Chapter 30
Isabelle
A few days after seeing Austin at the training facility, I woke up feeling like death.
My heart sank; we had plans today. The weekend date we had agreed on.
The one I’d been looking forward to despite being a little nervous about going from fling to actual dating. But with Austin,
it felt like an easy transition.
I rocked forward on my living room couch, where I’d landed after getting up for exactly ten minutes before my muscles dragged
me down like sandbags. I grabbed my phone and sent the text I didn’t want to have to send to Austin.
Me: I can’t see you today
Me: I’m definitely sick
I sighed and dropped my phone somewhere on the couch and tried to keep warm under the rolling shudders. Today was supposed to be a day-date at the farmers market and other cutesy things.
I dragged my weighted blanket onto the couch as another wave of icy shivers hit me. It wouldn’t be long till it was on the
floor. Because I’d spent most of last night and this morning in a cycle of blistering sweats followed by debilitating chills.
Wrapped up in warmth, I looked around at my sparse apartment and my eyes started to close again.
I was always pretty good at being alone because I could wait it out. As a teenager—when I had a private tutor teaching me
all the material I’d learn in school the next year while my friends were at summer camp—I waited for the summer to end and,
like clockwork, I was happy again when my friends reconvened at school in the fall.
As I got older and the waits became longer as my friend group thinned out because not much survived my schedule, I could always
count on Selena to show up and fill the quiet.
Alone and sick was always the worst to wait through. But I refused to call Selena and get her sick; besides, she was still
on her honeymoon.
My eyes closed and, in the warm sunlight, I fell asleep.
Hours later, a loud knock at the door woke me.
The afternoon light was overhead. I’d been asleep all morning. Did I end up ordering that soup for delivery? In my feverish
delirium, I wasn’t sure.
“Isa. It’s Austin.” His voice, heavy and low, rolled over me.
I sat up.
“Coming,” I shouted against a sandpaper throat.
Knowing he was there was like a shot of epinephrine.
My sluggish body stood and took the heavy blanket, wrapped it around me, and walked to the door.
Hoping the stimulants in the decongestants I’d taken did something to make me look less like a zombie, I ran my hand through my hair, then pulled the door open.
His eyes ran over me once.
“You’re sick,” he said out loud, like his assessment confirmed something for him.
I guessed the decongestants did nothing to cure sick-face. “What are you doing here?”
“You’re sick,” he repeated, brushing past me with whatever was in his canvas grocery bags. I closed the door behind him and
followed as he began to make himself busy at my kitchen counter.
He pulled out two large containers with what looked like soup.
My heart’s unsteady rhythm became more erratic. “You made me soup?”
“Technically, I’m injured and it’s the offseason,” he explained, pulling the lid off one container and then opening and closing a few
cabinets until he found a bowl. “I had some time.”
“You didn’t have to do that.”
I wasn’t expecting anything from him because I knew I couldn’t return much in the way of time spent. This wasn’t like the
trip abroad at a decadent wedding. Here, in reality, that attraction wouldn’t survive my schedule. It never had before.
“Well, I knew you weren’t going to ask for help,” he drawled.
I tried to steady myself enough to take a seat on one of the barstools, telling myself that I’d lean against the back of it
to keep from falling over. “I don’t need help.”
I was planning to order soup . . . until I passed out for four hours.
He looked around the sparse fridge, my apartment, and finally at me—a shivering mess wrapped in a weighted blanket.
“I know,” he said. He stopped pouring the soup in a bowl.
Without another word, he put his arm around my waist and assisted me back to the couch, pulled the coffee table closer, and
placed my legs on it. My shoulders relaxed and I leaned into the couch.
I gave him a silent smile, and he nodded.
He was giving me the dignity of not making it obvious that I could use someone here, and I tried not to revel in the feeling—knowing
it wasn’t going to be permanent, not for me.
I didn’t need a partner to help me. But the warmth that fluttered in my chest reminded me it was nice to have someone who
did anyway.
“I don’t want to get you sick,” I told him as he finished getting a bowl of soup for me and grabbing a spoon.
This was nice but this wasn’t casual territory. This was best friend territory, or relationship territory. Real relationship territory.
