Work of Art

Chapter 4

The next day followed in an identical fashion: Nick arrived, gathered her materials, and worked on painting the background base color of the ocean. The only differences were the lack of physical collision and the use of a ladder that Nick had drug down the wall.

She made quick work of it with her paint roller, and before she knew it Nick was staring at a wide expanse of blue that stretched along the wall. She longed to immediately start with details of the rippling water, but conceded it could be better to wait for the base layer of paint to dry.

So after cleaning up all of her supplies, and with some apprehension and excitement for tomorrow, Nick left the hospital earlier than usual.

She offered a friendly smile and wave to the receptionists at the front desk as she walked out the large automatic doors that excited the waiting room into the parking lot.

Almost as soon as the doors slid shut behind her with a slight click, the receptionists sprung to action with excited smiles.

Carlisle sat in his office rifling through notes. As a part of monthly hospital learning and bonding, Forks Township Hospital hosted a medical seminar the last Monday of every month, and despite his recent hire, Carlisle was asked to speak at this month's. The prompt was vague, if not nonexistent, and he had no idea what he would discuss with the rest of the hospital.

Notes from previous speakers sprawled across his desk. There were some patient reports, research proposals, even the occasional discussion of adopting new procedures. But there was one in particular that caught his eye: a pullet pointed outline covering key points of the importance of art in hospitals.

Carlisle couldn't help but smile as he spotted Nick's name scrawled across the top messily in a blue pen and a spiderweb on blue lines that lead to additional barely legible notes scattered around the page.

While the concept intrigued him, he was more interested in the girl from which they originated from.

Carlisle couldn't quite decide why exactly he felt compelled to read through her notes. There was something that fascinated him about the tall artist with long brown hair, but his thoughts couldn't stay on her long because he heard a tentative knock on his office door.

Sweeping the papers into a pile, all while making sure Nick's was hidden from view and not the last one lengthily viewed, Carlisle quickly organized his desk then stood to open the door. As he twisted the handle and swung the door inwards, he was surprised to see two women that looked vaguely familiar standing there with somewhat nervous smiles.

Carlisle greeted them kindly and invited them into his office. It wasn't until they hat sat down and the part of three made themselves comfortable did he place their faces at the front desk. He had seen these two women working his first night at the hospital when Dr. Gordin had walked him through the hospital and into the fateful waiting room.

After an awkward moment of silence, the woman on the left spoke up. "Dr. Cullen, we know you're new around here, but we're trying to get all employees to sign this card for us." As she spoke, she bent over and bug through her purse she had set on the ground beside the chair she sat in. After a moment, she pulled out a flowery card neatly tucked in a blue envelope. She sled it across the desk towards the doctor and Carlisle hesitantly picked it up.

"I'm not sure how well you're acquainted, but Nick usually makes it her job to get to know everyone around here."

Her name caught in his ear. He had been thankful in the sense for a distraction from thoughts of the girl, only to once again be sucked into her affairs. He should have known he wouldn;t have caught a lucky break.

He opened the card and saw the message printed in the center: 'Happy Birthday'. He looked at the women inquisitively.

Picking up on his question, the woman on the right answered this time. "Her birthday is tomorrow, so we decided to get this done tonight."

"Thank goodness she left as early as she did," the one on the left added, "or we might have been here all night."

Carlisle nodded along then looked back down at the card. It was littered with happy birthday messages in a plethora of colors. Almost the entire right side of the card was filled with notes and there were sparse spaces over on the left. It truly looked as if the whole hospital staff had all managed to sign the small card.

Carlisle reflected on his brief encounters with the girl as he glanced over some other birthday notes. Some were long and recalled funny situations or jokes, while others simply stated basic pleasantries. After a moment, Carlisle decided on a simple 'Happy Birthday' then signed his name below. It was simplistic and impersonal, but it got the job done. Besides, he reminded himself, he'd only ran into the girl twice, maybe three times, and there was absolutely no way she even remembered his name, let alone thought of him more than absolutely necessary.

As his eyes skimmed over the card once more, he landed on another detail that he had missed before, the number 18. Once he noticed it, it was all he could see. Shit. The girl who had inexplicably been frequanting his thoughts was barely an adult, or not even at all at this point.

Carlisle quickly refolded the card, tucked it in the envelope, and handed it back to the woman on the left. She smiled brightly at him, thanking him for taking the time to sign the card.

They seemed to leave in slow motion as they stood up and walked out of his office. They lingered too long for his liking as they invited him to come visit them up at the front desk, offering that they have mints if he needs a refresher, and how all the other doctors stop by. Carlisle gave them an indeterminate answer and a smile that didn't reach his eyes as they finally walked into the hall and closed the door behind them. Once he heard the door click shut and their feet patter down the hall as they frantically whispered to each other about where they should go to next, Carlisle dropped his head onto his desk with a slight thud.

He once again evaluated his thoughts. As his head spun, he abruptly stood and began to pace the length of the room, grateful once more for the fact that there were no windows for people to see into his frantic walking.

Once again, although with more fervor this time, he vowed to erase all thoughts of the girl from his mind. He refused to even acknowledge her name. He briefly wondered if Edward could learn to remove memories from one's mind instead of just viewing them.

While completely irrational, the question of memory removal still warranted a google search.

While all of the links that surfaced were ineffectual to answering his question, there were many fascinating topics around the concept of memory loss and its causes. Even if it wasn;t able to solve one issue, the brief research was still able to answer his other more pressing concern of what to discuss at the seminar.

While it was an excellent distraction, Carlisle was determined to make a good impression on the rest of the staff with his talk, so he poured himself into research and hastily wrote notes on every aspect of the issue he could find to later be organized and spliced into coherent sentences to present. As the pages filled, Carlisle was so immersed into his research and preparation that he didn't even notice how his hand had gravitated to the only blue ben in his office, and how his white pages were webbed with an array of blue lines and notes.

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Slow burn Carlisle? Absolutely

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