Chapter 9
Silas
The door to the scrub room swung open, voices from the OR fading as soon as the two nurses stepped out into the hallway, the door shutting behind them to seal the rest of the small transition room off from the rest of the hospital.
Nothing else, aside from the running water of the sink, could be heard.
Silence after a successful surgery was always blissful. One would argue nirvana-like.
No somber mood of a patient lost to sour the rest of the day. No stress of having to go out into the waiting room to inform the family of the tragedy or ask permission for additional palliative care.
For all intents and purposes, this Monday was shaping up to be decent.
My nails hurt from scrubbing under them so vigorously, the water from the faucet stinging as I ran them under the hot stream.
Even through the pain, the ritual needed to be complete, the dirt and grime long since washed away still feeling prevalent underneath the nail beds, bothering me to the point of hyperfocus.
A rather annoying symptom of a much larger problem I’d been ignoring since Sunday. Persistent and irritating. Not at all washed away no matter what I’d tried fixating on to move on from it.
Thoughts were seldom to haunt me. Even less to follow me home after leaving my place of work and driving me into fitful sleeps that felt as wasteful as staying up the entire night.
At least if I had done that, I could’ve gotten some work done.
Buried myself inside some medical texts and worked my brain hard enough to fall into a dreamless sleep on the couch until my alarm went off in the other room.
Instead, my ceiling had been the source of my entertainment for the past two nights. The rotation of the fan mocking me with each slow pass of the blades. A rich man’s version of counting sheep.
At this rate, I was beginning to suspect some kind of sickness had infected me—wormed into my brain in the same way syphilis did, or those stupid zombie movies Marlow loved to force Avery and I to watch with him once a month religiously.
At no point in my life had I ever suffered from something similar.
My almost near-death illness in Switzerland hadn’t come close to the amount of sleep I was losing over this entire situation.
At least back then, there was an excuse for the erratic behavior I was experiencing.
Here in the present, there was no such justification outside of dizzying need.
That soft inhale he’d taken when my impulse to squeeze his waist had taken over. The muscles of his stomach twitching under my touch while running my fingers over them under the guise of inspecting his incisions.
At no point had I stopped myself when inspection morphed into curiosity.
My oath as a doctor quickly being stripped away the second he’d slapped a hand over his mouth to cover up the soft sounds of what I could only guess was a moan, pulling me into the foggy haze of dominance that was supposed to be left at the front door of the hospital.
This was no place to experience sexual attraction, no matter how desirable the man under my care was, no matter how sensitive he seemed to the slightest brush of a hand over his bare skin.
What would he be like all dressed up—
The water scalded my skin as I shoved my hands under the spray again.
These racing thoughts that were driving me fucking mad.
I didn’t want.
I took.
Desire and yearning were for romantics. Something I’d never be—refused to.
“Dr. Montgomery…” The door swung shut behind Violet, her soft footsteps scuffing against the tiled floor toward me. Worst of all, I hadn’t noticed it opening in the first place, far too distracted yet again. “Terran Bishop is asking for a follow-up.”
“Discharge him.”
She reared back, clearly surprised by the quick decision. “You think he’s recovered enough for that? We just upped his pain meds yesterday. I don’t think—”
He’d live. That was all that actually mattered.
He needed to get out of my fucking hospital ASAP.
Shutting off the water, I wrung my sore hands out twice before reaching for one of the paper towel dispensers hanging off the way, snagging two. “Do you get paid to question me?”
Her face fell instantly. There was a beat of silence that passed between us, picked up by neither of us to mend the bridge that had clearly just been scalded. “I’ll draft up the paperwork for you to sign.”
She spun around on her heel, marching back out into the hallway while shoving at the door to the scrub room hard enough to bang against the frame once it boomeranged back. Under normal circumstances, I’d be pulling her to the side to talk to her about her attitude problem.
Considering it was my fault this time around… I’d let it slide.
At least for the day.
Tomorrow would be a different story.
As I tossed the paper towels into the trash, the prevalent headache that had followed me into work this morning from lack of sleep still throbbed at the back of my skull.
Ibuprofen had done shit and acetaminophen was fucking useless.
