Chapter 17
John
“I’ve said this before, and I will keep saying it until you hear me: we need more nurses,” John leveled at Tanya with an uncompromising gaze.
“My team is working with a skeleton crew. With the nursing shortage and increasing demands from higher-ups, we’re losing good people.
People who want to help, but are shackled by the politics of this place, and insurance companies dictating what can and can’t be done. ”
John leaned forward, snapping his reading glasses off and tossing the digital tablet filled with her charts and areas of ‘improvement’ onto the table between them.
Tanya’s lips flattened. “That is not the point of this meeting, John.”
“Then what is the point? If you want me and the people still willing to do this job to keep giving you more, I don’t see how that’s feasible.
Especially not at the rate we’re going. I can’t remember if Dr. Walsh has actually taken any time off.
He practically lives here because he doesn’t have a consistent alternate for the night shift.
Mendez, our security officer, is underwater most days, and we need at least two security officers at the door with another in the lobby.
You wanna see our performance times go up, you gotta actually participate, not walk around and critique us at every turn.
We don’t need that. We need a full staff. ”
Tanya’s shoulders straightened under her dull brown blazer. “I understand your concerns, John. I really do.” Her placating tone was not helping John’s mood.
The fact that he had to sit and endure this meeting first thing Monday morning was bad enough. But the real reason for his shitty mood was Wyatt.
John woke Sunday morning to an empty bed, after they had spent a glorious, mostly naked day in bed on Saturday, talking, making love, and napping.
It was the best day he had had in recent memory and he had hoped Wyatt would stay the whole weekend.
Maybe he should’ve just asked, but instead, he woke to an empty house.
Not a trace of Wyatt was left, as if he hadn’t even been there at all. And that hurt more than being left.
John immediately got dressed and went for a run. He had to get out of the house, to let the storm of the weekend’s intensity wash over him. Sex with Wyatt was changing his fucking brain chemistry—hell, Wyatt was changing him, and he had admitted it to him.
John took to the dirt trail behind his home, winding up through the LA hills, absorbed in his thoughts.
The pounding of his footsteps vibrated up his legs, reminding him of all the incredible things Wyatt had done to his body.
He was sore from sex alone, and yet it thrummed with something else, too—something energetic that sparkled inside his chest and burned to be released.
He sucked in the chilly, misty air, letting the run clear his mind.
When he returned home and checked his phone, sweat dripping down his neck, he heaved a disappointed sigh at the empty screen. Wyatt hadn’t reached out. And he feared he wouldn’t until he saw him at work on Monday.
John stepped into the same shower Wyatt had so carefully tended to his shaking, shivering muscles.
He sighed, dropping his temple onto the cool tile, a painful constriction forming around his heart.
He dug his fingers into his collarbone and down over his upper chest, attempting to release the tightness, but it didn’t work.
The band around his chest was unshakable.
Had he asked too much of him? Had he given too much? Had he scared him away? Fear and insecurity washed over him, leaving him unsure of what to do. John didn’t let people in for this very reason. The pain of losing them was too much. He cared too much.
John had always struggled with his emotional sensitivity throughout his life.
He was shamed for it a few times, both at school and at work.
He was told to bottle and suppress it. Doctors don’t cry, they contain.
They’re stoic, not vulnerable. They hold back their emotions, no matter how painful it is for them.
And yet Wyatt wanted to see it—feel it—hold him during it.
He wasn’t afraid of his big emotions. He was fearless.
John, feeling achingly pathetic, played the commercial of Wyatt on the screen in his living room about a dozen times that lonely Sunday, watching and re-watching him charge ahead, boldly stopping a breath away from the edge of the cliff, and feeling even more ridiculous the more he watched.
Maybe he needed to be more fearless again. John pushed his fingers into his eyes, fighting back a headache.
His phone vibrated in his pocket. Hope flaring in his limbs, John reached for the phone and saw it was his sister. He released his breath and answered it.
“Hey,” Justine said in a rush over the phone. “Sorry to bother you. I just wanted to plan Thanksgiving with you.”
He paused the commercial, slumping back into the couch. “Yeah, of course.”
“Are you working that day?”
“Yeah, of course,” he repeated with a slight tease.
