Doctors Orders (Book#1 Hope Ridge)

"I can't believe I forgot the dang cake, Mum." I was a big ball of nerves and anxiety. I had been planning this surprise birthday party for my husband, Nate, for over a month. I have put all my free time outside of my work shifts into getting everything in motion. I knew Nate and I had been off our usual flow lately. It was primarily due to him receiving a significant promotion at the bank where he worked. Nate and I have been married for four years now, and within those four years, we have overcome lots of little bumps here and there. However, ever since he was promoted to branch Manager, he hasn't had any free time for just us. I understand the pressures he is facing, and I support him as much as I can. We have gotten a lot better over this past year, but he’s also been distant, which was unlike him. When I am not at work in the clinic, I keep a clean and organized home, as Nate prefers, and assure him that all his favourite meals are cooked for when he gets home at night. It has been this way for a year now, but lately, he has been even more withdrawn. Nowadays, he comes home late and reheats his meals in the microwave when I have already gone to bed, or he has just been taking his plated dinners to his office at the other end of the house. It hurts a bit—the rejection. I don't let it get me down, though. I remind myself that it is because he trusts me to my own devices while he focuses on excelling at work. I needed him to always know that I was supporting him, even if it made me a tad bit lonely. I was so used to him always being there that it feels taboo now. This night will be different, though. I had it all planned out. I told Nate I would be out of town for a work-related banquet and ensured I had all the supporting evidence to prove if he inquired. I was in the medical field, after all. It typically consisted only of reps and actual doctors, not so much their nurses, but Nate wouldn't think that far into the details. He is far too distracted with his work to focus on mine. I checked my smartwatch and started drumming my fingers anxiously on the side of the car door while my mother calmly weaved through the busy traffic downtown. I hated driving in the city and constantly avoided it whenever possible. It worked well, though, because Nate loved to drive. However, to drive me around, that would mean he'd have to be home more than to eat and sleep. Most mornings, when I woke up, he was gone for a long time. The only way I knew he was even in bed the previous night was because he was a slob. He never made his bed, nor did he pick his clothes up on the floor. Sometimes, I felt like his mother or caregiver and not his wife. However, these are the things you accept when you get married—the little nagging annoyances. Nate had many, but I let them all go because he was trying. I needed to, too. Things were better than they were at the beginning of our marriage. I never wanted to upset the positive changes we’ve made. Don’t make waves, I believe the saying goes. Pulling me back to the present, my mother calmly reaches over as she drives and squeezes my hand gently. She was always so calm. I used to be calm, but marrying a man who has been invisible this past year affects a gal zen. I take care of everything at home. The cleaning, cooking, and making sure the payments are all made on time. You'd think with Nate being in finance, he'd be a whiz at all the banking stuff, but he is a reckless spender and often forgets the little things, as he would call them. Mortgage, utilities; none of these things were little things, but to someone like Nate, who grew up spoiled and incredibly wealthy, I suppose they were. At the beginning of our marriage, he controlled everything, but this past year, I have been transferred his share of the expenses and told to handle it. Sometimes, I wonder about the change, but I am cautiously adapting with a smile. It's all okay. In our four years of marriage, I was embarrassed to admit that I had become the queen of Everything is Fine. I always thought my marriage would be like my parents. What they had was something like a fairy tale. They were both in their late forties but still very much in love. Yes, they fought. And when they did, you stayed clear of the house for a while. They never went to bed angry, though. Mum always said nothing is worth missing a chance for forgiveness with the person you love more than your sanity. That was how my mother described their love. Insanity. They were passionate in every way when they loved, and when they fought, but before bed, they always made it a point to resolve their issues if they weren't cleared by then. My parents were that rare dream. They met in high school and fell in love. They went to separate universities, and the long-distance caused a pause in their relationship for a couple of years. They each dated casually, but no one stuck with either of them. They both said they kept comparing their new partners to each other, and no one was ever good enough. My dad was a metalhead. He was all about cars and metal. Looking at pictures of him when he was my age is comical. My mother was the polar opposite. Everything was frilly and laced, prim and proper. No one ever thought these two would be end-game, but they were. Their absolute differences tied them together even when hundreds of miles separated them. My Dad stayed in our town, attending a community college, so he finished school first and started his small mechanics shop. Slowly, it began to take off. He became known for vintage and export customizing and repairs. Twenty years later, my father has expanded his shops across the province and three in the neighbouring country. When my mother returned from school, she accepted a proposal from her boyfriend, whom she had started seeing in the last year of school. She said the love wasn't as deep as it was with Dad, but she figured it was safe, and that was what she needed. My parents hadn't spoken in three years, so my mother presumed he had moved on. Boys, was she wrong! My father was waiting for Mum to return and slowly started building their empire. The day my mother returned home with her fiancee, Dad made his claim known. By