I was stuck with it until I went home and crashed. When that would be, I had no clue.
My seventy-seven hour stretch rotation was only forty-nine deep at this point.
With the ER dead since yesterday, I had time to snag one of the cots in the on-call rooms to pass out on for an hour or so, but given how wired I still felt, even after surgery, there was no doubt my ceiling fan debacle would turn into a fun game of counting footsteps passing by the doorway.
The pager on my hip buzzed, forcing me to shoulder the door to the scrub room open while slipping it off the waistband of my scrubs. The display read a 45 code, detouring me to the nurse’s station to pick up the call directed for me.
As soon as I reached the desk, Beth flashed me a smile. “Morning, Doctor.”
Behind her, Violet made a show of turning her back toward me, half bent over the tablet in front of her as she filled out what looked like the discharge papers for Bishop.
Her being angry at me wasn’t new, nor was the silent treatment I’d inevitably receive as a result.
All natural consequences I’d be forced to face due to my piss poor mood and taking it out on her.
Apologizing wasn’t exactly my strong suit.
Not as an excuse to remain arrogant in my opinions but more so in how difficult I found it to approach people in general.
Vulnerability was a foreign language I’d neglected to learn as a child, carrying the dysfunction with me well into my adulthood and never bothering to correct it in all that time.
Usually, running into problems was far and few. And if they did happen, I seldom cared.
Dealing with this at work, however… made things unnecessarily difficult.
But in order to properly apologize, one needed to be vulnerable to do so—opening up to the possibility of expressing emotions and deep, personal thoughts that led to the reason behind the quarrel in the first place.
Something I would absolutely, under no circumstances, do.
Least of all with a coworker.
So, at an impasse we stood.
One thing at a time, though.
I shot Beth a nod before reaching over the lip of the desk to lift the phone up onto the higher counter. The light on the second line flashed green, and I pressed it with my thumb the second I had the receiver cradled to my ear. “This is Dr. Montgomery.”
“Silas!” Marlow. “I called and texted you a few times but you didn’t pick up.”
“I was in surgery. Something wrong?”
Out of the five people in this world that I genuinely cared about, Marlow was infectiously my favorite.
We’d been friends for so long I hardly remembered a time when we weren’t.
Going from small boys, to growing teenagers, and into fully ambitious adults.
A lifetime together spent evolving into the people we were today.
Sometimes, I found it strange to have someone like Marlow attached to me.
On the rare occasions I did actually look deeper into my own self, I found it odd he’d choose to be friends with someone like me—a total and complete opposite personality from his boisterous and friendly one, exhibiting all of the traits I lacked, and at one point envied, before burying that emotion deep down into the abyss to never been seen or examined again.
I appreciated the dedication to dragging me along to whatever adventure he seemed eager to chase. Even if I made it difficult by digging my heels into the proverbial dirt.
Giving Marlow too much leeway led for a boring life. He needed some kind of adverse attention to make the carrot at the end of the stick far more desirable.
“Nah. Just wanted to invite you to dinner with Blake and me.”
Except when it came to his new relationship.
That I was still salty over.
“Dinner, huh,” I drawled.
“Come on. Even robots have to eat.”
“Technically, they would need an oil change.”
“What the fuck—shut up, you ass. Just come out to dinner with us.”
“Can’t. I’m on rotation still.”
“Okay,” he spoke slowly. “When does it end?”
“Wednesday.”
He swore softly. “You’re going to actually keel over and die from a heart attack.”
“What a perfect place to do so… at a hospital. I’d get such stellar care, don’t you think?”
“What happens if I call in a bomb threat? Does that get you off for a few hours while they investigate?”
I rolled my eyes. Leave it to Marlow to actually think of something that over-the-top as a means to give me an excuse to go to dinner with him and his boyfriend. I still hated that word.
Weren’t we too old for those things?
“He says on an unsecured line.”
There was dead silence on the other end, long enough for me to glance down at the phone dock to check that the green light was still on.
“Okay, so. Avery can get me out. He’s got a lawyer on standby.”
“I believe he has a few. Though, none that I recall are experts in posting bail for potential Homeland Security threats.”