7. Logan
LOGAN
I always had a feeling Kristen Portland might kill me one day. I just assumed it'd be a pen to the heart, or maybe a well-aimed textbook to the skull. Not a pepper spray on a sidewalk outside the hospital at nine o'clock.
I'm bent over the sink in the staff bathroom, flushing my eyes with water for the third time, fairly certain I'm going blind.
The burning has faded from unbearable to deeply unpleasant, which I guess counts as progress.
The one time I take my glasses off. The one time.
I wear them every single day, fourteen-hour shifts, back-to-back surgeries.
But tonight I take them off for five minutes because my shift is over and my eyes are tired, and that's the exact moment Kristen Portland decides to commit a war crime on my face.
She's standing behind me. She hasn't stopped apologizing since she sprayed me, which was approximately four minutes ago, and at this rate, she's going to hit triple digits before I can see straight again.
"I'm so sorry, Dr. Maxwell. I really didn't mean to. I thought you were…I didn't know it was you. I'm so, so sorry."
"You've said that."
"Because I mean it. Are you okay? Can you see?"
"Unclear. Ask me again in an hour."
I straighten up and turn around. Her face tells me I look terrible. My eyes are red, swollen, and watering like I've just watched a twelve-hour marathon of sad movies. She presses her lips together. Too late. The laugh escapes before she can catch it. She immediately slaps her hand over her mouth.
"Sorry. I'm sorry. It's not funny."
"Of course not. At least try harder."
"I am. It's not funny. I'm not laughing."
She is. She's trying so hard not to, and she's failing completely.
Her shoulders are shaking and she's biting the inside of her cheek.
She looks completely different from the woman I found in that elevator a few hours ago—relaxed, actually here, in this moment, not somewhere else.
If getting pepper-sprayed is what it took to make her laugh like this, then maybe it was worth it.
Maybe. I look at myself in the mirror.
A very small maybe.
"I'll make it up to you," she says, pulling herself together. "I'll buy you dinner. Anywhere you want."
"If your plan was to ask me out, Portland, you didn't have to pepper-spray me first. A simple question would've worked."
Her laugh cuts off. She goes chin up, crosses her arms, and narrows her eyes at me. It amazes me how her mood can shift so fast, but I'd rather take this than the one I saw earlier.
"That's not what I…I'm being serious. Let me make it up to you."
"Fine. Tonight. Before my corneas dissolve."
"Tonight?"
"You just assaulted me with a chemical weapon, Portland. I think dinner tonight is reasonable."
She opens her mouth, closes it, then shakes her head like I'm being ridiculous. "Fine. I know a place."
She leads me to a Mexican restaurant a few blocks from the hospital.
It's small, a little cramped, with mismatched chairs and string lights along the ceiling and a chalkboard menu that someone clearly rewrites every day by hand.
Not the kind of place I'd pick, but exactly the kind of place she would.
"I come here after long shifts sometimes," she says as we sit down. "The food is good, it's never crowded, and they don't rush you."
"Important criteria."
"When you've been on your feet for fourteen hours, yes."
She orders like she hasn't eaten real food in a week. Tacos, rice, a side of guacamole, and then she adds queso at the last second, like she just remembered she's allowed to enjoy things. I order something simple, and she looks at my plate when it arrives and says, "That's it?"
"I'm a simple man."
"You're a boring man. A danger to fun."
"Says the woman who just committed a crime against me."
"It was self-defense."
"Against what? My attempt to return your ID badge that you left at the nurses' station?"
She freezes. "That's why you followed me?"
I reach into my coat pocket and slide her badge across the table. She stares at it, then at me, then she drops her face into her hands and groans.
"Oh my God."
"Yeah."
"You chased me down a dark street to give me my badge."
"I didn't chase. I walked briskly."
She lifts her face and she's completely red, and she's laughing again.
This time, she doesn't try to hide it. It's a real laugh.
Open and unguarded and a little bit embarrassed.
I sit there watching her, and I don't say anything because I don't want to break it.
This is the first time I've seen Kristen Portland laugh like she used to, and hearing it somehow makes me feel lighter.
