town's curiosity was peaked enough to stop by the practice. They were all friendly enough, some even borderline invasive, but Simone attended them as she would any other patient.

Mrs. Carol Anne Baker, for example, came in for a check up early in the morning. The elder woman with short white hair and warm blue eyes said her hip was acting up, but Simone never heard anything about any injury or pain. Instead, Carol Anne asked Simone a million and one questions and offered her a batch of homemade strawberry jam.

Simone had cautiously taken the jam with a strained smile and placed it next to the other gifts she'd received today. By lunchtime she had enough jam to last her a lifetime. If she shared, that is.

One teenage boy also came in today for a check-up for the next school year. He was wide-eyed and clean-shaven. Polite, and endearingly embarrassed by his mother fretting over him. After a bit of convincing on his part, he was able to coerce his mother into staying in the waiting room while he was examined for his athletic physical.

"I'm eighteen, you know," he said as Simone started filling out his name on the form. "Well, I'm seventeen and six months, but if you round up I'm practically an adult."

Simone gave an absentminded nod and continued writing. Physicals were about the most boring thing to do, partly because it was very standard information and very easily—

"So it's not like I'm a kid, or anything," he said, interrupting Simone's train of thought.

She offered him a polite nod and placed the clipboard down. "Okay Tommy, I need you to sit down for a second. I am just going to--"

"Call me Thomas," he said with a smile. Simone paused and frowned a little in confusion.

"Forgive me, I just heard your mother call you that in the waiting room." She reached for her stethoscope and walked towards the boy.

"My mom calls me that because she still seems me as a little boy, but I'm already a man. "

"Hmm," Simone said distractedly as she put the earpieces in place. "Alright, I'm just going to press this to the back of your..." Her voice trailed off when the boy threw his shirt over his head. He gave Simone a cheeky smile and nodded at her to proceed.

"What are you doing?"

He looked at her innocently, "Oh, I thought this made it easier?"

Simone gave him an unimpressed look and took a step back, almost as if that would defuse the awkwardness that hung in the room. "It doesn't. Put your shirt back on, please."

Tommy pouted but did as she said. Once again, Simone warily approached him and pressed the diaphragm to his back. "Take three deep breaths."

Simone stepped back to jot some notes down on his form and put some distance from the boy. Halfway though the test he had looked at Simone with longing eyes and sighed like a lovesick puppy.