Anatomy of a Meet Cute by Addie Woolridge

Chapter One

“If there is a doctor or a nurse on board, will you please ring the call button?”

The soothing voice of the flight attendant glided across Sam’s consciousness, jolting her out of her early-flight stupor. Pushing her sleep mask to the top of her head, she sat upright in her chair, stretching to her full height so she could look around the plane. No one else was ringing the call button. Shit.

Taking a deep breath, she raised a shaky hand and pressed the dreaded button above her seat. Nervous energy coursed through her as she tried to recall what her professors and any doctor she had ever encountered said about medical emergencies and aviation. She’d been warned that this could happen to her one day. Sam had just thought she’d have a lot more actual doctoring under her belt when it did.

“Ma’am, are you a medical professional?” the flight attendant asked, his voice low and calm, as if someone weren’t somewhere on the plane experiencing a trauma.

“I’m an ob-gyn. Will that work?”

The flight attendant’s flinch was almost imperceptible. “I think it’ll have to. Would you come with me, please?”

Sam tried not to let the fear creeping through her skin make its way to her face as she mumbled apologies to her seatmates, both of whom smiled at her in the vaguely uninterested but encouraging way that only a plane full of Los Angelenos making their way to the freezing wasteland that was San Francisco could. This was probably an average Tuesday to the Hollywood set.

Snatching her sleep mask off her head, she looked at the flight attendant, who began to walk down the aisle. “Can you tell me anything about the individual?”

“We have a gentleman in first class, wearing dark sunglasses, who started behaving strangely just after departure. He keeps trying to take off his clothes, saying he is melting, then saying he needs help. We’re about twenty minutes to San Francisco; the captain has already called ahead, so medical attention will be waiting for him at the gate. We just need to make sure we can get him there in one piece.”

“Right,” Sam said, taking a deep breath. What she really wanted to say was oh shit. The flight attendant’s description wasn’t much for her to go on, but it would have to be enough, since she’d decided to take her Hippocratic oath seriously.

“Excuse me,” a passenger said, stopping the flight attendant as they neared the front of the plane. The attendant motioned for Sam to continue as he leaned in to listen to the passenger’s request.

Pushing aside the thin curtain that separated the economy cabin from first class, Sam spotted the man almost immediately. Even as he wrestled with his jacket, it was impossible not to notice how good looking he was. He was probably four years older than her. His fine face twisted as he fussed with a zipper, the tawny color of his East Asian features slightly flushed from exertion, the muscles in his sculpted shoulders flexing as he shook his arm free from one sleeve.

Pursing her lips, Sam reminded herself that this was someone in need. Ogling was wasting valuable seconds that might save his life. Filling her lungs with air, Sam bent down next to the man, gently setting a hand on his arm. Twisting around in his seat, the man snatched a pair of designer headphones off his head and lifted his Wayfarer sunglasses to look down at her. “Can I help you?”

Sam fought the urge to squirm and reminded herself that the flight attendants had put out this call because the individual in need was acting strangely. “Hi. I’m just here to check on you. The flight attendants thought you may need some medical attention?”

“Excuse me?”

Sam shifted uncomfortably under the intensity of his gaze. His eyes were just-woke-up puffy but not bloodshot. She registered this as a good sign, trying to ignore the fact that his eyes were so dark they seemed more black than brown. That information wasn’t, strictly speaking, medically relevant.

“How are you feeling?” Sam asked, cursing her hair puffs. Of course, this man didn’t recognize her as a doctor. She was wearing pigtails, not scrubs, and thanks to God and a sprinkling of melanin, people often mistook her for younger than thirty-two.

“I’m fine. I work in medicine. Why would I need a doctor?”

Sam took a deep breath, giving the man a once-over. If she had to guess, he was on a bad trip. The question was, What had he taken? Fake Ambien? Maybe a party drug?

“I see. Did you, by chance, consume anything before you boarded the plane? You’re not in trouble.”

“No. You’re mistaken. I’m not in need of medical—”

“He took something right when we boarded. I saw it,” the elderly man next to him chimed in, causing the man’s head to whip around. Not helpful. She was trying to establish trust with the patient, which she couldn’t do if the older man was going to tattle on Mr. Sexy Ambien.

