Chapter 16
SILVER TONGUE VS. SILVER SPOON
Horses: cute, delightful creatures, as common as they are predictable.
Zebras: frightful, menacing beasts that are far more rare, often used as a way to describe medical anomalies that are as perplexing as they are.
THANATOS
“Two things,” Ginny begins, closing the door behind her and pressing firmly to make sure it’s shut.
Waves of red hair fly around her face as she twists, pinning me with a stern glare.
I gulp.
This is going to be bad.
I missed the first week of this rotation due to shingles, so when Dr. Metrodora warned me to brace myself for the midway evaluation, I prepared for the worst.
It’s a four-week rotation, and I missed a fourth of it.
There’s only one week to evaluate me on.
And I’m a week behind the other student who’s been here this whole time.
I’m in danger.
I almost collapse onto the couch, but Ginny doesn’t; instead, she paces around every inch of the blush-colored OB/GYN resident lounge, yanking the glittery curtains closed.
My thoughts race. Is it going to be that bad?
They can’t even see me break down from the feedback?
“One,” she says. Her brows scrunch together, sorrow leaking through her eyes as she turns. “Percy, you’re about to fail this rotation.”
My eyes squeeze shut.
I knew it.
I wring my hands together, slumping against the wall.
“I figured,” I admit. My voice comes out timid, awkward. “But I can come in on weekends to make up for lost time, stay later, do some quality improvement projects—”
“No,” she says, shaking her head. “That’s not why.”
The glossy pastels of the OB/GYN resident lounge glimmer at me, K-pop biases on the wall grinning at me fondly, while Ginny tramples across the pastel rugs again. She moves from corner to corner, checking each window latch to make sure it’s sealed.
As if even the birds outside can’t hear.
When satisfied, she abruptly stops. “What I say next does not leave this room.”
My stomach rolls.
“Understood.”
She takes a fierce inhale. “Percy.”
Her palms press against the wall, finally still, like she needs its support to stand. “Dr. Grendel’s evaluation of you this week was a zero out of five. He can’t stand you.”
“What?” I gasp.
My breath catches. Zero out of five?
Zero out of five is what you give to someone who’s actively trying to kill a patient! I’ve never had an evaluation that low in my life!
“Ginny, I—he never told me anything like that—I—”
I blink rapidly, trying to process what I could have done to warrant failing.
Ginny’s eyes dart back to the windows again.
She’s nervous. But nervous about what? My evaluation?
“We—and by we I mean Dr. Metrodora and I—think he dislikes you because of how Kane treated him last year,” Ginny explains.
“Kane?”
She clasps her hands together like she’s praying, expression grave.
“Yes, Kane. He made the old geezer cry. Something about him hitting on his little sister at a conference.”
My mind buzzes.
He’s the attending Kane made cry? But—
Why was a grown man hitting on a teenager?
On Jade? Who would have been seventeen?
I’m still sweating, but stammer, “That sounds—justified?”
“Yes, one of the few times he used his demonic assholery for good,” she admits. She bites her lip. “But—”
She inhales. “Dr. Grendel is a legendary influence in this field. People here don’t even question him, much less publicly degrade him. He doesn’t like knowing there’s another silver spoon in his presence who’s just as haughty and insubordinate as he is.”
She looks back again at the window, as if to make sure it, still, is impenetrable to sight and noise.
Her voice still lowers. “And, Percy, a lot of people in this hospital don’t see any difference between those two. For good reason. And by associating with Kane, they don’t trust you, either.”
My head throbs, trying to process this.
“Are you saying that you think he failed me—”
“Yes.”
The weight of this disorients me like a stroke, jarring my senses so that everything seems real, but also, inexplicably nonsensical.
There’s no way. God, this is my outpatient elective! It’s supposed to be the relaxing one!
Steely eyes meet mine. “Dr. Metrodora volunteered to evaluate you for the next two weeks, so unless you royally annoy her, your overall average should improve to a passing grade. But you need to think seriously about whether being with Kane is a good idea.”
