Chapter 15
FIFTEEN
ALLY
I stare at Drew, who just told Dr. Kaminsky I’ll be staying with him until my apartment’s sorted out. He gives me a shrug in reply, as though it was a perfectly natural thing to say.
And to be fair, maybe it was. If we were really in a relationship, it would be logical for me to crash at his place if there was a problem with my apartment. Drew’s just trying to keep up the act.
“Great,” Dr. Kaminsky says with a bright smile. She’s an attractive redhead, probably only a few years older than me. I bet Drew will end up with someone like her eventually. Someone smart and accomplished, who can talk medicine at the dinner table every night.
“I’ll just do a quick exam, okay?” she asks me.
After I nod, she shines a light in my eyes, then asks me to follow her finger. Drew watches carefully as she puts me through the neuro tests. But when she asks me to lift my shirt so she can listen to my heart, Drew studies the ceiling tiles.
It feels surreal, having Drew next to me as though we’re actually a couple. Even though I’m not really his girlfriend, he left his clinic to track me down.
And I can’t deny I’m happy he did, because this was shaping up to be a very bad day.
When I got up this morning, I found water dripping down my living room wall and a large muddy puddle on the floor.
After I texted a photo to my landlord, who pooh-poohed it as a little leak, I spent almost an hour cleaning it up.
By the time I left for work I was too late for the bus, so I took my bike.
And wiped out for the first time in years.
Drew’s appearance in the ER has been the one bright spot in this day from hell.
“Everything seems okay,” Dr. Kaminsky says when she’s done listening to my chest. “And your ECG looked fine. I think you’re right, you probably fainted from the pain in your arm.”
“Nearly fainted,” I correct.
“Right,” she says with a grin. “Let’s have a look at your arm.” She unwraps the gauze and exposes a jagged cut on my forearm just below my elbow.
“It doesn’t look too deep, but I think it’ll heal better with stitches,” she says, glancing from me to Drew. “You okay if I do it? I can call plastics if you want.”
“Go ahead,” I tell her. Dr. Kaminsky seems very capable, and I doubt she’d usually call a plastic surgeon for a cut like this. She only offered because of Drew, and I’m already feeling guilty about the preferential treatment.
“Great,” she says, pulling over a small cart with suture equipment on top. “Drew, I’ll have you stand on Ally’s other side.”
“Sure,” he says, walking around the stretcher.
“Okay, Ally, I’m going to wash it out with saline,” Dr. Kaminsky says. “Try to focus on Drew instead of what I’m doing. Imagine you’re on a a beach or something. Maybe at a really crappy resort, which is why Drew doesn’t have a chair.”
I obediently turn my head and stare at Drew. I’ve only known him for a month, but there’s already a comforting familiarity to his face.
“I wouldn’t take Ally to a crappy resort, Sophie,” he says.
“Well, I’ve never heard of you taking a vacation at all,” she returns. “Which is why this situation is imaginary. Okay, Ally, this is the freezing, it’s the worst part. A sting and a burn. You’re going to want to hold his hand.”
Drew gives me a questioning look, and after I nod, he takes my hand in his. It’s not the first time we’ve held hands, but this hasn’t reached the familiar stage yet. My whole body is aware of the contact, to the point that I barely notice when Dr. Kaminsky injects the freezing.
“Okay, the sutures will dissolve within a week,” she says a few minutes later, and I glance over to see that she’s finished. “Try to keep it dry for forty-eight hours. Do you know when you last had a tetanus shot?”
“I’m not sure,” I admit.
“No problem, we’ll give you one today. I’ll let you know when your bloodwork’s back, it’ll be at least an hour.”
“I’d like to get her out of here, Sophie,” Drew puts in. “Any chance you could call her with the lab results?”
“Sure,” she agrees. “Just don’t leave without a tetanus shot, okay? I’ll ask Kelly to do it now.”
“Thanks Sophie,” he says. “I owe you one.”
She grins. “Just tell your residents not to whine when I call them with consults, and we’ll call it even.” She turns to me. “Any problems with that cut, Drew knows where to find me.”
“Thanks.”
Kelly appears a moment later to give me a tetanus shot, and we’re finally free to go.
“Thanks again for coming,” I tell Drew as we walk out of the ER. “I’m pretty sure if you hadn’t shown up, I’d still be waiting.”
“No problem.”
“I can take that now,” I say, reaching out to take my backpack from him. “I should head upstairs.”
