Chapter 19 #4
“And the phone calls started. It hadn’t even been ten minutes when my phone started ringing.
All day, every day, it’s not an organized sign-up schedule like the match.
I couldn’t breathe, I couldn’t sleep, all I could do was answer phone calls as the lowest-ranked, malignant, rural, all combinations of diabolical programs called me to scrounge for fresh blood to ruin. ”
He’s crying now, quivering droplets streaming down his face, quivering uncontrollably. Without even realizing what I’m doing, I move with my towels, placing my hand on his knee, giving him a reassuring squeeze. He takes a shuddering breath and continues.
“That won’t be you,” he says solemnly. “I’m just your fun on the side. Where I end up has no bearing on you. Make sure programs know that.”
“I’m not perfect, either, Kane.”
He pauses his grimace for the ghost of a smile to appear. “I disagree.”
I reach my other hand up to wipe away the tears from his face, but he eases my hand away.
“I have this… lingering guilt that everything I do is wrong now,” he whispers. “That everyone who ever said they liked me lied. That all my accomplishments were just figments of my imagination.”
“I always liked you,” I say.
“Liar.”
“Maybe not at first,” I admit. “But I do now.”
I can’t stand to see him like this, so raw and exposed, baring worse than his skin to me.
“Would someone that didn’t like you do… this?” I whisper, shuffling closer.
The room feels warmer somehow, with me pressed up against him, in a different plane from where words like match, medicine, and hospital exist. Without letting myself think too deeply about it, I climb back into his lap, nestling my head against his chest. It feels as natural as breathing, as thinking, as his sweat-slicked arms wrap around my exposed skin.
I cuddle into his rising and falling chest, and his head tucks to rest on my shoulder.
Whatever invisible thread keeps tying me to him, it feels like it weaves around us now, threads encased by the same meddling fates.
“I was lucky my father’s program took pity on me,” Kane murmurs against my skin. “But even here, I’ll never be enough. I’ll always be the nepo baby daddy had to save.”
“You’ve proved yourself,” I insist. “The surgical staff can’t run without you. Anyone with a brain can see that.”
“Maybe,” he says, “but the bias remains.”
He draws back an inch. “You’re the only good thing about this place.”
That’s the second time today he’s said he’s liked me, and the sincerity of the confession warms me more than his skin. But I don’t feel surprised by it. If anything, I feel a comforting blend of protective and… relieved. Almost overwhelmed by the rush of fondness.
I lean forward, and he wraps his palm against my cheek, gently tilting my face up to meet his. It’s the softest, warmest kiss of his against me, and our bodies mold together like two puzzle pieces clicking.
It feels like coming home.
But when he pulls away weakly, it stings like a goodbye.
We stare at each other for another painful, stilted moment, and Benson uses that time to return, silently handing us two dark hoodies.
“Thank you,” Kane and I say.
“This year… did not go as I expected,” he says, laughing remorsefully. He pulls back further to look at me. “Match day approaches.”
“I don’t want it to approach,” I tell him, curling closer.
There’s no point in telling him why. Neither of us is dumb. What we don’t say out loud, we’ve already proved with our actions.
“You’ll be fine,” he insists.
And then, after a painful moment of pleading with my eyes, he says, “You’re going to be fine because you won’t be tied to me in any way.”
“Kane, we don’t have to—”
“I want to,” he says plainly, and what’s left in my heart fractures into a million pieces.
It’s happening again. The pieces of me are falling apart, but this time, I’m truly in love with him.
“Percy, you have an entire career to look forward to—”
“I don’t give a shit about my career—”
“I think you do,” he says, firmly. “I think your pride is bigger than either of us is willing to admit.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?” I cross my arms around myself, suddenly frigid again.
“Were you ever planning on telling me you almost failed a rotation because of me?”
Huh?
“I—”
How did he find that out?
“It doesn’t matter, Kane. I passed.”
“But it was your relationship with me that almost made you fail.”
“Kane—”
And ever the gentleman, he stops arguing, gently extricates me from his lap, and places me beside him. Before I can stop him, he pulls the XL one over my head.
“Hey!” I yell, lost in the cotton darkness.
One sharp tug, and my head pops back up to see him.
“You can wear it as a dress,” he says, tossing the medium one over himself. “I’ll just keep my wet shorts on.”
“Kane, I met one asshole on one rotation—”
“And you knew they had a point, which is why you never brought it up to me.”
I bite my lip. He does know me better than I thought.
But ever the optimist, I still look for a way out. “Well, let’s say—”
“Percy, you’re doing this for your sister, aren’t you?"
The world shatters.
Fragments of memories and lost hope storm over me as the furniture vanishes beneath my body. My thoughts short-circuit, electrocuting what’s left of my synapses, settling into one lone emotion: betrayal.
“Me too,” he says while I shake. “You told me yourself that family comes first…”
“How do you know about my sister?” I whisper.
The very air feels stilted, shredded.
“Ah,” he winces. “I’m sorry. I know it’s a sore spot. Bianca found out by accident. Your mom wanted a remembrance spot for her at our wedding, and she found her, who told me…”
I’ve been blocking out memories from that day that motivated me to become an OB/GYN, but they all attack me at once.
The car ride through winding back roads in the piercing black night.
My mother’s screams about how she didn’t even know she was pregnant as my father shoved her in the trunk.
My sister’s absence of screams as she came out with the rush of blood, still 30 miles from the nearest hospital…
How could Kane bring that up now?
How can he even make that horrible comparison?
She’s not even alive anymore—
I see him now, in the dark that looks as familiar as a hearse, the finality that’s as comfortable a concept as her tomb.
He’s right.
I’m not choosing him.
Not over my own match. Not over what I’ve worked for for 27 years. And especially not over my family, and the patients I’ve pledged myself to serve.
I can love my career alone.
I’m always going to choose medicine over myself.
Which means I’d have to choose medicine over him, too.
“I’m sorry, Percy,” he says, distraught. “I—”
He shakes his head. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have brought it up.”
“Your rank list won’t be affected by me,” he says, exiting the booth and extending his hand.
Tears well up in my eyes, but I don’t take his hand.
I slide right past him, ignoring his devastated expression.
“Goodbye, Kane,” I say emptily.
“Percy, I can still take you home—”
“I’ll call Hyacinth,” I say, refusing to look at him. “And she’ll drive my car to me, then back to you.”
“Percy.”
But when I run down the stairs, across the hall from the bright-eyed and bushy-tailed debutantes, he doesn’t follow me into the mournful embrace of night.
And whatever thread connects us severs with a violent and final snap.