Finding Mikayla Read online

  “Sir, the colonel has burdened the good doctor with showing me the ropes this week, so I believe she has a full schedule.” He turns to me and adds, “Isn’t that right, Mikayla?”

  I can practically hear Pam and Craig straining to hold in their laughter.

  “Is that so?” John bites the inside of his cheek as his eyes shoot daggers at Mitch. “Well then, I guess I’ll see you at the softball game,” he says to me before walking away.

  Our foursome watches him walk out the front door of the mess hall, and then Pam and Craig simultaneously blow out a breath and fall into a fit of laughter. “Shit, man,” Craig says to Mitch, “I think you just made him enemy number one.”

  Mitch turns to me with an apology. “I’m sorry about that, but he was sending venomous stares at me all throughout breakfast. And when I saw the way you reacted to his hand on you . . .” Regret washes over him as he lowers his head. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to turn that into a pissing match.”

  “It’s okay,” I reassure him with a quick nudge of my elbow. “He’s been hitting on me for months, but he can’t take a hint.”

  “Yeah, you just did Kay a huge favor,” Pam says. “But I’m afraid you landed yourself on John’s shit list in the process.”

  Craig stands up with his tray. “Well, the corn ain’t gonna husk itself,” he drawls. “Maybe we can meet up for a beer sometime this week,” he says to Mitch.

  Mitch’s eyes go wide. “Beer?” he asks, looking excitedly between the three of us.

  “I may have a few lying around if you’re interested,” Craig says.

  “Hell yes!” Mitch replies. “I may not remember much, but I’ll never forget how good a beer tastes.”

  “I hope you feel the same way after drinking a can of warm suds, my friend,” Craig says, laughing as he turns to go to work.

  After saying goodbye to Pam and taking Mitch through the routine of breakfast clean-up, we head over to the PX with his order for supplies from Colonel Andrews.

  On our way over I explain to Mitch, “Don runs the PX. He’s a civilian who managed the commissary before. He has a rough exterior, but don’t let him fool you, he’s a great guy. Just don’t piss him off like you did John.”

  “Well, that depends,” he says. “Is he going to hit on you, too?”

  I laugh at him. “I hope not. He’s my grandpa’s age. And I’m pretty sure he’s gay.”

  I silently wonder why Mitch feels the need to piss off everyone that might hit on me. Well, he doesn’t have to worry. Other than John, who is a stubborn ass, the men here pretty much leave me alone. They all know that I’m not available. They all know I don’t date and that I don’t plan on dating.

  “It would behoove you to make fast friends with Don,” I say.

  “Why is that?” he asks.

  “Because he can get you things. If he likes you, he will hold stuff back from the masses for you. But if you get on his bad side, he’ll only sell you the sloppy seconds.”

  “Is that so?” Mitch looks thoughtful as he holds the door for me and we walk through into the PX.

  Don must hear us come in because he emerges from the back room to greet us. “Well, if it isn’t the lovely Dr. Parker.” He pulls me into a hug. “I didn’t expect to see you on a Wednesday. To what do I owe the pleasure, Kay?”

  I motion to Mitch. “Don Jorgensen, meet Mitch Matheson, our newest resident.”

  As they shake hands, Don says, “Ahh, yes, the mysterious newcomer.”

  “It’s a pleasure to meet you, sir.” Mitch pats their clasped hands with his free one and I chuckle to myself wondering what he is up to.

  “Hmmm,” Don mumbles. “Polite and easy on the eyes, too. Call me Don, son.”

  “Okay, Don. I have an order here from the colonel to get some supplies. Can you help me out with this?”

  Don takes the slip of paper from Mitch. “Sure thing, right this way. I think I have a new male resident pack all ready to go.” He leads us to the large customer service counter that he ducks behind to retrieve a large backpack. He opens it up and inventories the contents out loud as he places each item on the counter. “One lamp. A quart of lamp oil. A toothbrush and small tube of paste.” He looks up at Mitch. “Sorry, son, it’s that nasty baking soda kind. You can use your credits to buy the minty stuff if you want to.”

