Chapter 2
Chapter two
Hot doctor real, or hallucination real?
Carina
“Apparently, it’s called a ladder,” someone whispers behind me. “Like a vertical… situation.”
“Three separate barbells?”
“On the underside. I googled.”
“No wonder he’s a goalie. Zero fear of pain.”
I stare at the computer screen in front of me, wondering how much of my surgical training was meant to prepare me for this exact moment—overhearing the entire post-op nursing team discuss Reid Hutchison’s dick piercings.
The cursor blinks on his file, which I still haven’t submitted yet.
“I was the one who had to bag them,” I say flatly, not looking up. “They’re not that impressive.”
“They are when you feel them inside you,” someone murmurs.
There’s a pause, followed by muffled snickering.
“Elodie,” I add, keeping my eyes on the computer screen, “if you’re participating in this, I will personally reassign you to hemorrhoid checks for the next two weeks.”
My favorite scrub nurse appears just inside my peripheral vision, totally unrepentant as the rest of the posse disappear. “I wasn’t saying anything!”
I glance sideways at her. “Your whole face says otherwise.”
“I was simply reacting to the fact that you, Dr. Carina Park, extracted jewelry from a very—allegedly— well-endowed man’s groin.”
“You’re not funny. And I didn’t extract them, he did.” I click ‘submit’ on the post-op summary and swivel in my seat to face her. “And I encouraged him to do that, so that you vultures wouldn’t get to do it while he was under.”
“Tell that to the nurse who just added ‘penis piercings x3—returned to patient’s care’ into the record and then asked if he needed assistance.”
“Elodie.”
“I’m just saying, you could’ve been a legend.”
I sigh loudly and swivel back to my computer. Reid Hutchison’s chart is still open on my second screen.
Vitals: Strong. No bleeding. No complications.
No reason to feel sick about it, but I do.
Not because of the procedure—that went exactly to plan—but because of who he is. What this means for him.
I knew his name before they sent his scans through. Everyone in sports medicine knows who Reid Hutchison is. He’s been anchoring the Colorado Storm’s defensive line for over a decade.
He’s a wall in the net, a monster under pressure. He’s not just good, he’s consistent. Respected. One of the best goalies in the NHL.
And he’s drafted to Team USA for the Winter Olympics in February.
Or he was.
The minute I saw the tear on the MRI, I knew.
Meniscus damage that deep, at his age? He doesn’t have a hope in hell of making the team now, not with the recovery timeline or the rehab demands, not with how close he is to the end of his career already.
No one’s said it to him out loud yet, as far as I know, but I’ve watched enough athletes go through this reality to know how it ends.
Even if he makes it back to the league before the end of the season, his Olympic shot is gone.
He’s not my patient anymore, not officially. I’m just the resident surgeon who assisted Dr. Moreno. The one who was there during the prep and held the scope during the debridement. But I read every note, watched every second of game footage I could find last night.
I know exactly what’s at stake.
Elodie shifts behind me again, sensing the mood change. “Hey. You okay?”
“Just tired.”
She doesn’t push. She knows the difference between tired and wrung out, but she also knows when not to ask.
And today’s not just about Reid Hutchison.
I still have to call the pediatric team about the eight-year-old in Trauma. The one with the osteosarcoma in his femur. We got the imaging report an hour ago—aggressive, high-grade, and already showing signs of cortical destruction.
It’s a textbook case with a textbook treatment plan.
But he’s eight. He asked if he’d be able to go to his friend’s birthday party next weekend, and his mother… She didn’t say anything. She just looked at me, her mouth slightly open, forgetting how to speak.
My stomach turns, and I scrub a hand down my face, then force myself upright to start gathering my things. I need to check on Hutchison, chase the peds team, and ideally not burst into flames from the ache in my spine.
But Elodie, as always, has perfect timing.
“Did you know Jenny thinks you’re sleeping with him?” she says casually, flicking a jellybean from her palm into her mouth.
“With Hutchison?”
She blinks. “What? No. Dr. Moreno.”
All I can do is stare because frankly, ew.
“She didn’t say it,” Elodie clarifies, a little too cheerfully. “She implied it. Passive-aggressively, of course. You know how she gets when he talks to you in full sentences.”
I groan and shove my chair back under the desk. “Unbelievable.”
“She’s just mad he respects you more than he respects her new lip gloss.”
“Her new lip gloss smells like bubblegum.”
“Mm, and he still said good morning to you before her. Tragic.”
