Page 6 of Family Bonds- Gabriela & Luca

Admit that he does it in front of people? Enough to lose a bet and get caught?

There wasn’t enough wine in this room for her.

Unless he was pulling her leg and this was an icebreaker to see her sense of humor.

She’d go with that.

But she turned and saw Joey’s sister giggling with Jared. Maybeshewas good with twenty-dollar bottles of wine.

“So I’ve got to ask, why do you pick your nose so much?” Now would be the time he’d tell her he was kidding.

Please let him say that.

“I can’t stand having things up there,” he said seriously. “And I can’t blow them out. It drives me nuts. Ever get a big booger stuck right up in your sinus cavity?”

How the hell was she having this conversation? “Sure, doesn’t everyone?” she said, humoring him.

Even if it was true. Just not date conversation material.

“That’s right,” Joey said. “And I can’t get it out. It’s so annoying.”

“How about saline spray? It could loosen it up to blow it out better.”

Exactly what she told her patients’ parents when they asked how to suck out snot from their kids’ noses.

“Ugh,” Joey said, shaking his head. “I can’t spray things up my nose.”

“But you can put your finger up it?” she asked, her voice drier than she intended it to be. Nah, she meant to sound like that. She couldn’t help it.

“It’s not the same thing,” Joey argued.

“Isn’t it though?” she asked sarcastically.

The bell went off a few minutes later. Somehow she got through that without arguing hygiene and grooming with him.

This time she walked out the door leaving the next man there by himself.

No. She just couldn’t do it again.

2

THE MEAN ONE

“Do you know anything about the new doctor starting Thursday?” Kate asked Gabriela in the office four days later.

Five sixteen-hour shifts on, ten days off. It was worth the long days to have so many off in between. Even worth moving to the island for it.

She said she’d give it a shot. What did she have to lose? She’d already been doing it for two months and so far loved it.

Sunday had been her first of five days back. So two more after today.

“Not a thing,” she said. “I haven’t even gotten his name yet.”

Which seemed odd, but she expected that an email would be sent soon introducing them. Since the new doctor would come in after her five days, he’d be coming on her last one and shadowing her for a day.

“Is that normal?” Kate asked.

She shrugged. “You’ve been here longer than me. Do you think it’s normal?”