  “It’s not a problem, Don. I’m just happy to have any at all.”

  Don turns to me, nodding his head. “I like this one,” he says with a wink. Then he continues listing the contents of the backpack. “One standard issue comb. One new razor. One generic bottle of shampoo. A stick of deodorant. Some bedding and a pillow. And, finally, one roll of toilet paper.” He holds up the toilet paper and says to Mitch, “You can probably trade this for something really nice. The ladies go crazy for toilet paper.”

  “I’ll keep that in mind, Don. Thanks.” He flashes Don an award-winning smile that makes me press my lips tightly together to suppress my giggle. He sure knows how to charm this guy.

  Don points Mitch towards the clothing section of the store and tells him, “You can pick out a week’s worth of clothing. That equals seven shirts and four trousers or short pants. Seven pairs of socks and underwear and one extra pair of shoes if you already got you a pair. I’ll leave you kids to it. Just let me know when you are ready to check out.”

  We thank him and head over to pick out his clothing. Mitch asks, “Is there anything in particular I need to wear to work in the clinic? I haven’t seen you in scrubs, so I assume street clothes are the norm.”

  I nod my head. “Whatever you want to wear will be fine.”

  His eyes peruse the shelves of clothing. “Will you help me pick, Mikayla?”

  “Okay, what do you normally like to wear?”

  “I’m not picky. T-shirts mostly. Jeans. Maybe some cargo shorts or something. Whatever fits decently will be fine. I wear a large shirt, size 34/34 pants, and my shoe size is eleven.”

  As he rattles through the numbers, I find myself staring at the very pieces of clothing on his body that he is describing. When I realize what I’m doing I shake my head and turn around quickly to do some shopping.

  While Mitch browses the shirts, I pick out a couple pairs of faded jeans along with two pairs of shorts. On my way back to show him, I spot something out of the corner of my eye and smile as I pick it up and carry it behind my back.

  “So, Mitch . . . are you a boxers or briefs kind of guy?”

  He stops looking through the selection of shirts and turns to me with raised eyebrows and an amused look on his face, so I pull the item out from behind my back and toss it over at him. He catches it before it hits him in the face, dropping the shirts he was holding in his hands, making me laugh at him. “Hey!” he shouts, playfully. Then he looks at what’s in his hands. It’s a pair of boxer briefs with a smiley face right in the front, over where the, um . . . goods are.

  He laughs. “Can you find me a t-shirt to match?” he jokes. Then he looks around and quietly adds, “I’ll bet Don would give me anything I wanted if I showed up wearing only these.” He winks at me. “At least you pegged me with the boxer briefs.”

  I try to get the image out of my head of him wearing the silly pair of underwear.

  We continue to joke around as we put together his new wardrobe. Ten minutes later we call Don out and have him bag up Mitch’s things.

  Don looks at me and then at Mitch, almost like he has a private joke that he’s unwilling to share. “Do you have any credits left, Kay?” He smiles devilishly at me awaiting my answer, and I think he must be up to something.

  “Uh . . . I have one left,” I answer cautiously. “Why?” I narrow my eyes at him.

  “Well, I guess I could take one credit. I mean it’s actually three books, but since it’s a boxed set, I guess I could bend the rules for my favorite doctor and let you have them for the one.” He bends down behind the counter to retrieve something while saying, “A lot of ladies have requested these. But I like you,
Kay. You’re good to me and you always fix me up nice, so I kept them for you.” He pulls out a set of books that I recognize as a popular erotic trilogy and my face heats up faster than a match in lighter fluid.

  I see Mitch’s jaw drop open out of the corner of my eye. I contemplate rejecting the books, but I know I’ve struck gold with them so I embrace my shame and nod my head at Don to deduct my credit and quickly shove the books into my backpack.

  “Thumbed through the books myself just to see what all the hype is about,” Don says, and I sense he’s about to add to my humiliation. I shake my head and silently pray for this to be over. “Whew,” he says, fanning himself. “That Christian Grey fella really knows his stuff.” Don looks from Mitch to me and then back to Mitch, smiling the entire time.

