8. Ethan
8
ETHAN
M onday morning at eight a.m., I was seated across from Howard Kratz in HR with a pen in my hand, ready to fill out the necessary forms. This time, I wasn't taking any chances. The most I'd gotten out of Lily was that she would think about it, but I knew her. I'd wear her down and she'd come back to me, and just thinking about that thrilled me.
"Please explain the nature of your relationship." Howard was a drill sergeant, but he was good at his job. I never had to deal with him much, but I knew a few colleagues who had. They'd had issues with personality conflicts or conflicts of interest, never declaring a relationship. But I trusted that he was a good man and knew hospital policy well. God knows, I went home and studied it all weekend after that dinner Friday night.
"Well, we worked together at St. Anne's. We dated for about nine months there and we didn’t follow hospital policy correctly. That led to her very unfortunate termination." I folded my hands together and left nothing out. There was no time for keeping secrets or being sneaky. This time, I was doing things the right way, even if there wouldn't be a "this time".
Howard looked up at me over the rim of his thick glasses and pursed his lips. "Termination?" he asked, brows furrowed. "I need more details, please."
"I was her superior. As a resident, she reported directly to me and we had a sexual relationship while thus employed. It was wrong, and clearly, we were punished. I know Mountain View's policy is different, and that's why I'm here. Before I even ask her out on a date, I want to let you know what's happening so we can follow the rules."
He lifted one eyebrow and his pursed lips flattened. "I appreciate that candor, Dr. Matthews. So you're not yet dating Dr. Carter?"
"No, sir, but we had drinks at the pub Friday evening after the welcome dinner and I would like to ask her out." Making my intentions known to HR felt a little like asking her father for his blessing, but it was worth it if she agreed to give me a second chance.
"Ethan, I'll let you in on a little secret. Most couples who declare their relationship don't end up sticking together. It's not that I'm a naysayer, but this place has a way of dividing couples. You seem like a smart man. Do you think it's wise to date a coworker?" His expression shifted from skepticism to compassion. He probably understood better than anyone else because he was the one who dealt with these sorts of situations.
"She works in pediatrics. I work in diagnostics. We're on different floors, different wings. We probably won't see each other at work at all. It would be like she worked in a different facility altogether. I think the relationship will stand on its own notwithstanding the fact we work in the same hospital." My shoulders were squared and he would never shake my confidence.
Howard pushed a stack of forms across the desk and nodded his head while taking a deep breath. "I believe you could pull it off with that type of confidence." His finger tapped the stack of forms and he said, "These need filled out when you believe the relationship is going somewhere. If there is a change, you can update me via email or by stopping in my office. I really wish you the best of luck."
"Thanks," I said, smiling as I picked up the forms.
With a skip in my step, I breezed out of the HR office and into the hallway. Everything about this situation felt different from before. The weight of nearly five years of depression had lifted at the sight of her, but I was on cloud nine at the thought of getting her back. I hadn't realized just how deeply losing her had affected me. Now that she was back, I felt reborn.
I stopped by my office to put the forms on my desk and field a few calls, then I headed toward the elevators in the B wing.
I didn't have Lily's number or any way to connect with her, so it made my declaration to HR seem even more premature, but I wasn't ashamed, nor was I going to chicken out. Lily had said she would think about it, and that was my foot in the door and the reason I was headed to see her right now.
Too much time had already passed for me to waste a single second waiting on her to "think about it". I knew she probably got slapped with the shock of seeing me again the way I had, and the reason she left still remained hazy. She was hurt, but why it was so devastating that she couldn't speak to me to end things properly had never been discussed. I wasn't really interested in revisiting those old wounds unless she needed to unload on me—which I'd take patiently. I knew I screwed up.
What I wanted was to move forward from here. Just the idea of having her back had me planning for my future. Mom lived in my spare bedroom now, and I had to take her to visit Dad every weekend and several nights a week. Things would be chaos, and Lily might have to understand that date night could be as simple as sitting in a retirement home while my parents visited. It was a different phase of life for me, but I was willing to do anything to make it work.
When the elevator doors slid open to me on the third floor, I walked out with pep in my step. I hadn't been so happy in years. People who passed by me smiled, probably in response to the dumb grin on my face. I couldn't make it go away and I didn't want to try. Lily made me happy all the way to my core, and I wanted the world to know.
