Me After Meeting You

Amber sighed. After Billy left, she hadtried to contact Ian. But unfortunately, he didn’t want to see her, and he wouldn’t even pick up his phone.

She didn’t try to hide this from Nancy. After hearing this, even Nancy didn’t know whether to cry or laugh. “This man … fine, Iadmit that this is my fault. I’ll let him know for you. As for the hospital … after such a big fuss, has the administration made any trouble for you?”

“Well, the silver lining is that the director of the hospital isn’t around. But unfortunately, the department head told me to meet him after work.”

Nancy couldn’t help but laugh. “You must be the first doctor that’s been forced into such a situation by a patient. Alright, don’t worry too much about it. I’ll help you deal with your department head.”

Amber instantly found the cause of her headache dissipate and she clasped her hands together in gratitude. “Thank you, Professor.”

Nancy tended to work quickly, before Amber’s shift was even over, she had been notified that the department head wouldn’t be inviting her over for tea.

And then, after work, she even saw Ian.

***

It was drizzling lightly outside then and he had sent a chauffeur over specifically to pick her up. After driving around for a while, the car pulled up at an indoor tennis court.

As she pushed the car door open, his ball swerved toward her face. If Amber’s reflexes had been even a step slower, the ball could have blinded her in one eye.

But instead, the yellow green ball brushed against Amber’s temples, hit the doorframe and bounced back onto the court like a bullet.

Amber couldn’t help sweating. As she looked at Ian again, he didn’t seem flustered at all. Instead of greeting her, he merely lifted his racket and continued to practice his brutal, fast serves.

Amber breathed out, trying not to disturb him. Only when he was tired did she finally walk over.

“Mr. Axton, can we talk?”

He wiped the sweat off of his head with a towel, and peered down at her from above. “Are you willing to accept my proposal?”

Truly a machine that won’t stop before reaching his goal.

Amber stopped going around in circles with him and directly addressed the issue. “Mr. Axton, i think that you clearly understand that my professor introduced you to me not for us to go on a blind date, but rather for me to assist you as a doctor.”

Ian’s hands stopped moving. He threw down his towel, wiped his smile off of his face and walked toward her. As he approached, his imposing manner pressured Amber so much so that she felt like she couldn’t breathe.

He pushed her against the wall, maintaining just a slight bit of distance between them and placed his hand against the wall. “As a doctor?”

He sneered. “Don’t think you’re special just because you’re a doctor. Here’s a question. Do you believe me when i say that i can make your title of “doctor” disappear?”

All of a sudden, Amber’s phone rang. But instead of alleviating the tension between. the two, her crisp ringtone only made the atmosphere even more oppressive.

Amber didn’t pick up the call. She tried her hardest to ignore the tension emanating off of Ian by looking at him straightforwardly without any intent of deflection. “Do you have any particular misgivings against doctors?”

“Misgivings? Is it a misgiving to rightfully deny that I am ill?” Ian’s voice was steeped in disdain and an indistinct anger when he replied. “If being aloof is truly an illness, then how many people in the world are currently suffering from this incurable disease?”

Clearly, he was quite self aware and even unexpectedly logical about his own situation. Amber was even starting to doubt her own diagnosis.

She didn’t intend to argue with him, though. For a psychiatrist, listening to one’s patients was a necessary skill to have. When she did reply, she deliberately spoke very softly and warmly. Her voice, already pleasing, became as soothing as the March wind, comfortably caressing one’s ears. “Are you disgusted when they act like that towards you?”

“Would you like to be treated differently, like a monster?”

Amber shook her head. “No one’s saying that patients who have unusual mental diseases are different or are monsters. Mental diseases are just that, diseases. Just like how we can catch the cold and become feverish and cough, mental diseases are just the result of a key part of our body malfunctioning. It is wholly unrelated to age, unrelated to level of education and certainly unrelated to monsters or things of the sort.”

Such an explanation was feeble at best and Ian’s face returned to his normal frosty expression, aloof and grim. “If that’s the case, then why are you unwilling to be my girlfriend?”

“No, it’s not that I’m unwilling. Rather ….”

“Then let’s go.” He interrupted her halfway and immediately turned around and left shortly after, leaving Amber with no time to react.

She decided to follow him. “Where to?”

He didn’t answer. The driver drove towards them, and then he opened the door to let her in.

Amber stood still, not moving.

“Are you scared?” He cocked his head back slightly as he looked at her.

“No. But I feel like you should inform me of our destination, as a basic courtesy.”

Ian simply replied, “My office. Are you coming?”

Even though she didn’t understand why Ian wanted them two to go to his office, Amber nonetheless still got into the car.

At this point, she couldn’t shirk back from her duty as a psychiatrist.

During the drive, Ian didn’t speak a single word. Amber, on the other hand, finally answered the call from before, it was from her colleague.

Once the call connected, she immediately heard her colleague’s exaggerated tone say, “Oh, Dr. Amber, you’re famous! Go on WhatsApp, quickly!”

She refused to explain to Amber exactly what was going on, so Amber had no choice but to hang up and open WhatsApp, just as she had been instructed to. The first thing she saw was an image that had been posted on the psychiatry department’s group chat.

It was from an unknown person’s friend group’s chat. She opened it and read the caption, “This actually happened in our hospital! In order to lighten his girlfriend’s workload, some rich guy booked all of her appointment slots for the next few days.”

The colleague who had sent out this image then said, “Someone posted this image onto Instagram and then it started trending from there.”

The others laughed. “Hahaha, will there be reporters here to interview us tomorrow?”

“Heh, don’t talk about tomorrow. Just this afternoon, the media has already been calling us to confirm the story.”

“Then has our Dr. Amber really become famous this time?”

“Call her out, we’ve got to get her to treat us to a meal.”

The group chat kept getting peppered with new messages. Amber looked at the shrinking scroll bar, sighing in dismay.Belongs to (N)ôvel/Drama.Org.