Rolling his eyes, the man said, “It was Advil. I have a headache.”

Doing her best to look sympathetic, Sam nodded. “It is possible to have an unusual reaction to—”

“What reaction do you think I’m having?” the man asked, squinting at her, wrinkling the fine smattering of freckles across his nose.

“You were—”

“Oh, no,” the flight attendant said, placing a hand on her shoulder. “Doctor, the—”

“I’m dying!”

Sam’s head jerked up just in time to catch a blond man with a bun scratching at the sleeve of his blazer and jerking around in his seat two rows up.

“Oh. The attendant said a man in sunglasses needed help.” The heat in her body kicked up a notch, and no amount of additional poolside tan was going to save her from the visible humiliation flooding her face.

“And you thought it was me?” Mr. Sexy Not Ambien looked incredulous.

“Well, you were struggling with your—”

“It’s here,” Man Bun whispered to the terrified-looking woman across from him.

Taking a deep breath, Sam stood abruptly as Mr. Sexy Not Ambien leaned into the aisle to get a good look at the guy, then looked up at her as if she were less useful than a box of weasels. Whatever—the good-looking dude could be offended. Right now she had an actual patient. Giving the man a curt wave, she said, “My apologies.”

Taking two quick strides toward Man Bun, who had started buckling and unbuckling his belt, Sam dredged up her very best calming voice, again, and said, “Hello, how are you feeling?”

The man looked up at her wildly, pushing his mirrored aviator sunglasses onto the top of his head. “Do you see it?”

“Can you tell me what you’re seeing?” Sam asked, hoping to get a sense of what the man was experiencing so she could start calming him down.

“My face is pixelated. My whole body is.” He had the nerve to look at her as if she were completely stupid for not seeing it. And Sam did feel a little stupid. Hallucinations could be caused by anything, and she was no closer to soothing the man than she had been when she was talking to Mr. Sexy Not Ambien.

“Can you tell me if you ate or drank anything out of the ordinary before boarding the plane?”

The man looked up at her and winked. “Why should I tell you?”

Gross. Sam sighed, placing her hand on the back of the man’s chair and giving his gold-and-black brocade blazer a once-over. He looked like the kind of nightclub promoter who lied about having a private jet to impress bumpkins from out of state.

“I want to help you, but . . .” Sam paused as a seat belt unbuckled. The man wiggled his eyebrows, then seemed to remember that his skin was loading slowly and began pressing on either elbow in short, jerky bursts.

“Sir. Can you please tell us what you ingested? You’re not in trouble.” A voice rang out, causing Sam to jump. She turned to see Mr. Sexy Not Ambien standing directly over her shoulder, looking put upon in one of those magical black T-shirts that managed to hug the chest but not look tight.

“What are you doing?” Sam asked. It was one thing for Mr. Sexy Not Ambien to observe a medical emergency. It was another thing for him to steal her line and impersonate a care provider. She was already not an emergency medicine doctor; the last thing she needed was someone who wanted to play one on TV jumping in to try to be “helpful.”

“My job.”

Just my luck.She would have two delusional people on one flight. “Could you please sit down?” Sam hissed, running out of patience. This guy was not helping. If anything, he was making the patient more antsy, and she’d just been starting to establish . . . well, nothing, but he was still in her way.

“I’m a doc-tor,” the guy said like she was dense.

“Then why didn’t you ring the call button?”

“Noise-canceling headphones,” Mr. Sexy Not Ambien said, pointing to where the headphones hung around his neck.

“Is he a Fed?” Man Bun interrupted their conversation, loudly addressing his question to Sam. This was not how she’d imagined helping someone in need on a plane.

“Ladies and gentlemen, we have begun our descent into San Francisco. The flight attendants will be coming through the cabin shortly to collect any remaining service items. If you could please help us out by . . .” Sam, Mr.—no, Dr.—Sexy Not Ambien, and Man Bun all stopped to listen to the announcement, as if someone had hit pause on the entire bizarre scenario.

“Is that God?” Man Bun asked as soon as the attendant uttered their final thank-you.