the end of the week, Mum and Dad were back together, and whoever the other guy was left a rejected man. My mother took the culinary route. She loved to cook new and creative dishes. Whenever there was an event or holiday, Mum was guaranteed to be in the kitchen creating large and impressive masterpieces. How my father was able to maintain his physique was beyond me. He never stops eating. He won't eat anything else if Mum's cooking is an option. To the point where they only go out to eat twice a week, and that's only because Dad doesn't want Mum to cook every night, and we don’t trust his cooking to eat in on those nights. Even if she loves doing it, she needs a break, too, and since she works full-time at the restaurant, he doesn't want to burn her out. In my father's eyes, no one ever compares to my mother. His love for her will never and has never been questioned. Being a good-looking man, my dad gets lots of female attention, but he is the first to put it on notice that he is not interested in anyone but mum. My mother, however, is utterly oblivious to men hitting on her. She has this innocence about her, thinking they're just being friendly. That delusion has caused a few fights, as well. That's what happens when a Metal-Head Playboy falls in love with Sunday School Nancy. Their vast differences helped the other grow, however. I wanted that—someone to show me a different perspective and challenge me in ways that would allow me to learn something new. I thought that was how Nate and I would be. I was so much like my mother; it was crazy. My father dubs me as a carbon copy of perfection. Physically, I am identical to my mother, except my eyes are my father's, and my height is just above a dwarf ranking in Lord of the Rings. I would be comfortable living in the shire at my standing height of five feet two inches. My mother stands five feet nine inches, and my father is six feet three inches, so it very much confuses us all. In addition to my mother's physical features, I am just as gentle and kind-hearted as she is. We volunteer at the women's shelter every Sunday after church and on holidays. I didn't follow my mother's pursuit of culinary, either. Although I enjoy cooking, I love being a nurse even more. I love knowing that I help people every day. Okay, I work at a small community walk-in clinic, but it still helps those in need of medical assistance. The dream is a family clinic position, but finding one like that available in the city is tricky. There are a few positions in smaller towns, as medically trained, able-bodied people are more challenging to recruit in smaller towns. Most medical professionals want the hustle of city life and the salaries that come with it. Not me, though. I have always wanted to relocate. Nate is a city boy through and through. Nate is happy where we are, and I am happy if he is. Again, the pattern of everything is fine comes back. Givers tend to over-give, but I was confident that once he got better situated in his new promotion, we would return to that lovey-dovey stage we were in when he actively pursued me before the marriage. When I went to university, I didn't know Nate existed. We had never met. We come from two vastly different lifestyles. Nate was a huge, spoiled player. Everything he wanted was his. He had quite a reputation, so when I introduced him to my parents, my dad flat-out said, "No." Not only did my face drop, but so did Nate's. My mother remained silent, but she agreed with my dad. I didn't know about Nate's player reputation then, but they filled me in once he left my parents' house. I called things off with Nate the following day, explaining that that wasn't the type of reputation I wished to align myself with. He was adamant that he was different and that I made him want to be a better man. That he wasn’t the guy my parents thought he was. So I gave him the in he needed to prove it to me and to my parents. After having his work cut out for him, he put a ring on my finger just over a year into dating. Shortly after making our engagement announcement, I moved out of my parent's home and into Nate's. After months of decorating and the arguments of clashing personalities, mainly Nate's, we had established a loving home and planned our wedding details. I was freshly twenty-one when we finally tied the knot. Our wedding photos were decorated up and down the hallways. We had many happy couple photos together before marriage, but it stopped. We started going out less and less. At first, I was concerned that Nate was losing interest. Still, after several conversations and our friends mutually supporting his explanations, I got out of my head and focused on how I could help Nate better at home to make things less stressful after work. I made many mistakes in our marriage and needed a lot of corrections and redirecting, but we are in a good place. Looking back, they were all correct, after all. If you start looking for problems, you usually make ones that were never there. "We're here," my mother says, cutting my thoughts off on Nate and his weird behaviours and back to the task of getting the cake home before Nate does. I checked my watch again; he was off work in just over an hour. This cake was the final piece missing. My mother left me in her SUV while she ran inside the bakery and collected the cake herself. I hopped outside and got the door ready. My dad rigged up a barrier in the back seat so the cake wouldn't shift around while we drove. That man is the modern-day Red/Green. If you don't understand the reference- he is Mr. Fix-it. Linda, the bakery owner, helped my mum carry the gorgeous three-tier cake outside to the SUV. We all made sure it was fully secure before we thanked Linda one last time and took off to get home quickly. The whole drive home, I was more and more anxious. I hope Nate appreciated the time and effort we all put into this day for him. It was his twenty-eighth birthday, and I wanted him always to remember that he had a wife who would go to the moon and back to celebrate the day he was born. If he weren't, we would never have met. I wanted him to understand how much I appreciate him and all the hard work he's put into our future by building his career.