Chapter 10 Mia #2
"I want to check on her nutrition intake," I respond, somehow keeping my voice level despite the fury bubbling beneath my skin. "She's lost another two pounds since admission, and I wanted to see if we need to adjust her supplement regimen."
It's a perfectly legitimate medical reason, and we both know it. For a moment, something flickers in Sebastian's eyes—something that might be regret or might just be annoyance at being challenged. Then it's gone, replaced by that same clinical detachment.
"Dr. Langston is handling Ms. DuBois's nutritional assessment today," he says, gesturing down the hall. "The team will be reconvening in seven minutes."
The dismissal is so clear, so final, that arguing would only make me look more unprofessional. I nod once, a sharp movement that probably gives away more of my anger than I intend and turn on my heel. As I walk away, I can feel his eyes on my back.
Seven minutes. I have seven minutes to pull myself together, to push down the hurt and confusion and rage, to become the professional doctor he apparently expects me to be despite his own wildly inconsistent behavior.
I duck into the nearest bathroom, grateful to find it empty. Leaning against the sink, I stare at my reflection. "Get it together, Mia," I whisper to myself. "Don't let him see you break."
But as I splash cold water on my face, I can't help wondering what changed between last night and this morning. What made Sebastian Walker go from looking at me like I was something he desperately wanted to treating me like something he couldn't wait to be rid of.
That thought never dissipates, even as I walk into my building long after my shift ended, it’s still there, unanswered.
My apartment key misses the lock twice before I jam it in with enough force to risk breaking it.
The door swings open and I step inside, letting it slam behind me with a satisfying bang.
The day clings to me like a second skin I can't shed.
I want to scream, to throw something, to call Laney and rant until my throat is raw.
Instead, I kick off my shoes with enough force to send one flying across the room where it knocks over a stack of books.
"Fuck," I mutter, not bothering to pick them up. The mess somehow matches my mood—chaotic, disordered, and completely undone.
My scrub top comes off next, yanked over my head and thrown over the couch.
The pants follow, peeled off like they're contaminated with something toxic.
In a way, they are—the residue of humiliation that seeped into the fabric with each of Sebastian's cutting remarks, each cold dismissal, each moment he looked through me instead of at me.
By the time I reach the bathroom, I'm down to my underwear, skin prickling with goosebumps and leftover anger. I crank the shower handle to its hottest setting, not caring that it'll turn my skin lobster-red.
I step under the spray and hiss as it hits my skin, just shy of scalding.
Perfect. I want it to burn away everything.
Water streams down my face, mingling with tears I didn't realize I was shedding until I taste salt on my lips.
Fuckity fuck. I refuse to cry over Sebastian Walker.
I scrub at my face with both hands, as if I can physically wipe away the emotion along with the tears.
"He's not worth it," I tell myself. "He's just another arrogant doctor on a power trip. Nothing special."
The lie tastes bitter even as I say it. Because he is special, that's the problem.
I've worked with difficult attendings before—medicine is full of outsized egos in white coats—but none of them got under my skin like Sebastian.
None of them made me feel this strange cocktail of fury and fascination, of wanting to prove myself and wanting to run away.
None of them showed up at my door at night looking at me like they were drowning and I was air.
I stay under the spray until the water begins to cool, my fingers pruned and my skin flushed pink. After drying off, I pull on my softest pajama shorts and an oversized t-shirt and head out.
My kitchen offers little in the way of comfort food—I really need to go grocery shopping—but the freezer yields the last of my emergency. I grab a spoon and head for the couch, collapsing onto it with my legs tucked under me.
"Okay, plant friends," I announce to the green audience scattered around my living room. "Time for tonight's episode of 'Why Sebastian Walker Is The Actual Worst.'"
Fitzwilliam the fern, as usual, says nothing. But his fronds seem to lean in slightly, as if interested in the gossip. Or maybe that's just because I need to water him.
"I hate him," I continue, jabbing my spoon into the ice cream for emphasis. "I absolutely, one hundred percent hate Sebastian Walker."
The jade plant on the coffee table absorbs this declaration with stoic silence.
"He's arrogant." Scoop. "Cold." Bite. "Inconsistent." Another bite. "And completely fucking impossible."
The plants listen with the patience of good therapists as I outline every moment of today's humiliation in excruciating detail.
"And the way he just dismisses my ideas without even considering them?" I wave my spoon in the air, narrowly missing the hanging pothos. "Like I'm some first-year med student instead of a doctor who graduated top of her class. Who does he think he is?"
A drop of melted ice cream lands on my shirt, and I absently wipe it away. "My body absolutely one hundred percent does not hate him at all."
And there it is.
"This is ridiculous," I mutter, setting the now-empty ice cream container on the coffee table. "He's my boss. My incredibly annoying, impossibly hot boss who probably gets off on making me look stupid."
The unbidden image of exactly what Sebastian might look like getting off flashes through my mind, and I groan in frustration, grabbing a throw pillow and burying my face in it.
"Stupid, stupid body," I mumble into the fabric.
I squeeze my eyes shut, but that only makes it worse.
The darkness behind my eyelids immediately fills with Sebastian.
The way he looked at my door, tension radiating from every inch of his tall frame.
Sebastian in my imagination, pressing me against a wall, those large hands finally, finally touching me the way I've secretly wanted since the moment I first saw him.
I toss the pillow aside and stand up abruptly, needing movement, needing distraction, needing anything but this torturous awareness of my own contradictory desires.
I'm angry at Sebastian—furious, even—but my traitorous body doesn't seem to care.
It wants him anyway, with an intensity that's both embarrassing and impossible to ignore.
"This is just… what? Sexual frustration? Proximity attraction?" I ask the rubber plant by the window, as if it might offer some botanical wisdom. "It doesn't mean anything. It's just biology. Chemicals. Hormones."
The plant, unsurprisingly, offers no insights.
I gather the empty ice cream container and spoon, carrying them to the kitchen where I rinse both and place them in their proper spots.
Tomorrow will be better. It has to be. I'll be more prepared, more professional.
I won't let Sebastian's coldness throw me off-balance again.
I'll focus on the medicine, on the patients, on proving myself through my work rather than wasting energy trying to decode Sebastian Walker's emotional state.
And if my body continues to want things my mind knows are impossible? Well, that's what cold showers and batteries are for.
But as I head toward my bedroom, I can't help wondering which version of Sebastian I'll encounter tomorrow—the cold, dismissive Dr. Walker, or the man who stood in my doorway looking like he was fighting a battle with himself. And which version I truly want to see.