Chapter 17 Xander
XANDER
“I can go home?” Mrs. Wilikis stares up at me with glassy eyes, clutching a tissue in her frail hand. “Truly?”
My smile warms. “Yes. Your tests came back promising, and you’ve been keeping solid foods down for over a week. Not only was your surgery successful, but you’ve improved greatly in the weeks you’ve been here, so I’m happy to get the discharge papers for you.”
“Ma, this is amazing!” Her daughter surges up from her seat and clutches her mother’s hand. “You can be home for dinner, right, Doctor?”
“Yes, of course.”
“Oh, my…” Mrs. Wilikis gasps softly and presses her tissue to her mouth. “I didn’t even dare to hope.”
“I’ll call Darren and he’ll get a turkey, we can whip up everything really quick, and it’ll be ready by the time you’re home!” Her daughter turns to me with a wide smile. “Thank you, Doctor!”
“It’s my pleasure.” With another brief smile, I exit the room and sigh softly.
Giving Mrs. Wilikis the news that she could go home on Thanksgiving is the only good thing that’s happened today.
Jules hounds me constantly about the promotion and half the staff are acting like I’m the Chief of Surgery already when I haven’t even stepped into the temporary position yet.
As great as the move would be for my career, I’m not ready.
That amount of responsibility is supposed to be for later in life when my days of holding a scalpel are over.
“Xander!”
A sudden familiar voice yells halfway down the corridor, and my heart lurches faintly, trying to work out why I’m hearing it here in the middle of my work day.
My answer comes two seconds later when I turn and my sister, Thea, launches herself into my arms.
“Surprise!”
“Thea?” My arm encircles her in a brief hug as she tightens both hers around me like she’s trying to squeeze the life out of me. “What are you doing here?”
“Visiting you, of course! I begged and begged you to come and see me for Thanksgiving and then I got tired of your excuses and decided I would come and see you instead. Soooo…” She leans back, both her hands on my shoulders, and grins. “Surprise! Happy Thanksgiving!”
It’s jarring seeing my bubbly sister in the hospital.
This place is quiet and dramatic, if not downright heartbreaking on the best of days.
Thea’s always exuding life and she burns as brightly as the sun. Mom used to say she got double the personality to make up for my lack of one.
“Happy Thanksgiving.”
“That’s it?” She pouts dramatically. “I fly all the way here to see you and all I get is a single flat Happy Thanksgiving?”
“Were you really expecting something else?”
“No,” she sighs. “I suppose not. So, when does your shift end so we can cobble together a Thanksgiving dinner? Or we could go out, but I already tried to make a couple of reservations and for a town as small as this, I didn’t expect so many people to be eating out on Thanksgiving. Oh, well.”
“Thea—”
“I could go back to your place and cook, but do you remember that Thanksgiving when I forgot to turn the oven on and we just had all the trimmings while staring at the ice cube? Or you could cook! You were always so good with your hands.”
“Thea, I can’t.”
Her hands drop away from my shoulders and her face crumples. “Are you serious?”
“You literally turned up with no warning. I have to work and I’m on call. I can’t just drop everything.”
Hurt flashes in Thea’s eyes as she sighs. “Right.”
“I’m sorry. It’s nice to see you, it really is, but if you’d just called ahead…”
“Xander, that defeats the point of a surprise visit. I get it, my hotshot doctor brother can’t spare time to eat Thanksgiving dinner with me.”
That’s not strictly true. I do have Thanksgiving plans, but they involve shitty cafeteria sandwiches snatched in the fifteen minutes my break lines up with Snow’s.
“Thea.” I gently clutch her arms. “Meet me in the cafeteria in” —checking my watch, I run a quick calculation— “forty minutes. We can have a Thanksgiving meal then.”
Her brow lifts but whatever apprehension she has at eating hospital food fades at the prospect of dinner together and she nods with a grin. “Alright, don’t be late!”
Famous last words in a hospital.
A sudden trauma from a bus collision takes up every second of those forty minutes and an hour has passed by the time I make it to the cafeteria.
Thea sits at a table near the window, her chin resting on her upturned palm, gazing out at the light snowfall drifting through the air and transforming the parking lot into a blanket of white.
As I approach, a soft touch to my elbow draws my attention.
Snow stands beside me with a warm smile on her face and several packets of pre-made sandwiches in her arms. “I didn’t know what you liked,” she says as she gazes down at her arms. “So I got ham and cheese, turkey and stuffing, smoked salmon and cream cheese, seasoned ham and cranberry and…” She squints, trying to read the last label. “Egg and cress. Any of these good?”
When she looks back up at me, my heart flutters just like it does every time I pass her in the hall or catch a few notes of her talking nearby in the hospital.
My request to calm things a little so Snow can give herself time to process everything until her test results has only increased my yearning for her.
A desire that pulses hot every second our eyes meet.
“Ham and cranberry sounds like a combination I never would have pictured in a sandwich, but I’m willing.”
“Excellent!”
“Although there has been a slight change of plans.”
“Do you have to go already?” Despite the smile on her face, she doesn’t fully manage to hide the disappointment in her eyes.
“No, but my—”
“Xander!” Thea bounds up to us with a grin and shoves at my shoulder, tucking her dark hair behind one ear.
“Forty minutes, you said. It’s been over an hour!
Do you have any idea how uncomfortable those seats are?
Who’s this?” Her curious gaze lands on Snow, who switches her smile from warm to polite.
“Thea, this is Snow. My colleague.” Such a term is a disservice to her. “Snow, this is Thea. My sister. She’s surprise visiting from Canada and arrived an hour ago.”