I roll my eyes and leave the room. Jenny is exactly where I expect her to be, perched behind the reception bay just outside the surgical wing, her nails clicking aggressively against the keyboard.
Technically, she doesn’t need to be here.
Dr. Moreno’s private clinic is separate from the hospital.
But when he’s booked into an OR, she’ll find a reason to be nearby.
She’s in her signature floral blouse and a slick of her new favorite lip gloss, reapplied before every senior consult.
When I pass her desk, she doesn’t look up.
“Another successful save for Dr. Moreno?” Her purring tone always makes me want to perform a tracheotomy on myself.
“Team effort,” I say, without even glancing over.
The hospital’s break room is mercifully empty. Slightly different to our own space at the sports clinic, but when we have surgeries out of the hospital, we can’t be picky.
I pull out the sandwich I packed at six a.m. and stare at it. There’s just something about this job and eating that don’t go together for me. It’s probably the insistent feeling of nausea that exists in the pit of my stomach. Comes with the territory of being a resident surgeon, I guess.
After a few seconds, I snap a photo and text it to Heidi.
Me: Does looking at this for 6 minutes count as eating it?
She replies almost instantly, because Heidi always replies instantly.
Heidi: No. You have to actually place it into your mouth and swallow. Which is exactly what I did with my date last night. Also, are you emotionally imploding or just regular imploding?
I roll my eyes and huff a laugh.
Heidi Grant is one of the only people in my life who knows which one I’m more likely to answer.
She’s a sports PT I met on rotation two years ago, when neither of us had slept in four days and were both elbow-deep in post-op athletes and caffeine-induced existentialism.
We’ve been each other’s emergency contact ever since, and she recently started her physical therapy role out of Dr. Moreno’s clinic, so now we see each other almost every day.
She’s less cynical than me, annoyingly perceptive, has a knack for reminding me to eat, and is weirdly good at asking questions I don’t want to answer.
So I don’t answer.
Because I can still see the eight-year-old boy’s face when we told him he couldn’t go home tonight, and I can still hear his mother’s voice cracking as she quietly asked out of his earshot if he’d walk again.
And I know the surgical plan. I know it’ll be okay, or at least as okay as it can be.
But that doesn’t change the way he looked up at me earnestly and asked if he could have a blue cast, because blue is his favorite.
And that was his most important thought in that moment, not the cancer invading his bone.
It’s always the kids that get me, and it’s always when I’m alone that it hits.
Heidi knows this, too, which is why I don’t reply.
Because if I do, she’ll show up here with a protein bar and that annoying, too-gentle look that says you’re allowed to feel things, you know.
But I don’t have time to feel things.
And I need to check on Reid Hutchison.
***
It’s almost seven when I find myself outside Room 143, and technically, I’m off shift. No lab coat, no badge. Just my bag slung over one shoulder with the weight of a dozen cases. I should keep walking, but my feet don’t move.
Reid Hutchison was transferred here an hour ago from recovery. He’s in a private room, post-op vitals holding steady, no complications.
There’s no medical reason for me to be here.
But I remember his face as the anesthesia started to pull him under—how that cool demeanor of his slipped, just for a second.
I’ve seen that look before. On patients who know exactly how much they’re gambling, and what it’s like to place their entire future in someone else’s hands and hope they don’t fuck it up.
Especially ones with Olympic jerseys hanging in their closets.
I push the door open and see he’s awake. Sort of.
Flat on his back, one arm tossed over his eyes, the other resting on the TV remote he clearly doesn’t know how to use. The room’s dim, and the TV’s stuck on a sports channel highlight. He doesn’t seem to notice me.
“You’re alive,” I say.
He shifts his arm slightly, one bleary eye squinting at me before he perks up.
“Ahh, my favorite doctor came back!”
Clearly still high.
“I was curious if the anesthesia fried your last three brain cells.”
“Nah.” A faint smirk pulls at his mouth. “Still got two.”
I walk to the end of the bed, check the chart, then glance at his monitor. “Your heart rate’s a little high.”
“Can you blame me? You’re out of scrubs.”
“Yeah,” I reply, scanning the notes. “I finished hours ago.”
“You have… clothes.”
“I’m off shift.”
“You have… legs.”
I pause, then glance down at the leggings and UGG boots I pulled on after showering. “Incredible, isn’t it?”
He stares at me, suddenly suspicious. “Are you real?”
“Excuse me?”
“Are you hot-doctor real, or hallucination real?”
My mouth twitches, but I smother it. “You’re high.”
“I probably shouldn’t tell you your hair looks really fucking soft, then.”