The Design(6)

The elevator doors slid open and I stepped out onto the eleventh floor with a confident smile and a walk that belonged on a runway. (Y’know, a runway that didn’t mind bloody kneecaps.) The elevator opened up to a small waiting room with a petite blonde sitting behind a mahogany desk. She was facing away from me, chatting with another employee. I didn’t recognize either of them from the employee section of the Cole Designs website, but I couldn’t really see their faces.

“No. Seriously, the teenager swore that she’d never been sexually active,” the employee whispered, much louder than she probably intended.

“Was her mom in the exam room with you guys?” the receptionist asked.

“Yes! That’s why she didn’t want to tell us the truth.”

“So what happened?”

“We figured out what was causing the problem. She had like ten condoms stuck up there!”

“No!” the receptionist gasped.

“I swear.”

What the hell had I walked in on? I cleared my throat as they continued their private conversation. The moment the receptionist noticed my presence, she swiveled in her chair and smiled wide, trying to cover up the fact that she’d just been gossiping in front of me.

“I’m so sorry! What’s your name?” she asked.

“Cameron Heart. I’m here for an—”

“I don’t see your name on the schedule,” the receptionist cut me off with a frown.

“Oh, um, I received an emai—”

She stood, cutting me off again, and shoved a clipboard at me so that the sharp metal clip jabbed into my stomach.

“Just fill this out and give it back to me. Do you have any pain? Any UTI symptoms?”

I narrowed my eyes, trying to figure out why those questions were relevant in any way. Then I glanced down at the paperwork. A few questions jumped out at me right away: “What’s your sexual orientation?”

“Are you currently taking birth control?”

“What was the last day of your menstrual cycle?”

I blanched. Nope. No. Oh dear god, I was not in the right office. I dropped the clipboard onto her desk and bolted toward a side door off the main waiting room. Once I was outside, I glanced back to read the placard that I’d missed on my way in.

“Dr. Donald Fitzpatrick, OB/GYN #1160”

Shit. Shit. Shit.

I reopened the email from Grayson’s receptionist, cursing myself for reading the suite number wrong. But when it opened, I found the same number staring back at me: #1160. What the hell? Was this a joke? I groaned and pulled up the Cole Designs website. At the very bottom of the black screen, it listed the firm’s address and suite number: #2160. NOT #1160! I was ten floors short of the Cole Designs offices.

I took the stairs up two at a time, not bothering to go back through the doctor’s waiting room to call for an elevator. The rage I felt toward Grayson’s receptionist was boiling up inside of me and I used it to fuel me up the ten flights of stairs.

By the time I’d reached the correct floor, I was breathing far heavier than I should have been. Sweat was collecting under my arms. The cuts on my knees hadn’t started to scab over yet, and blood was still trickling down my knees. In a matter of ten minutes, I’d gone from put together professional to homicidal hobo lady.

I stared at the placard for Cole Designs as I collected my hair in one hand and fanned my neck with the other. Most of it had fallen down from my updo, but there wasn’t much I could do about it without a mirror. A quick glance at my phone informed me that I was a minute away from being late, and although I wanted to run home crying, I knew I had to pull the door open and face my interview head on. I gave myself three seconds to calm my heart rate before pulling open the door and walking into the Cole Designs lobby.

It felt like I was walking into my own personal version of hell, but I pushed the feeling aside and forced my feet to move forward, one after the other. The moment I crossed through the threshold, chaos erupted before me. There were at least twenty applicants sitting in the waiting room. They filled every possible chair, and even overflowed onto the floor. Like me, they all had pad folios. Unlike me, they all looked cool, calm, and collected, save for the skinny boy in the far corner, who was talking to himself and rocking back and forth. He might have been even more nervous than I was.

I turned toward the reception desk, ready to explain my tardiness, only to find a frazzled woman shoving everything from her desk drawer into a cheap cardboard box.

“Smug, no good—” she mumbled beneath her breath as I stepped closer, unsure if I was meant to checkin with her or stay far, far away. Up until a moment before, I was ready to growl at her for sending me the wrong information, but now it looked like she might have been having an even worse day than I was.

“Excuse me,” I spoke, trying to get her attention as quietly as possible. She had a pencil shoved into the messy bun atop her head. Sugar—or some other white substance—coated the top of her cardigan, and her red lipstick was smeared across her teeth. When she looked up, she gave me a plastic smile and aimed the stapler she had clutched in her hand right at me.

“I’d love to help you out,” she said. Her tone insinuated otherwise. “It’s just that I am no longer employed by this company or by its prick boss.”

My mouth fell open while my brain tried desperately to catch up. I was about to ask for clarification when a new woman stepped out of the door behind the reception desk. She had a clipboard in one hand and a pen in the other. She was beautiful in a non-threatening sort of way, like a chic French girl. Her skin was a rich dark brown and her eyes shown just a few shades lighter.