Chapter 13
THIRTEEN
FINN
“You”—Tessa pointed her latte macchiato spoon at me—“look like a website that someone desperately needs to refresh.”
“Yeah, baby.” Khai grinned at her. “Talk nerdy to me.” He sat beside me on a lilac bench, his legs stretched out, mirrored sunglasses reflecting traffic and sky.
I cradled my coffee in both hands—rich and strong, just what I needed and nearly as good as advertised based on Tessa’s research into affordable places with great coffee.
The tiny Italian bakery she’d picked came with flaking teal paint and too many plants stuffed onto narrow windowsills, cinnamon and warm bread scents drifting out to us every time someone left with a paper bag in hand.
“Just tired.” I barely stifled a yawn, squinting against afternoon sunlight that was bright but gentle. “Kinda feels like I’m running on fumes right now.”
“Aren’t we all?” Khai’s tone was philosophical, and yeah, true. But getting a mere three hours of sleep last night, tossing and turning, teetering between I should have stayed and no, no, I made the right call—well, it hadn’t helped.
“But some of us saved a baby yesterday,” Tessa said. She leaned forward, her smile eager and a shade longing. “What did it feel like?”
“It…” I paused and let myself sink back into it for just a moment—the shadowed unrealness of it all, how time had ceased to exist. Jesse.
“It felt like the rest of the world wasn’t even there.
Like everything else just… stopped. All the thoughts in my head.
Just—it was like there was nothing other than keeping that baby alive and breathing. ”
For a second, we sat in silence, cut only by traffic and other people’s conversations. “That’s why we do it,” Khai said then, hushed. “Isn’t it?”
“Speak for yourself,” Tessa said. “I’m just in it for the money and the bragging rights.” But her eyes, soft and wistful, betrayed her.
We moved on from there—Tessa wheedling Khai about a dance class she wanted to drag him to, with him arguing that “we have no free time as it is and we’d miss half the lessons because Devon won’t reschedule our shifts so I can learn how to waltz.”
I leaned back to listen, smiling a little even as something in me pinged hollow.
Maybe this was how they felt hearing me describe yesterday’s PICU save—not jealous, not exactly, but coated in a layer of I want that, too.
Too bad I’d tripped headfirst into the bed of a guy who embodied it’s complicated.
Again. Too bad I couldn’t even fucking talk about it when something in me seemed ready to burst.
While Khai ordered another espresso, I glanced at my phone. And—fuck. Jesse. As if he’d heard an echoed whisper of my thoughts.
Dr. Carter will take over as your supervising fellow for the rest of your rotation.
What?
My chest caved in a little. I reread the message—neutral, polite, professional. Everything we’d promised each other weeks ago on a rooftop. Everything we’d absolutely shattered last night.
I’d left, yes. But now it was Jesse slicing through the ties that still bound us.
“Hey,” Khai said. “You okay?”
I looked up, locked the phone, and put it away. Smiled. “Yeah. Just… realized that I forgot something.”
My head. Or possibly my heart.
They both studied me for a beat, then let it go—as they were meant to.
But would Eli back home have done the same?
Or would he have called me on my bullshit, insisted on the truth?
We’d been friends since fifth grade, though, so I’d be setting myself up for disappointment if I expected to find the same closeness just a couple of months into moving here.
The conversation resumed. I kept my shoulders loose and my attention on Tessa and Khai, and it wasn’t until they hopped on a bus while I started walking that I pulled out my phone again.
Jesse’s message was devoid of any personal touch. He could have sent it to a near-stranger, simply conveying a piece of information, done, have a nice day. It didn’t require an answer, so maybe I should just… let it go.
I liked Dr. Carter. If it weren’t for Jesse, I could even see myself nursing a little crush on Carter, something sweet and harmless to pass the time, easy like a smile.
No such luck.
Is this a punishment?
I wrote, then deleted it—only to type the exact same words again. This time, I hit send.
Jesse’s reply came so quickly that I wondered whether he’d been waiting for me.
No. It’s admitting that when it comes to you, I am not objective.
I stared at the words until they blurred. Then I shoved the phone back into my pocket and kept moving, joining an uncaring river of pedestrians on their way to somewhere else.
Never fast enough to escape their own selves, though.
For the first time since starting my rotation, I was running late. Cutting it close, at least. I hadn’t meant to—just, it happened. No big deal if my feet and heart felt a little heavy today.
