2. Joseph
CHAPTER TWO
JOSEPH
I'm late. Not dangerously so—just late enough that I have to jog through the corridor and switch to a casual walk the second I round the corner past the nurses' station. Smooth transition. Very convincing.
Dani looks up from behind the desk. She shakes her head at me, but she's smiling.
"Don't," I say, pointing at her. "I'm early for me."
"It's seven twelve, Dr. Liu."
"And I said what I said."
My phone buzzes before I make it to the locker room. I glance at the screen, keep walking, and pick up.
"Joseph! Good, you're awake."
"I'm at work, Ma."
"Even better! Listen. He's been sneezing all morning. A lot. And I looked it up online, and it says it could be an upper respiratory infection or allergies or, Joseph, it says it could be a tumor."
"It's not a tumor," I say calmly, already knowing who she's talking about.
"You don't know that. You haven't seen the sneezing. It's very aggressive sneezing."
I push into the locker room with my shoulder, holding the phone against my ear. "Ma, I fix bones. Human bones. I'm not qualified to diagnose a cat."
"It can't be that different. It's still a body. It has bones and lungs."
"Cats have over two hundred bones."
"See? You already know more about it than I do."
I open my locker and pull out my scrub top. "Take him to the vet, Ma."
"I will. But first, can I send you a video of the sneezing? Just so you can see what I'm dealing with."
"Sure."
"Okay, good. I'll send it now. Call me back after you watch it. Love you."
"Love you too."
She hangs up. I stare at my phone for a second, then laugh under my breath. The cat is a gray tabby she and Dad found under the porch a week ago. He doesn't have a name yet, but he's already sleeping on their bed, eating better than I do, and apparently now has his own personal medical team.
I change into scrubs, lace up my shoes, and check the board.
First case is already in pre-op. Twelve-year-old named Ansel.
Fractured wrist, displaced on impact from a skateboard fall.
The imaging showed a clean break, but the bone shifted out of alignment badly enough that it needs surgical pinning to set it back in place.
Standard procedure, but the kid doesn't know that.
For him, this is the scariest morning of his life.
I find him in pre-op. He's sitting up in bed trying hard to look brave, and doing a decent job of it, except his good hand is gripping the blanket like he's holding on for dear life. His mom sits in the chair next to him, smiling, but her jaw is tight.
I pull up a stool and sit at his level. That matters with kids. If you stand over them, you're a doctor. If you sit with them, you're a person.
"Ansel. My man." I hold out my fist. He bumps it with his good hand. "So. Tell me the truth. What trick were you going for?"
He glances at his mom, then back at me. "Kickflip."
"Bold choice. Did you land it before everything went sideways?"
"Almost."
"Almost counts. I want you to know that. I tried to learn to skateboard in college. Once. I made it about four feet before I ate concrete so hard the only thing I broke was my dignity. And that has never fully healed. So you're already doing better than me."
He laughs. It's small, but it's real, and next to him, his mom's shoulders drop about two inches.
"Here's the plan," I say. "I'm going to fix your wrist. The bone shifted when you fell, so I need to put it back where it belongs and pin it so it heals straight.
You won't feel any of it. When you wake up, you'll have a cast, and in six weeks we'll take it off and start getting that wrist strong again. Sound good?"
He nods. Then, quieter, he asks, "Can I get a blue cast?"
"I'll see what I can do."
The surgery goes clean. Good reduction, solid fixation. The bone sits where it should, and the pins hold. Textbook. I close up and head to recovery to check on him. He's groggy but already asking his mom when he can skate again. I give him the honest answer wrapped in something he can hold onto.
Six weeks in the cast, then rehab to get the strength back, then we talk about skating.
He groans. I tell him he's going to be the most popular kid in class because everyone will want to sign his cast. He thinks about this for a second, then asks if he can charge people a dollar per signature.
I tell him that's between him and his business model.
On my way out of post-op, Ray from maintenance comes down the hall pushing a supply cart. He stops when he sees me.
"Hey, Doc. Got a second?"
"Always. What's going on?"
"My kid graduated. Marcus. The one I told you about."
"The one working through community college?"
"Three years. Three years working full-time and going to school at night, and he did it. Engineering technology." Ray's voice cracks, just barely, on the word technology. He recovers fast. "Got the diploma last Friday."
I stop walking and look at him straight on.
