Chapter Fourteen Rules of Engagement
By the time the story reached Sophia’s ears — the balcony, the rain, the unfinished sentence about words she hadn’t decided yet — Jennie had already resolved never to tell anyone anything again as long as she lived.
“You said what?” Sophia’s tray hit the cafeteria table so hard a fork bounced.
“You said ‘colleague hasn’t been accurate for a while’ and then just — left?
You left him standing there?” “I panicked.” “You panicked eloquently. That’s worse.
That’s a whole speech, Jennie. That’s not panic, that’s a declaration with a dramatic exit.
” Emma slid into the seat beside them, coffee in hand, entirely unbothered by joining a conversation already in progress.
“What did I miss?” “Jennie’s in love with Dr. Ice and made a dramatic exit before he could respond.
” “I am not—” Jennie started, and then stopped, because the sentence had nowhere honest to go.
Emma studied her for a long moment, then smiled, slow and knowing.
“Oh, sweetheart. You’ve had it bad for weeks.
We’ve all just been waiting for you to notice.
” “Okay,” Sophia said, straightening with the particular energy of a woman assembling a battle plan.
“New strategy. We’re doing this properly.
” “We are not doing anything. There is no ‘we.’” “There is absolutely a we. Rule number one.” Sophia held up a finger.
“Stop apologizing for every little thing you say around him.” “I don’t do that.
” Emma and Sophia looked at each other. Looked back at her.
“You do,” they said, in unison. Jennie opened her mouth to argue and realized, with some horror, that she genuinely could not remember the last conversation with him that hadn’t included at least one sorry, that came out wrong or ignore that, I don’t know why I said it.
“'..Fine. Maybe a little.” “Rule number two.” Emma held up a second finger. “Be yourself. Fully. Don’t perform a calmer version of you for his benefit. He already respects you as a doctor. Let him get to know the actual Jennie — the one who talks to dinosaurs and cries at K-dramas.” “I don’t cry at K-dramas.
” “You cried during a cereal commercial last week.” “That commercial was emotionally manipulative and you know it.”
Sophia raised a third finger, grinning. “Rule number three. Outside the hospital, you can call him Lin. You're already doing that, apparently, which is progress. Keep going.” “I’m not ready to call him Xing.” “Nobody’s asking you to call him Xing.
Let’s not rush the woman.” Emma laughed, then sobered slightly, her tone shifting to something gentler.
“One more thing, though. And I mean this kindly.” Jennie braced herself.
“Go on.” “Don’t confess just because you're excited,” Emma said.
“I know it feels like it’s building to something.
It is. But right now, he trusts you, he’s opening up to you, he’s happier than any of us have ever seen him.
Let him get there in his own time. Give him room to figure out what he’s feeling instead of reacting to what you’ve already figured out.
” Sophia nodded, uncharacteristically serious.
“The strongest relationships aren’t rushed.
Especially not with someone like him. You push, he retreats.
Let him come to it.” “So — no dramatic confession in a hospital corridor?” “God, no,” Sophia said.
“Save the corridor confessions for K-dramas. You'll cry, remember?”
The three of them burst out laughing, loud enough that a passing resident glanced over with mild concern — and that was, of course, the exact moment Lin Xing walked into the cafeteria.
The laughter died instantly. All three of them straightened with the guilty precision of people caught mid-conspiracy.
He raised an eyebrow, glancing between them.
“Am I interrupting something?” “Just giving Jennie some life advice,” Sophia said, entirely too innocently.
He looked, for a moment, like he might actually pursue that — and then apparently decided against it, some things clearly still being outside even his considerable curiosity.
“As long as she remembers the case presentation tomorrow,” he said instead, and turned toward the coffee machine.
“I won’t forget,” Jennie called after him, and then, quieter, to the table: “There wasn’t a step one.
What was step one supposed to be?” Sophia grinned, watching Lin Xing pour his coffee with his usual unhurried precision, entirely unaware of being observed.
“Just being yourself,” she said. “Turns out that was always the plan.”
Jennie glanced over at him — at the careful, deliberate way he moved, at the small furrow of concentration on his forehead as he checked his phone, at a man who had, in two short months, gone from a closed door to something that felt, increasingly, like an open one.
For the first time since she’d walked into this hospital, instead of trying to impress him, she simply let herself watch him.
No performance. No half-formed joke waiting to spill out of nervousness.
Just the quiet, unguarded pleasure of looking at someone she’d come to genuinely, thoroughly like. He glanced up, as if he’d felt it, and caught her watching. He didn’t look away. Neither did she.
Something passed between them across the cafeteria — brief, wordless, entirely unmissed by Sophia and Emma, who exchanged a look of pure, silent triumph — and then he offered the smallest possible nod, and turned back to his coffee.
Jennie felt her whole chest go warm. That, she thought, felt easier than anything I’ve said to him in weeks.
She had no way of knowing that, three floors up in his office an hour later, Dr. Lin Xing would sit at his desk, stylus hovering uselessly over an unfinished chart, thinking about exactly the same look — and the exact word he still hadn’t found for what she was to him.
He was getting closer, though. Much closer than either of them yet realized.
Nathan’s two-week follow-up fell on the Thursday, and Nathan — echo clean, labs perfect, personality fully intact — endured the appointment with the long-suffering air of a man being detained without charges.
Jennie ran the checks. Lin Xing reviewed the results.
And somewhere between the stethoscope and the discharge summary, Nathan looked back and forth between the two of them with narrowed, forensic eyes.
“Are you two married?” The room went extremely quiet.
“What— no,” Jennie said. “No. We work together. Colleagues. Who work.” “You should be,” Nathan said, with the flat certainty of a boy delivering a lab result.
“You keep doing the eyebrow thing at each other. My parents do the eyebrow thing.” He shrugged back into his jacket.
“Also he holds the door weird for you. Like it’s his job.
” Lin Xing, a man who had faced down surgical boards, hospital administrators, and eleven Ontario winters without flinching, looked at the ceiling and said nothing at all.
Jennie made a sound like a kettle. In the doorway, entirely unnoticed until that moment, a nurse lowered her phone with the unhurried calm of a war correspondent who already had the story filed.
By the time Nathan reached the elevator, St. Maple 4th Floor (OFFICIAL) was carrying a single new message, from Emma, that said only: the eyebrow thing has been independently confirmed by a patient. no further questions at this time.