Chapter Twenty-Seven Nomi #2
“It’s very hard to admit you have a shitting disease to the boy you like.”
“The very hot guy, you mean,” Julian corrects.
“The extremely intense, underweight, big mouth teenager that I, for some reason, desperately wanted to make out with.”
“I’ll allow it.” Julian folds his arms. “And then, when you came back, and I saw you smoking pot with Eve. All those things I said…” He swallows, the sound rough in his throat. “I’m so sorry. It wasn’t really about you.”
“I know that now,” I reply softly.
“You may not have noticed this, but historically I’ve had some major emotional hang-ups with cannabis.”
“Oh, really?” I smile, then wince as a spasm hits my lower belly.
It’s an empty threat, being that I’ve eaten nothing to fuel a true attack, but it doesn’t stop the pain from radiating through me periodically.
Julian’s big, blue eyes see it, see me, but I don’t see pity in him, or disgust, or dismay, or any of the reactions I’ve always hated so much.
I see acknowledgment and understanding. I see love.
This intense, gorgeous, brilliant man loves me, all of me. And though I’m not ready to say it, I think I love him, too.
I tell him about going to the Rutgers regional campus instead of Yale and the rough college years when I was so sick and starting biologics therapy.
The allergic reactions, the doctors who refused to try anything else.
Julian bites his bottom lip in, clearly angry on my behalf, but also, chastised somehow, as though he’s partly taking responsibility for his profession.
I tell him how cannabis pulled me out of the worst of my illness, but how difficult it was to find the kinds I needed for Crohn’s prior to legalization, and then, what a miracle getting my first medical card was and how I knew that’s what I wanted to do.
I’d quit pharmacy school because of an epic stress-induced flare and the worst allergic reaction to a biologic yet landed me in Philly Gen.
I was back home, not knowing how I was supposed to pick up the pieces of my life or what my disease would allow me to do.
But if I could help other people find relief through cannabis, the way I had, that was a calling I could answer.
I tell him about the years that followed, working for Damon, the ebb and flow of my disease. The disappointments I experienced with the medical industry, one doctor after another, until finally, I gave up seeing doctors and specialists altogether.
“Except for Dr. Appa,” I amend. “He’s always been good to me.”
Julian’s brows pinch together, though he doesn’t say anything.
“What are you thinking? You want to say something.”
“Nomi, I want to respect the boundaries you set around your illness and how we talk about it. But it may be hard for me to know where those boundaries are intuitively. If I ask or say things that go too far, especially in the beginning, will you give me some, I don’t know.
Amnesty? Without getting too angry right away?
I’m really trying, and I want to do this right. ”
I run my hand down his arm, squeezing lightly, appreciating him so much in this moment it hurts. “Okay. That sounds fair. What do you want to say?”
Julian takes a deep breath in. “If you haven’t seen a specialist in—”
“Five years,” I fill in.
His eyebrows lift. “That means you haven’t had a colonoscopy to monitor your disease progression recently. Is that right?”
I swallow. “That’s right.”
Julian bites both lips in. “I understand how frustrated you are with the medical industry, but you’ve been very sick, and your normal interventions haven’t been helping lately.
Maybe it’s time you had some testing done to see what’s going on in here.
” Julian places his hand directly over where it hurts the most, and the touch feels so comforting, a tear rolls down my cheek.
“I’m suggesting this not as your doctor, Nomi, but if you’ll have me, as your partner. ”
He watches me closely. “Was… that okay for me to say?”
I breathe deeply in, eyes closing on reflex. This is part of why I don’t talk about my disease, too. I don’t like hearing what I don’t want to do. I don’t like facing what I’ve been running from. And I don’t like feeling accountable for ignoring my own needs to someone who cares about me.
But maybe this boundary isn’t fair to ask the people in my life to respect.
If I’m sick and getting sicker, is it right to pretend I’m not and then get angry when someone refuses to buy my heavily edited version of reality?
Or is that just me choosing to be alone with my fear, again, instead of together with someone who loves me, where I have to be brave and vulnerable and honest?
Defiance surges through me, because I don’t want to be alone anymore.
Not when Julian’s here beside me, the jagged, difficult angles of who he is fitting so neatly against my own.
And if that means hearing the uncomfortable truth, if that means I have to be fucking brave and bravely allow some doctor to plumb my ass looking for answers, so be it.
“Yeah. It was.” My mouth quirks in a half-smile. “The bidet doesn’t hurt, either.”
Julian’s brows lift earnestly as he pulls me into his arms. “It’ll change your life.”
He holds me, the new fan keeping me cool in his embrace, and I sigh against his chest. “Now you know all my secrets.”
“I do? There isn’t anything else about, say, Lil Dom?”
