Chapter 11
Finishing on time without bloodshed during that ENT conference, Roan signed out around six in the evening and stopped by Clarissa’s rowhouse in the resident housing called Doctor’s Row.
Her psychiatry roommate, Willow of the notorious fake-dating, let him in.
Her other roommate, second-year internal medicine resident, Simone was boiling water on the stove.
“She’s not awake yet,” Simone said, finding two packages of Ramen in the cupboard.
“Yes, she is. I borrowed this shirt from her. She’s getting dressed.” Willow stood off to one side in a pink-heart-covered shirt and was drawing hearts on her face with red lipstick.
“Is she okay?” Roan asked quietly. Clarissa’s two roommates varied in how they treated him. Simone had made it clear she was less than thrilled about the whole fake-dating of Willow mess he’d created. It was hard to tell if Simone was still angry or if she was worried about Clarissa.
“I can’t imagine she had a good time taking call in the pediatric cancer ward.” Simone dumped the noodles into the water. “You will feed her something better than this, right?”
“Of course.” Roan told himself not to be annoyed with her implying he didn’t take good care of Clarissa. He had an entire plan at his house for tonight to make her feel appreciated.
“You do feed her when she’s not being your sex slave. Or only if she’s been a good girl?” Simone covered the pot as Roan gritted his teeth.
“Ignore her,” Willow said and turned to Simone. “Sure you don’t want to come out with me tonight? Or you gonna stay in and stew with your angry, dark, stormy self.”
Simone took in her roommate’s outfit. “Pass. Me and the ramen will stew here just fine. You go cheer on the Cardiac Bypasses. Any bad Clarissa mood will be cured by Chief Sex.”
Roan didn’t deny that was what was most likely going to happen, but he was going to set Simone straight. “Yes, I will feed her first. Actual food that isn’t Ramen.”
“Will it include fruits and vegetables? A balanced meal?” Simone pressed, unable to back off, wiggling what was practically an irritated tooth.
“Why are you giving him the third degree—or the fifth degree, or the tenth degree?” Willow was taking Roan’s side. “You don’t ask Zach how he’s taking care of me.”
“Because I can hear just fine through the walls how Zach is taking care of you. And he isn’t fake dating you.” The two roommates were squaring off in a way that caused him to suspect this wasn’t the first time the conversation had occurred.
Willow threatened Simone with the open tube of lipstick. “You are such an only child. Everybody has that unapproving jerky sibling. Clarissa just happens to have a murderous Navy SEAL, and that’s his best friend who plays naughty games with his little sister.”
Roan didn’t have a comeback for any of this. She was checking off the exact reasons why he had gotten himself in this mess. “I am sorry about that. I just…” He paused. “I want this to work without him interfering.”
Willow laughed. “I am so lucky. I have a little brother and not a big brother.”
Roan noticed that Simone was watching him intently, so he added for emphasis. “I wish I hadn’t lied. I didn’t mean for this to happen.”
She shook her body like she was coming out of a trance. “That wasn’t what I was thinking about. Clarissa’s been different this year.”
He glanced up. “Different?”
Simone opened the Ramen pot and stirred it with unnecessary roughness.
“Intern year—it’s supposed to be the hardest because you’re the most tired.
Last year, Clarissa was always this ray of sunshine.
I would have believed she had Disney birds showing up to braid her hair while she sang songs with them. ”
Willow interjected, “Are there any Disney movies where the birds actually sing songs?”
“No, weirdly, they usually tweet,” Simone said, establishing that she was the resident movie expert. “A lot of mice sang. Some bears. The crows sang that one time, but they’ve been canceled. Also, that creepy suicidal firefly.”
“You said Clarissa’s different,” Roan interrupted to move back to a topic he cared about. “Is she okay?”
“Sometimes,” Simone said. Her next words had a lot of meaning. “Make her feel good.”
This time she wasn’t making a sex joke. “That’s the only thing I want for her.”
The door opened down the hallway and Clarissa came out. Her roommates abruptly changed their postures, pretending they hadn’t just been bickering or talking about her.
Roan’s heart both leapt and lurched at the sight of her. She was in a bright blue dress, and her hair was pulled back into low-slung pigtails. She erased the tiredness from her features, smiling when she saw Roan. “Hey there.”
He reached for her coat from the hook nearby and said, “You ready to go? I was just chatting with your roommates.”
She made a show of checking the expressions of both of her roommates. “Oh no. Did they ask you weird questions? I’m not responsible for that. I never talk about us, really.”
“It’s fine. They’re your friends,” Roan said, trying not to over-examine her in the context of what Simone had mentioned. Instead, he zipped up her jacket and took the notorious mittens out of her pockets. “Let’s make sure these stay in your coat this time.”
She stuck her adorable little tongue out at him and held up a photo of Tank on her phone to her roommates. “Tristan’s still sending me random text messages. If you see this guy—I sent you his picture—don’t just run, go full duck and cover.”
Willow winked. “Oh, don’t worry. I’m the world’s best secret keeper. Even better than the Harry Potter secret keepers.”
Simone re-covered the Ramen and drained the water into the sink. “Bad choice. Every single secret keeper in the Harry Potter series was terrible at their job. Becoming the secret keeper is the guarantee that the people you’re trying to keep the secret of will be dead.”