The conversation loosens after that. She asks about my residency, how I ended up as department head so fast, and I give her the short version. Residency, fellowship, junior attending, a lot of late nights and a last name that comes with expectations.
"Was it worth it?" she asks.
I think about it. "You know what's funny?
Every time I hit a milestone, whether residency, fellowship, the department head position, people weren't impressed.
They just nodded like they expected it. Like I was checking boxes on a list someone else wrote.
" I turn my glass on the table. "After a while, it stopped feeling like an achievement.
It just felt like I was meeting the bare minimum. "
She doesn't tease me or fire back. She just looks at me and nods. She listens, she understands, and I realize I just told Kristen Portland something I've never said out loud to anyone. Just like that—over chips and guacamole at a Mexican restaurant after she pepper-sprayed me.
I clear my throat and try to change the topic. "So. How often do you pepper-spray people? Is this a regular thing for you, or am I special?"
"Ugh. It was an accident, okay? And you're the first one. I'm treating you to Mexican food. That should be enough."
"Hardly. If I go blind, my career is over. And that's on you."
"Oh, don't be dramatic. You won't go blind from pepper spray."
"I could have, with how you aimed it directly into my eyes. You're going to have to take me in." I pause. "Actually, remember that bet we made at graduation? This is it. I'll become a househusband."
"Oh my God, please don't remind me." She covers her face. "God, were you always this insufferable, or did you develop that in my absence?"
"Oh, I was always this insufferable. You just forgot."
We go back and forth like this for a while, and it's easy. We reminisce about med school: the professors we hated, the ones we liked, the attending who used to fall asleep during his own lectures and who nobody had the nerve to wake.
"Remember the simulation lab?" she says.
"Which time?"
"The time they kicked us out."
"You started that."
"I started that?" She puts her fork down.
"We were doing the emergency laparotomy sim.
I controlled the bleeding and ligated the vessel.
Textbook. Clean. The professor asked the class if the management was appropriate, and everyone said yes.
He was literally about to agree when you raised your annoying hand and said I should have obtained proximal control before ligating. "
"Because you should have."
"My management was correct. The bleeding was controlled. The sim patient survived."
"Your management worked. Mine was better. There's a difference."
"No, there's not. Yours was just different. And you only suggested it because I called out your knot tension earlier in front of the whole group. Your square knots were slipping, and everyone could see it."
"My knots were fine."
"Your knots were loose, Maxwell. I could have pulled them apart with two fingers. The professor even paused to watch. You were embarrassed, so when it was my turn, you found something to nitpick because you couldn't stand that I was right about your hands."
"I wasn't embarrassed. I was offering a clinical alternative."
"You were being petty." She rolls her eyes, but smiles. "God, we argued about it for so long, the professor told us to get out."
"Yes. Because of you."
"Because of us. It's always because of us."
She says it without thinking, but she must catch it, because she goes quiet for a second and picks up her fork again. I don't say anything. Neither does she. But it sits there between us, that word. Us.
She recovers fast. "Anyway, you're still just as annoying over dinner as you were in that simulation lab, so that tracks."
"And you still can't admit when someone else has a point."
"Your technique wasn't better. It was different. I stand by that."
"And your knot tension critique?"
"Your knots were loose. I stand by that, too."
"I will never live that down, will I?"
"Not as long as I'm alive." She points her fork at me. "And if you argue with me one more time, I'll pepper-spray you again."
"Resorting to violence when you can't win an argument. Such a Portland move."
She rolls her eyes, and for a second, it feels exactly like it used to.
"God, you really haven't changed, have you?" she says.
"Nope." I take a sip of my drink. "But you have. A lot, actually."
The lightness drains. Not all at once, but like someone turning a dial down slowly. She looks at her plate, and moves a piece of rice around with her fork.
"Earlier today," I start, keeping my voice even.
“In the elevator. The way you reacted when I touched your arm.
" I pick my words carefully because I can see her tensing already, her fork still, her eyes on the table.
"I'm not trying to force you to talk about anything.
But I want you to know that if you ever feel unsafe, or if something's going on, you don't have to deal with it alone. "
She's quiet for a while. Long enough that the waiter comes by to ask if we need anything, and I wave him off. I keep my eyes on her and wait. Kristen talks when she's ready and not a second before.