Ray has been at St. Aldric's longer than most of the attendings—he was here when I was an intern, too nervous to eat lunch in the doctors' lounge, spending my breaks in the maintenance hallway instead, asking him the questions no orientation packet could answer.
He taught me things the senior residents never would have.
Which nurses run the floor and which ones just clock in.
Which attendings lose their temper in the OR and which ones go quiet, and that the quiet ones are worse.
Where the families go when they need to cry, where nobody sees them.
Ray sees everything in this building, the way maintenance staff always do—they hear more than the nurses and notice more than the doctors. They just don't get asked about it.
"Ray, that's incredible. Seriously. That's not easy, and he did it anyway. He's lucky to have a dad who showed up for him through all of it."
Ray gets a little glassy. He blinks it back and claps me on the shoulder, hard, the way men do when they don't have words for what they're feeling but still need to put their hands somewhere.
"Thanks, Doc."
"Tell Marcus I said congratulations. And if he ever wants to come fix the MRI machine on the third floor, I'll put in a good word."
He laughs and pushes his cart down the hall.
I grab a coffee from the lounge. I'm two sips in when Dani appears in the doorway holding a plastic container like she's delivering evidence.
"I saved you three," she says, setting it on the counter. "Abuela made empanadas last night, and they were gone in twenty minutes. I hid these because last time you missed out, and you looked so sad about it."
"Dani, you're the greatest human being in this hospital."
"I know."
She grins and walks off. I open the container. Still warm. I bite into the first one and close my eyes.
I'm finishing the second one at the counter, scrolling through my phone with one hand, when Dr. Lena Fisher walks up. She leans against the counter next to me, arms crossed.
"Hey."
"Hey."
"So," she says. "I had a really good time last week. That place you picked was great."
"Yeah, it was nice. Glad you enjoyed it."
"Would you want to do it again? Maybe this Friday?"
She's direct about it. I've always liked that about Lena. She's smart, she's sharp, she's the whole package—warm, capable, exactly the doctor you'd want in your corner.
"I'd like to," I say, and I mean it. "But my schedule is packed this week and the next."
I say it warmly. I don't say I'll let you know or maybe another time, because she deserves a straight answer, not a vague promise I have no intention of keeping.
She understands and nods once. "No worries. If things clear up, you know where to find me."
"I do."
She walks off. No awkwardness. No sting. Just two adults being honest in a break room. I go back to my empanada.
"That was painful to watch."
I turn around. Sarah is standing behind me like she materialized from the wall. She's in her second-year resident coat, arms crossed over a belly that's getting harder to hide behind a clipboard, and she's wearing the look of someone who has cleared her entire schedule to dissect my love life.
Sarah Wren. Well, Sarah Porter now, though she still goes by Dr. Wren at work.
Married to my best friend. Connor's wife.
The woman who went from mopping floors in this hospital to wearing the white coat, and if you knew everything she went through to get here, you'd understand why I'd walk through a wall for her.
She's one of the strongest people I know. She's also one of the nosiest.
"What's wrong with her?" she says. "She's pretty. The interns talk about her constantly."
"Nothing's wrong with her. She's great."
"Then why did you just shoo her away?"
"Excuse you, I did not shoo her away. I declined with a charming smile. There's a difference."
"Which is your way of saying you never plan to see her again."
"That's not true. I'll see her all the time. In this hospital. Where we both work."
"Jo." She says it the way she does when she's about to deliver a lecture, which is often, because Sarah and Connor are the same person in different bodies. I love them both, but they are both insufferable. "Seriously, how does Connor put up with you?"
"He doesn't. But he loves me too much to say anything."
She drops her arms. "You know, one of these days you're going to have to actually date someone. Like, for real. Not one dinner and a charming exit. An actual relationship with an actual human person."
I put my hand on my chest. "The only heart breaking here is mine, Sarah. Because the fact that you think I'm a heartbreaker genuinely wounds me. I'm kind, I'm gentle, and I let people down easily."
"You let everyone down easy. That's the problem." She crosses her arms again. "You know what I think? I think you're scared."
"Of what?"
"Letting someone in."
I laugh. It comes out faster than I mean it to. "Okay, Dr. Phil. Are you done? Or do you want to also tell me about my childhood?"
She holds my gaze for a second. She's good at that. Learned it from Connor, probably. Then she lets it go.