Spirit Desire

The job hunting hadn't gone exactly as I had wanted, but I could finally say I had a job. It was far away from being a nurse at the Children's Hospital, but it was something. I was now the receptionist at a small private clinic in downtown. I wasn't using all the skills I had learned through my five years of school but hey, I was weighing people and asking for their symptoms all day.

My brother's wife, who was a resident pediatrician at the Children's Hospital, had offered to place a good work for me in the nursing department, but I of course refused saying my skills would speak for themselves. I was currently regretting that as I had to clean up after some kid who had come in complaining of a really bad stomach ache and while he was sitting in the waiting room couldn't resist the need to vomit all over the linoleum floors. The perks of the job I guess.

"I'm sorry you have to do this," Amy, the blond, green-eyed, and always perky nurse said as I gagged a bit. Even after having trained for situations like this and the horrible colostomy bags I still wasn't used to it.

What can I say, I was more of the nurse that wanted to comfort children after a shot and give them lollipops. But here I was, not working as a nurse and picking up vomit. Luckily the next time the sixteen-year-old felt the need to vomit he did the smart thing and ran outside to the trash can.

"Why me?" I whined as I grabbed a plastic bag and covered the mop, "what did I deserve to be cleaning up puke in a waiting room."

She giggled, "Think of it this way, if you were working as a nurse you would still be wiping poo and picking up puke from little kids. You'd just be Nurse Sandoval instead of Ms. Sandoval."

I did the only mature thing I could think of and stuck my tongue out at her before standing up and walking towards the back where all the trash bins were located. "That and the pay raise," I muttered but she seemed to have heard and laughed as she knocked on one of the eight private rooms in the clinic.

I guess I couldn't complain too much. After all, I was getting a paycheck, I had three days off, and this vomit situation or anything like it had only happened once in the three weeks I had been here.

"Do you want to go out to lunch today?" Amy asked as she organized some folders behind me.

I turned around in the swivel chair and looked at the clock, it was 12:02 which meant it was only about twenty-five minutes until our break.

She continued, "Unless you're going to lunch with that guy you did yesterday," she sat down in the chair beside me and placed her hands over her growing stomach. Amy was five and half months pregnant and it seemed every day her tiny tummy was getting bigger. "Mark is coming anyway so the men can talk."

"I was going to have lunch with him but I guess he can handle talking to another guy right?" I laughed as I pulled out my phone and sent a quick message.

She scrunched up her nose, "I was so ready to tell Mark not to come since we were going to have a girl's lunch."

I laughed as I turned to look at her, luckily Thursday's were always pretty boring and no one came in unless scheduled so it gave us basically all day to talk. "Why?" I asked.

"I love the guy and all," she paused, "this is going to make me sound like a brat but he is so caring and doting. He thinks I'm going to break all the time and he never lets me do anything."

"He just cares about you Amy, think about it this way, it probably means that once the little peanut is born he'll spend all his time looking after it and basically ignore you," I laughed as she made a face again.

"God I hope so," she muttered, "after the last pregnancy I can't handle him being so worried all the time."

I nodded my head even though I didn't understand what she was referring to, after all I am pretty sure this was Mark and Amy's first child together, but some things are better left unanswered especially when talking to a pregnant woman.

"I'll just go take care of this last patient and then we can leave, Dr. Brown isn't in so no one will complain if we leave for break a few minutes early," she smiled before calling a middle-aged man by the name of Arnold and leading him to one of the offices.

Some five minutes later Mark walked into the office and took a seat on the gray seat in the waiting room. I smiled before letting him know that Amy was just going over some things with a patient and we would be leaving soon.

When I finished telling him about Amy and the unfortunate event that had taken place earlier—which he couldn't stop laughing about—Javier walked through the glass doors and up to the desk. I rolled my eyes as he took off the black knitted beanie from his head and I could tell he had fun last night.

"Hey Adri," he smiled as he leaned his hands on the desk and I rolled my eyes after hearing his scratchy voice. Too much fun.

"I told you not to go out drinking yesterday," I told him as I got a bottle of water out of my purse and handed it to him.

"Come on Adri, I'm still here going to go to lunch with my favorite girl," he sent me one of the smiles that made me fall for him six years ago and I pursed my lips cause he knew and I knew he had won. I could never be angry at him.

"Still I told you, we're supposed to go out to celebrate Chris' birthday tonight and now you're all hangover and icky," I grabbed my purse and exited the receptionist desk.

"I'll be fine," he mumbled as he grabbed my hand and pulled me to his side, "now how about a kiss to make me feel better."

"You're such a baby," I smiled as I pecked his lips and squeezed his hand. He laughed and I turned around to Mark who was reading a pregnancy magazine, his eyebrows furrowed in concentration and I knew Amy would be complaining Monday about some new thing Mark wouldn't let her do because of the magazine.

"Mark," I called out and he placed the magazine on the pile next to him, "this is Javier," I motioned towards Javier and added, "He's going to join us for lunch, so us girls can talk without making a man uncomfortable," I rolled my eyes and smiled. They did one of those manly handshakes to assert their masculinity before starting some small talk that was no doubt extremely awkward.

"I'm going to go get Amy and then we can go out," I quickly left them and got Amy from the back where she was disposing of some used needles. "Are you ready for lunch?" I asked her and she jumped a bit as she took off her latex gloves.

She hummed and nodded her head, "are the boys here?" she asked.

"Yeah, they're outside waiting so we shouldn't keep them waiting," she nodded her head and grabbed her purse. They were out in the waiting room waiting quietly and as soon as Mark saw Amy he rushed over and placed his arm around her shoulder while taking her bag at the same time. I think I could understand what Amy was talking about when she talked about Mark.