She sighed, “Right. Well, maybe next weekend then, instead?”
“Sure, sounds good.”
“Your place?”
He paused. He had never hosted in his new home since his divorce—granted, he’d been living in it for over two years now and hadn’t done much to it other than the backyard and the living room. His place was bare and needed life.
“With the kids, our house is a mess, and I don’t have the energy to clean…”
“Absolutely,” he replied, cutting her off. “I’ll host, don’t worry about it.”
“Really?” She asked, unable to hold back the excitement in her tone.
“Really.”
“So… how’re things?” Justine hinted, changing the topic.
He glanced at the paused image of Wyatt, smiling beneath his black hat, sweat glistening off his perfectly tanned skin. “I’m all right.”
“Johnny.”
He leaned forward, pinching the brim of his nose, “Okay. Yeah, I’m not all right.”
“Spill, now.”
“I think…” His throat closed, and he nearly groaned. “I think I’m in love.”
“You sound like you’re being tortured!”
He chuckled, the tension easing from his chest. “It feels like it.”
“How come?” she asked compassionately.
“Because… fuck, there are so many reasons I shouldn’t be with him. He works under me—he could lose his position at the hospital, so could I. He might have to repeat his last year of residency. I might have to…”
Stop working in the ED.
The thought gave him pause, and he waited for the anxiety, the remorse of not being the attending at his hospital anymore. But nothing came. He was more concerned about Wyatt’s future than his own.
“That’s if the hospital finds out, right?” Justine asked.
He swallowed. “Yeah.”
“Big if.”
“I know.”
“What about him?”
“What about him?” John asked slowly.
“Does he love you, too?”
His eyes flicked back to the screen and his belly tightened. “I…”
I hope so.
Fuck.
He scrubbed his hand over his face, “I don’t know.”
She sighed, “Well, I think you should invite him to Thanksgiving. Let mom gush and grill him.”
“I haven’t told her yet.” Not about Wyatt, he thought, but that her son is gay.
“So? She’s a grown-ass woman. She can handle it. She’s handled far worse, Johnny. We all have. Who you love doesn't matter to us. This is your life. We’ll love you regardless. You know that.”
Emotion welled behind his eyes and he smiled, “It’s always good to be reminded.”
“I’ll remind you every day if I have to because I have to meet the man who swept my brother off his feet.” Justine paused, seeming distracted. “Sorry, I gotta run. Olive is trying to feed Jake a potato chip.”
“I love you.”
Justine’s voice was lighter as she replied, “I love you.”
He spent the rest of his Sunday organizing, cleaning, and unboxing the last of his boxes. It felt surprisingly good. He ended the day watching a football game, drinking a glass of wine, and thinking of how he was going to ask Wyatt to move in with him.
John's heart skipped in his chest at the mere thought.
This is so crazy.
And it was happening so quickly. But he wasn’t sure he cared about social expectations or norms anymore. Not when it came to his happiness. Because Wyatt made him fucking happy, and he reminded him how to take care of himself again. If that wasn’t love, he wasn’t sure what was.
“…the fact of the matter is, John, that until your performance evaluations improve, we cannot start talking about staffing issues.”
John turned his head back to the conversation in Tanya’s office, frustration eating away at his patience. “Did you even hear what you just said, Tanya?”
She blinked.
“Did you even listen to what I said?” He asked incredulously.
“How can we possibly meet your standards when we’re working purely in survival mode?
You’re lucky Dr. Samuels, Dr. Walsh, and I don’t walk out of this hospital and find somewhere else that will treat us like human beings instead of robots and listen to our concerns.
We are the best doctors in this city, and you know it.
You let us walk out because you refuse to work with us, and that will get around,” John said firmly.
“No doctor in their right mind would willingly come here and be put under the same pressures you are asking of us. I’m trying really damn hard to get you to wake up and work with me.
Because out there…” he pointed to her closed office door, toward the emergency department.
“People are going to die because you refuse to see the human element in all of this. You’re too focused on arbitrary numbers and your bottom line.
That shit doesn’t matter. You can’t tell me you got into medicine to crush a doctor's ability to save a life.”
Tanya parted her thin red lips, about to reply, then sat back, her chin jutting out defiantly.