3. Logan
LOGAN
Med school graduation day
We're standing outside the auditorium, and she's got her cap on crooked because she caught it wrong after she threw it, and she's arguing with me about something, which is how we spend roughly ninety percent of our time together. I don't remember who started it. Probably her.
She's talking about her five-year plan and her ten-year plan and how she's going to be running a department before she's forty.
I'm leaning against the wall, watching her talk with her hands the way she always does when she's fired up.
Big gestures. Pointed fingers. She uses her whole body to make a point, like words alone aren't enough to contain what she's feeling.
I've spent four years watching her do it, and I'm not tired of it yet.
"Good plan," I say. "Only, I'll become the head of a department first."
I push off the wall and cross my arms. She mirrors me instantly. She always does that: matches me. I don't think she notices.
"You forget I'm the one who actually knows how to lead people, Maxwell.
" She starts ticking things off on her fingers, each sounding like evidence in a courtroom.
"President of the Student Surgical Society for two years.
I organized the skills labs, I mentored the first-years, and I ran the free clinic schedule every semester.
All you've ever done is show up, score the highest, and leave.
Being a department head isn't just about being the best. It's a responsibility.
It's looking out for your team." She tips her chin up. "Something you clearly lack."
She says it like a dare. And she's not wrong.
I never cared about any of that, content with being the top student.
It was always enough. But Kristen Portland has this talent for making me care about things I never planned to, and right now she's standing there with her chin up and her cap sideways, and I'm actually thinking about what it means to lead people instead of just outperforming them.
She'd love knowing that. I'm not going to tell her.
"You underestimate me, Portland." My glasses slip, and I adjust them. "You know, once I set my mind on something, I get it."
"Ha! That's me, not you." She jabs a finger at my chest. "Also, that's not fair. You can't become head surgeon just because it's my goal."
"I don't see how that's unfair. You make it sound so appealing. Plus, the chief surgeon is the top position." I shrug. "And I always like being on top."
Her eyes narrow. That flush of annoyance is creeping up her neck, and her lips are pressed tight.
I'm going to miss this face. Whatever comes after med school, whatever residency looks like, I'm going to miss the exact expression Kristen Portland makes when I've gotten under her skin, and she's deciding whether to argue or throw something.
"Well, it doesn't matter," she says, crossing her arms tighter. "Because I'll clearly get there first. Not you."
"Want to bet?"
"You're joking."
"Scared?"
Her chin comes up again. There it is. "Hell no." She squares her shoulders. "Fine. If I win, you have to announce to the whole world that I'm the best and that I've always been better than you." She pauses, then adds, "And a car."
I almost laugh. I have to press my lips together to keep it in, because she just attached a car to a declaration of intellectual dominance like a kid adding dessert to a Christmas list, and it's so genuinely her that it spreads a strange warmth through me.
"You know what, I'll buy you a car as a consolation prize when I win."
"Don't patronize me, Maxwell. I'll win that car fair and square."
I chuckle. I can't help it. "Fine. Fine.
" I pause, and then I step closer. Close enough that I have to lean down slightly to meet her eyes.
She doesn't move back, but I catch the shift, the small stiffening of her shoulders when she sees how near I am.
"But if I win, if I become head surgeon first." I hold her gaze. "You have to marry me, Portland."
Her eyes go wide. She steps back, and there's a flush on her cheeks that wasn't there ten seconds ago.
"What?" She blinks. "Are you kidding? Why the hell would I want that?" She crosses her arms again. "Don't tell me you like me."
I shrug. "Maybe I do. Or maybe I just want to annoy you for the rest of your life. Both seem equally rewarding."
If I were to paint her right now, I'd paint steam coming out of her ears. How red can a person get again?
"Something wrong?" I tilt my head. "Not feeling so confident all of a sudden?"
"I'm plenty confident. You're just insane." But she hasn't said no. She's flustered and annoyed, and her arms are crossed so tight she might cut off her own circulation, but she hasn't said no.
"You realize that's years from now. You could forget. Or we could both be in relationships."
I sigh. She's always so logical. "You really are no fun sometimes.
