Chapter 18
Silas
“You’re in a good mood today.”
I glanced up just in time to catch Violet’s tray being set down on the table across from me. She collapsed into her chair and shook out her hair from the tight bun she’d tied it up in early this morning when we’d both clocked in for the day.
Her long, dirty blonde hair was kinked in the middle from how taut her hair tie had been wrapped around the strands as they fell down her shoulders, the ends of it curling slightly, reaching right above her chest. Her cheeks were lightly flushed from the walk over here, the cafeteria’s heat still blasting high to combat against this past week’s temperature drop.
Normally, my staff avoided me during our breaks. So this was... an odd change of circumstances.
Violet sighed to herself as she grabbed the yogurt cup off her tray and shook it next to her head to mix the contents.
Dark circles were a prominent mark under her eyes, as was the slight tired slack to her expression.
Rarely, did I see her these days without her facemask, cap, and safety glasses on—a permanent addition to both of our appearances as of late.
With the weather getting cold and the roads getting slicker than normal, accidents were coming in droves, leading my entire team to pull long shifts that had us dragging our feet by the end of it, none of us having the energy to strip out of our scrubs and coverings before clocking out and heading to our cars.
While the pursuit to save lives was noble, the exhaustion certainly wasn’t.
The ends of my plastic fork bent as I stabbed it into a few more pieces of the barely dressed pasta salad that had been slopped onto my tray by one of the kitchen cooks, along with a healthy portion of mushy string beans to accompany the rest of my meal.
None of it was particularly appetizing, but calories were calories and I still had a good four hours left of this shift.
And twenty-eight hours until Wednesday evening.
Not that I was absorbing myself keeping track of that specific timeframe.
“How so?” I asked.
“You were smiling while you were on the phone earlier.”
Untrue, but I’d let her have it.
“I’m surprised it didn’t make you run out of the locker room screaming in horror.”
Her face flushed even more as she muttered a quiet, “Really?”
She struggled with peeling back the top of her yogurt, pieces of it coming off in small slivers that she flicked away quickly using her nails. A small pile of it collected on the napkin tucked under her paper plate by the time she got a good hold of a portion of it and ripped it clean.
“I was just surprised, is all,” she finally said.
How odd.
Not one of my staff had concerned themselves thus far regarding my personal life, and even less so if it had to do with something outside of hospital policy.
What did they care what I got up to in my free time?
“Again, why?”
She shrugged. “I don’t know. Maybe it’s nice to see you... happy? Since that officer was discharged, you’ve been a little...”
I paused with my fork mid-way to my mouth. “A little what, Violet.”
She busied herself with scraping off the remnants of her yogurt from the inside of the lid with her spoon, dunking it down into the pink goop once she was finished to scoop up a spoonful and bring it up to her lips. “Upset, is how I would describe it, I guess.”
“Upset,” I repeated in disbelief.
She looked at me for only a brief moment before shrugging again, slipping the spoon past her lips to lick it clean. “Claudia says ‘pissy’ but I think underneath all of that, you were sad when he got discharged.”
How in the world was I supposed to respond to that?
Denial?
Dismissiveness?
Deflection?
If I knew calling up Terran after that god forsaken text message was going to get the nurses talking, I would’ve snuck out to the parking lot before doing my bed checks.
My fault for taking the easy road by ducking into the locker room instead.
Impatience had won out, impulsivity taking over at the mere hint of Terran occupying his time with someone else.
Ridiculous, considering I wasn’t at all obligated to care who else he was seeing.
He was young, barely into his adult years.
It shouldn’t matter so long as it didn’t get in the way of our time together.
Rookie mistakes on both ends of the spectrum: taking a personal phone call where anyone walking by would overhear whatever was being said, and letting myself get riled up over some innocuous comment made by someone I was sleeping with.
He drove me nuts, as did my nursing staff.
My fork practically bent in half with how hard I slammed it down into the pile of pasta gathered on my plate. “I wasn’t aware I was the topic of gossip.”
Why the fuck would he insinuate seeing someone else?
