18. Greer
Greer
“Great bathtub.” Beckett grins at me, stepping back into my room, running a hand through messy hair.
I arch a brow. “Are you big into baths?”
“Fuck yeah. Love a bath. Ice or otherwise.” He nods, stretching an arm across his chest, making all the muscles in his obliques and abdomen flex. He hasn’t put a shirt back on, only his shorts found their way back to his body.
He’s made no moves to leave at all, actually.
He laid in bed beside me, fingers toying with the ends of my hair, wandering over my shoulders and down my arms, while our breathing slowed and the stars winked to life in the sky through the window.
I don’t think it was friendly to sit there like that, talking to one another, naked, and to carry on casual conversation while we stood and got dressed, for him to tell me I should put on the grey pajamas because he thinks the colour is nice. To smile at each other and laugh.
I’m not sure how much time passed. He has this tricky way about him—time slips through my fingers when he’s around.
But it’s not just the time. My mind quiets down and I don’t realize I’m on the precipice of one of my boundaries until I’m right there—toes off the ledge and about to fall to what’s probably an uncertain death.
I should probably ask him to go—the warning sounds start in my brain; the scar twinges and I remember I scribbled all these lines in some sad attempt at a preservation instinct.
You can’t give anything else away, my brain whispers . You’ll give and give and give and then there will be nothing left.
But then Beckett speaks. His voice, still rough in this sort of post-sex haze, rolls across the room, wraps around me, and my brain shuts up because other parts of me like the way he sounds. He points to the remote, sitting haphazard on my bookcase, and then to the TV mounted on the wall across from my bed. “Do you want to watch something?”
And I find myself nodding. I never use it, but Stella insisted on having it for nights she stayed over.
Beckett stays standing, rubbing the back of his neck with one hand, the other pressing aimlessly on the buttons of the remote until the TV flares to life.
I wrinkle my nose, glancing between him and the channel he picks. “I’m sorry, did you just turn on sports highlights? That would be like me coming home and watching Botched .”
He tosses me a lazy grin before climbing back into bed beside me. “Of course, I have to see what they’re saying about me.”
I pluck at the thin strap of my tank top and narrow my eyes at him. He rubs the back of his neck again before scrubbing his jaw. A muscle ticks in his cheek. I don’t think he wants to know at all, actually.
“You don’t have to do that,” I offer, taking the remote from his hand and changing the channel.
Beckett furrows his brow and raises a hand behind his head, leaning back against the headboard. “Do what?”
“Be someone else. Reliable. Likeable. Who people expect you to be.” I shrug. “You can just be you.”
He stares at me for a minute, slight lines of age starting to show, crinkling around his eyes, and he smiles, nodding slowly. “You sure you aren’t a psychiatrist? Didn’t major in psychology?”
I shake my head. “No. I majored in biology, and I only did one psychiatry rotation.”
Beckett keeps one hand cupped behind his head, the pop of the bicep and triceps in his arm even more defined when he shifts, the other hand finding the hem of my tank top. He toys with it before smiling at me. “Biology. Do you ever think about all the other biological life forms on other planets?”
“I’m sorry, are you asking me about aliens?” I widen my eyes, but a small rasp of laughter sneaks out.
“Fuck yeah.” Beckett nods enthusiastically. “The universe is vast, Dr. Roberts. How do we know what’s out there?”
“Don’t tell me you minored in astronomy.”
“Nah. I didn’t have a minor. Too busy running and then kicking. But I specialized in the French Revolution.”
“That’s . . . niche.”
He sits up, eyes wide, like the French Revolution is a newborn hippo that takes the internet by storm, and everyone should be obsessed with it. “Come on, what’s more interesting than a man rising up from outside nobility, becoming the greatest military mind of his time, naming himself emperor, and betraying the ideals of the very movement that facilitated his rise?”
My nose wrinkles, lips turning down. “A lot of things.”
One of his fingers sweeps up under my top—this casual movement, like he touches me all the time and we weren’t two barely friends, sort of business acquaintances, who fell into bed together—and it grazes the scar.
His finger stills, and he glances down.
“Is your scar”—he swallows, eyes flicking up to mine—“from the car accident?”
I blink. It’s a simple question, but it’s not exactly a simple answer.
I’m not sure why I tell him. It’s one of the top two things I don’t share with people. But Beckett leans back against the headboard, expression earnest, waves curling around the nape of his neck, thumb and forefinger playing with the hem of my tank top again.
I shake my head. “No. It’s a transplant scar. I donated half my liver to my father when I was eighteen.”
“Because of the accident?”
Because driving his two teenage daughters off a bridge was apparently the final straw for my father, and they don’t give livers to people who can’t stay sober. But I was a perfect match.
My brain whirs back to life, and it screams at me: Back away from the ledge because you’re going to fall. You’ve already fallen off once, and you might not survive again. I give him a small smile. “Something like that.”
