10. Greer
Greer
He’s holding fucking flowers.
Standing just past the elevator bay, looking like he stepped out of an ad in a magazine. Chocolate hair pushed off his face, curling around his ears and a few stray waves around the nape of his neck, green eyes practically golden in the setting sun, and a dusting of stubble that makes that dimple even more noticeable.
His clothes are casual enough. Just a charcoal long-sleeve sweater rolled up his forearms and nondescript khakis.
But the flowers—this gargantuan display of peonies, hydrangeas, and lilies.
I blink for a minute, not because I’m blinded by him, unlike everyone else in the lobby who not so subtly stops to stare. But because I’m not entirely sure what I’m looking at.
I narrow my eyes at him when I cross the floor. “You can’t have those in here.”
“What? Why?” Beckett’s brow creases and he looks down at the flowers, before his eyes snap back up and he offers me a lazy grin. “Are you worried people will think I’m your boyfriend?”
“No.” I reach forward and snatch them from his hand. “It’s a scent-free environment.”
“Do you not like them?”
“No—they’re—you just can’t—” I exhale, tempted to pinch the bridge of my nose but I shove the flowers back at him. “Fine, just go put them in your truck and I’ll put them in my locker after dinner.”
Beckett gives me a rueful shake of his head, before this crestfallen look takes over his face that makes me want to give him a hug or something. “I took the subway here.”
My lips part and I’m about to apologize when he cracks a grin, all of him lighting up.
He shakes his head, fingers grazing mine when he takes the bouquet back. “I’m fucking with you, Greer. My truck’s just around the corner. I’m sorry, I didn’t realize the scent rules were so strict. The last thing I need is for my carefully restored image to get destroyed on my last day if someone goes into anaphylactic shock over my flowers. I’ll leave them on the passenger seat, and you can get them later.”
Beckett holds the flowers in the air before turning and jogging out the lobby door.
He’s only gone for a few minutes—just enough for everyone lingering around to stop staring and then start again as soon as he walks back, raising his empty hands.
“Dinner?” he prompts, eyebrows lifting.
I point towards the opposite end of the lobby, and the long sunlit hallway that leads to the cafeteria. “What’s with the flowers?”
Beckett shoves his hands in his pockets, falling into step beside me. “A friend can’t bring another friend flowers?”
“Flowers aren’t friendly.” My voice is flatter than I mean for it to be, and I can hear my sister in my ear—hear Kate and Willa—telling me not to be so harsh. Just because I drew lines around myself like a child might in an attempt to make a self-portrait—scribbled and everywhere, jutting out around certain parts of my body because I can’t seem to stop giving away pieces of me—it doesn’t mean I can’t be kind.
“What’s with the commitment to business-only friendships?” He angles his head, tousled hair catching the sunlight streaming through the windows.
I glance sideways at him, and he looks curious, eyebrows furrowed and lips in this quizzical sort of line that makes him look cute instead of earth-shatteringly, Gatorade-commercial-level handsome—the kind of boy in another life I’d have run straight home each day to tell Kate and Willa all about.
I give him a small shrug. “I just don’t date.”
“Too committed to saving lives?”
Trying to save my own , I think.
But I don’t tell him that, I just shrug again and say, “Something like that.”
In addition to their commitment to ensuring high-quality food, the hospital redesigned their cafeteria to be warm, welcoming—a place families could come and not be forced to sit in uncomfortable cracking plastic chairs. It’s quite nice now. Cushy leather chairs with polished wooden arms spread out around trendy concrete tables. Waxy, impossibly green palms tower over everything in wooden planters, and the buffet line looks like something you’d find in a first-class airport lounge.
Beckett stops abruptly as soon as we round the corner. “What’s with the Michelin-Star restaurant? This is a hospital. Shouldn’t we be eating shitty egg salad sandwiches?”
I give him a pointed look and walk towards the tray line. “You know that’s not very good for recovery. There’ve been studies. Patients and their families score higher on different indexes when they’re fed well.”
“Huh.” A muscle in his cheek ticks, but he lines up behind me, hands practically dwarfing the grey plastic tray. “Well, the world is your oyster, Dr. Roberts. Don’t let cost stop you. Dinner is on me, so you can have whatever you want.”
I glance back at him. “Sorry to break it to you, but food is free for staff here.”
Beckett slowly turns away from the array of salad options to look at me with wide eyes. “What? Since when?”
“Recently, actually.” I reach forward and grab a bowl, piling it high with different leaves and greens. “It’s part of a resident wellness initiative, but we bargained to have it extended to all staff.”
He scoffs, helping himself to two separate bowls of salad. “You’re a cheap date.”
“Not a date.” I cut him a sideways look, and he holds up his hands in defeat before following me down the line, picking up a seemingly endless, and random, array of food. “Your tastes are ... varied.”
