Chapter 15 Elias
ELIAS
The ER is slammed today. It’s an all-hands-on-deck kind of situation. The flu season has hit hard. We’re running out of beds, and at this rate, we might have to start turning patients away for them to go to another hospital.
“What were you doing before you were called in?” Dr. Warrick asks.
Winston—I should call him Winston. He’s my friend now. I need to get used to that.
He presses his forehead against the coffee machine as it groans and tries to fill up the two hundredth coffee cup this afternoon.
“I was…I was…” I stumble over the truth, unsure if I want to be that honest.
His eyes gleam with life over the dark circles and he grins. “Oh, you have to tell me now.”
I scratch the back of my head, making a sound of uncertainty.
“We have ten minutes before we have to go back out into a war zone. Spill.”
Like I’m going to tell him I was making a replica of my cock to send to a woman I’m dating that I’ve never met.
I look around the room to make sure we’re alone and pull out a chair, the legs grinding on the floor.
“Oh, this is going to be good. Yes, please. Let this be enough to get me through this shift.” Winston plops down in the seat, stirring the sugar in his coffee with a small black straw. “I’m listening.”
“You’re a bit of a gossip, aren’t you?” I smirk, finding it hilarious that Winston, such an accomplished surgeon, loves to hear what everyone else is doing.
He tosses the straw in the trash. “First, I’m not a gossip.
Gossips spread the information they find.
I listen. I hoard it. It keeps me alive during times like this.
” He crosses his left leg over his right knee, tilts his head, and waves his hand in a circular motion. A gesture that tells me to go on.
“Fine.” I lean forward, folding my arms against the table and he matches my position. “You can’t tell a soul.”
“Just to let you know, my wife doesn’t count,” he warns. “I’m immediately going to tell her.”
“Fine. Fine.” I stare at Winston, debating if I want the truth to leave my lips. He’s grinning like someone who’s about to win a jackpot. “I’m dating someone. And…I might have…I definitely probably made a replica of my cock to send her before I got called into work. So that was fun for me.”
Winston doesn’t say anything. He just sits there, blinking, staring at me while processing the information I gave him.
I lean away, drinking my coffee. “Take your time,” I say, the words muffled by the cup.
His brows pinch together in thought, his eyes drifting to the side, his mouth forming a silent “what.”
“Yes. It’s exactly what you think it is. I made a dildo of my cock to send to the woman I’m dating.”
His brows raise comically, the wrinkles deepening before he bursts into laughter, slapping a hand against his chest.
“Okay. Yep. Let it all out. Go on. Make fun of me. Go ahead. I don’t regret it. I’m actually really excited. I only have to send it to her now. I would have already if I didn’t get called in.”
“I’m not making fun of you. I didn’t expect that to be what you were going to say.” He sits back in his chair, looking thoughtfully up at the ceiling before his gaze finds mine again. “I should do that for Dove. I like the idea of—” He shuts his mouth before giving me too many details.
I smirk because I know exactly what he’s thinking. “Yep. That’s why I did it.”
He crowds the table again, forearms on the table, both hands holding the small paper cup. “So you’re seeing somebody? Who is it? Where did you meet?”
“Okay, so I’m going to need you to keep a very open mind. Before I tell you everything, I need you not to judge me.”
The curiosity flees from his face, his eyes softening. “I would never judge you, Elias.”
“Okay, I know this is weird and I know it’s insane to date someone based on the experience I’m about to tell you, but…” I smile, a real happy type of smile that I can’t stop whenever I think of her.
“But she makes you happy,” he finishes my sentence for me.
“Yeah, and I’ll be honest, Winston, I can’t remember a time where I’ve been happier than when I’m talking to her.”
“Okay? So what’s the big deal then?”
I roll my lips together, debating if I should tell him the truth or take a page out of her book and keep most of the truth to myself.
I want to tell Winston, though. If I want this place to be my home, if I want to build a home for me and any future I’ve imagined for myself, it starts with the truth.
“She texted me a few weeks ago, but I was the wrong number. She was sending pictures of herself to an ex. Long story short, we kept talking. We don’t know what the other looks like—well—we know what our bodies look like.
We haven’t shown each other our faces, and I don’t know her name.
She doesn’t know mine either. We decided to get to know each other first and then we’re going to meet. In two weeks. That’s pretty much it.”
My leg shakes with anxiety under the table. Watching Winston’s emotions ghost over his face is a movie in itself.
“You don’t know her name?”
“No.”
“You don’t know what she looks like?”
“Also, no.” I take another swig of horrible vending machine coffee.
He tilts his head and narrows his eyes. “You don’t know her name?”
“We’ve gone over this, Winston. I don’t know her name.”
“That doesn’t bother you?”
“Should it?”
His cheeks puff when he blows out a breath, and he runs his fingers through his graying hair, the ends standing up straight. “I mean, yes? No. No, a name doesn’t make a person, right? It doesn’t tell you what you need to know about them.”