The corner of his mouth kicks up, and his dimple pops. “That’s the third time I’ve asked you a question like that and you’ve given me that same answer.” I’m not sure what to say, but the sharp planes of his face soften, and he whispers, “That was brave of you.”
I don’t think it can be considered being brave when you think you might regret it. When you did it because the only thing you’ve ever known was giving away pieces of yourself.
“Coming to the hospital was brave of you,” I offer quietly. I mean it.
His eyes flash with a wince. “Yeah, well, if you ask Nathaniel, I should have been running PR stints there and fundraising for kids with cancer since he set foot through the door.”
I shrug one shoulder. “Grief is complicated.”
Beckett starts to shake his head, brow creasing. “Grief?”
“Grief,” I repeat. Those lines stay between his brows, and his lips turn down. He still looks confused. It looks cute on him, but I cock my head. “Have you ever grieved?”
“What do I have to grieve? Sarah lived.” Beckett rolls out his neck, like he can shake it all off, like it’s this nothing thing.
“Your childhood?” I ask. He doesn’t answer, but his shoulders slump an almost undetectable amount, and I can tell he’s hurting. I sit forward, stopping his hand where his fingers still toy with my shirt, interlacing them with mine. “Imagine a positive, healthy, but hypothetical childhood. What would that look like? Would it look like yours did?”
He glances down at our joined hands, thumb brushing over the back of mine. “Huh. There you go again. Seeing right through me.”
When he looks back up, he stares at me a little too intently, so I push my shoulders back and let go of his hand.
If he’s bothered, he doesn’t let on. He pushes back, hand resting behind his head again, and he rolls his neck to look at me. “What was your childhood like? It’s just you, your sister, and your dad, right? Do you—”
I spare him from trying to find a polite way to ask whether I ever had a mother. “I don’t really remember my mom. She left when I was four and Stella was two.”
“But you were her kids.”
We were. But she was also my father’s wife and I don’t think she could live with him for a second longer. Her self-preservation instincts kicked in, and for some reason, they didn’t include us. She’s not around for me to ask her, but she got out. Stella says I have more grace for her than I do anyone else, and I think that might be true. Sometimes, I understand why she did it and I’m not sure it’s entirely unlike all the lines I try to uphold. “It’s okay. I hope she’s happy, wherever she is.”
I mean that, though.
Beckett looks at me, and it’s another look that’s a bit too much, but he raises his eyebrows before reaching forward and grabbing the remote again.
“You’re quite something, Dr. Roberts.” He’s not looking at me when he says it, but his voice is low, and the line of his mouth looks like it might be curving upwards into a smile.
I don’t answer, but I sit back against the headboard, my shoulder resting against his while he flicks through the channels. He stops on one, glancing sideways at me and grinning. “ American Psycho ? Seeing as you love the fictional restaurant so much you have a shirt with its logo.”
“Sure.” I nod, even though I know I should ask him to leave, and I should go to sleep and let those lines around me darken their ink so I can wake up tomorrow and remember that boundaries exist to keep people like me safe. “We can watch.”
And we do.
We get about halfway through when my phone starts going off with a page. My eyes cut to where it sits on the windowsill, and I’m hardly paying attention when I pick it up.
But when I see the screen, I inhale, a small audible gasp of excitement, and I’m climbing out of bed and over Beckett.
I glance back at him, holding up the phone. “I’m so sorry, I have to go. But you can stay—finish the movie. Shower, sleep. Whatever. Just press the lock button on the keypad when you leave.”
“I take it that page means good news?” He smiles faintly.
“Yes.” I smile—it’s wide, and my cheeks hurt—pressing my hand to my heart. I think the beats are telling me that this is what it was all for at the end of the day. For my sister, for my father. For every other person I get to give life to. “A liver. For someone who’s been waiting a long time.”
“Someone who deserves it?” Beckett asks quietly.
He looks at me, and I know the question is bigger, grander, than just those four words strung together. My hand presses harder into my chest, and I give him a smile I hope he knows is just for him. “Everyone deserves a second chance, Beckett.”
Liver transplants can take anywhere from five to eight hours, depending on a lot of factors.
This one only took six from the time I opened to the time I closed. It was routine as far as a transplant goes, but this one was special.
It wasn’t just the fact that it was for a patient I’d been with for years. Someone who wanted to live so much—to see another sunrise and sunset and breathe fresh air and love—it wasn’t that I held his hand and cried with him when other organs fell through. That I promised I’d do everything in my power to make sure he lived.
It was the fact that my heart beat differently when I was performing the surgery. The fact that I smiled so wide behind my mask when the new one was placed in his abdominal cavity, my eyes started to water. It was exactly the right size—a better match probably didn’t exist anywhere in the world.
