Chapter One Nomi #2
“Yes, that’s her name!” Eve speaks loudly from behind my back.
“Her big flap’s bleeding out, doctor. I think she’s confused.
” Eve, who clearly hasn’t even looked at New Guy, corrals me toward him.
I’m still clutching my area, too afraid to let up the pressure, and her shove knocks me off balance.
I tip over, my face smooshing against the name embroidered in blue cursive over his chest pocket, confirming that, yes, my worst nightmare is happening right now.
Dr. Julian D’Angelo.
First my high school rival, briefly my… I don’t know what, then my absolute nemesis and now, apparently, my doctor? What’s he doing here? He lives in Philly—works in an ER there, last I heard. He hates Sparrow Nook!
Julian catches me by the elbows with a sharp intake of air as he clocks the blood running down my legs. The horrified recognition of who I am is replaced with professional medical urgency.
“What happened?”
Before I can stutter out clearance rack electric razor, Eve gasps, mentally a moment behind us.
“Julian D’Angelo?!” Her hands go distressingly slack, and then, I feel it: the cool kiss of air on my ass as Eve drops the towel. In the immortal words of Kate McKinnon, I’m now Porky-Pigging it in my cropped T-shirt and nothing else in front of Julian fucking D’Angelo.
Maybe I should just bleed out.
Julian eyes us. “Are you on recreational drugs?”
Eve blurts out “No!”—a juvenile reflex to Julian’s big cop energy, though cannabis is fully legal. The obvious lie is undercut by my stupid T-shirt featuring a red-eyed Colonel Sanders holding a bucket of green buds labeled THC, which our eyes flick to simultaneously.
Julian’s jaw clamps shut, and then he picks me up princess-style like I weigh nothing.
In high school, Julian was a string bean of a guy—all height, spite, and sharp elbows.
But Dr. Julian D’Angelo is—wow. Something altogether different.
I stare up at the freshly shaven line of his jaw and try to process this stunning turn of events as my life force drains from my vulva.
Julian was the first person I met at Sparrow Nook High.
I’d just moved to the sleepy, almost-a-shore town from Atlanta two weeks before my senior year.
As a quiet, southern goth girl with a perfect GPA, the move up north felt tantamount to social annihilation.
A feeling confirmed when I walked into the debate team’s practice after school hoping to find my people and found Julian instead.
He took one look at my dyed-black hair and skull-patterned fishnets, rolled his bespectacled blue eyes, and said: Detention’s down the hall.
I’ve been pissed at him ever since.
Julian was completely obsessed with prestige and being the best. The best GPA, the best SAT scores, first place at every debate tournament—he won every single accolade.
Until I snatched valedictorian out of his maniacal hands. Which are now, coincidentally, about to inspect folds town.
“Tell me what happened,” he orders.
“Pube chores!” Eve yells just as I say, “Shaving accident!”
I moan, more from mortification than pain at this point.
Julian enters Patient Room #2 and lowers me gently onto a white table-cot that I immediately ruin, then pulls out the stirrups for my feet. “LET GO OF YOUR VULVA,” he commands at an insane volume, but I shake my head furiously.
“I can’t, I can’t!”
“Yes, you can.” The latex glove slaps his skin as he pulls it on. He glares at me as he approaches with an epic amount of gauze. “I have to look at your—”
“—area,” I mewl.
Julian’s face is redder than I’ve ever seen it. “—vulva,” he corrects, which is so much worse. Oh, God. Julian D’Angelo’s going to see my vulva.
“Where’s the injury?” he barks.
“She said somewhere left of center,” Eve supplies from the doorway. “In folds town!”
Jesus, I said that aloud?
“Only family can be back here.” His eyes narrow. “Are you family?”
Eve considers this. “I mean, not technically, but from a spiritual perspective—”
“Then get out!”
My eyes widen. Julian has the bedside manner of a German shepherd on meth. Eve winces at me apologetically, then runs for the waiting room.
He spins back to me. “On the count of three, you’re going to let go, and I’m going to staunch the wound with this gauze. You will be fine. Ready?”
“No,” I cry. “Call Dr. Appa! Make him come in!”
“Dr. Srinivasan is at home asleep, so you’re stuck with me, Wyeth.” Julian’s blue eyes are as intense now as they were staring me down across our debate podiums. “One.”
“No-no-no!”
“Two.” He leans forward, like he’s about to pounce.
I squinch up my entire face.
“THREE!”
And God help me, I do it. I let go. I squeal as Julian’s broad palm comes down like a hammer against the entire area.
There’s at least an inch of gauze between us, but the firm pressure feels like such relief, I collapse backward, limp.
When I open my eyes, Julian’s poised between my parted legs. His face is nearly purple now.
He’s breathing in, silently counting to four and out for a count of six.
“Are you—alright?” What is it with other people experiencing palpable distress over my bloody vu—area?
His eyes snap up to mine. “I’m fine. Once again, are you under the influence of recreational drugs?”