“No, sir,” both Sam and Dr. Sexy Not Ambien said at the same time. Sam sighed, looking down at the man and over at the new doctor. What was she doing here? Maybe her mother was right and she had no business becoming a doctor, let alone a researcher. Almost any other doctor was more qualified to deal with the hallucinating club kid. Looking back at the other doctor, Sam watched as he scrubbed his hand down the back of his close-cropped black hair, and she prepared to come clean about being a researcher. Better to admit that she spent more time behind a desk, hunched over journal articles, than in the emergency room.

“You know what—” Sam began at the same time Dr. Sexy Not Ambien began to speak.

“I’m sorry.”

For a moment, the pair blinked at one another. Sam watched as the guy exhaled, a half smile tracing the left side of his face. “I interrupted you just now. I’m sorry for that and for butting in. This guy is all yours. Let me know if I can help.”

With that, Dr. Sexy Not Ambien rolled his shoulders and turned to go back to his seat, leaving Sam slightly stunned.

“I just need my face to load,” Man Bun whispered, snapping Sam out of her trance and back into the very real present.

Looking from the man to Dr. Sexy Not Ambien, Sam made a snap judgment. “Uh, Doctor?” Watching him turn around, Sam tried to ignore the tired expression on his face.

“Yeah?” he said, a barely masked irritation riding his tone. Sam almost changed her mind. Almost. The Hippocratic oath said do no harm, didn’t it? She couldn’t lose her nerve, even if this doctor was a jerk. She’d made a promise.

“I could use your help. I’m not a doctor.” Sam flailed her hands and rushed to finish as his eyebrows shot toward his hairline as if she might be as high as the man they were trying to help. “I mean, I’m a doctor, but I’m a community health research fellow. I recently finished my residency, and I haven’t spent time in emergency since med school.”

Dr. Sexy Not Ambien took a deep and seriously overtaxed breath before exhaling an “Oh.” Rubbing his eyes, he straightened up again and walked back toward her. Giving her a once-over, he gestured to the man and said, “Proceed.”

Somehow, Sam had expected him to be less professorial and more, you know, helpful. Sam nodded, looking from him to Man Bun, who was loudly patting his cheeks.

“Can you tell me your name?”

“Mark von Erik.” He wiggled his eyebrows at her like his name should mean something to her. It didn’t.

“Well, Mark. Can you tell me when your face started to . . .” She looked over at Dr. Sexy, who quirked an eyebrow but said nothing. Thanks, Doc. “Pixelate?”

Wrong question. Mark’s eyes got wide as saucers. Filling up his lungs with good old-fashioned plane air, he shouted, “Is it still doing that?”

“No. No. It’s stopped,” Sam said, holding her hand out to try to stave off another round of shouting and pulling at his clothes. Dr. Sexy pursed his lips but said nothing.

“I’m not sure you’re telling the truth.” Mark looked down at his hands.

“Can you tell me what medications you are taking?” Sam asked, trying a change of subject.

“I don’t take pharmaceuticals,” Mark burst out before pulling on his belt buckle.

Sam looked at the not-so-good doctor and shrugged, telegraphing What do I do? with her eyes. For his part, Dr. Sexy smirked before breaking down and asking, “Have you mentioned nonpharmaceutical substances to him?”

Whipping her attention back to the man, she asked, “What about anything plant based?”

At this, Mark looked up, giggled, and said, “You don’t strike me as into mushrooms.”

Bingo! Sam smiled as her ears popped. Judging from the tiny window to the outside, she had about seven minutes of flight time to keep this guy calm. She could do that. It was unlikely he was going to die in the next seven minutes, but it might be helpful to have a sample of what he’d taken, or at least the name of what he thought he’d taken, once he was off the plane.

“Do you have mushrooms on you still?” Sam said.

“Oh, you’re that kind.” A lewd smile cropped up on Mark’s face. Next to her, Dr. Sexy snorted but turned it into a cough when Sam shot him a dirty look. “I guess I’d share with you.”

“I want to know what it’s called,” Sam said, forcing a smile on her face.

“God’s tea.”