I didn’t feel so much like I was stealing or taking something someone might not really want to give. I don’t get to ask donors if they’re like me. I don’t get to ask them if they’re the only choice for someone who’s hurt them immeasurably, and if at the end of the day, they’re just a young girl who wants their family to stay whole, so they give up one more piece of themselves.
I remembered what it was all about today—that it was a special, important, magical gift given—and I made sure it was treated with care.
It might have had to do with the fact that hours earlier, someone traced my scar with reverence and told me I was brave.
Not broken and desperate. Not a little girl giving herself away piece by piece.
I found an empty on-call room afterwards, and I think I slept better after a surgery than I have in over a year.
When most surgeons say they don’t sleep well, it’s because they just don’t sleep—resident schedules are cruel. It’s not something to be glorified, and everyone is walking around sleep-deprived almost ninety percent of the time.
But I stopped sleeping well when I started my fellowship and realized I was dedicating my entire life to the very thing that hurt me immeasurably.
I didn’t go into surgery with the intention of performing transplants.
It wasn’t some sort of calling that was stitched into me when the surgeon excised my liver and sewed me up all those years ago.
It just sort of happened.
The whole thing has felt a bit like I’m still stuck in the car. The water inching higher on my legs, the seat belt jammed and compressing all my air while my hands claw at the buckle, trying to get out.
This morning feels inexplicably bright—like maybe the way the water looked in the early morning after the crash. When the sun slowly blinks awake and its rays aren’t quite down to earth yet, but it’s starting to warm everything.
It feels peaceful and lovely when I leave the on-call room. It’s seven a.m.—not a notably busy time, but it’s nice that the lobby isn’t crawling with people or medical staff in search of caffeine yet.
It was only four hours of sleep, but I feel like a new person.
Early-morning sunshine spills through the floor-to-ceiling windows lining the cafeteria, warming the back of my neck when I sit down in one of the chairs in the corner.
I don’t have to round until nine, and usually I start reading charts and reports from the night before when I’m at home, but it feels nice to do it here. I don’t agree with romanticizing surgical schedules or the residency system in general, but it feels like another quiet reminder—sitting here in the sunlight, with coffee that’s better than most hospital coffee, reviewing patients’ labs and charts—that even though I chose to do this thing that had already defined me, it can be beautiful.
I’ve barely opened the first one when my sister calls.
She doesn’t say hello or good morning. “I stopped by your place last night.”
“Oh. I got a call around—”
“I know,” Stella cuts in, and even though she’s not here, I can see her mouth curling up into a saccharine smile, the way she would prop her chin up on her fist and blink at me. “Beckett told me.”
My mouth dries out and my heart, expanded beyond its borders, shrinks in my chest. “He—”
“Save it. I saw your claw marks.” She cuts me off again, words dripping and smug when she keeps going. “Imagine my surprise, throwing the door open to my older sister’s house, just to yell in and ask if she wants to come down to our father’s for a Sunday night movie, and who walks out of her bedroom as he’s pulling a sweater on? Red welts across those beautiful shoulders that could really only be from someone’s nails. Sleeping with a professional athlete and you didn’t tell me? I’m hurt, Greer.”
“I’m not sleeping with him.” I try to swallow. “It was a one-time thing.”
Stella scoffs. “Don’t pretend. You’ve spent weeks gallivanting around the hospital with him. You took him to that gala, and now this? What’s next? Marriage? Did your boundaries and plans to focus on yourself disappear and evaporate when he took his shirt off? I think mine would, too. I mean I only saw a glimpse of the abs last night, but I’ve seen the commercials enough to know.”
She thinks she’s joking. She thinks she’s being sisterly and fun. And maybe in another world, she would be. But in this world, my sister doesn’t live in a body she can’t help but give away. To know what it’s like to be the kind of abhorrent person who gives her father part of her liver and sometimes wishes she hadn’t. To be such a fucking hypocrite that she dedicated her entire life to the thing that hurt her.
“Stop,” I whisper.
She inhales. “Nutty—”
“Don’t call me that.”
“Greer, I was joking.” Stella’s voice cracks, the line she crossed scoring through it. “I was kidding. Of course I don’t think that. You can date or not date or sleep with or not sleep with anyone you want. It doesn’t mean anything about who you are as a person.”
“It’s fine.” I wipe at my eyes. “Stella, I have to go. I need to check on a patient.”
I hang up before she can answer.
I blink away my tears, and I try to swallow away the ache in the back of my throat. She might have been kidding, but she was right—maybe I can’t help myself.
The sun doesn’t look serene anymore. I don’t find the early-morning quiet peaceful. I might be staring at a still lake. There might be birds chirping, a beautiful breeze and rays of sun inching across the body of water to touch the shore. But all it does is remind me there was a crash, that a car did go through the water, and maybe it still sits at the very bottom of the lake, sinking into the silt, and maybe I’m going along with it.