" I adjust my glasses, pretending to think.
"Fine. Amendment. If we're both single by that time, you marry me.
And no, I won't forget, because we're keeping in touch.
Obviously." I look at her. "Who else am I going to brag to about my achievements?
Who else am I going to tell when I'm already the head, and you're still catching up? "
She should be telling me to go to hell. Instead, she smiles, and it's slow.
"Fine," she says. "Deal."
"Deal." I hold out my hand. She reaches for it, and we shake once. "Actually, no. A handshake is boring."
She narrows her eyes. "What do you mean, boring? A handshake is perfectly—"
I pull her in and kiss her.
It's quick. My free hand rests on her back, and her body stiffens with surprise for about a second before it softens, just barely, and then I pull back.
Her mouth is open, but nothing comes out.
The heat is aggressively climbing up her neck and spreading across her cheeks, and she's blinking too fast. For the first time in four years of knowing Kristen Portland, she has absolutely nothing to say.
She's not angry. If she were angry, I'd already be bleeding.
She's flustered. And maybe, hopefully, she liked it.
"Have you gone insane, you pervert?! What the hell was that for?"
"Sealing the bet." I step back. "A handshake felt underwhelming. A blood pact felt excessive. This seemed like the middle ground."
She opens her mouth, closes it, opens it again. "I…fine." She clears her throat, straightens her cap, and clears her throat again, her cheeks still flushed. "It's sealed, then."
"Good."
"Good."
She turns and walks away too fast, so I watch her go, hands in my pockets, grinning like an idiot, because Kristen Portland just short-circuited, and I'm the one who did it.
As it turns out, a human can turn beetroot red.
The first thing I thought when I saw Kristen Portland's name on the resident roster was that somebody was playing a joke on me.
I was in my office, glasses off, pinching the bridge of my nose because I'd been reading charts since five and my eyes were done.
The roster came in that morning. New rotation, fresh batch of residents, names I'd memorize by the end of the week and forget by the end of the year.
Standard. Until I got to the P's, and the name sitting there was one I thought I'd never see.
After graduation, we kept in touch. Texted about which hospitals we'd matched at, compared notes, talked shit about the ones we didn't pick. We ended up in the same program. Of course we did. She sent me a text that night.
Kristen
Great, four more years of your face
Me
You love my face.
She replied with a middle finger emoji, and I sat there looking at it longer than any reasonable person should look at a middle finger emoji.
But when residency started, she never showed up.
On the first day, I looked for her name on the check-in sheet.
It wasn't there. I figured it was a delay: paperwork, something administrative.
I texted her, got no response. Called the next day, went to voicemail.
Called a week later, and the number didn't connect anymore.
I tried for a while. Longer than I'd admit to anyone.
I even looked her up online, which felt desperate, but there was nothing.
No social media, no publications, no forwarding address through the school.
Kristen Portland had disappeared as cleanly as if someone had erased her, and at some point, you have to accept that a person who wants to be found makes it possible.
But she'd made it impossible.
I did my residency without her. It was fine.
Everyone was competent and predictable. No one argued with me during rounds or made me defend answers I thought were obvious.
No one threw things at my head when I was right.
No one looked at me during a simulation and said that's wrong, and I can prove it with their whole body before they even opened their mouth.
It was fine, but it was quiet in a way I never got used to.
But I'd said I was going to be the head, and when I say something, I do it.
With or without her. I blazed through residency, fellowship, and junior attending, all on the fastest track the program had seen, because I'm a Maxwell.
The only son of Dr. Theo Maxwell and Dr. Margaret Maxwell.
You don't coast on that name. You prove every day that you earned it. So I proved it.
And somewhere at the back of my mind, through every late night, every promotion, every decision I made about how to run my department, I heard her voice: All you've ever done is show up, score the highest, and leave.
Being a department head isn't just about being the best. I wanted to prove her wrong.
I wanted to prove to myself that she wasn't right.
Now I'm the youngest department head this hospital has ever had. And the woman who challenged it out of me is on my resident roster. I fix my glasses.