“No.”
Yes. But I’m not telling him that.
I scowl at the wall. Guess legalization didn’t shake Julian’s historic scorn for cannabis.
His gaze flicks down to the gauze, then back to my face. He clears his throat. “The bleeding is under control now. I’m going to remove the gauze so I can inspect the wound.”
“No!” I slam my knees together on instinct, trapping his hand there. Julian’s expression is truly alarmed. “I-I’m scared,” I finally admit, my knees slacking open.
“I’ll be gentle,” he says, his voice low and strangely husky. It plucks something inside of me. Julian sucks a deep breath in and repositions his palm slightly, sending a wave of heat through my broken bits up to my belly.
Oh, NO! Spinster Nomi gasps. The horny pot!
Now I’m as red as Julian. I start to cover my face with my hands, but they’re coated with blood. There’s nowhere to hide in this hell I’ve entered. Please don’t get wet. Please don’t get—
“I’m peeling back the corner.” Julian removes the gauze. Another sharp breath in.
“Is it that bad?” I cry.
“No, but I need to—remove the blood—to examine the laceration.” His words come out thick, and he clears his throat as he dabs the area with saline-soaked gauze. His touch is surprisingly soothing, and I start the same breathing technique just to keep my head on straight about this.
Julian D’Angelo is cleaning my vulva.
Julian D’ANGELO is CLEANING my VULVA.
JULIAN D’ANG—
“Wyeth…” He bites both of his lips in, making direct, unblinking eye contact with, oh hell, folds town. “You need sutures.”
“No,” I whisper, even though part of me always knew this is how it would end. Not the stitches, exactly, but dying of embarrassment. You don’t get to thirty-three as a woman with Crohn’s disease, arguably the most embarrassing disease of all time, without coming close to expiring via mortification.
And now, my time has come.
“Slide forward.”
I scoot toward the cot’s edge, but my face twists in discomfort, and wordlessly, Julian places his large hands on either side of my hips and lifts. His skin is warm through the gloves, giving me goose bumps down the length of my legs as he tugs me forward, bringing me to the cot’s edge.
I want to die. And also, have sex.
Julian lifts my left calf, also unshaven, until it’s bent at the knee, placing my foot gingerly into one of the stirrups, then the other.
My knees instinctively fall together, but he pulls them apart to step fully between my legs.
The sight of stern, adult Julian hovering over me, his face taut with vicious concentration, sends a lightning bolt through my entire being.
Oh, Jesus. I’m definitely getting wet.
Julian lowers himself onto a stool between my stirrups until all I can see is his disembodied head floating between my legs. With one hand, he parts my flesh, giving him full access to my—
“Left labium,” he says to no one, his voice strangely choked, “laceration approximately—three centimeters, presenting with mild damage to the—soft tissue.”
He sounds like a doctor on an ER show, but there’s no nurse standing by to hand him instruments.
Meanwhile I’ve entered some Zen, dissociative state as the guy who once petitioned the Sparrow Nook Board of Education to revoke my valedictorian eligibility on the sole basis that my prior credits were earned in Georgia, and thus, inherently suspect, slathers a numbing cream across folds town.
I turn and face the wall, squeezing my lips shut as Julian D’Angelo proceeds to stitch up my labium.
“All done.” He peels off his gloves and tosses them in the trash, then bolts for the door. I stare at his fleeing back in disbelief.
“Wait!”
Julian freezes and, reluctantly, peers at me over his shoulder. “What?”
I blink, then gesture below. “What do I do about this?”
He frowns at my half-shaved bush, a study in contrasts. Finally, he coughs.
“It’s a… vibe. I guess.”
I blink. “I was referring to the fact I have no pants?”
Julian’s eyes widen behind his gold frames, and the blush returns full force.
“Ah.” He disappears and returns a moment later with scrubs, facing the door while I hobble into the soft pants one leg at a time.
I feel the need to say something, to smooth over this moment with a laugh, with anything that would make it feel like what just happened won’t embarrass me until the end of time.
“I can’t believe Julian D’Asshole just sewed up my labium.
” I don’t know why the old nickname half the school called him comes back to me now, or why I thought using it would be a good idea.
He always hated it, and by the look of his tightening shoulders, he still does.
He swirls around to face me, all pretenses of professional courtesy gone.
“Well, I can’t believe I had to deal with Nomi Wyeth’s mangled genitalia because of”—his eyes flash as he air quotes—“pube chores.” He shakes his head, disgusted. “Congratulations, Wyeth. You’ve ruined lasagna forever.”
My mouth drops open. Did he just compare my vulva to, to, lasagna?! Fury floods my entire body.
“Whatever, Julian, you’ve always wanted to see my vulva, and you know it!” I storm into the hallway, holding up the too-big scrubs by the waistband.
“Keep the laceration clean and dry!” He sticks his head into the hallway to yell after me. “And I did not want to see your vulva!”