10. Jack
10
JACK
A fter a long day, the last thing I wanted was to disappoint Leah by telling her I had to cover an on-call shift tonight, and Dana would have thrown a fit. So, having no other choice, Leah joined me at the hospital. She sat across from me at the small dinette set in the on-call room with her workbook doing her homework as I typed my recorded patient visits into my computer to keep the transcript. She was quiet and well behaved, and we'd done this a few times before now. I had a few nurses who would step in and help watch her if I got called away.
"Daddy, what's this word?" Leah asked, pushing her notebook toward me. I glanced down at the page full of English terms and their definitions. She was supposed to match the term with its meaning by drawing a line from one to the other.
"It says, 'friend'. Do you know what that means?" I pushed the book back toward her and she grinned.
"That means Sophia. She's your friend." Leah's huge smile beamed, and I found myself smiling back at her.
"Yes, Sophia is a friend. Now finish your homework so we can watch a movie." I nodded at the book, hoping she didn't bring up my beautiful infatuation again. Sophia and I had a rough week. If she wasn't being flustered and distracted by me, I was gawking and admiring her poise and beauty.
That one little kiss had been the spark that ignited the forest fire of desire I felt in my body every time someone even said her name. I tried to focus back on my recording and transcribing the conversation, but I found myself staring at the screen, not really listening. Instead, my mind was fixated on this afternoon's interaction and how Sophia brought up our one-on-one session.
I winced and pinched the bridge of my nose. I was supposed to have met with her right now, in my office. I had been so busy trying to work out arrangements for Leah to be with me that I totally forgot I was meeting with Sophia.
Glancing at the time on my screen, I shut the laptop and stood. "Baby, I have to go to my office real quick. I'll be right back. You just do your homework, okay?"
Leah didn't even look up as she said, "Okay, Daddy." Her attention was fixed on her homework and I slipped out the door.
Before I even rounded the corner, I bumped into the person I was looking for. "Dr. Chen," I said hastily, watching the stack of index cards from her hand flutter all over the hallway.
"Oh, gosh, I’m so sorry. I wasn't watching where I was going." Sophia dropped to her knees and started scooping up the cards. I crouched alongside her and helped, feeling bad for running her over.
"I totally forgot I was helping you tonight." I felt foolish kneeling in this hallway as nurses walked past watching us, though they didn't say anything to us.
"It's okay if you don't have time. I know you're pretty busy." Sophia sounded disappointed, and I felt bad for that too.
"Not at all. I just have Leah here with me. We're in the on-call room. We can go over some things there if you don't mind a seven-year-old doing her homework."
Sophia looked up at me and smiled as I handed her the stack of cards I had collected from the floor. She added them to her stack and nodded at me. "I don't mind at all. I really appreciate your taking time to help me." We both stood, and when I stretched to my full height, I realized for the first time how much taller I was than her. Her petite frame probably only rose to my shoulder. I thought it was cute.
And the way a single dark strand of hair snuck out of her scrub cap and hung by her temple made my fingers itch to tuck it behind her ear. I was used to seeing her makeup-less face and hospital scrubs, but tonight she looked more beautiful than normal. Maybe it was the lighting, or maybe I was just paying more attention.
"Should we go, then?" she asked nervously, glancing around the hallway while I stared at her like an idiot.
"Oh, uh… Yes." I turned and walked back around the corner and dipped into the on-call room. Leah wasn't at the table with her book anymore. She was on the bed with the Xbox remote in her hand, staring up at the screen mounted on the opposite wall. Her homework looked finished, and she grinned at me when I walked in.
"Daddy, what movie can we watch?" Her eyes lit up when Sophia followed me into the room and she tossed the controller and dashed over toward us. "Sophia, you're here! Want to watch a movie with me?"
I watched Sophia's eyes trace a line from Leah's face to the workbook on the table and then back to mine. She smiled and chuckled, then said, "I have to do a bit of homework. Maybe you can help me first? Then we can watch a movie. I heard there is a new superhero show."
Leah clenched her hands into fists by her face and shook a little as she grinned. "Yes! I will help. Then we will watch a movie." She reached up and snatched Sophia's hand and pulled her toward the bed. It was cute watching them interact. I shut the door and turned to see Sophia trying her hardest to sit up on the bottom bunk. Leah was able to sit up easily, but Sophia was a few inches too tall for that.
She hunched over and started sorting her cards, and I felt sorry for her. I grabbed two chairs from the dinette set and dragged them over, then positioned them so that she and I could sit facing each other while Leah sat on the bunk.
"Oh, thank you," Sophia said, blushing. She climbed off the bed and sat in the chair, and Leah took her stack of cards with a bit of authority. I'd seen the way she took charge while interacting with friends after school sometimes. I knew it was the influence of being an only child and being surrounded by adults who were constantly telling her to do things. She had a bit of an edge, but Sophia didn't seem to mind.
