Free Private Practices by Linda Wolfe Page B

a new compelling gratitude.
    â€œIt was because of you,” Mrs. Harper said to him in his office the next morning.
    â€œWhat was?” Ben asked her, puzzled.
    â€œThat I stopped bleeding.”
    He smiled modestly. “I didn’t do anything.”
    â€œOh, you did. You calmed me down. Wouldn’t the bleeding have gotten worse if I’d gotten all upset?”
    â€œNot necessarily.”
    â€œWell, you got me to take it easy. To stay in bed. I figure it would surely have gotten worse except for that. So it was because of you.”
    The phrase stuck in his head. Daily, for over a week now, he had been planning to call Naomi but time after time, the phone receiver already off the cradle and in his hand, he had hesitated, worried about exposing his newly hatched dream of marrying to the tasks of reality. In order to marry, he would certainly have to make love successfully to Naomi, and he had been impotent for years. Of course, Masters and Johnson, whom he had heard speak at a gynecologists’ convention, had claimed that virtually all impotence was curable, provided a man could find himself a willing partner. But would Naomi be willing? He remembered distinctly the hurt look on her face when he had said goodbye to her in Sidney’s examining room.
    Then, listening to Mrs. Harper elaborately exaggerating his role in the cessation of her bleeding, and feeling flattered despite himself, a clever plan occurred to him. He would admit his addiction to Naomi. And tell her that it was only because of her that he had at last decided to go off the pills. He would explain to her he had been eager to come to her drug free and capable of starting a serious relationship. It might move her. Certainly, whether or not she fully believed him, it would flatter her.
    Mrs. Harper was staring at him with curiosity and he snapped his attention back to her, saying, “Don’t exaggerate my role. I really didn’t do anything. There’s so much we don’t know about first-trimester bleeding—what makes it start, what makes it stop …”
    Mrs. Harper fidgeted with a blue cardigan folded in her lap. “Then you told me to lie down just to give me something to do?”
    â€œMore or less,” he admitted.
    She blushed. “I guess it was because I sounded hysterical.”
    He saw the way the color flooded her cheeks, saw how she crossed her black-booted legs and, quite unconsciously, shifted her skirt so that it rode upward on her thighs. She was flirting with him.
    It made him smile bitterly to himself. It was ironic that he should be so admired by his patients and yet feel himself to be so undesirable when it came to the women he encountered outside the office. But he would have to take his chances with Naomi. A time-consuming relationship was, he was still certain of it, his only hedge against returning to the pills. And perhaps Masters and Johnson had been wrong in one respect. Perhaps it was not so much a willing partner that a man needed, as the will to find himself a willing partner. He hadn’t had that will before. He had it now.
    Mrs. Harper was saying, “Well, no matter what you say, I’ll always be grateful that you called me back so promptly.”
    He sat back, lost in his own musings. The baby had given him the will for courtship, he thought. Mrs. Kinney’s baby. Or was it Sidney’s baby?
    â€œI guess I’m keeping you,” Mrs. Harper said apologetically.
    â€œWhat? Oh, no. No, I’m not so very busy this morning, Mrs. Harper.”
    But she was standing up and draping her overlarge cardigan around her shoulders. “Emily,” she smiled.
    â€œEmily,” he said.
    As soon as she was gone, he impulsively picked up the phone and dialed Naomi.
    He reached her at the magazine and knew at once that he had been right to worry that she might not be receptive to him. She sounded aloof and told him outright, when he suggested their getting