  Mitch steps back and holds up his hands in surrender when he says, “What?”

  Mortified, I turn and walk away, but not before I look back and yell a word of thanks to Don. He winks at me while he finishes up with Mitch.

  Mitch catches up to me out on the front walk and elbows me with a smirk on his face.

  “Not a word,” I utter.

  “I—” he starts.

  “Ever!” I interrupt.

  He laughs at me and the deep, rumbly sound coming from his chest sends a twinge through my insides.

  “Ever!” I repeat, staring him down.

  “Okay, okay,” he acquiesces.

  We walk in silence across the open courtyard and I sit down on a nearby bench to try and gather my composure.

  Chapter Six

  Mitch gives me a minute, probably more for himself so that he won’t laugh at me. When he finally joins me on the bench he asks, “So, what now?”

  “Well, normally new residents would come to the clinic for a physical, but we’ve pretty much done that. I guess I just need to know if you have any medical conditions that we didn’t cover already.”

  “Such as . . . ?” he asks.

  “Um, let’s see. Family history of heart disease or cancer?” I ask him.

  “No and no,” he answers.

  “History of asthma?”

  “Nope.”

  “You don’t smoke do you? I didn’t smell it on you when you were brought in.”

  “You smelled me, Mikayla?” I know he’s kidding by the way he says it, with a raised eyebrow and stupid grin on his face. But, dammit, when he put my name at the end of that sentence, it just oozed sensuality.

  “Uh . . . yes. You know, to check for alcohol on your breath.” I roll my eyes at myself. I really was checking for the smell of alcohol, but I do remember his rugged spicy smell and I momentarily wonder if that is his natural scent or if it was something he had recently washed with.

  “Is that all?” he asks.

  “What about other diseases. Anything I should know about?”

  “What do you mean by other diseases?” he asks.

  “You know, um . . .” For Christ sake, you’re a doctor, Mikayla. Spit it out. “Uh . . . STDs.” I feel another blush work its way up my face and I wonder if I will ever be able to not turn red in front of this man.

  “Doctor, do you know your freckles all but disappear when you blush?” He laughs. “No. No STDs,” he says.

  I simply want to find that hole I thought about digging earlier for my head. Instead, I punch him in the arm.

  He immediately stops laughing. I thought I may have hit him too hard. But he looks down at the front of his jeans and back up at me and says, “Oh, shit . . . at least I don’t think so.” And all of a sudden, he remembers his reality.

  “Don’t worry, Mitch,” I say, trying to comfort him. “I really do think your amnesia is temporary. It’s only been a few days. Your memory will come back. Maybe not all at once, but it’ll come back.” I hope the words I’ve spoken are true. Well, I’m pretty sure I hope they are true. Who knows what, or who, he will remember. I need to keep in mind the possibility that he may leave once his memory returns, so I can’t rely too much on him at the clinic until that happens.

  He nods his head and changes the subject. “Tell me about credits. How do they work?”

  “Well, adults get two credits per week and children get one. Everyone gets the same, no matter what their job or contribution around camp. Even Colonel Andrews only gets two credits per week. It’s not much, which is why you want to be friends with Don.” I elbow him. “But, it looks like you already have that in the bag.”

  He blows a hot breath on his fingertips and shines them on his collar as if he had just won an Academy Award.

  “Anyway,” I continue, “you can spend your credits each week as you earn them or you can save them up for something more expensive.”

  “Can you give me an idea of what things cost? Apparently, books cost one credit.” He winks at me and then wisely shifts himself away from my swinging fist before it makes contact with his arm.

  I roll my eyes at him and explain, “It’s all about supply and demand around here. It doesn’t matter how big or expensive an item is; it’s all about how many people want it. Take liquor and cigarettes for instance, a pack of cigarettes costs four credits, that’s half a month’s allotment. Liquor is right up there as well.” I turn away slightly knowing I will blush and say, “So are condoms.”

  “Huh,” he muses. “So, society hasn’t changed much, I see. It’s all about sex and drugs. Add in some rock and roll and it’ll be like nothing ever happened.”