The shift nurse pointed me toward the team room, and I tugged at my scrubs before I peeked in. Carter was there, checking labs with a focused frown. No Jesse. Already gone, probably—hands washed clean of me, no reason to linger.
Okay, no. I couldn’t think like that.
“Hi,” I said, a shade too quiet. “I was told to come find you?”
Carter looked up and over, grinned. “Good morning, minion!”
It pulled a startled half laugh out of me. “Morning. Are you allowed to call me that?”
“Look, six months ago, everyone called me ‘kid.’ This is me paying it forward. Or backward. Something, anyway.”
“Okay, that seems fair.” I stepped fully into the room and sat down when he nodded toward the saggy couch—a little gingerly, hands tucked between my knees. A bag of pretzels had spilled across the coffee table like someone had left in a hurry, oddly comforting in its normalcy.
“So.” Carter leaned back in his chair, studying me.
There was something warm and easy about him, and the way he’d told me to take a breath when the blackout hit…
Yeah. I liked him. This would be fine. Really.
“Jesse,” Carter continued, then corrected himself.
“Dr. Maddox. He told me just now I’ll be taking over as your supervising fellow. ”
Right. The official handover. Total surprise.
“Oh,” I said. “Okay, sounds good.” Then I realized it might imply there’d been a rift with Jesse. “I mean—I’m good either way. But happy to work with you.”
Carter stood and stretched out a little before he leaned against the counter, the sleeves of his scrub top pushed up to the elbows. He looked at home here.
“It’s not a slight,” he told me gently. “Maddox handing you over, I mean. In fact, consider it a compliment.”
Shit, I must have been too transparent. But then, it would be normal to seem a little hurt, right? As if I’d been pawned off on someone else.
“A compliment?” I asked.
“The reason he did it is because, in his words, you’re hard to evaluate right now.” Carter let it sit for a beat, a smile playing around his mouth. “Said he’s at risk of seeing you through rose-colored glasses after your blackout performance.”
It felt like a warm bath. “He really said that?”
“Yeah. That’s not easy to earn from a guy like Maddox—he’s not easy to impress.”
“Thanks.” I cleared my throat. “That’s… I’m flattered.”
Carter gave me a long look, then sat down on the other end of the couch, facing me. “Great. Now that that’s settled and we established you’re with me for all the right reasons…”
“Like so that you can call me minion?”
His mouth curved up. He seemed to do that a lot—smile. God, if only I could develop a fun, simple crush on him instead of this… this thing that was Jesse and me, burning bright behind my ribs.
“Among other things, yep. Now.” Carter set his elbows on his thighs. “First things first. I’d like to drop last names—there’s research that says it’s better for open communication. If you’re comfortable with that?”
“Of course, yeah.” I nodded. “I’m Finn.”
“Tay,” Carter—Tay said. “So, this’ll be a bit of a learning curve for both of us, all right? I want this to be an open loop. If I mess something up, you tell me. I’ll do the same. Deal?”
He made it sound so easy—not just the work, but everything. Like the invisible barriers between our respective roles barely even mattered. If only.
“Deal,” I said, even though I didn’t exactly see myself handing him a list of complaints.
“Good. Anything you need, you come to me. Also…” He shot me a little grin. “Here’s your first task—each day, I want you to give me one thing you learned. But. Make it interesting. Something unexpected. Don’t just give me textbook knowledge.”
It startled another laugh out of me. “Like what? That the coffee machine in the break room might have been a torture device in a previous life?”
“No, that’s just common sense.” He chuckled. “Whatever you want. Dealer’s choice.”
Something inside me clicked halfway back into place.
It was different from the carefully measured, necessary professional distance Jesse and I had tried for, at least until it collapsed so spectacularly—but it wasn’t worse than that.
In fact, it was simpler, no complicated history that made every public interaction a potential minefield.
Maybe Jesse had been right to push this change.
“Then I’ll do my very best,” I said, and Tay’s expression shifted into something kind and understanding.
“I know you will. Let’s just make sure you don’t run yourself into the ground while you’re at it.”
“Thank you.” I inhaled and managed a smile that felt real, even with my head still a little heavy.
I’d be fine. This was not an exile.
Tay was a good teacher. He didn’t treat me like an idiot, but he also didn’t speak in shorthand and abbreviations the way Dr. Novak sometimes did, in sentences that only loosely resembled English, and the best I could hope for was catching at least the gist of what she said.
So why, then, did it feel like there was water sloshing through my brain three hours into my first shift with him? Must be weekend dregs latching onto the ends of my thoughts, the extra weight turning them sluggish.