Chapter 28
Icrossed the room and sat across from him.
We were quiet for a moment.
"You didn't text me," I said. Quieter now. The anger had gone somewhere in the last twenty minutes and what was left was just the thing underneath it.
"I didn’t," he said.
"For four days."
"I know."
I put my hands on the counter. "I get that you didn't know what to say. I get that you were—" I gestured at the apartment, at the general situation, at the direction his parents had just left in. "Clearly dealing with things. But I was on a couch. Thinking about your lanyard. I could have helped.”
"I know," he said.
“I wanted to help.”
I could tell that Nathan was thinking about how to respond.
"I don't—" He stopped. Started again. "Emotions are not—" Another stop.
"This is not something I've ever been good at.
Saying things. Feeling things and then saying them to another person.
" He looked at his hands. "I've been alone for thirty-five years, Wesley.
Not by accident. Not because nobody was available.
By—" He paused. "By design. It was easier.
It required less of me. I built everything around it. "
The apartment was very quiet.
"And then you," he said. To his hands. "And I don't have the system for it.
I don't have the framework. I have—" He stopped.
"I have thirty-five years of not doing this.
I didn't text you because I didn't know how to do it correctly and so I didn't do it at all.
" He looked up. "Which is wrong. I know it's wrong.
I knew it was wrong every day I didn't do it. " A pause. "I'm working on it."
I just looked at him for a long moment, and something in my chest went quiet in a way it hadn't been quiet for four days.
"Tell me now," I said. "What happened. All of it."
He told me.
The leave of absence. Three months minimum.
Paid—he said that specifically, which meant someone had been decent about it somewhere in the process.
The investigation, the review process, the conditions.
He said it the way he said everything, clinical and precise, no editorializing.
I listened without interrupting, which was new for me, which I was getting better at.
When he finished I said: "You reported yourself."
"Yes."
"Before anyone asked."
"Yes."
I sighed. "You didn't have to do that."
"Yes," he said, with the expression he used when I was saying something he fundamentally disagreed with and was choosing the precise words to say so. "I did."
"There's no way anyone would have—"
"I knew the assessment was wrong when I made it," he said. "I made it anyway. That goes on the record. That's not a negotiation."
"I pushed you into it," I said. "I said it was Dylan. I said my parents were watching. I—"
"You asked," he said. "I said yes. The decision was mine. You don't get to carry that."
"Why not?"
"Because it was my call."
"Nathan—"
"I failed you," he said.
It came out differently than everything else. Not level, not reported. Just—there, in the kitchen, quiet and direct.
"I made a medical decision that wasn't medical, and you got hurt," he said.
"Those are the facts." He looked at his hands.
"I've spent years keeping it separate. Keeping myself separate.
Because that's the only way to do the job correctly.
You can't care about the outcome and assess it honestly at the same time.
" He stopped. "My father used to say that.
About surgery. About medicine in general.
That the ones who let it in—who let the patient matter beyond the clinical picture—were the ones who eventually got someone killed. "
"Nathan," I said.
"He wasn't wrong," Nathan said. "That's the thing. He wasn't wrong, he was just—" He stopped. Started differently. "I've spent my whole life doing it the right way. Being precise. Being detached. Not letting things matter beyond what they were supposed to." A pause. "And then you showed up."
I didn't say anything.
"Portland," he said. "The reason I left there was because I'd let someone matter.
Not romantically. You remind me of him, actually.
Young, reckless, thought he was invincible.
And I let that familiarity make me careful with him in ways that weren't purely medical.
I wanted him to be okay. I wanted it to work out.
And the wanting didn't change the outcome, he'd have been fine or not fine regardless of whether I wanted it, but I carried it for years.
The idea that wanting something for a patient was its own kind of failure. "
He looked straight at me.
"And then you," he said. "I knew from approximately the first game that you were a problem.
I tried for two years to keep it where it was supposed to be and I—" He stopped.
"In that tunnel I looked at you, and I thought about your parents and your brother on the ice.
I made a decision that had nothing to do with medicine.
And you got hurt." He stared down at his hands again.
"My father would say that's what happens. When you let it in."
"Your father," I said carefully, "just sat in your living room and talked about you like you weren't there."
Nathan was quiet.
"The optics," I said. "He led with the optics, Nathan."
Nathan still said nothing.
"You've been on leave for four days. And your dad came over and asked about the committee and the timeline and the—" I stopped. "He didn't ask if you were okay. Did he?"
When Nathan didn’t respond, I asked again.
"Did he ask if you were okay?”
The pause was its own answer.
"He means well," Nathan said again.
"I know he does," I said. "I'm not—I'm not saying he doesn't." I looked at the counter. "I just think the thing he taught you. The detachment thing. I think it's cost you stuff. Like, a lot of stuff." I looked up. "And I've watched you show up for me in ways that had nothing to do with that. So."
I stopped.
Nathan was looking at me with the expression that had no wall in it.
"So," I said again, slightly less certainly, because I had run out of words and the word so was doing a lot of heavy lifting right now. "That's. Yeah. That's what I think."
"My father would disagree," he said.
"Your father," I said, "just left."
Nathan’s gaze didn’t leave my own.
"I would do it again," he said.
“What?”
"Not the clearance," he said. "I wouldn't clear you again. But the—" He stopped. "The letting you matter part. I would do it again."
I didn't say anything.
"I've been—" He stopped again. Started differently. "I've been trying to find the correct professional framework for what this is. For what you are. For the last two years." He looked at his hands. "I don't have one."
"Nathan.”
"But I don't have one," he said again. "You don't fit in any of them.
You never did. And I—" He stopped. "I stopped trying to find one," he said.
"Somewhere around the pizza place. I stopped trying to find the framework and I just—" He looked up.
"You're it," he said. "That's all I have. You're it."
It wasn't I love you.
It was so much more Nathan than I love you.
"Yeah," I said. My voice came out slightly wrong. "Okay."
"Okay," he said.
We looked at each other.
"I'm not going anywhere," I said.
"I know.”
Leo jumped onto the counter between us and sat down with the authority of an animal who had been patient long enough and had things to say.
Nathan reached over and scratched behind his ears.
We sat there for a moment in the kitchen.
"You haven't eaten," I said.
"I've been—"
"Tea is not food, Nathan."
"It was a substantial—"
"Do not say substantial tea," I said. "I will order food."
"You're supposed to be resting."
"I can rest and order food simultaneously," I said. "I'm very talented."
He looked at me for a long moment. Nathan Cross, with the leave of absence and the review and his parents having just been in this apartment and me having said things to his father that could not be unsaid, looking at me across his kitchen island.
The wall that used to be up between us was nowhere to be seen.
It hadn't been since I walked in.
"Pizza?" I said.
Something settled in his expression.
"Yes," he said.
"Okay," I said.
I ordered pizza.
Nathan made more tea.
Leo stayed on the counter between us and purred.
I was not going back to my apartment tonight.
Neither of us said that out loud.
We didn't need to.