  “Oh, there’s rock and roll all right—just not the kind that blares through the headphones of your iPod. You’ll have the chance to see what I’m talking about after the softball game on Friday.”

  “I look forward to it,” he says, smiling. “So, what about the other stuff at the PX? There was a ton of clothes there, and I saw a section for shampoo and shit like that.”

  “Clothes are plentiful and super cheap if you get them secondhand. New things are harder to come by and will cost you. Shampoo, body wash and shaving cream will usually run you around two credits or so. Occasionally there will be some food items. Most of the food goes to the base kitchen, but sometimes there are odds and ends of things that they will find, mostly snack food, that will be for sale.” I laugh as I tell him that last month a box of Twinkies went for eight credits.

  “So, does anyone provide services in exchange for credits? Say if I wanted a haircut or something?”

  I nod. “Well, maybe not a haircut—which, by the way, I could do if you wanted—but other things, yes. Betty Livingston or Marge Crockett will do your laundry and mend your clothes every week for one credit a month.”

  “Good to know,” he says. “On the clothes and the haircut. So, what else? You said there were other things, plural.”

  My face heats up before I can put a stop to it.

  “Oh, this must be good, your freckles just disappeared again,” he jokes.

  “Well, there are a few um . . . ladies, who offer their . . . services,” I choke out.

  “Reeeeeeally,” he draws out. “And what’s the going rate for that?”

  “Why, you interested?” I scold him with my eyes.

  “Do I look like someone who has to pay for that, Mikayla?”

  “I don’t know, with a head that big, you are kind of disfigured, so you might have to.”

  He laughs at me and then stands up, pulling his large pack up off the ground. It occurs to me that we are both carrying quite a load after visiting the PX. “Let’s go over to Austin’s apartment and see if you can bunk with him.”

  We cross the street to the apartment building and enter the first floor breezeway. A short hallway later, I stop at Apartment F. Mitch has his hands full so I open the door and walk in. He gives me a look and I know what he’s thinking. “We don’t really need to lock up around here,” I tell him.

  “Oh, okaaaaay,” he says, like he can’t imagine a world where some don’t desire what others possess.

  The front door slams behind us and he opens his mouth to say something else, but instead, I hear, �
��Too fucking early!” Then a grouchy Austin emerges from his bedroom, rubbing his head and scratching at the front of his boxers. His large stature fills the entire doorway to his room.

  “Afternoon, sunshine,” I say to Austin before turning to Mitch. “He works nights patrolling the perimeter.” I look back at Austin and say, “You can go back to bed, we just wanted to see if Mitch could have Craig’s old bedroom.”

  Austin looks sleepily from me to Mitch. “Sure, whatever. She told you not to take a shit in the toilet, right?” Then he turns around and shuts his bedroom door. Seconds later we hear a big thump followed by a creak from his bed, causing Mitch and I to crack up as we walk further into his new apartment.

  “Don’t worry about him, he’ll be in a better mood later.” I point to a door opposite Austin’s. “Your room is over there. I need to go check on a few patients and do some paperwork at the clinic. Why don’t you relax and get settled in today. Then tomorrow if you are up for it, we’ll tour the rest of the camp on horses.”

  He walks me to the front door of the apartment, his hands now free to open the door. “Sounds good, but when can I start working?”

  “Let’s play it by ear, maybe in a day or two.” I walk through the door.

  “Alright then. I’ll see you in the morning. Thanks for all your help today, Mikayla.”

  “No problem. See you later,” I say. I expect him to close the door, but he stays put and leans against the door frame.

  “Yup, tomorrow,” he replies, still not moving a muscle.

  “Okay,” I say, hoping he will retreat, but he simply crosses his arms and stares back at me.

  I turn around and roll my eyes while taking the three steps across the hall to Apartment G. I open the door, walk through and steal a glance back at Mitch to see him smile as he finally retreats into his apartment.

  ~ ~ ~

  Entering my apartment after a productive afternoon at the clinic, Holly jumps off the couch and grabs my arm. She pulls me over to sit at the kitchen table where there is a bottle of . . . something, sitting next to two shot glasses filled to the brim with clear liquid.