Chapter 15 #2
Foam swirled down the sink like answers that slipped through my grasp, couldn’t focus long enough to hold onto a single one. I needed sleep, needed the light of a new day to make sense of it.
All around me, silence pressed in like a punishment.
The hiss of the door carried me straight into the fluorescent glare of overhead lights.
Pastel scrubs drifted past, much like the thoughts crowded around the back of my mind.
Exhaustion made reality lag by a step or two.
I nodded at whoever I passed, pretending I was fine, composed, collected.
The kind of person who didn’t screw everything up the second feelings got involved.
When I washed my hands, the disinfectant bit at a hangnail I hadn’t even noticed yesterday.
I’d been up since five—had bolted awake, one hand splayed across the cold half of the bed. Confused for a second until I remembered why I was alone. Why I deserved to be.
That’s for later.
My fingers were tired when I looped the mask around my ears. I set my shoulders back and went to find my patient.
Brooke’s bay was near the end of the corridor.
A big bunch of balloons sat next to the bed—probably left by her parents, who’d been threadbare with hope and exhaustion when I’d told them the news last night.
Daylight leaked through the blinds, the monitor shedding a green glow that spelled steady numbers, arterial pressure rising and falling like gentle waves.
Someone else’s heart, beating like it belonged, and this—God, this was why I did it.
Why I’d mortgaged half my twenties to on-call pagers, learned to measure life in residency checkpoints, crafted my identity out of OR lights.
This.
Reputation mattered. One wrong rumor, even a hint of favoritism—it could torch years of that grind. My career was too advanced to snap beneath me. Tay, though? A single ill-timed whisper, and his fellowship letter might read We’re sorry to inform you rather than Congratulations.
I pulled myself back into the present. “Hey there. How’re you doing?”
Brooke focused bleary eyes on me, nose cannula fogging up. “Back already?” Words raspy and slow, but coherent. “D’you, like, sleep under a desk here somewhere?”
“Not last night. Generally, though? Yeah—it’s called a call room. Very glamorous. Comes with a plastic pillow.”
Her laugh sounded rusty and a little pained. “Thought they’d offer you a coconut drink with a straw. For, you know, being some kind of hero or whatever. Send you back to paradise.”
“Two coconut drinks minimum, served with a paper umbrella. I’m high maintenance.” I adjusted her arterial-line dressing mostly to busy my hands. “Really, though—got homesick for your sparkling personality and hospital coffee.”
“Pretty sure that’s certifiable.”
“Tell HR to open an investigation.”
She snorted, then winced a little at the tug of tubes. “As long as you still remember which end of the scalpel’s sharp.”
“That’s what online tutorials are for.”
Her chuckle scraped like sandpaper, and I pressed my gloved fingers to her wrist under the pretense of checking the pulse. It was regular under my touch—as stubborn as her, yet steady and new. Relief loosened something in my chest.
“Okay,” I said. “Let’s talk next steps. You ready?”
“English, please?” While it carried a trace of her usual sass, a sense of wonder shone through—as if she was only just beginning to grasp that this was real.
“I’ll do my best. Stop me if anything is unclear.” I tapped the foot of her bed like a pen against a clipboard. “So, your heart is settling in nicely. We’ll ultrasound it this afternoon just to admire our handiwork—mostly because it’s good for our egos.”
Another sandpaper chuckle. “Knew it.”
“Then a quick CT tomorrow to make sure there’s no fluid crashing the party.” I reminded myself to skip the Latin. “Your biggest job right now is to rest.”
“Feels like I’ve been resting for a decade.” She shifted, and the IV tubing yanked as if to prove her point. A wince flitted across her face.
“Slow movements, please—the hardware’s a little touchy.” I untangled the line, palm lingering on her forearm until she seemed calm.
“Fun.” It came out croaky. “Speaking of, I hear the drugs are a riot?”
“Party of the century.” I ticked them off on my fingers. “Basiliximab to keep your immune system in line, tacro drip starting at lunch, steroids tonight.”
“That’s the stuff that’ll turn me into, like, a pufferfish with mood swings, right?”
“You really have a way with words.”
She lifted a shaky hand in response, middle finger halfway up.
I grinned. “Cute.”
Her lips tugged up into a smile that faded after a beat. Silence settled while I busied myself with adjusting her blanket, watching the rhythm on her cardiac monitor, waiting for her to put voice to whatever thoughts were traipsing through her mind. Eventually she did, words thin around the oxygen.
