Chapter 2
A year and a half later
“Alexa, stop,” I call out to the device we have in the corner of the OR, and immediately Taylor Swift shuts off.
Half the room groans in protest. “Ah, come on. That was the best part,” one of the nurses complains.
I grin behind my mask. “No, it wasn’t. This is.
We’re done. You can close,” I tell Jequai, the resident beside me, all business, though my heart hasn’t stopped hammering like a jackrabbit’s since I stepped foot in this OR with my first patient this morning.
Three surgeries later, it still hasn’t slowed.
The rush never gets old, but it’s also my first surgical day as an attending with this practice, so nerves are to be expected.
“But I want those stitches to be tight with perfect approximation. The last thing we need is for this patient to return with any sort of abscess or wound infection. We’ll glue the top layer. ”
Jequai does this blinky owl-eyed thing to me and then does the same to the surgical field before us. “Really? You’re sure? Dr. Limpdick never lets us do that.”
I choke into my mask. “Who?”
The intern across from the resident clears his throat, as do two nurses.
“What am I missing?” I question, searching the eyes of everyone in here since that’s all I can see over their masks. I’m too new to know if this is some sort of initiation or gag.
“Dr. Limbick.”
I snort out a laugh, my eyebrows at my hairline.
“Does he know you call him Limpdick?” I hold up my gloved hand.
“And wait, how did you get Limpdick of all names?” Then I think better of it and hold up my hand a second time.
“Never mind, I get it now. Evidently, I’m a little slow on the uptake.
Let’s get back to the patient and away from Limbick’s limp dick—a mental image I could have gone my entire life without, so thanks for that. ”
“I know right?” Jequai laughs. “I keep picturing it old and saggy—”
“Enough,” I cut in sharply. “For real, I can’t take anymore. Do you feel comfortable closing without me?”
“Yes,” Jequai promises earnestly. “We study in lab all the time. He just never lets us touch a patient and feeds us lines about how this hospital is number three in the country, and our sports medicine program is number one, and we’re here to learn.”
I scowl at that. “You’re also here to do . See one, do one, teach one. I’m letting you do one Jequai. Next time you’ll teach one to Ross over there.”
Jequai bobs his head at the intern across from us. “See? I knew she was cool when she let us both scrub in and stand patient-side. And then put on music.”
Jesus. What are the attendings doing here?
Maybe I’m in the wrong, but when I was a resident in Miami and then doing a fellowship in the UK, it was entirely hands-on with no holding back. How else do you learn? That said…
“I’m not cool. I might be the least cool person you’ve ever met. I’m boring and annoyingly type-A, and my idea of a good time is sleeping.”
“But you won a gold medal. I heard Limpdick bragging to a patient about how you were barely even fifteen when you won it for figure skating. That was you, right?”
“Yes. That was me.”
“That’s cool.”
I smirk beneath my mask at his awed tone. “Okay, I agree, that was cool, but I’m far from cool now. Back to the patient. Show me your stuff and prove to me that you deserve to be the resident on my team.”
Jequai gets to work on suturing and gluing our patient closed. And he does a damn fine job of it. By the time we scrub out, it’s late, and after I speak to the family of the patient and crack my back about fifty different times in fifty different ways, I’m more than ready for this day to be over.
I wasn’t lying about the sleeping. It’s become my favorite sport, and I’ve learned to get it wherever and whenever I can. Probably because I haven’t stopped moving since I was three. But the last year and a half of my life has been trial by fire.
I spent six months in London working with an ortho team there, and then I came back to Miami to, well, deliver my son and finish up my residency. Then I hung around the ortho floor at my hospital in Miami until I was offered the position here in Boston.
I wasn’t about to give up on my dream of becoming a sports medicine orthopedic surgeon, certainly not when I was that close to the finish line.
Nine years—including medical school—of struggling and toiling were not going to be overthrown simply because I had an epically horrendous drunken one-night stand and got pregnant.
But now Mason is almost one, and when the sports medicine orthopedic surgeons at Mass General Hospital offered me a position as a new surgeon on their team, I didn’t hesitate.
For one, it’s the premiere sports orthopedic surgery practice in the country—I mean, hello, Boston sports.
And for another, my mother and stepfather moved up here about five years ago after my stepfather retired from the NHL to become the head coach of Boston College’s hockey program.
