Chapter 9 #2
I’m still hurt, but it’s hard to hate him when he’s looking at me with that crinkle in his eyes that looks more like a plea than an apology.
He offers his hand timidly, face resembling a weak smile again. “We can be middle schoolers. My ego will survive.”
I step forward. “It better,” I say, placing my hand in his, feeling grateful he at least has enough remorse to take my backpack and spare me.
And in one tug forward, his hand swings around my back, the other catching under my knees as I fly into the air.
“Kane!” I scream as he catches me in his arms, heart thudding wildly against him.
He smirks, cradling me to his chest. “If you want to embarrass me by holding your hand, I can do you one better.”
He throws his arms up like I’m about to soar, and I squeal again.
“You’re weak,” he says, but this close, it’s almost affectionate, the way his words dance along my bangs. “And we won’t get anywhere with you having the stamina of a turtle.”
He moves us through the halls, carrying me, pace oblivious to the excess weight.
Enveloped in his arms, swarmed by his nutty coffee and lavender scent, my pulse grows increasingly irregular.
Floppy, all over the place. A little too fast. Then too slow.
If I were standing, I’d be stumbling.
He tucks me closer to his tie, his peculiarly nice suit, and my heart continues to backflip despite my best efforts while he grins at me with perfectly straight teeth.
“No snarky retort?” he asks as we draw closer.
I’m being carried by Kane Goodyear.
I’m being carried through the halls of the hospital by my resident fake boyfriend.
Women display different signs of cardiac arrest than men, and if my jaw begins feeling fuzzy, then I would absolutely be labeling the fluttering in my chest as my first heart attack.
“That’s your job,” I tell him, a little too breathy as he strolls, keeping me balanced and close to his heart.
His grip is gentler than I thought. I expected he’d yank me, but it’s more like a warm tug. Like being hugged in little increments as we round the corner to the auditorium, him relaxed, me dazed.
Before we enter, he pauses, then drops his head, pressing a gentle kiss to my forehead.
My heart skitters.
“That’s for being my friend,” he murmurs. “Thank you.”
Then, with the biggest blush on my face, he storms into the room with me in his arms.
His arms squeeze around me reassuringly as we enter the cavernous auditorium.
I twine my hands around his neck, holding him tighter.
All conversations draw to an abrupt halt as we enter.
The world tilts into silence.
In the distance, Hyacinth looks like she’s holding back a scream, and David, a hex.
I smile up at Kane as the lights illuminate us. He carefully lowers me, removing my backpack and putting it back around me.
“Hobble,” he whisper-commands.
What?
My friends are still staring at me, mouths gaping open, while I look at the presentation on the screen:
DECEMBER MORBIDITY AND MORTALITY: PRESENTED BY KANE GOODYEAR
My blood skitters to a halt.
Kane’s leading the Morbidity and Mortality conference?
I’m jolted by the shock that he decided to be late to his own presentation as he drops my hand and steps up to the stage. He made the entire audience wait to rescue me?
I scramble back into the seat Hyacinth saved right as he begins talking.
“Sorry,” he chuckles, the very picture of irreverence. “My girlfriend sprained her ankle recently, and I worried she was shuffling around alone.”
The stares and morbid curiosity of the medical students sitting behind us burn into the back of my head as he begins, 15 minutes late, while every program director in this room looks at Kane with disdain.
Including the general surgery program director.
Guilt ripples through me like a tsunami.
I didn’t even try to limp.
I hope nobody thinks we were—
Why didn’t he tell me he was the one presenting today? I could have stayed lost and slipped in later without drawing attention to myself.
“Family first, right?” he says, attempting what might be… a smile? It’s a bit contorted, but at least he’s trying.
If there’s any word I can use to describe the mood of the room, it’s grotesquely unimpressed, while I sag into my seat.
“Even Liam wouldn’t do that for me,” Esther whispers conspiratorially. Her husband, Liam, is a radiology resident at a hospital an hour away. “He’d probably tell me to enjoy my hour off,” she chuckles.
Kane’s smooth voice drones on about hospital mortality measures while I sit with the weight of what he’s done for me.
He must have practiced this for hours. He’s missing his usual nervous tells—the clenched teeth, the eye dancing, the clothes fighting.
And yet he still put his career on the line to save me.
Even if he makes the mistake of not saying nice things, at least he’s trying to do nice things.
Actions over words, right?
And the next day, when we meet for my new tradition of pilfering the attending lounge together, so subtly, praying that he won’t notice, I slip a photo of the sunrise into his side pocket so he can see it again.
It’s not as grand as my carrying him, but it’s a start.
1 Narrator’s notes: A BS-DO program combines the BS from college with the DO from medical school to make the 8 years combined whittle down to 6 years.
It’s a blessing for gifted high school students who don’t want to deal with interviews and applying to multiple medical schools.
It’s a curse for someone who probably could have used the interview practice…