Chapter 137 Josette and James

Chapter 137 Josette and James
Chapter 136: Josette and the Doctor
~VALERIE'S POV~
The phone call happened on a Thursday evening.
I was doing laundry, which was not a dramatic context for significant news but was the context I had, and I had learned over the past year that significant news arrived in whatever context was available rather than waiting for the appropriate setting.
My phone buzzed on the washing machine.
Josette.
I answered.
"He asked me," she said.
No preamble. No hello. Just that, the way she said things she had been holding and had decided to release.
"Tell me everything," I said.
I wedged the phone between my shoulder and ear and kept sorting laundry because the laundry was not going to sort itself and I had learned to do two things at once during the year when everything was happening simultaneously.
"Dr. James Ashford," she said. "Late twenties. He's been at St. Michael's for two years. He's from a large family, he mentioned this in conversation, not as information, just naturally, the way people from large families mention it because it's just a fact about the world to them." She paused. "He's very precise. Very professional. He manages my follow-up appointments with the specific care of someone who has decided that follow-up appointments are as important as the procedures themselves."
"And?"
"And at the third appointment," she said, "he asked me if I'd like to get coffee sometime."
I stopped sorting laundry.
"He just… asked?"
"He just asked," she said. "Like it was simple. Like he had considered it, decided it was a good idea, and was proceeding accordingly." She paused. "No preamble. No elaborate setup. Just: would you like to get coffee sometime."
"What did you say?"
"I said yes before he finished the sentence."
I started sorting laundry again.
"Good,"
"Val."
"Yes."
"I said yes before he finished the sentence," she said, with the specific emphasis of someone replaying a moment they were still processing. "Like my mouth just, decided without consulting me."
"Your mouth was right,"
"I know," she said. "That's what's interesting."
I moved to the tea kettle because the laundry had progressed to the stage that required waiting and tea required doing.
"How's Daniel?" Josette said, with the register she used for questions that were straightforward but whose answers she was paying attention to.
"He remembers to buy juice now,"
A pause.
"Progress," Josette said.
"Significant," I said.
The kettle was running. Tyler appeared in the kitchen doorway, he had been in the main room working on his school project, which was a diagram of the pangolin's defensive capabilities that he was labelling with the focused precision of someone who had a clear vision of the finished product.
He looked at me on the phone. He held up his diagram.
"Your label is slightly off on the keratin scale notation," I said.
He looked at the label. He made a correction.
He went back to the main room.
"Who was that?" Josette said.
"Tyler," I said. "He's working on a project."
"He's there?"
"He comes over," I said. "He likes the apartment. The wobbly desk is apparently interesting."
"You need to fix the wobbly desk," Josette said.
"It has character,"
"So do people with terrible posture," she said. "Doesn't mean you should maintain it."
I made the tea. I watched the kettle. I thought about Dr. James Ashford from a large family who treated follow-up appointments with professional precision and asked questions like they were simple.
"How's that different from what you deal with?" Josette said.
"What?"
"You said that's how it works when someone is actually confident. As opposed to…? you started to say."
"As opposed to whatever we deal with," I said.
"Whatever we deal with," she said. "Meaning?"
I looked at the main room, where Tyler was labelling his pangolin diagram.
"Meaning people who know what they want but express it through contracts," I said.
A pause.
Then Josette laughed, the one from our mother, the one that started in her eyes.
"He's gotten better," she said.
"He's gotten significantly better,"
"The juice," she said.
"The juice," I agreed.
The tea was ready. I sat at the kitchen table. Tyler appeared again.
"The keratin scale notation is now correct," he said. "But I think the defensive coiling diagram could be clearer."
"Show me," I said.
He brought the diagram to the kitchen table and set it down. He pointed at the coiling section.
"The arrows indicate direction of curl," he said. "But the viewer might not understand why direction matters."
"Add a note," I said. "Single sentence. Explains why the direction is defensive."
He considered this.
"Yes," he said. He took the diagram back.
"He's there too," Josette said.
"Yes,"
"The three of you," she said.
"It's a Thursday," I said. "It's just a Thursday."
"Val," she said.
"Josette."
"You're doing laundry and making tea and helping Tyler with his pangolin diagram," she said. "On a Thursday evening."
"Yes,"
"That's what a home sounds like," she said.
I looked at the kitchen. The secondhand desk with the wobbly leg visible in the corner of the main room. The fairy lights that had been here since before everything. The seventeen plants of Josette's at my apartment, four of them, an advance party she had left when she visited last month and had not retrieved on the grounds that they needed the light from that particular window.
Tyler in the main room, labelling pangolin diagrams.
"Yes," I said. "I suppose it is."
\----------
I mentioned Dr. James Ashford to Daniel that evening, after Tyler had been collected and the laundry was done and we were in the penthouse kitchen with the late-night version of the city outside.
I told him the coffee question story.
He listened.
Then he asked three questions.
"What year did he qualify?" he said.
I looked at him.
"Which hospital group is St. Michael's part of?" he said. "And is he on a permanent contract or a rotation?"
I stared at him.
"What?" he said.
"You just asked three background check questions about Josette's doctor,"
"They're reasonable questions," he said.
"They are background check questions," I said. "Specifically."
"I want to know he's…" He stopped.
"He's w
hat?" I said.
"Appropriate," he said.
I looked at him.
"She's my sister-in-law," he said.