I searched for a few minutes before one of the nurses pointed me in the right direction. Lily was with a patient, so I'd have to wait, but that didn’t mean I couldn't observe. The patient's door was cracked, and if I stood just slightly to the left of the door, I could see through the crack to where she was interacting. It was a young boy and his parents.
Lily spoke calmly and with a friendly tone. She made the patient smile and put the parents at ease like it was the simplest thing to do. Any doctor would tell you that it was challenging to bring comfort and reassurance to a patient's family, but she made it look easy. And when she wrapped up and walked into the hallway, I was there to greet her. I fell in step beside her and we walked toward the nurses' station.
"Good morning." I resisted the urge to blurt out everything I'd been doing this morning and settled for her response.
"Morning, Ethan. Can I help you with something?" She was busy scrolling through her patient files on her hospital-issued tablet, and I wanted her to pay attention to me, but I stayed patient.
"Uh, just a short personal visit. I didn't realize you were started on rounds already."
Her eyes flicked up to my face briefly before she began poring over the tablet again. "I have twenty patients to get acquainted with. It's my first real day here."
I myself had only four patients, but not many got all the way to my office. I had a specialty and I was department chair. I had people who worked for me to do my rounds. I had forgotten how big the workload of an attending physician could be in a hospital this size.
"Yeah, sorry. I guess I just forgot." I stayed in step with her as we walked up the hallway, assumingly to her next patient.
"What do you need?" she asked again, but this time she didn't look up. I was bursting with positive emotion and I didn't want to vomit it all on her. Nor did I want to get carried away with myself, because I really wanted to kiss her and pull her into one of these rooms to have the best makeup sex ever.
Instead, I steadied myself and asked, "Can we speak privately for a second?" And when she stopped, I was surprised.
"Anything you need to say to me, you can say right here." She wasn't impolite or harsh. She was being professional, and I respected that. She always had the ability to turn off the personal side of our relationship and compartmentalize better than I did. That was why we lasted so long and it worked so well. We had to hide it before, but she didn't know we didn’t have to hide it now.
I took a deep breath and blew it out with as many nerves as I could dump. "I'd really like to take you to dinner, just the two of us."
Her hair had been pulled up into a ponytail, but the curls still reached toward her ears. Her face was plain, devoid of makeup, and her signature scent wasn't wafting around the air like normal. She probably had a scent-sensitive patient. I missed that lilac and lavender scent. But she was captivating and beautiful.
"No. I don't think it will work out." The polite way she smiled could have cut like a knife, but I wasn't one to give up easily. Of course, she knew that about me.
A smile stretched my lips as I remembered the first real date we went on. We'd already been having sneaky sex in the on-call room and after hours in my parked car, but when we decided to make a go of it, I took her to a little Italian place with privacy curtains.
"Remember our first date?" I asked her, reaching for her hand. She let me remove it from her tablet and hold it as I recounted the details. "You resisted me, but I convinced you to go along with me. You thought it would screw up the dynamic we had going by making things real, but we really hit it off.
"We drank way too much and had to Uber to my place, and I made you come five times that night." I winked at her and watched her face warm to a bright pink. "I think that was the best night of my life, second only to this moment now. Please, say you'll relive that with me?"
Lily seemed nervous, biting her lip, trying to tug her hand from my grasp. But I saw the hint of curiosity and desire in her eyes. She blinked several times, and I could tell she was thinking about it. "You know how beautiful I think you are? And I just want a chance to apologize and at least attempt to make things right. Say you'll come. Just one dinner. If it's too much, I'll back off and give you space."
She audibly whimpered and glanced up the hallway, but her shoulders dropped and her head bobbled. "Fine, one dinner, but I really have to go. I have work to do."
"Great." I again resisted the urge to grab her face in my hands and kiss her. "Friday night, and I'll get you details on where and what time. I'll need your number."
She scowled, but she reached into the breast pocket of her lab coat and pulled out a card. "Here. Now go. I have patients."
I practically skipped all the way back to the elevators. It didn't matter that she looked nervous. She had agreed to dinner and I had her back. Now I just had to do my best groveling and maybe we'd get somewhere. A man could hope…