Chapter 29 – Clay
The emergency department is packed for a Thursday night.
The blood from the gash on my forehead has mostly stopped, thanks to compression and a heavy-duty, tactical bandage that Dallas had in his car. He dropped Maggie and me off, saying he had to head back to San Angelo to pick Dove up from the airport after the conclusion of her latest tour.
After a thirty-minute wait, Maggie and I are finally escorted into a spare room in the back, where we sit and wait again, this time for the doctor.
“Mr. Cameron. I wish we weren’t meeting under these circumstances,” the doctor says with a smile as he enters.
I smile back, recognizing him as the one who treated me a couple of months ago for bruised ribs. He shakes his head playfully and flips through my chart.
“How are you feeling now?”
“Like I took an elbow to the face.”
Maggie snickers beside me but remains quiet.
The doctor shakes his head and snaps the clipboard shut. “With the bleeding and the blurred vision that you mentioned on intake, we’re going to do an X-ray just to be safe.”
“Possible fracture?” Maggie chimes in.
The doctor nods. “Unlikely, but we’ll rule it out. Once we’re sure, I’ll stitch up that nice gash you’ve got, and it’ll barely leave a scar.”
“Can’t damage the moneymaker,” I joke. Maggie snorts and shakes her head.
The doctor leaves, and almost immediately, the door opens again. This time it’s McKenna, the X-ray technician, who also happens to be Maggie’s manager for her internship.
“Hi, I’m McKenna – Oh, hey, Maggie,” she says, once she realizes who is in the room.
Maggie smiles. “Hey, McKenna.”
McKenna glances between us, her eyebrows lifting. “So, back again but this time for a possible face fracture?”
I raise my hand sheepishly. “That’s me.”
She shoots Maggie a questioning look but moves behind the bed, unlocking it and beginning to push me towards the hallway.
“I can walk there.”
“Doctor’s orders. If you’re feeling dizzy, I have to wheel you.”
I catch Maggie stifling a laugh. I roll my eyes and shoot her a look as if she orchestrated the whole thing. Nothing more ridiculous than a grown man who walked into the hospital fine being wheeled through the hallway on a big, white bed.
“Say bye to your girlfriend,” McKenna teases as she wheels me out.
The trip through the hospital corridors feels longer this time.
Likely because I’m not distracted by thoughts of Maggie hovering behind me, which probably means I’m thinking too much about how I’m going to tell her I’m in love with her.
When we reach the X-ray room, McKenna locks the wheels and gestures for me to stand for the images.
She’s quiet as she positions me for the scans, tilting my head just so and adjusting my neck. I know from the many long talks that Maggie and I have had that McKenna’s been a great mentor to her, and I get the sense she knows about our secret arrangement.
When she finishes taking the last image, she gestures back to the bed. “You can have a seat.”
I move back towards the bed where she joins me, leaning against it and crossing her arms as she chews her lip nervously and scuffs the sole of her sparkly pink croc shoes. “Soo…”
I mirror her tone, “Soo…?”
She smiles, then dives in. “I like Maggie. A lot.”
“That’s good because so do I.”
We exchange a brief smile before McKenna continues. “The hospital is likely to offer her a job after she graduates in December.”
“That’s awesome,” I reply, unsure of where this is going.
McKenna raises an eyebrow. “I wonder if she’ll take it.”
Before I can ask what she means, she forges ahead. “Maggie mentioned you two are ‘fake dating’ or something for the summer to get her dad off her back and to keep your siblings from finding out about your underground fighting.”
I rub my jawline, not surprised she knows, but still a little thrown off by why Mckenna would care about our arrangement. We’d never said we wouldn’t tell anyone, and Dallas and Jovie clearly know. I stay quiet, letting her continue.
“I think you like her more than you’re pretending to.”
I nod. “I do, and I plan on telling her that tonight. It may have started out as a fake agreement, but I’ve always had very real feelings for Maggie that have only grown over these past two months.”
McKenna sighs. “But what will knowing that do for her?”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean, don’t you think telling her that might guilt her into not going back to school and finishing.”
“No… she can still finish. We can do long distance. She graduates in just a few months.”
Dallas' words rush back to me. Am I scared that she won't want to do long distance?
“Ok, so let’s say she does. And she gets this job offer for Lonestar Junction Hospital in October. Now she knows that you like her and that takes away her opportunity to choose.”
“Choose what?” I ask.
She rolls her teeth under her lips and stands, brushing off her scrubs.
“Look, I’ve been in Maggie’s shoes before.
I was twenty once, trying to decide whether to leave town for a big opportunity or stay because of a guy.
I stayed, and ten years later, I’m still here—without the guy, ring or a family. ”
My eyes narrow. “What are you saying?”
“Maggie has an offer lined up with a major hospital system in Houston, too. It’s an incredible experience and pays a lot more than what she’d make working here.
I want her to stay, of course. I love working with her.
But if you tell her how you feel right now, before she has time to decide for herself what’s the best opportunity for her career, you might be influencing that choice. ”
I’m silent, digesting her words.
She shrugs, moving around behind the back of the hospital bed and unlocking it before we wind back through the cold, hospital hallway. The entire way I’m reminded of how right McKenna might be. Maggie's still young and should be able to make this big decision on her own without my influence.
Without me telling her exactly how much I don’t want what we have to be pretend any longer.