In hindsight, expecting him to use the plant’s formal name might have been asking too much. Sam looked over at the other doctor, who shook his head as if to signal that he wasn’t familiar with it, either, before asking her, “How else could you find out the name?”

Sam almost strangled him. The last thing she felt like doing was playing twenty questions with a distracting and obtuse doctor when they had a man they needed to keep calm and ten thousand feet to go before their wheels blessedly touched the ground.

Sighing, she turned back to the man and asked, “Where were you when you got God’s tea?”

Mark opened his mouth, and Sam prayed he wouldn’t answer Mars. “Cows, dude. Canadian cows.”

The synapses in her brain fired, connecting the dots, her grin spreading with them. She knew what this was. Turning to Dr. Sexy, she whispered, “Psilocybe fimetaria.”

“You know mushrooms?” he said, his smooth forehead wrinkling with surprise. Daggers shot out of Sam’s eyes—just because she had a hard time figuring out which indoor-sunglasses guy needed help didn’t mean she was totally useless. Dr. Sexy must have read her irritation, forcing him to attempt a botched recovery with, “Surprised is all. Good work.”

Good work, no thanks to him. Sam opened her mouth to say as much when a flight attendant interrupted them. “Doctors, we are going to be landing shortly, if you could brace yourselves.”

“Why don’t you sit in my seat? I’ll stay with him and function as the attending for the medical team when we land.” Dr. Sexy put a gentle hand on her upper arm, and Sam almost jumped out of her skin. It was a brotherly gesture, but her body did not respond to it in a brotherly way. Sam looked down at his hand, checking to see if the tingling feeling in her arm meant he was actually melting her skin away. Nope, still there. Taking a deep breath, she looked up at him. Dr. Sexy’s gaze mirrored her movements, and heat crept into his cheekbones as he let his hand drop away.

Swallowing the lump in her throat, Sam stuffed her bodily response in the “To Understand Later” file and nodded as if her head were filled with cement. “I’ll do that.”

Without another word, Sam walked past him down the aisle. Reaching his seat, she picked up his sweatshirt, then buckled herself in. Still reeling from whatever inexplicable reaction her body had decided to have to Dr. Sexy, Sam looked down at the sweatshirt in her hands and back up at the man who owned it. He had tucked himself against the galley barrier wall and the man’s chair and bent down so he was eye to eye with Mark the Man Bun, holding on to his wrist.

Sam chastised herself. Why hadn’t she checked for an erratic pulse? No wonder he was surprised she could identify a mushroom. She had failed to do the most basic of crisis-management procedures. They literally taught that to fifth graders in babysitting classes. Her face rapidly cooled as all the blood rushed out of it to make way for ashen humiliation as the wheels of the plane bumped along the tarmac. Dr. Sexy hadn’t offered her his seat to be nice. He’d offered her his seat to get her out of the way while he did the real medical stuff. At least he’d done it nicely. Looking down at the sweatshirt in her lap, she picked up the item and began carefully folding it. If she couldn’t do a good job doctoring, at least she could fold with military precision.

As people on the plane began to shift, Sam risked a glance up to where the doctor was still wall sitting and talking to Mark in a low whisper, probably checking for pupil dilation, because she hadn’t. The corner of her mind where she had stuffed her ill-advised physical reaction noted that it was particularly difficult to maintain a wall sit for the length of time he was managing. The rest of her mind began to wonder how she was going to disembark when all her stuff was in the back of the plane, where the budgetiest of the budget seats were located.

Ears popping as the cabin depressurized, Sam watched Dr. Sexy help Mark out of his chair and into the arms of the first responders. At least she could relax now, knowing she would never see Mark or Dr. Sexy again. As soon as she could get back to 30A, she was off this disastermobile and free to forget her experiment in emergency medicine and heroics.

As the flow of passenger traffic slowed, Sam gently placed the sweatshirt on the doctor’s seat and began the arduous process of making her way to the back of the plane to get her things. As Sam row hopped her way to the back of the plane—ducking into row 10, then 17, then 25—passersby congratulated her on helping. Sam felt every inch a fraud. She hadn’t helped anyone.