Beckett picks up his tray, barely sparing it a glance as he follows me towards the register. “As are my dietary requirements.”
“I didn’t realize a kicker would need to eat so much. Don’t you practice significantly less?” I ask, parroting back one of the endless tidbits of information my sister keeps inundating me with.
“It’s not necessarily the practice.” Beckett shakes his head, like he can’t believe me, picking up an apple from a bowl, tossing it in the air a few times before leaving it beside one of his seventeen plates. “I practice different types of kicks three times a week, at least. But it’s the workouts. I’m in the gym or stretching about double that amount.”
“Where does the reformer Pilates fit in?”
“You remembered.” Beckett smiles at me before he drops his tray and taps an index finger to his temple. “I do it a few times a week. Great for flexibility and strength. Really extends a kick.”
It makes sense, but the idea of impossibly tall—too tall for a kicker, according to Stella—Beckett strapping his muscled legs into reformer straps seems impossible.
I raise my badge and smile politely at the woman sitting behind the register. She glances at my tray before waving me on. She throws a bored look towards Beckett before blinking rapidly, a blush rising on her cheeks, and she quickly looks down, fingers slipping over the keys on her register as she rings all his food through.
Beckett reaches into his back pocket, fishing out his wallet with a grin, and I swear to god she looks like she might need to fan herself. My eyes narrow, flicking back and forth between the two of them. He pulls a nondescript black card from his wallet and holds it out to her between two fingers.
He grins when she takes it, his voice dropping an octave when she hands it back. “Thank you.”
Her voice is nothing more than a squeak. “You’re welcome.”
Practically ripping my tray off the metal rungs, I roll my eyes and tip my elbow towards an empty table in the corner of the cafeteria, pushed up against one of the giant paned windows.
Glancing back over my shoulder, I notice she’s moved from staring to texting frantically on her phone. “Are you always such a flirt?”
“I wasn’t flirting.” Beckett shakes his head, lips pulling down in confusion. “I was just being nice. Likeable.”
“You were being likeable?” I ask, incredulous. “Who tries to be so likeable they’re actively aware of it?”
He shrugs, stopping in front of the table to pull out my chair for me. “Lots of people.”
“I’m not so sure about that.” I eye him as I sit. He makes his way around the table and folds into a chair, long legs stretching out underneath.
“What can I say?” Beckett unrolls his cloth napkin and holds up his fork before stabbing at one of his two salads. “It’s how I grew up. Sarah healed, Nathaniel studied, and I became likeable. Reliable.”
“That’s...” I pause, pulling my head back. “Kind of a depressing sentiment.”
“Is it?” he asks vaguely, but he glances up at me and by the way the corners of his eyes crinkle, the way his cheek twitches—I think he knows it is.
I feel a bit like reaching across the table and telling him I understand. Maybe it’s not quite the same—but it’s close enough. He became someone else, because other people needed him to be, and I gave away pieces of myself so other people could be whole.
But I tip my head to the side, make a show of unfolding my own napkin, and start to chase the salad around my bowl like him. “I imagine it was difficult, to grow up while your sister was sick so young. We see it a lot. You know, we talk a lot about what it does to the parents, to their marriage. But no one ever talks about what happens to the other children in the home.”
Beckett makes a noncommittal noise, but I notice his fork hits the bottom of his bowl harder.
I feel like asking a bit more. Because I’m not so sure anyone ever cared enough to ask before.
But I think of all the things I don’t like to talk about and I blink at him, this man who pretends to be so carefree, who’s really, maybe, too wonderful to be so sad, before changing the subject. “How’d you become a kicker, then?”
“Do you always ask such hard-hitting questions?” He’s grinning again, but his eyes don’t seem quite as bright.
I point my fork at him. “You were the one who wanted to have dinner.”
“I was actually a wide receiver in college. Went to school in New York on a partial athletic scholarship. But I was probably never going pro. I was okay, but nothing special. The kicking thing was kind of serendipitous. I played soccer too, and one day both our kicker and punter were injured, and I stepped in. Turned out to be really, really fucking good at it.” Beckett sets his fork down and leans back in his chair, crossing his arms over his chest. The material of his sweater pulls taut over his biceps. “Kind of a stupid thing to be good at.”
“Talents aren’t stupid.”
He points to my hands. “Yours aren’t.”
“Maybe I’m bad at my job.” I shrug one shoulder, stabbing at a particularly tricky piece of lettuce. “What did you study in college?” I ask another question before he can. I can already hear the inevitable follow-up on the tip of his tongue—why did I really become a surgeon, why did I choose my specialty?
I hear the questions and I don’t want to answer them.
Beckett stays there, leaning back in his seat when he answers. “History.”
Looking up, I widen my eyes at him. “Oh no, you’re one of those.”
