Examined by the OB-GYN CEO novel · Chapter 1 of 24
Chapter 1: The Doctor Wore a Suit
Claire shakes at a pen handed to her in front of the board, her mother-in-law sends her to the 47th floor, and the doctor who examines her turns out to be her husband's stepbrother.
I started shaking in the middle of the quarterly board meeting, in front of eleven people, because the man next to me passed me a pen.
His fingers brushed mine.
That was all it was.
Heat ran up my arm and settled low in my stomach, and my hand shook so hard the pen hit the table and rolled away.
"Claire?" the board chair said. "Are you all right?"
"I'm fine," I said.
My voice broke on the second word.
I was the director of partnerships at a women's hospital group. In five years I had never lost my place in a presentation.
Now my knees were pressed together under the glass table and I could feel my pulse in places I didn't mention in meetings.
I had been married thirteen months, and my husband had never touched me.
My mother-in-law, the vice chair, was out of her chair before anyone else moved.
"She's been overworking," she told the room, and she put her arm around my shoulders. "I'll take her out for air."
In the corridor she held both my hands until they stopped shaking.
"That's the third time this month, sweetheart," said Honora.
"I know."
"Preston booked you in with a doctor. Three o'clock today, the executive clinic on the 47th floor. There was a cancellation, so he grabbed it."
My phone buzzed in my pocket.
It was a text from Preston: Booked you for 3. Go.
It was the most he had done for me in months.
"Thank you," I told Honora. "I'll go."
She kissed my cheek and went back to the meeting.
The executive clinic had a glass door and a receptionist who didn't ask for insurance. The nurse who took me back wore plain scrubs.
The doctor was waiting at a glass desk with my file open in front of him.
He didn't wear a white coat.
He wore a charcoal three-piece suit with the sleeves of his shirt rolled to the elbow, and he stood when I came in.
"Mrs. Lowry. I'm Ronan Maddox."
I knew the name. It was on my paychecks and on the front of the building.
At work I still used my own name, Dunning, so my chart was the first place he had seen the other one.
I had seen him twice, across the boardroom, from the far end of the table.
"I thought you were a CEO," I said.
"I trained as an OB-GYN for eight years before my father died. I still see patients here on Thursdays. Sit down, please."
He had the kind of voice that made you do what it said.
I sat.
"Tell me what's been happening. All of it, in your own words. Nobody in this room is going to be shocked."
I looked at the nurse by the door.
I looked at the dark glass wall behind him, all the way down to the lake.
Then I told him the truth.
I told him about the elevator on the 12th floor, where a stranger's sleeve had made me grip the rail. I told him about the barista who gave me my change and the burn that went through me all day after it.
I told him about the board room, and that I had wanted to crawl under the table and stay there.
"How long?" he asked.
"Seven months. It's getting worse."
"Any pain?"
"No. It's the opposite of pain." My face went hot. "I'm sorry."
"Don't apologize to me." He wrote something down. "When were you last intimate with anyone?"
"Before I was married."
"Your husband?"
"He has never touched me," I said. "Not once. We sleep in separate rooms."
His pen stopped.
He didn't say he was sorry or ask me why I'd stayed. He said, "All right. Let's examine you."
The exam room was warm.
The nurse stayed by the door when I asked her to.
Dr. Maddox washed his hands and put on gloves, and he told me before every single thing he did.
"I'm going to press on your stomach now."
"I'm going to touch your knee."
His palm settled on the inside of my knee to guide my leg, and every muscle in my body pulled toward it.
A sound came out of me.
I clapped my hand over my mouth.
"Look at me, Mrs. Lowry."
I looked.
His eyes were dark and perfectly steady, and his hand did not move.
"That is a normal response," he said. "Your nervous system has gone a year without touch, and it's answering the first hands that are kind. Nothing is broken in you."
My eyes filled.
Nobody had said that to me in thirteen months.
He finished the exam in four more minutes, quiet and exact, and he never once looked away from my face.
When he stripped off the gloves he asked the nurse to bring me water.
She left, and the door closed.
He pulled my chart toward him and read the last line, where the clinic had listed an emergency contact.
His jaw went tight.
"Mrs. Lowry, your husband is Preston Lowry."
"Yes."
He closed the file very gently.
"Preston is my stepbrother," Ronan Maddox said. "I did not know he had a wife."
He looked up at me.
"And I did not know the woman at the far end of my boardroom was her."
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