We decided to leave in two cars since Mark said Amy needed all the space she could get and so the passenger seat would be pushed all the way back and no one would be comfortable if they were seated in the back.

"You always manage to find some of the most boring friends Adri," Javier said he put the car in drive and began following Mark as he drove to a small bistro that he said had the best salads in all of downtown San Diego.

"Don't be mean," I smacked his arm before turning in the seat to look at him, "they're extremely nice and not everyone can be as cool as you Mr. I'm in a band Javier," I sang.

He rolled his eyes and turned on the radio to some soft music, "sometimes I forget you're actually doing something with your life and went to college. Now you have to hang around with boring people like nurses and lawyers." He said about Amy's and Mark's professions respectively.

"I'm a nurse too," I said in mock offense, "besides, you could have gone off to a university somewhere too. Some of us boring people have to have normal and boring jobs, we can't all spend out free times playing the guitar with a band."

"You're going to turn boring too Luz," he smiled before shutting off the ending and stopping in front of a quaint French restaurant. I rolled my eyes again when he referred to me by my first name.

"Oh shut it," I mumbled as we walked into the restaurant where Mark and Amy were already waiting for us at a table in the brightly light areas of the café.

Even though Javier had initially said Mark and Amy were a bit boring he seemed to have actually had a good time talking to Mark. As he later said, he didn't think the lawyer would have a good taste in music. They spent the whole time talking about music and then about Mark's job as a lawyer and what he felt were the most ridiculous cases that he had worked on.

Amy and I had spent the lunch talking about her pregnancy as she ate some salad niçoise without the fish so there was really no point and I ate a croque monsieur. She was extremely excited to finally begin going clothes shopping since they had decided they did, after all, want to know the sex. It was going to be a baby girl and she was looking forward to making Mark paint a nursery.

Although I had only known Amy for about three weeks I could tell the girl had a heart of gold and she was the only person in the office that would think of befriending. She was one of the sweetest girls and I could tell we were going to be friends and it wasn't often I could say that about people. So instead of just going along with her conversation I was actually listening to her and it wasn't hard, especially when she started talking about Dr. Brown, the weird head doctor at the clinic.

I had complained to her that he had been saying some comments that I couldn't tell if they were completely innocent or just the opposite and he had the habit of hovering over me wherever I went he was there, unless he had an appointment time. Luckily he hadn't been in the office today and so he didn't try to weasel his way into our lunch.

Amy had laughed and explained that Dr. Brown was that way with everyone that started working at the office. Apparently it took about three months for the allure to leave so I only had to deal with Dr. Brown's creepiness or I could do something drastic, like get pregnant. Amy assured me that once Dr. Brown saw she was pregnant he stopped being creepy.

Unfortunately, I wasn't planning on getting pregnant anytime soon so I would have to stick it out a couple of months. She laughed after I had told her that and we continued eating over small conversation before out time was up and we had to go back to the office.

"How did you and Javier get together?" Amy asked as she inputted information into the computer about a new patient. Usually, I would deal with insurances and new patients but she was so bored she said she wanted to do it.

"Oh, it's a long story," I waved my hand, "he's my best friend's older brother. I had a crush on him when I was seventeen, moved away, came back and we started dating when I was twenty. We broke up last May and a year and some later, here we are." I made a gesture as I looked at her.

"Oh," she raised her eyebrows in surprise, "so it's been on and off for a while?"

I shrugged my shoulders and took a sip of coffee, "I guess I mean it was only off for a year and some and we're seeing where things go right now. We're not really dating right now."

She hummed and closed down the file, "seems like it though," she shrugged her shoulders.

"Meh," I muttered, "I guess it happens when you've known someone for so long and you can't seem to shake off the feelings for them, at least that's what I think it is on my side of things." I grabbed some manila folders and started sorting them into a cabinet, "Any who," I mumbled, "Mark seems like a nice guy." I smiled, but Amy scrunched up her face.

"You know what he said in the car when we were driving back from lunch?" she asked as she picked at her nails with an annoyed look on her face, "I mean it's bad enough that he claims he's gone vegetarian in order for us not to eat a lot of red meats cause he says it's better for the baby. I'm the nurse here, I know better than he does. What's does he know about babies? All he knows is who's supposed to get the baby after a divorce and how to read DNA test results."

I laughed at Amy whose face was getting redder and redder as she continued. "What did he say?" I asked.

Her eyebrows furrowed, "He said I shouldn't drive anymore," I laughed and she rolled her eyes, "I mean he's practically babysitting me when I'm at home and now he'll be babysitting me on my thirty minute drive to work and then again when I want to go back home."

"Just talk to him, there's nothing wrong with you driving," I laughed, "tell him you know better since you're a nurse."

"I did," she threw her hands up, "but apparently his mom said I shouldn't drive and the knowledge of someone who has some medical training isn't enough to go against a woman who's popped out seven kids. I mean what am I supposed to do? His heart is in the right place, but he's so... so stupid."

"I'd hide the keys and tell him it's either driving or eating meat," I laughed, "he's probably going to be more against you eating red meats and 'poisoning' the baby than you driving, at least until your third trimester."

She stood up and took some folders with her, "that's in two weeks Adriana, I can't take him being even more worried about me and so paranoid for three more months."

I laughed before turning around to the computer and placing a headset over my hair. The most tedious and boring part of the job was having to make reminder calls and since I was the newest member of the team I was handed the task no one less wanted. Looking at the list of patients who had appointments for next week it would take me at least an hour and a half to get through all of them. I sighed before dialing the first number and starting.

"Hello, this Peterson Family Health Clinic calling Mr. Cameron to remind of his appoint next Monday August 18th at 9:45am with Dr. Brown."