“It only happened five or ten times. Which is fewer times than sentient beings becoming Horcruxes. Well, I mean, they could also be turned into a snake sometimes when they’re not a real person. Or be a Horcrux,” Willow said.
“Okay, I am so out. You two enjoy yourselves. May the best doctor basketball team win.” Clarissa laughed at them, grinning up at Roan.
He took her arm and led her out of her row house to his waiting SUV. He even helped her into the car and made sure she was strapped in before he got in himself.
They started driving, and he was still turning over what Simone had said in his mind.
Clarissa, however, was chipper and chirpy.
“So, I got almost two hours of sleep on my last call. After, I got to go to bed for a whole eight hours, and, even though you weren’t there, it was still pretty good sleep. ”
He cracked a smile. “I promise not to keep you up too late.”
“I’m okay with it if you make it worth my while. You can review the Mallampati scores with me.”
“I don’t see how that’s kinky sexy,” he said. “Nor is it that difficult.”
“Yeah, my next upcoming lecture that I’m giving to the peds residents is pediatric airways. One more this month, then I’ll ignore all of that because I’ll be in the NICU, and Mallampati scores for airways probably doesn’t apply.”
“Newborns generally don’t have tonsils,” he agreed.
“If you’ve ever been to the NICU, sometimes they don’t even have mouths,” she said, a morbid but sad truth about the congenital deformities that came through the NICU.
He decided to take the risk of opening the pediatric cancer can of worms. “Is everything going okay with you at work?”
“There’re no issues,” she said too quickly. “Why are you asking?”
“You’re the same year as Simone, and she seems kind of tired.” He went with using a tried-and-true method of deflecting but still addressing the problem.
“She should be. Her patients have a lot higher mortality rate than mine. And second year, you’re doing a lot of the same stuff but it’s heavier,” she said in a way he did understand.
“It’s probably because you have the same amount of control as an intern with a lot more responsibility.” He saw the similar weight in a few of the surgery and intern residents, provided they weren’t hooking up with paramedics.
“We’re residents this year, no scaredy-cat interns,” she said.
“True, but as an intern, your senior residents were monitoring you and making sure you weren’t making mistakes. Now you have to monitor the interns and your own patients. Twice the work and no one is checking your work.”
“I suppose,” she agreed. “On the plus side of mistakes I’m not making, I did do something cool for a Heme-Onc patient. I introduced her to her favorite band.”
“I was unaware that was a service offered by the Child Life Department at MetroGen,” he said, though pediatrics did operate its own child-centric support activities no one else in the hospital had.
“Actually, my friend Lillian, the pediatric attending—has an in with this heavy metal band, Valkyrie StormFlyght. Familiar with them?” When he shook his head, Clarissa expanded. “They’re a big deal, and Lillian hooked us up with a video chat.”
“Hm, Lillian is Dr. Hernandez, right?” he said. Other than her roommates, he recalled Clarissa mentioning Lillian on occasion. “She’s a first-year attending?”
“Yeah. Other than getting on Steadman’s bad side, she got tied up in her office by the guy who went after me. She’s dating the cop who saved her. They’re engaged, actually. I haven’t met him yet.”
“Good for her,” he said. He couldn’t throw stones at a cop hooking up with a cute pediatrician that he’d rescued.
Clarissa seemed to be thinking about something as they continued to drive down streets, which weren’t too snowy. “And?” he asked.
“Well, I’d like to meet him and maybe have time with her and her new fiancé. Maybe like a couples’ thing. My birthday’s coming up.”
Finally, she was giving him another tidbit that he could actually do to brighten her day. He needed to take more steps beyond the sexy stuff, given she had such a gauntlet to run. Adjusting his schedule to have extra time for her and the small changes at his house weren’t going to be enough.
“How about I host a birthday party at my place for your friends. When’s your birthday?” A better boyfriend ought to have known the date, but he’d settle for rectifying this failure.
“I turn twenty-seven April 18th.” She frowned. “I’ll be on call in the NICU for it.”
She sounded pretty mournful about it. “Then I’ll have it post-call. Give me the names and numbers of your friends.”
“Seriously?”
The fact that she sounded surprised showed he had a lot of ground to make up in the boyfriend department. “How else would I get ahold of them?”
“No one who wasn’t related to me has ever thrown me a birthday party, let alone my semi-secret boyfriend. Last year, Simone gave me a cupcake from the hospital cafeteria.”
They stopped at a light near his house, and Roan wondered if he had failed to clue her in on where they stood in their relationship.
“There is no secret-boyfriend except from Tank. We aren’t hiding from the hospital.
I’m generally a private person, so not making a huge announcement isn’t a reflection of you or us. ”
“All true, especially since you’re getting flak from my roomies about our sexy times.” She glanced over at him. “Speaking of private, when is your birthday?”
“May second,” he said and added a second key fact, “I’m turning forty.”
“You old dirty dog,” she giggled. “I’ll have to make sure I plan a good surprise for you.”
“Don’t worry about it. Seeing you should be enough.” He pulled into his garage and got out, holding her hand. “I did a little redecorating. Hope you approve.”