“But Ginny.” I reach for the ring on my finger, which I’ve finally gotten to wear now that I’m off the surgical floor. Fidgeting with the sharp edges has become my new anxious tic; the pain grounds me in reality.
“Can’t I fight this? I’ve been here every day since recovering—”
“So you don’t text him during chalk talks? Sneak away to meet him during the day? Giggle at messages coming in from your watch?”
My gut twists.
Damn it. I’m not as subtle as I thought.
Her face softens. “I don’t like him either, but he’s not the only one who noticed you and Kane have slacked in your clinical duties since dating. Everything he wrote in his evaluation is true. You can’t sweet-talk your way out of this.”
My spirits sink. I thought this would be a meeting for me to plead my case, to work extra hard, to prove that a temporary illness won’t define me.
Not an attack on my integrity.
“I’m sorry,” I apologize. “I’ll take out all distractions. It will never happen again.”
“I know,” she says. Some of her derision melts, eyes flitting to my ring.
Taking a step closer, her voice murmurs. “Percy.” Her fists clench and unclench.
She furrows her lip, hesitating. “Do you… Do you know what happened to Kane last year?”
My brows raise.
“He didn’t match?” I ask.
Isn’t that obvious?
“Is that all?” Her eyes widen, seeking. “Did—”
She lets out a sharp sigh, shaking her head.
“I don’t think you know what I know,” she says.
Her foot taps faster with each sentence, like she’s about to launch back into pacing.
“And that you don’t know is absolutely ridiculous.
And it’s something that Dr. Grendel heard rumors of, since he was in the hospital when it happened. And it’s something that I—”
She runs a hand through her hair, tying it back into a messy knot.
“That you?” I ask, growing more confused by the second.
Her jaw feathers. “I am legally bound by—”
She cuts off her own sentence, teeth grinding.
“You know how people in this field discriminate against—”
She yelps, frustrated.
What is she talking about?
I push off from the wall, trying to meet her gaze.
My mind races for an explanation, and the best I can come up with is, “Are you calling Dr. Grendel… a racist?”
“No!” she gasps. “Well, maybe, you never know. But that’s not what I’m trying to say.”
She waves her hands in the air, like she can conjure an explanation.
“Percy, that’s the second thing I have to talk to you about. I was in Kane’s medical school class. You didn’t see him go off the grid and wonder what happened and what he did.”
Did what?
My hands shake.
Please tell me she’s talking about something benign and harmless.
What could he have done that has to do with my evaluation?
Think. What about Kane is there to dislike? His attitude has steadily been improving. If it’s about the intern spot he was given—
“Are you talking about his nepotism, working at his father’s hospital?”
“No!” she erupts.
She throws her head back, directing her aggravation to the ceiling.
Did he do something last year to make people distrust him?
My heart stops when a raw, rancid reason occurs to me.
“He—he didn’t hurt a patient, did he?”
“No,” Ginny mutters. “Nothing like that.”
My relief is palpable, but Ginny moves on. “Objectively, he’s great at his job. He—”1
Her pager beeps, and she levels it with a scowl so fiery that it could have single-handedly obliterated the ice age.
She scrubs a hand over her face. “I knew this would happen. You’re a black cloud, Percy. Everything that touches you has a brush with death.”
I don’t even have time to let hurt pierce me when her pager flashes rapidly, light and shadows warring across her face. “The fetal heart rate in six is plummeting. I have to take this.”
“Go,” I agree.
The baby’s—and mom’s—lives are way more important than mine right now.
Ginny launches for the exit, tossing open the blinds, ripping open the door. The stark hospital light is blinding, painful, almost, compared to the duskiness that preceded it.
But it’s the somber sincerity in Ginny’s expression that makes me want to shield my eyes.
“Don’t fail this rotation,” she says. “And please, don’t let that man ruin you.”
And with that damning note, she’s gone.
1 Narrator’s notes: Regretfully true. Dr. Demon has been hoarding his patients from me, and I’m bored.