Retrieving her bag from the overhead bin, Sam began her trudge back toward the front of the plane, grateful only the flight attendants were left to see her gracelessly knock her rolling suitcase into the armrest of nearly every row. Frowning down at her uncooperative suitcase, she had just enough time to wonder why she couldn’t wheel the stupid thing in a straight line when a voice caught her attention.

“No big deal. Happy to help,” Dr. Sexy told an airline attendant as he stepped back onto the plane.

For a brief moment, Sam thought about diving into the row she was standing near and hiding until he deplaned. She was taller than normal thanks to the stupid platform sneakers her mother had insisted she buy, but she could crouch and maybe—

“Hello,” Dr. Sexy said, picking up his sweatshirt. Waving the crisply folded garment at her, he added, “Thanks for this.”

Grasping at words through the pit of her humiliation, Sam cleared her throat and let what she hoped was a gracious smile cross her face. “Well, I can’t remember to take someone’s vitals, but I can fold, so at least there is that. Thank you for your help.”

The guy shrugged. The half smile was back, showing off a faint dimple in his cheek that Sam promptly ignored. She didn’t need another misguided physical reaction right now. “It was more important to keep him calm so we could land. It was clear he wasn’t dying, and the paramedics would have done the vitals again anyway.”

Turning to face the exit, he started walking, and Sam followed, still knocking her bag into every armrest, despite the aisle being wider in first class. Reaching the jet bridge, he turned with a sort of casual economy that reminded Sam of celebrities on a red carpet. Not at all like he was in a hurry but rather like he had a sort of graceful schedule to keep. Passing the sweatshirt to his left hand, he held out his free hand to her and said, “I’m Grant.”

“Sam. Nice to meet you, Grant.”

“Nice to meet you too.” He smiled, then added, “Little tip for your fellowship: You’re a doctor now. If someone like me barges in on your patient, you can tell them to back off.”

The attraction Sam had been fighting died in the middle of the frigid San Francisco jet bridge. “I did.”

Grant raised an eyebrow at her, and the familiar sensation of being on unsure footing returned, as if he were her professor. A better-looking professor than anyone she’d had at Case Western but still distinctly professorial.

“I mean, I didn’t know you were a doctor when I asked you why you weren’t in your seat, but I most definitely did tell you to go away.”

“Did you? Because I heard a barrage of questions about a call button,” Grant asked, his half smile turning into a smirk.

Sam tried not to sound indignant as she snapped back, “It’s not my fault you failed to read the room.”

“No. I guess it isn’t.” Grant shrugged, amusement still written on his face. He was laughing at her. This was officially the worst career experience ever. “Do you live in San Francisco?”

“I do,” Sam said, grateful for the subject change as she began walking again, bumping her way through the entrance to the boarding gate.

“So do I. Do you need a ride to the city? We could split a car.”

Sam marveled at Grant’s delivery, so friendly, as if he weren’t offering to share a cab with someone he had just insulted only moments before. Nothing could be less desirable than a twenty-five-minute ride back to the city in which she had to hear about her numerous failures as delivered by Dr. Grant. That was a hard pass from her, thanks.

“That’s nice of you to offer. I have a friend coming to pick me up.” Sam watched his face fall, and a small corner of her heart twinged with guilt. But not enough guilt to make her offer him a seat in her imaginary friend’s car. “I’d offer you a ride, but he drives a two-seater from 1987. You don’t want to ride in that thing.”

Guilt averted. Her midwestern-white-lady mother would be so proud of the brush-off she’d just delivered. Besides, if he could afford to fly first class, he could afford a forty-five-dollar ride home. In fact, he was probably offering her a ride because she’d admitted to being a lowly, overworked and underpaid, newly minted fellow.

“You’re right; I choose life.” Grant smiled at her joke, and the guilty twinge kicked back up a notch. “Get home safe.”

“You too,” Sam called as he began walking toward the SFO rideshare pickup spot, a fancy new phone in his hand. She waited a beat before wheeling her bag over toward the BART entrance. Sure, it would take her twice as long and be three times as unpleasant as sharing a car, but at least public transit wouldn’t judge her performance today. Wrestling her suitcase through the ticket barrier, Sam was convinced her pride was worth the hassle.