“Upstairs?” Drew asks.
“To work. I’m still on my three month probation, and I’ve basically missed the whole morning, so—”
“Ally, you’re not going to work today,” he says. “You just fainted—”
“Almost fainted,” I correct.
“And you’ve just had stitches,” he continues. “So you’re not going to work. Sophie can write you a note if you need one. Have you told Heather what happened?”
“Yeah, I called her this morning, before you showed up.”
“What did she say?”
“She said I should take the day off,” I admit. But I’d still planned to show up for the afternoon, even though I haven’t been given any real responsibility yet. If I’m going to get ahead, I need to show I’m committed to the job.
“Great,” Drew says. “That’s taken care of, then. Let’s go to my office to talk about the plan.”
I’m not sure what he means by the plan, but I follow him to his office anyway. When we get there, he gives me his chair and sits in the cheap Ikea one he keeps for visitors.
“So.” He hesitates and clears his throat. “About what I said in the ER. That you were going to stay with me?”
“Oh, I get it,” I say quickly. “Dr. Kaminsky thinks I’m your girlfriend, so when I said there was a flood in my apartment, you had to say it. And it’s no big deal, because she’ll never know if I’m staying with you or not—”
“No,” he interrupts with a frown. “That’s not why I said it. I think you should consider staying at my place. You can stay as long as you need, until your apartment’s sorted out.”
“What?” I blurt.
“There’s a pull-out couch in my home office,” he says quickly. “You’d have your own room.”
“Oh.” I hesitate, trying to collect my thoughts. I wish I hadn’t mentioned the flood. I wouldn’t have, but I was feeling stupid for falling off my bike, and I wanted to explain why I was starving and frazzled.
I look up to meet Drew’s gaze. “Thanks, but I’ll be fine. My apartment’s not that bad, more of a puddle than a flood. I got most of it cleaned up this morning.”
“Really,” he says skeptically.
“Yeah. And my landlord said he’d look after the rest of it.”
Which is true. Robbie said he’d fix the water damage and get the foundation waterproofed. He just didn’t say when he’d do it.
Drew sighs. “Look, Ally, I’m not trying to pressure you into anything. But the offer’s there, if you want it.” He hesitates. “It would just be a place to stay. I promise I wouldn’t try anything.”
I nod, turning it over in my head. The truth is, I’m tired, and my arm is sore. Falling off my bike shook me up. And the thought of going home to my basement apartment, that probably already smells like mildew, is not appealing.
I thought of going to my parents’ for a few days, but it would feel like admitting I can’t look after myself. I have some friends in Somerset, but they’re not close. My best friend is in France, training for the French Open, so I’d have to get on a plane before I could crash on her couch.
But Drew is here, offering to let me stay at his place, and I doubt his condo smells like mildew.
It would fit right in with our pretend relationship, and I trust him when he says it would just be a place to stay.
In the ER this morning, he made an effort to look away whenever I had to lift up my shirt.
“Okay.”
“Okay?” he asks.
“I’ll stay at your place tonight. Thanks.”
Some of the tension leaves his shoulders. “Great.”
“Just for tonight, of course,” I clarify. I’ll feel stronger tomorrow. Strong enough to face my damp apartment and argue with my lazy landlord.
“Sure,” Drew agrees.
“You have to go back to your clinic now, right?”
He looks at his watch and grimaces. “Yeah, I should. Do you mind waiting for me here? Or I could drop you off at my place and come back—”
“Oh, I’m fine to wait here. Thanks.” I’ve inconvenienced this man enough already.
He nods. “Did you bring a lunch?”
“Yeah.” Fortunately, I packed it last night and remembered to throw it in my bag this morning.
“Good. You should try to eat something, so you don’t faint again. And call me if you’re feeling sick, okay? The clinic’s just down the hall.”
I open my mouth to insist I’ll be fine, then hesitate. Why am I fighting this? He wants to look after me, and it’s actually kind of nice.
Maybe the fact that we’re faking a relationship has turned on his protective instincts, like some kind of placebo effect.
“Okay,” I agree. “Thanks, Drew.”
“Sure.”
After he disappears out the door, I realize I’m famished, and I demolish my turkey sandwich. When that’s done, I shoot off a text to my landlord to follow up about his plan to fix the water damage. Robbie doesn’t reply right away, but that’s no surprise.