"Okay, we're gonna do English now. That's what I do too. My teacher, Mrs. Kaup, calls it reading, but the book cover says English . That's what my mom said." Leah spoke in such a matter-of-fact way, sounding like a grownup, that I couldn't help but chuckle.
Sophia gave me a surprised but cheeky look, playing along. "Alright, Mrs. Thornton, you're my teacher tonight. I have to know all my vocabulary words. Can you read these cards?"
Leah held one up and scrunched her nose at it. "In-ci-sion," she announced proudly, and I was surprised she could sound it out. I knew the difficulty of all of the medical terms Sophia would be brushing up on were well beyond Leah's reading level or her comprehension. Hearing her use phonetics well was impressive.
"Well done," I told her. "Now you give me the card and when Sophia says the answer, I'll tell her if she's right."
Leah handed me the card and Sophia rattled off the definition. I had to help Leah sound out several of the terms when she started to get frustrated by it. Sophia cheered her on too, encouraging her, especially when Leah got to the word "resect." Leah turned the card over and read Sophia's definition— well, most of it.
"Remove part or all of an or-gan, tiss-ue, or st… Str…" She scowled. "I can't read this word."
"Structure." Sophia tousled Leah's hair. "Hey, well done. That's a very big word for a first grader. You did really good."
Leah beamed with pride and then looked up at the TV. "Daddy, did we study enough? Can we watch a superhero movie now?" Her nose scrunched up again, and I sighed.
I looked at Sophia, who was collecting her cards, and she shrugged a shoulder and gave me an understanding look. We hadn't gotten through even half of her terms, and the real work I wanted to do with her had been pushed to the back burner. We should have been going through virtual surgeries with the simulation software on my laptop.
"It's okay," Sophia said. She tapped her cards into a neat stack and stood up. "I can just get going. We can do this next week when you're not so busy. You should have time with Leah."
"Are you sure?" I asked, standing alongside her.
Leah was scrambling for the remote. I knew she knew how to navigate to the streaming app and pick a movie, so I focused on Sophia for the moment. I felt bad that I was the one who requested this opportunity to pour knowledge into her and she was being nudged to the side because of my personal life. On the other hand, my daughter was everything to me, and I couldn’t just ignore my time with her. Not only would that make me a horrible parent, but Dana would flip out and I would feel guilty. I got so little time with Leah as it was.
"I'm sure. But thank you.” Sophia turned and walked to the door, and I followed her. After such a tense week, I had actually wanted to speak with her about that kiss and how we could move past it and be professional. I was having a hard time, but I knew if we just spoke to each other like professionals, we could establish clear boundaries and eventually, we'd move past it.
Sophia opened the door and I turned over my shoulder and said, "I'll be right there, Leah." Then I slipped into the hallway next to my intern and leaned on the wall.
"I'm sorry, Dr. Chen."
"Please, when we're off duty, just call me Sophia." She tucked her stack of cards into her pocket and pulled her scrub cap off. Her hair, which I thought was tied into a ponytail, fell in loose waves, framing her face. She was so pretty I had to say something.
"Your hair looks nice like that. I wish I could see it more often." The compliment could have been just a passing comment between coworkers, but against the backdrop of that kiss and my strong attraction, I knew it was inappropriate.
"Uh, thanks," she said, sounding uncomfortable.
"I didn't mean… I meant… Gosh, I'm bad at this." I felt foolish again for the third time tonight. "I'm sorry. It just came out. I have a hard time keeping my mouth shut." It appeared to me that if I didn't put actual physical space between me and this woman in front of me, I was going to be the one to flub up again.
"It's okay. I understand." She chewed her bottom lip and smiled. "I should go. I don't want to end up kissing you again." The blush on her face when she said that sent a zing of arousal straight to my core. I grinned and chuckled.
"Why would that happen?" I asked her, and I probably shouldn't have. But I was curious to know what she was thinking. Honesty was the only way we'd get past this weird chemistry. We had to be honest with each other and ourselves. Pretending we weren't attracted to each other was only making us more flustered. If we could just acknowledge the attraction and admit that we had to contain it for the greater good, we could move past it.
"Well, because you're only the hottest doctor on staff and every time I'm around you, I think about doing it." Sophia's shoulder bobbed and her eyes shifted away from me, but I saw the smirk.
"Yes, well I think we both feel the same way." I sucked in a breath of relief and tried to muster the courage to have this honest conversation, but before I could, a nurse called my name.
I turned over my shoulder to see her rushing up. "Dr. Thornton, there's an emergency. Car crash victim. Internal bleeding. He's not stable. Two units of O-neg hung and he's on fluids, but we have to stop the bleed or he'll die."
My brain clicked over to autopilot and I nodded. "Get Tina. I need her to sit with my daughter." Then I looked at Sophia and said, "Want to assist? I could use your keen eye on this one."
"Of course. Let's go." Sophia took off toward the surgical unit, and I took five minutes to explain to Leah what was going on.
This wasn't how I saw my night or that conversation going, but an on-call doctor has to respond quickly. The conversation would just have to wait.