His lips turn down. “One of what?”
“One of those white boys who loves history a little too much.”
Beckett blinks before tipping his head back—this deep, reverberating laugh shakes the column of his throat.
It’s a picturesque sight—all of him relaxed, leaning back in this chair, laughing in this beautiful and real way with the last rays of sunlight streaming through the window.
He finally sits up, grinning at me, and the lines around his eyes crinkling, but in happiness this time. He picks his fork up and points it at me before moving onto another plate. “I will give you that one, Dr. Roberts.”
I smile at him, and it’s real.
But he asks another question before I have a chance.
“My brother said you were a fellow. What does that mean?”
“Oh.” I pause, setting down my fork carefully and flexing out my fingers. “Essentially, I’m a board-certified general surgeon. But I’m finishing up additional training in transplant surgery. I’m a second-year transplant and hepatopancreatobiliary surgery fellow. It just means I’ll specialize in abdominal organ transplants, basically. Livers, kidneys, and pancreases.”
Full lips curve into a smile, and he nods. I think he’s about to ask another question, but someone shouts his name.
“Beck!”
He glances over and he’s still smiling—it’s full of affection, but something, somewhere, seems like it’s hurting him just a bit. He raises a hand and beckons them over.
I shift in my seat just as his brother and another two oncology residents I’ve only seen in passing come to stand beside the table, coffee cups and charts in hand.
“What are you doing here?” His brother looks confused, but when his eyes land on me, his face pales. “Hi, Dr. Roberts.”
Beckett tips his chin to me, dimple popping in his cheek, and winks. “Just trying to take Dr. Roberts to a thank-you dinner. Low and behold, she invites me to a place where her meals are free. What do you guys make of that?”
“Sounds like she didn’t want to have dinner with you.” Dr. Davis grins at Beckett with a shrug, and the other two glance back and forth between us with wide eyes.
“I’m on call. I can’t leave,” I blurt, and it comes out harsher than I mean it to. All three of them pale now, and I wish I could take it back.
“So she says.” Beckett’s brows quirk up, and he throws them a good-natured smile.
The one standing on the other side of Dr. Davis peeks her head around, blonde ponytail swinging wildly—Dr. Lowe stitched into the chest of her scrubs. “Congratulations on the fellowship award, Dr. Roberts. You deserved it.”
“Oh.” I blink. “Thank you, that’s very kind.”
Beckett cocks his head, and he’s looking at me with this faint appraising smile that has his brother glancing back and forth between us, and I think there’s a false sort of understanding dawning in his eyes.
Dr. Davis takes a measured step back—he looks infinitely softer and significantly less afraid when he glances back at me. “Well, we should go.”
He practically drags them away by their elbows.
Beckett watches them before his eyes swing back to me. His voice is low, teasing. “Award?”
He looks at me like, maybe, I’ve been keeping some sort of secret from him. When really, I just forgot. It was nice when I got the email saying I was being recognized. And then it didn’t feel much like anything worth celebrating at all.
I shake my head, looking back at my salad. “It’s just a stupid, made-up award. They give them away at this gala the health network hosts each year. One fellow gets one for ‘dedication to clinical and surgical excellence.’”
“You’re a big deal, eh?” His eyes glint, and all of him looks amused.
“I’m really not.”
“You are to me.” His voice softens, and my eyes cut up to him. He clears his throat. “I meant it when I said thank you. Thank you for helping me, when you didn’t have to. These last few weeks were a lot easier because of you. I’m glad we met.”
For some reason, I think of Beckett as a child—Beckett growing up when maybe he shouldn’t have had to. Beckett smiling and laughing and grinning when maybe he didn’t feel like it. Beckett becoming this person—likeable and reliable—because he didn’t have another choice.
And I think of little me. The path carved for her that maybe she didn’t want to follow but she had to because other people needed to be whole, so she gave and gave and gave until they were.
Not quite the same, but I wonder if there’s a world out there where we grew up as next-door neighbours—where we tied cans together with string and dangled out our windows each night so we could whisper to each other and keep each other safe—little him and little me.
Not the same, but not really all that different.
I set my fork down and flex my fingers again. “I don’t date so I don’t ... I don’t have a date. You could come with me. To the gala. If you wanted. One more kick at the PR can.”
“As friends?” He tilts his head, all of him suddenly serious and the lines of his jaw looking sharper now that the last rays of the sun are gone.
“Friends. Business acquaintances.” I shrug.
He nods once, thoughtful, before grinning. “Yeah, alright. I look incredible in a tux.”
I wrinkle my nose, roll my eyes like he’s insufferable instead of funny and maybe sort of wonderful. But I’m laughing a bit when I speak. “Shut up.”
He smiles at me, entirely different and entirely radiant, before he points at my tray of practically untouched food. “Eat your food. I paid a lot for that.”