He chuckled and walked back over to the couch. Dropping a fluffy, beat-up old throw pillow on my lap first, he then handed
me the soup. “I’m not leaving. And it’s not like I can even play until I get cleared to by my . . .” His voice swung up playfully
and he look at me with eyebrows raised.
“I’m not your doctor.”
The steam rising from the bowl wafted with the scent of herbs; it eased my congested nose as I breathed it in. And a long, languid sip ran over my inflamed throat, soothing it. The warmth sank into my bones, and so did the sentiment.
I let out a sigh and took a few more slow sips and slurps of soup. It was so good.
“So, it’s settled,” he whispered, and flicked on the TV but kept the volume so low I wondered if he could even hear it. It
was set to operative videos of knee repairs. He was right—I loved sports medicine. It was interesting to see it, learn it,
perfect repairs, and then see the results.
We sat there like that, quietly. He mostly winced and looked away from the screen.
My appetite was essentially gone, but I managed to finish most of the bowl. I guessed I was hungry and did, sort of, need
help.
“Thank you,” I whispered.
He nodded, running his arm around my shoulders. His eyes searched my face and concern softened lines around his mouth. “Can
you take some time off if you’re feeling this beat?”
I groaned. “That’s not really how it works.”
I just got back from two weeks off, and that almost never happened in residency. The only reason I was able to line up two
weeks back to back was because I hadn’t taken a single day off in almost a year.
While technically, per the national residency accreditation standards, I had a few days off left for the year, it wasn’t like
taking them was something you did unless you were deathly ill.
“When I was a junior, one of my seniors had a crazy high fever; he looked like death but still took call for seven hours.” I repeated back the toxic cycle we were trying to break as a profession, but that didn’t mean much when I was up against an institution riddled with subconscious discriminatory beliefs.
“He still finished his call shift, signed out, then moseyed over to the ER to have his appendix removed before it burst.”
I knew how that sounded, and I was pretty sure all I had was a case of RSV or something. But I was a woman in surgery—any
extra time I happened to take would always be tinged with the idea that this was too much to handle. That I was weak. It didn’t
help when there were stories like that one repeated with reverence by your attendings.
“And that’s a story about what you should do?” he asked, confused. “If you look like this tomorrow, I’m taking you to the ER.”
I huffed a sigh, too tired and too weak to go through all the ways residency and fellowship weren’t fair. It wasn’t like other
jobs, and every time I tried to explain it to someone who didn’t go through it themselves or see someone they love do it all,
they didn’t understand.
That made Austin’s kindness all the more painful. He was trying to be there for me, but he’d get sick of it soon enough.
“Can we talk about something else?” I leaned my head onto his shoulder, the warmth from the soup beginning to weigh heavy
on my eyelids. “Did you hear from the teams?”
“Yeah, actually.” He shifted a bit. “I may be in a position to choose.”
My body felt heavier than before. That meant he was planning to go back abroad. Even though that was exactly what I was expecting to hear from the question, it still felt like a surprise.
“That’s great.” The words propelled out of me. It was great, the next logical step. “So, which do you want: Paris or London?”
“I was actually thinking maybe something else.”
I turned my head up to meet his eyes. “Yeah?”
My body eased into his.
“Now that there’s more attention on the foundation . . .” He waffled over his words and looked ahead. “I was working to get
some real capital behind the football academy idea. Well, I guess we’d call it a soccer academy. But yeah . . .”
I smiled. When we left France, it seemed like it was something he’d work on in the background, not that he’d throw himself
into it. I wondered what prompted the change.
“Paris gave me a little perspective,” he admitted.
My pulse fluttered. The muscle aches felt a little less intense. Maybe it was the tachycardia secondary to viral-illness-induced
hypotension.
Or maybe it was because I liked the idea of having him around. I liked making plans with him and the way he helped me think
about things other than work.
My heart beat a little faster. Because maybe I was getting a little attached to that feeling. I couldn’t help the tiny cloud of fear that bubbled up at that realization,
warning me the warmth blossoming in my chest would be painful to lose.
But I was tired, and I didn’t feel like chasing the happiness away just yet.
“I guess your little crush led to something good,” I answered, feeling a little delirious.
His chest rumbled with a laugh, and it chased away the momentary concern.
My eyes began to feel heavy again. The soft and hypnotic feel of his thumb moving up and down my arm slowly lulled me to sleep.