She scooped up another spoonful. “You’re our direct higher-up. Of course we talk about you.”
Annoying. Irritating. Vexing me with petty speculations about things they had no business talking about.
“I wasn’t upset.” In actuality, I was pissed.
Pissed at him for getting into my head. Pissed at him for invading my life and enticing my friends into needling me about making nice with their fucking partners. Pissed that I was now fucking hooked hard enough to actually refuse overtime on Wednesday just to see him.
Sending him a driver to pick him up like a date to a ball.
Bringing him out to another nice restaurant in some grand effort to woo him before bringing him back to my place to fuck him senseless.
Gifting him a two hundred thousand dollar piece of jewelry so that every time he moved, he felt the metal tug against his skin and was reminded of me.
All for what?
Seeing him in more skimpy little outfits that would absolutely rot my brain again?
I was better off watching porn and getting off that way. It would curb me from ever finding myself in a situation where I let some guy invade my mind more times than my daily reminder on my calendar to eat three meals a day.
I hated that stupid little twisted up expression he got right before he came. I hated the way he grabbed onto me, pulling me closer, and those small, gasping breaths that left him with each thrust.
One time.
We’d hooked up one goddamn time.
What the fuck did he do to me?
“Fine. In a mood, then,” she amended.
As if that was any better.
“Perhaps you all would be better off spending less time talking about whatever fictional personal life you think I possess and use that energy to do faster vital checks. It would certainly help get the higher-ups off my back.”
She was quiet for a long moment, not sparing me a glance while she wormed her spoon around inside of the half-eaten cup. She finally said, “Is that an order?”
I held back a deep sigh, nearly dropping my fork to cradle my head in my hands. Instead, I rested my elbows on top of the table and pulled my hands together, letting the fork dangle between them.
She sat quietly while I watched her, not at all concerned with waiting for whatever response she was gearing up to receive.
No tense pull to her shoulders, or a worried frown tracing over her features.
A calm and collected resignation to whatever scolding she was expecting to hear roll off my tongue.
Disappointing, really, to realize that this was what had come of our professional relationship.
Rarely, did I feel the need to apologize to my nursing staff when they were all well aware of the shortcomings of my personality.
They’d all come to know from day one not to take anything I said in an off-handed manner to heart, or let it get to them when it was easily brushed off as something innocent.
Too many times had I needed to pull them aside in the beginning to explain myself and after five years as one of Ellington Medical’s lead trauma surgeons, barely anyone batted an eye anymore.
In Violet’s case, however, I’d been harsher than I meant to be that day. Triggered by Marlow pissing me off with his nagging and the over-present, looming threat of dynamics shifting into something unfamiliar and becoming a terrifyingly new normal.
And now I was doing it all over again—completely weakening internally over Terran when absolutely nothing had happened outside of my own worked up emotions getting the better of me.
Toddler behavior.
Setting my fork down, I slid my tray away from me to lace my fingers together on top of the table.
“I am sorry for snapping at you the other day. I didn’t mean to let my outside problems become internal ones with any of you.
I appreciate you keeping up a professional relationship regardless of how I upset you.
That was far more than what I deserved. And I do recognize and appreciate you, along with the rest of our team.
You all are the hospital’s backbone and should be treated as such. ”
I bounced my leg under the table. Sucking up that small amount of pride that shielded my ego from bruising wasn’t exactly pleasant.
However, I meant what I said. Despite us not having a deeply intimate relationship outside of work, she was still important and deserved to feel that way.
If not by me, then the rest of the surgical staff.
When she finally looked up from her food, she smiled. “You’re welcome. Thank you for saying all of that. I’m glad to see you’ve gotten out of your weird funk. It’s nice to see you perked up again.”
I worked my teeth against the inside of my cheek to keep from correcting her on that last bit since, in the end, it didn’t actually matter what perception they all had about my life outside of this place. What counted was that it seemed there were no hard feelings.
A positive outcome to all of this, seeing as how much time we spent together. Seventy hours a week being stuck with the same people tended to bond a unit together quite intrinsically. It made for an easier work environment, anyway.