“So I… Uh.” A twitch of her hand. “I get to try again, right? College applications, bad dates, everything I missed. Like… a new lease on life.”
My pulse jolted like I was the one wired to a monitor.
Lease—temporary and revocable, just like how I’d kept guys: week-to-week, no extra toothbrush in the bathroom.
Charley’s voice rang clear in my mind—heart wrapped in barbed wire, a trespassers will be prosecuted sign. Healthy organ wrapped in hazard tape.
Until Tay. His I love you had kicked in the door and taken it clean off its hinges.
And I’d just… walked away. God.
I forced a steady tone. “Think bigger—a lease is temporary. This? It’s yours. No landlord, no rent. Run with it.”
Her brows drew together, eyes shining with tears that she’d hate for me to see. I got it. So I pretended to be engrossed in the monitor, numbers staggering through my mind like drunkards on the way home from a late night out, twining with half-formed thoughts. Tay. I love you. I need to go.
“Listen, menace.” I cleared my throat. “Rest, okay? Breathe. Complain about the shitty food. Essentially, that’s your entire to-do list.”
She sniffed. “Can I at least flirt with, like, the physical therapy guy?”
“Give it a few days, all right?” I checked the arterial waveform once more—stalling, really. “Buzz the nurses if you need anything. They like feeling useful.”
Her eyelids drooped a little, lashes nearly as pale as her cheeks. “So do you.”
Yeah—it was nice, being needed. But you start mistaking it for identity, and one day you look up and realize you don’t know who you are without a job to do.
I exhaled roughly, then squeezed her hand and stepped back. Time to go before my chest caved in.
Autopilot marched me out, the corridor like something out of an Alfred Hitchcock film—that weird zoom effect that stretched and closed in at once, like the walls had come alive.
I turned left at the vending machines, into the doctors’ lounge.
A thunk as the couch caught my weight. Above me, a lamp seemed to flicker in Morse code while a half-eaten bag of pretzels slouched on the side table. It smelled like adrenaline gone stale.
Brooke just… Fuck. If she could stare down a dying heart and wake up making college plans—then what fucking right did I have to hide behind audit committees and hypothetical gossip?
It felt like my ribs cracked a bit with the thought—Tay’s grin and stupid jokes, the way he doubted himself and tried to gloss it over with charm.
I…
I had made him doubt himself. Probably, almost certainly.
As if he wasn’t good enough when I—Jesus.
I’d been falling for weeks, maybe as early as that time during his rotation when I’d found him sitting at the edge of an elderly patient’s bed, just listening.
No clipboard, no checklist—just presence, and I’d watched from the doorway and thought, God, don’t lose that.
And then at the café, waving and smiling like it cost him nothing, and I…
Something in me had flinched and leaned in all at once.
Easy to ignore until now, when I’d finally hit the ground.
I tipped back into the couch, cushions folding around me like quicksand. An ugly thread of fear pulled tight—whispers in the corridors, interviewers side-eying Tay’s application. Reputation mattered in our line of work, hierarchy and competition stitched into the very fabric of our training.
But fear was… nothing, really. Not compared to the idea of losing him.
What if he’d gone out last night? Got wrecked on shots and let someone take him home—someone kind and gorgeous and emotionally stable?
Someone who flirted without flinching and said “I love you” back like it was a normal thing, not a fucking earthquake?
What if next year, Tay scrubbed in three states away, and I’d be the one still checking the cafeteria on reflex, hoping?
A sound scraped out of me, halfway between a chuckle and a sob. I blinked, eyes burning, but the room stayed fuzzy. Fuck. Less than a day, and I missed him.
I dug out my phone, thought about calling and didn’t know what I’d say. “I’m sorry. I’m an idiot. Please give me another chance to get it right.” But what reason had I given him to listen?
Instead, I opened Gregg’s last message, fingers hovering for a breath.
You free? Need to talk.
I stared, pride twitching in some distant corner of my mind.
Please.
I sent it before I could erase the last word, breath coming just a hint easier—years since I’d last asked for help, maybe since my teenage days. It felt like stepping off a ledge.
Hoping the drop was the start of flight, not the end of it.
“Okay.” Gregg scrubbed a palm over his face. Then: “No, but seriously, Dean—what the fuck?”
Steam rose from the filter machine behind us, the slightly burnt smell tickling something uneasy at the back of my throat. The incoming day team was chatting outside the break room, but for now, it was just us.