I deal with my ruined shirt next. My left sleeve is ripped and bloody, so I find a pair of scissors in Drew’s desk drawer and cut both sleeves off at the elbow. It’s a bit ragged, but it’s definitely an improvement.
Now I have the rest of the afternoon to kill, so I log in to Netflix on my phone. I need something mindless, and I decide to try a new medical drama, Grace General. It’s pretty soapy—the call rooms see a lot of action—but it’s good entertainment.
Halfway through the second episode, there’s a knock at the door, and a young woman steps into the office. She’s dressed in scrubs and carrying a messenger bag.
“Hey. Ally, right? I’m Lucy Sun, one of the neurosurg residents. Dr. Malone sent me to see if you needed anything.”
“Oh. Uh, no, I’m good. Thanks.”
“He told me you’d probably say that.” Lucy smiles and takes the chair on the other side of the desk. “I’ve got Tylenol and Advil in my bag, and I’d be happy to do a coffee run if you want.”
“Oh. Thanks, but I’m really okay.”
Lucy nods. “Dr. Malone suggested I eat my lunch here, if you don’t mind.”
“He thought I needed a babysitter, huh?”
“Well, he didn’t put it quite like that,” Lucy says with a grin. “I can sit in the outer office, if you’d rather.”
“Oh, no, stay here,” I tell her. “I’d like the company.”
“Thanks.” She opens her bag and pulls out a bottle of water and a sandwich.
“So what year of residency are you in?” I ask.
Lucy swallows a bite of sandwich. “Fifth.”
“So you’re nearly done, right? You’ll be an attending soon?”
“I wish,” she says with a laugh. “Neurosurg is six years, and then I’ll have to do a fellowship, which will be another two. And I’ll probably have to do a PhD on top of that.”
“Wow. That sounds . . .”
“Ridiculous,” Lucy supplies with a sigh. “Yeah, but that’s neurosurgery. The job market’s awful, and no one gets an attending job before they’re thirty-five.”
“Really?” I knew neurosurgeons did a lot of training, but I didn’t realize quite how much. “But Drew . . .” I let my sentence trail off. It’s probably not polite to point out that Drew’s only thirty-four, and he’s already been an attending for a few years.
But Lucy gets where I was going with that, and she doesn’t seem insulted. “Yeah, Dr. Malone’s kind of in his own league,” she says with a chuckle.
“Huh,” I say thoughtfully. “Because of the whole thing with the Tates?”
“Yeah, that’s part of it, I guess.” Lucy looks a little surprised that I have to ask. “But he was already an attending by then. He was like, thirty-one when Somerset hired him, which is insane for neurosurgery.”
“How did he manage that?” Thirty-one doesn’t actually seem all that young to get a job, but the entire field of neurosurgery sounds insane.
Lucy shrugs. “I think he went to one of the three-year med schools, maybe Calgary? So he started residency pretty young, and apparently he was just that good. For his residency research project, he developed a new type of aneurysm coil that led to a patent.”
“Wow.”
“Yeah, I was a first-year resident when Somerset was trying to recruit him, and all the attendings were talking about it. He did residency in Toronto, and apparently they really wanted him to stay. Montreal wanted him too, so no one thought he’d actually come here.
It was big news when he signed a contract. ”
I’d guessed Drew was good—they made him chief of surgery, after all—but I hadn’t guessed he was at this level. “What’s he like to work with?”
Lucy thinks for a minute. “Kind of intimidating at first, because he’s got high standards and he’s pretty intense.
But operations are actually less stressful when he’s the attending, because you know that if there’s a problem, he’ll be able to deal with it.
He never loses his cool, and he’s got great hands. ”
Great hands. I know she’s referring to his surgical skills, but I can’t help remembering how his hand felt on mine in the ER this morning. Warm and strong. Capable.
“Are you okay, Ally?” Lucy’s looking at me with concern. “You look a bit flushed.”
“Yeah, sorry,” I say. “I just spaced out for a minute.”
“No worries,” she says easily. “Are you sure you don’t want me to do a coffee run?”
“Oh, no thanks.”
Lucy nods and finishes her sandwich. “In that case, I should probably head back to the clinic.”
“Sure. Thanks for keeping me company.”
Lucy smiles and heads off, and I go back to Netflix.
But Grace General can’t hold my attention. My thoughts keep drifting back to Drew, and his great hands. The man I’m pretending to date, and whose condo I’ll be sleeping in tonight.
He promised he wouldn’t try anything, but if I’m honest with myself, part of me wishes he would.