"My dad had a stroke right after graduation. A bad one. He needed full-time care, and I was the only family he had left, so I stayed." She takes a breath. "I took care of him for three years until he passed."
She says it simply. Like she's told this part enough times that the words come out smooth. But her hand is tight around her glass, and she's not looking at me.
"After he passed, I spent about a year putting myself back together.
Studying again, volunteering at clinics, doing medical outreach.
I didn't want to lose what I'd spent years learning.
" She pauses and sets her fork down. It clangs against the plate, but she doesn't seem to hear it.
"Through one of those volunteer programs, I met someone.
He seemed good at first. Then I found out he wasn't."
She pauses again, and this time she picks at the edge of her napkin.
"We didn't end on good terms. I tried to break up with him, but he wouldn't accept it. I ended up having to leave in secret. Pack what I could and go." She looks at me then, and her eyes are steady, but there's a storm underneath. "And I'm scared he's going to find me."
"Is that what happened earlier? In the elevator. Was it related to him?"
She nods. "I saw someone in the lobby. A resident from my old hospital, St. Andrew's. If he saw me..." She doesn't have to finish the sentence.
"Word could get back," I say.
"Yeah."
The restaurant keeps going around us, the clinking of cutlery on plates, the hum of conversations, the occasional laughter.
Normal stuff. And then there's us. She's got her hands in her lap and she's not looking at me anymore.
I can tell this is the most she's told anyone in a long time. Maybe ever.
I don't take that lightly. She didn't have to tell me any of this. She chose to, and I know how much that cost her.
But I'd be lying if I said I wasn't worried. Because everything she just described is not a messy breakup. It's something else. And it scares me, but I'm not going to show her that, because she doesn't need me to make it worse.
She gave me what she could tonight, and I'm not going to take more than she's offering.
"You don't have to tell me everything," I say. "Not now. Not until you're ready. If that's ever."
She nods, and her shoulders drop half an inch. Her hands uncurl on the table. Small things. Easy to miss if you aren’t paying attention, but I was already watching for them.
The check comes and she grabs it before I can. "I pepper-sprayed you. I told you, my treat. I'm not going back on it and don't even dare argue with me right now."
"Fine."
I offer to drive her home. She says the bus is fine, but I tell her it's dark and late. She accepts. I think she's too tired to fight me on it, and honestly, after tonight, I wouldn't let her win that one anyway.
The car is quiet for the first few minutes. She's looking out the window, and I can see her reflection in the glass. I don't know what she's thinking, but her face is still.
"Thank you," she says without turning from the window. "For listening. I don't really talk about this stuff."
"I figured."
"And for not making it weird."
"When have I ever made anything weird?"
She turns and gives me a look. The flat, unimpressed Kristen Portland look. "Do you want a list?"
"Not particularly."
She shakes her head, but she's smiling a little. She turns back to the window, and we drive the rest of the way in a silence that doesn't need filling.
"It's this one. On the left."
I pull up to a small house on a quiet street. The porch light is on, and the yard is tidy. We've been driving for a while.
"You live pretty far from the hospital," I say.
"Yeah. It's my dad's old place. I needed somewhere to go when I left, and it was the only thing I had." She unbuckles her seatbelt. "It's not much, but it's mine."
She opens the car door and pauses. "Thank you for the ride, and for not filing an assault charge."
"The night's still young."
She shakes her head. "Goodnight, Maxwell."
"Goodnight, Portland. Get some rest."
She gets out and walks up the front steps. At the door, she turns back. Just a quick glance, like she's checking I'm still there.
I wait until she gets in, then I pull away.
I drive home slowly. The streets are mostly empty, my eyes still sting, and I'm thinking about Kristen, who lost her father, her career, and years of her life and still made her way back into a surgical residency.
But I keep coming back to the elevator. To the way she pressed herself into the corner, the full-body flinch when I touched her arm, her hands coming up like she was bracing for a hit.
The question sat on the tip of my tongue the whole drive.
Did he hit you?
And as I drive home, I still don't know what I'd do if the answer is yes. But something tells me the bastard would end up at a hospital.