I nod in agreement. “That was our thought process as well. We’ve already talked about it.”
“And not knowing what she looks like doesn’t bother you?
I mean, let’s be honest, attraction does matter, Elias.
I’m not saying looks are everything. That’s not what I’m saying, but what about desire?
Passion? Your sex life? It might be good now, but what if you meet and neither of you are attracted to the other? ”
“I don’t think that’s going to be a problem, considering…”
“Considering…what?”
“You know. Considering,” I say in another tone, hoping he catches on.
“I don’t know. Considering what, Elias?”
I raise my brows. “Considering,” I bite out through tight teeth, the door swinging open to allow the chaotic noise of the hospital in.
We fall silent when Dr. Greene passes by our table.
“Doctors.” Even her usual unamused tone is somehow littered with exhaustion.
“Doctor,” Winston and I say in unison as she presses the button for coffee.
The machine groans again, and yet it somehow spits out another cup of coffee. Why the hell do we have vending machine coffee? We need an actual coffee maker. Sure, there’s the coffee shop at the other end of the hospital, but that takes time, and time is a luxury here.
“Doctors,” she repeats as she leaves.
“Doctor,” we say again, confused as to how one word ended up being an entire conversation.
When the door shuts, Winston whips his head around and stares at me. “Okay, back to the matter at hand. Considering, what?”
“Use that big doctor brain of yours, Winston. I’ll wait.” I lift my legs and stretch them out until my feet are resting on another chair.
Luckily, it doesn’t take long for Winston to finally put the pieces together. I grin when the lightbulb turns on and his brows rise again before a large knowing grin takes over his face.
“Naughty, Elias. I would have never thought you would do that.”
I pause bringing the cup to my lips. “Phone sex?”
“Yes. Phone sex. Especially with someone you barely know. For a guy who has trust issues, you seem to trust this person a lot. Who’s to say she isn’t uploading every single photo or video you’ve ever sent to her to the internet?
What if she isn’t who she says she is? What if you meet her and it’s a middle-aged man? ”
“The constant videos she sends of herself say otherwise.”
“Come on, Elias. Think about this. This person could have videos saved.”
“They don’t. The videos we send back and forth are…vocal.”
“Oh. Oh!” His eyes round.
“But I thought about that too. Listen, I know how it sounds, okay. I’ve thought about everything you’re thinking, but you’re wrong. She’s great. She’s funny and kind, sassy and unafraid. She’s bold, and I’m really enjoying what I’m learning about her while we talk.”
“Talk,” he says, lifting his fingers to show quotations.
I toss my empty cup from where I’m sitting into the trash can on the other side of the room, making it easily.
“As long as you’re happy, that’s all that matters,” Winston adds on a more serious note. “Really. And whenever you two are ready to meet, I can’t wait to hear about it.”
“Thanks. And if you could keep this between us, and Dove, I would appreciate it.”
“Of course, Elias. I wouldn’t tell anyone about your business. You’re in control of that narrative. Again, my wife doesn’t count. I tell her everything.”
“I know. I know. That’s fine. How’s she doing with the pregnancy?”
He’s about to answer when a nurse bursts into the room, tugs her mask down to inhale a deep breath.
“We’re running out of room,” she says, exhaustion riddled in her features.
“But other hospitals are overrun too. They’re turning patients away and they’re bringing them here.
What do we do? We don’t have many beds left. ”
I know she isn’t asking me. She knows that even though Dr. Warrick is the chief of surgery, it’s his name on the hospital.
“All patients have been sent home who don’t need to be here, right?” he asks.
“Yes, but it didn’t free up enough space.”
“Then we make space. Every ounce of space we have. Use every room. Use the cafeteria. We’ll have to use all of our resources. I’ll see what I can do about getting more resources as well.”
“Thank you, Dr. Warrick.” She slips her mask back on and runs out of the room, reminding me that the real world awaits.
Vending machine coffee can’t save us now.
“This flu season is scaring me,” Winston admits, standing slow, proving how tired he is.
“Me too. I’m afraid it might be one of the deadliest ones I’ve seen.”
“You’ll need to get tested to make sure you don’t have the flu when you see your father. He wouldn’t survive the flu with late-stage liver failure.”
“I know. I don’t plan on seeing him. It’s fine. I’m fine. You’ll need to get tested too. You don’t want to take this home to Dove.”
His shoulders sag. Had he not thought of that?
“If I have to stay here and not be with my family, it might kill me. They are my everything, Elias.”
I squeeze his shoulder in reassurance. “I know. And we’ll make sure that you’ll go home to them. Okay?”
“Okay.”
We both wash our hands in the sink, then drench them in hand sanitizer and snatch a fresh mask. My reward after getting through this shift is talking to my wrong number.
Fuck. I hope she doesn’t get the flu.