Snow’s brows lift to her hairline and she glances at me. In the split second our eyes meet, we have an entire conversation.
She expresses her surprise that I have a sister, who’s here in the hospital, and then acknowledges that our previously sneaky, slightly romantic dinner has just turned into a regular meal between strictly platonic friends.
“Snow?” Thea glances her over. “That’s such a cool name.”
“It’s a nickname,” Snow explains with a smile. “My name is Noelle. It’s nice to meet you.”
“Noelle. How festive. Your parents must love Christmas, huh?”
“Not exactly. I’m named after a song.” Snow chuckles softly. “It’s a long story.”
“Are you joining us for dinner?” Thea asks.
Snow’s lips already form the word no and I can see her bowing out of this, but a selfish part of me rears up first. “Of course she is,” I say quickly. “She was even kind enough to bring the food.”
Snow shoots me a confused glance, then offers her armful of sandwiches to Thea. “Take your pick!”
We sit at Thea’s table a few minutes later and dig into our respective meals with one eye on the clock.
Keeping Snow here is selfish of me, but every snatched moment with her is what is keeping me sane.
I’m like an addict who can’t go more than five minutes without a hit from her presence, so I’ll take what I can get.
She sits across from me next to Thea and quietly eats while listening to Thea talk about her amazing flight down here.
She details everything, from the food she had to the comfortable seat and even how polite the staff were.
Through it all, try as I might, I can’t keep my eyes off Snow.
She looks a little better.
Staying in my guest room seems to be helping her catch up on sleep and the cats love having her there.
I’ve been ensuring she eats at least two decent meals a day—difficult in our line of work.
It’s the little things I can do to help her while ensuring she doesn’t feed into that reckless streak she’s developed.
“What do you think?” Thea asks, and suddenly, all eyes are on me.
I finish my sandwich and tense. “About what?”
“Are you serious?” Thea groans and she glances at Snow. “How my scatterbrained brother became some leading surgeon is beyond me. He wouldn’t ever remember his own birthday, never mind listen to anything anyone has to say if he’s not interested.”
“That’s why I’m a leading surgeon. I’m interested in surgery.”
“Yeah, whatever,” Thea snorts while Snow chuckles to herself. “I was asking if you would come and visit me for Christmas since I came all the way down to see you.”
“Oh.”
“Oh, he says,” Thea groans. “Is that it?”
“I can’t make any promises,” I say. “You know how my work is. I can’t put in for time off this close to Christmas.”
“I did ask you back in March,” Thea accuses.
“I know. But… It’s difficult.”
“Plus, he’s up for a promotion,” Snow remarks, and she hides her smirk in her next bite.
So this is my punishment for making her eat with me.
“Promotion?” Thea nearly jumps out of her seat. “Why didn’t you tell me?”
“I wasn’t planning to,” I say with a warm, accusatory glance at Snow. “Until it was a done deal.”
“Dude, that’s not the point. A promotion is huge! What is it even for?”
“Chief of Surgery,” Snow answers in a flash. “In fact, he’s filling in for the position right now, technically.”
Every warm part of me wants to reach across the table and kiss her just to keep her quiet, but as frustrating as it is to hear my sister explode, I live for the amused twinkle in Snow’s eyes.
“Chief of Surgery?” Thea can barely contain herself.
“Why didn’t you tell me? This is the sort of thing you tell your sister.
You don’t keep it a secret! Are you crazy?
Do you know what this means? Also, what does the schedule look like for the Chief because I bet you could get Christmas off, right? ”
“I have to go. It was lovely to meet you.” Snow smiles warmly after a glance at her pager. She stands and fixes me with a satisfied stare. “Bye, Xander.”
“Goodbye, Snow.”
Just you wait.
I can’t punish her the way I ache to, but I will soon.
The moment she gives me the go-ahead, regardless of her test results, I will make her pay.
It’s only after I’ve spent thirty long seconds watching Snow’s ass rock back and forth as she walks away that I notice Thea has fallen quiet.
Glancing at her, her attention is also on Snow and then her eyes flick back to me.
“What was that?” she asks.
“What was what?”
“You were staring after her like a puppy watching the treat bag go back in the cupboard.”
“No, I wasn’t.”
“Yes, you were.”
“Thea.”
“Don’t ‘Thea’ me. You like her, don’t you?”
My sister is painfully perceptive to the things I’d rather she ignore. Returning to what’s left of my sandwich, I shake my head. “No.”
“You do. You have a crush!” Her smirk suddenly turns warm and she sighs. “I’m not having a go at you.”
“Sounds like it.”
“No, I’m not. I just… after Claire, I didn’t think that part of you would wake up again.”
Tightness sweeps through my chest and the sandwich turns tasteless in my mouth, so I set it down. “Are you saying I shouldn’t feel things for other people?”
“No! Oh, God, no, it’s not that. I’m saying it’s a good thing. You closed yourself off for so long, I was ready to introduce you to people as my spinster brother.”
“How cruel.”
“But accurate. You like her, don’t you?”
I lift my gaze to meet hers. “No, Thea. I don’t. I just appreciate how kind she’s being to me. Believe it or not, it’s rather lonely working here.”
Thea’s smile fades slightly and she tilts her head, unsure whether she believes me. After a few seconds, she sighs. “Alright. Sorry. You just looked so wistful.”
“You’re seeing things.”
“Maybe. Probably for the best, anyway.”
“Why?” My stomach flips. Did she see something I missed? Does she know something I’ve not noticed?
“You’re up for a scary big promotion, right? There’s no way you can ruin such a huge opportunity with something as dumb as a workplace romance.” She picks up the remains of her sandwich. “That would be career suicide.”