Chapter 40
Chapter Forty
Madison
I’d been avoiding the fifth floor.
Not consciously. Or at least, that was the lie I told myself.
I had cases on two and three, and the OR was on four; there was no clinical reason to take the scenic route through Cardiology.
For two weeks, I’d successfully choreographed my day to bypass Tom’s office.
Then, on Thursday afternoon, I rounded a corner and ran out of hallway.
There he was, clutching a coffee and a patient file. There was nowhere to go.
"Hey," he said.
"Hey."
We stood in the corridor as the afternoon light slanted through the window at the end of the ward, cutting through the usual hospital haze.
Around us, the hum of rolling gurneys and soft-sole shoes went on, indifferent.
He looked well. Rested. He looked like he’d processed a loss and come out the other side with his seams intact.
"You have a minute?" he asked.
We found a couple of chairs in the small waiting area at the end of the corridor, the one nobody used much except for the occasional family killing time between appointments.
Tom set his file on the low table and cradled his coffee with both hands.
He watched me with that directness that had always made it impossible to be anything less than transparent.
"I wasn't sure how things stood," he said. "Between us. I thought I'd just… ask. Rather than let it sit there." He paused, searching my expression. "Would you want to have dinner sometime? Soon?"
I studied him.
I felt the gravitational pull of it. The uncomplicated grace of the offer.
Tom was a known quantity; dinner with him was a warm room with no history to excavate.
I could say yes and slide back into something comfortable.
I could call it a life and be genuinely fine.
A part of me wanted that so badly I could feel it.
I lowered my gaze to my hands.
The problem was I'd sat at a kitchen table at four in the morning and said things I hadn't planned to say and meant all of them.
The problem was a man who I should've forgotten but hadn't, and a child who treated liking me as a basic law of the universe. I was being offered an off-ramp, but I’d already looked away.
I could feel the decision I'd already made sitting somewhere underneath all the uncertainty, quiet and inconvenient and entirely mine.
"Tom," I said.
He nodded slowly. Like he'd known before he'd asked. "Yeah," he said.
"I'm sorry."
"Don't be." He offered me a thin smile. "I think I've known for a while." He looked down at his coffee. "Since the funeral, maybe. The way you introduced us." He glanced up. "You introduced us like… like you were trying very hard not to."
I laughed. It felt silly to do it, but I couldn't help it. "Was it that obvious?"
"Only to me." He picked up his file. "Is it—are you—?"
"I don't know," I said. It was the only honesty I had left. "I genuinely don't know what it is."
He nodded. "Okay." He stood with unhurried grace. "For what it's worth, I hope it works out. Whatever it is." He said it and meant it, which was the most Tom thing he'd ever done.
I watched him move down the corridor, already skimming the file in his hand, already pivoting to the next task. I sat there for a long moment after he’d gone.
Through the window, the afternoon was shifting, the light filtering through the clouds in pale, settling streaks.
I thought about the future the way you do when you’ve just closed one door and are standing in the hallway before the next.
I didn’t know what was on the other side.
I didn’t know if what was happening with Jack was a real thing, or if the conversation that was clearly coming would change everything or end it before it started.
I didn't know if I was brave enough for any of it.
What I knew was that I’d seen the off-ramp and kept driving.
That had to mean something.
My phone buzzed in my pocket. I pulled it out to find four words from Jack.
Are you free Saturday?
I looked at his name at the top of the screen. I typed back before I’d finished deciding.
Yes.
I put the phone away and sat for a minute longer in the quiet waiting area. Around me, the hospital kept humming on. I felt as though I’d stepped off a solid ledge and into a fog where I couldn't yet see the bottom.
Then I stood up, straightened my coat, and went back to work.