Chapter 20 #2
Dylan scurries off just as I reach Carter’s door testing the handle. Locked. I inwardly roll my eyes. Like he has anything in here that anyone would want to steal. So arrogant.
I spin around, pressing my back into the wall beside the door, crossing my feet at the ankles and my arms over my chest. I hate standing here waiting for him. I’m playing into him. Giving him what he’s after. But he just upped the ante in that OR and I can’t let that stand.
But as the minutes tick by, I start to grow restless. I could just ambush him at home, but something that’s this important, something that’s work-related, feels like it needs to be hashed out here. Not there.
And for real, I seriously need to start searching for a new place to live.
Just as I’m about to say screw it and leave, he strolls in my direction. He’s showered. The bastard showered and changed his clothes.
“I was wondering if you’d still be here waiting for me,” he drawls.
And wow, he seriously has no idea what’s coming for him. I don’t appreciate being made to feel trivial. Like my time and my words and my feelings aren’t important. Like my work isn’t valued.
“In fact, I’m shocked it’s taken you this long to seek me out.”
“You arrogant motherfuck—”
“I’d watch your mouth, Dr. Hammond,” he cuts me off sharply. “You’re speaking to your attending in the halls of the hospital you work in.”
I push off the wall, standing up tall, fury leaking from every pore.
“Dr. Fritz, with all due respect, you’re a real asshole of a boss.
And the crap you’ve pulled this week is not only uncalled for, it’s unprofessional.
As much as I’ve valued the experience and training you’ve provided me in this last year, you should know that tomorrow morning first thing I will be going to my residency adviser to request a transfer to another attending. ”
“Good,” he says, calm. Cool. But beneath that facade, his eyes are burning embers on the brink of igniting.
“Good,” I parrot in utter disbelief.
“Was I unclear? I said good. As much as I will miss being your primary attending and instructing you in the OR, I am not sorry to lose you as someone I teach and evaluate.”
I’m stunned. And hurt. So hurt my body reacts physically to the assault of his words.
I open my mouth, wanting to spew a thousand nasty things at him, but the sting of his brutal rejection cuts me out at the knees.
In my entire professional career, I’ve never been reduced to tears—and let me tell you, doctors eat their young without remorse.
It’s life and death and coddling and holding your feelings in their palm is not something that happens.
It’s The Hunger Games meets medicine when you’re an intern and young resident.
But Carter looking at me this way—utterly apathetically—telling me these things—without a hint of remorse or regret—it absolutely guts me. And I have no one to blame but myself.
“Sleeping with you was the worst mistake I’ve ever made.”
With that, I plow past him, slamming my shoulder into his arm as hard as I can so I don’t sob.
I can’t go home tonight. I can never go back there again.
What do I do now? I have nothing. Everything around me is tearing apart at the seams, inch by inch, my life is unraveling.
I don’t even know if my residency adviser can switch me.
I was pulling that out of my ass, hoping Carter would crack and soften and I’m so stupid.
Carter Fritz doesn’t crack or soften.
He’s a—
A scream wrenches from my mouth as I’m suddenly lifted off my feet, swung wildly through the air, and dropped unceremoniously with a hard oomph onto Carter’s shoulder. Right here in the middle of the damn hallway in the middle of the goddamn hospital.
“What the hell do you think you’re doing?” I cry out, slapping at his back since that’s all I’ve got to work with. Who the hell throws their resident over their shoulder fireman style in the middle of an argument?
He doesn’t answer. He just unlocks the door to his office and storms me inside, flipping on the lights as he goes, and shutting the door behind us with a swift shove of his foot. Papers go flying across the room as he clears his desk of them, slamming me down on my ass with an unforgiving thud.
“You total asshole!” I fume. “I cannot believe—”
Getting right up in my face, he booms, “You stubborn, prideful, beautiful woman. What the fuck is wrong with you?”
“Me?” I yell, shoving at his muscled, unrelenting chest.
“Yes. You. Why the fuck did it take you a week to get here?”
“What?” squawks past my stunned lips.
Carter practically rolls his eyes at me. “I’ve been torturing you for a week. A week , Grace. And it isn’t until you’re cut out of a surgery that you literally had your hands in that you finally approach me?”
“I-I…” I stutter over my thoughts. “I thought this was all punishment because of what Tony said.”
Carter half laughs-half groans. “You’ve been avoiding me.
Every time I try to talk to you, you run.
I never see you at home because you hide from me.
I put you on scut, that didn’t do it. I put you on scut for every other resident, that didn’t do it.
I had to cast you out of surgery to get you to finally acknowledge me. ”
“Carter…”
I’m so confused.
“Tell me why you’ve been avoiding me,” he demands, baiting me. “You didn’t want it to change us and you’re the one who’s changed. Tell me why.”
Only I can’t tell him why. Not the truth anyway. And I have no idea what to do about it now that I’m cornered.