I now have help with Mason and a place to stay until I figure out a better alternative for us.
Stretching my arms over my head, I head back toward the locker room to grab my stuff so I can get out of here. If I rush, I can make it home before my little man goes to sleep. Maybe he’ll stay up so I can read him a story or at least snuggle him a little.
“There you are. I’ve been looking for you,” Dr. Limpdick—er, I mean Limbick—says to me. “I was hoping to catch you before you left for the night. Do you have a minute?”
No. The word snags on my tongue. The very tip of it. But it’s my first week and he’s my new boss, so I can’t say no. I plaster on a saccharine-sweet smile and force out, “Sure.”
“Great. My office?” He checks but doesn’t wait for my response as he heads in that direction.
Two minutes later, I’m shutting the door behind us and taking a seat as I covertly text my mom to let her know I might not make it home for bedtime. My heart plummets when she tells me he’s had his bath and seems sleepy. Fuck. I’m the worst mother in the world.
“Wynter?”
My gaze snaps up, clearly having missed whatever he said before that. “Yes. Sorry. I was just letting my mother know I might be a bit late to say goodnight to my son.” Hint, hint, nudge, nudge.
“Right. Sure. I remember those days. My boys are all out of the house, living their own lives now, and no longer have any need for their old man other than my wallet.”
Ha, ha, ha, yes, how funny and awesome for you that you’re not a single parent with an infant and can stay at work as late as you’d like.
“Did you want to speak to me about something?” I ask, trying to temper my tone.
He sits up, clearly remembering his focus. “Yes, I did. I know you had mentioned how you wanted hockey and basketball to be your sports focus, but it’s been requested that you take on the Boston Rebels.”
I do my best not to glare or find a random sharp implement to stab his carotid with. “Football?” The word hisses past my lips with more venom than any curse word ever could, and I clear my throat, hoping it wasn’t as obvious as I’m sure it was.
“Not your favorite sport then?” He surmises with a conspiratorial grin.
Understatement of the century there, Limpdick. “Uh. No. It’s not. Who made this request?”
A gleeful light hits his eyes. “Joe Cardone.”
Just like that, my world stops along with my breathing. The now necrotic part of my heart that he used to own burns, giving me chest pain. “I’m s-sorry,” I stutter through. “Joe Cardone?” His name on my tongue causes a wave of nausea.
“Yes! Can you believe it? I didn’t know you knew him.”
“I, um. I don’t. Not really. I thought he was still coaching in LA.” It’s why I stayed on the freaking East Coast all these years.
“He was just named as the new coach for the Boston Rebels last month after they fired their last coach in the offseason.”
My insides freeze over. “Oh.” That’s all I can manage because I had no clue my biological father was living in Boston, let alone the new coach for the Boston Rebels. That’s a massive oversight on my part.
More shocking than that, how on earth did he know I was here?
Hell, I had no clue he was aware I was an orthopedic surgeon.
The last time I saw him was on my fifth birthday when I fell out of the tree in our front yard and gave myself a lovely compound fracture of my radius.
I screamed for him, but he never came, and when I finally managed to get myself inside the house, I found him in my parents' bed naked with my mother’s best friend.
She wasn’t his first mistress—just the one he was caught with.
After that, he divorced my mother and got himself transferred to another team across the country since he was still playing professionally then.
I didn’t see him or speak to him again. Not once.
Not even when I would call him and call him as a child desperate to talk to her father.
He never bothered with any of my skating events and wasn’t there when I won a fucking Olympic gold medal or when I subsequently blew out my knee less than two years later and my career ended.
He didn’t care to learn that I got early acceptance to Yale for college or that I went on to Princeton for medical school.
He had no knowledge that I was placed in a top-tier residency program.
He definitely has no clue that I got pregnant and had a kid—he likely doesn’t know Mason even exists.
As far as I was concerned, my father had completely written me off when he told me he was moving away and wouldn’t see me again for a very long time.
The best thing to come out of that birthday was the orthopedic surgeon who fixed my arm and made me fall in love with this profession.
Then there’s the man who later became my stepfather, a professional hockey player who renewed my faith in mankind—literally.
It’s his last name that I bear. It’s him I call Dad.
Certainly not Joe Cardone.