I snort. “Nothing you can handle.”
Julian groans, and I use the opportunity to nuzzle in closer. “Now you have to tell me your secrets, too.”
“Anything.” Julian’s lips brush against my forehead.
“What happened at Philly Gen?”
He freezes in my arms. “I signed an NDA!”
I look at him sternly. “Spill it, Julian.”
He sighs heavily, his head leaning back against the couch as he regards me. “I’m physically and emotionally unable to deny you anything.”
I smile, satisfied. “Sucks to be you then, because I’ve long suspected I’m a raging brat. Tell me everything.”
“Fine, but you have to understand it was the full moon,” Julian begins. “And full moons mean chaos.”
“Did they teach you that at the Yale School of Medicine?”
“They did, you little smart ass, and I didn’t believe it then, either, but it’s a hundred percent true.
Ask any hospital employee you know—if you’re scheduled on a full moon, everything will go wrong.
That night the ER was slammed, every room taken, and we were severely understaffed because a horrible stomach virus decimated our ranks.
It was a terrible night. I hadn’t had a bathroom break or a single cup of coffee since I’d clocked in six hours earlier. ”
“Yikes, you? No coffee?” I lean over and take a sip of water, emptying my bottle in the process. “The story could end here, honestly.”
“Unfortunately, it doesn’t.” Julian takes my water bottle, heads to the kitchen, and begins to hand-wash it at the sink. I follow him meekly, mesmerized by the rightness of him in my space.
“A nurse that I don’t care for interrupted me for the fifth time that night to demand that I come up to the cardiac unit, which wasn’t even my floor, and I became extremely annoyed.”
“Why don’t you care for this nurse?” I take the clean, freshly filled water bottle that he offers me and take a long drink. Why is there nothing better than cold water that someone else has poured for you?
“He microwaves leftover fish.”
My eyebrows rise. “So he’s evil. I see.”
Julian offers me his hand, and I take it, letting him lead me to my own bedroom. “Also, his name is Gilroy, and I resent having to make those two vowel sounds back-to-back.”
“Ooh. Yeah.” I wince. “Gilroy.”
“So, Gilroy the Inconsiderate asks me to stop what I’m doing, again, to come pronounce this cardio patient dead.” Julian takes my favorite sleep shirt off the hook on my bathroom door and lays it on the bed.
“Oh, no.” I’d never considered Julian in that role. Standing over someone’s bedside at the end of their life, confirming someone else’s worst nightmare. “That’s so sad.”
“The worst part of the job, honestly. That, and making the call to their family afterward. May I?” His voice is low as his hands trail down my sides, tugging lightly at the hem of my hoodie.
I nod, not wanting my voice to crack, and raise my arms to let him lift it over my head.
The soft cotton drags against the tender flesh of my stomach, ribs, and breasts.
He sucks a short breath in as it comes off, my hair billowing down around my shoulders.
Looking over my shoulder at us in the mirror, he meets my eyes there.
But, with a look of serene discipline, Julian slips the large sleep shirt over my head.
“What happened next?”
“Bathroom first.” He nudges me toward the door, and when I return, freshly washed up, brushed, flossed, and relieved, he’s got the bedroom lighting down to the warm, honeyed glow of the bedside lamps, my covers pulled down, phone plugged in, and water bottle waiting.
I slide into my waiting bed and sigh, audibly, as he pulls the covers over me.
“Will you get in, too? And finish the story?” I yawn and pat the other side of my bed.
He shucks off everything down to his boxer briefs and climbs into bed. “I didn’t want to wear outside clothes in your fresh sheets,” he explains, as though that’s why I’m staring at him.
Facing each other on our sides, our hands tucked beneath our cheeks, he continues.
“I follow Gilroy up and pronounce this poor patient dead, so the next step was calling his family. And the whole time I’m searching for the patient’s information, Gilroy was yapping in my ear nonstop about all the things he needed me to do.
I found the number, called, and the patient’s wife answered. ”
Julian swallows.
“She couldn’t believe it. ‘I was just there two hours ago, and he was fine! You all told me he’d be released tomorrow!
’” Julian blows out a breath. “I felt bad for her, but I wasn’t this man’s doctor, and I couldn’t really answer her questions.
Based on his file, there’s no way that man could’ve been released the next day—he’d been fighting for his life all week—but denial is powerful when facing the death of a loved one.
So, I told her again I was sorry, her husband was deceased, and she needed to come to the hospital to make arrangements. ”
“God.” I whisper. “How awful.”
“The woman arrived extremely upset, and they let her in the room with her husband to say her goodbyes. She had this long, tearful conversation with him, and apparently, she’d been having an affair and needed to get it off her chest.”
“Oh, shit.”
“Yeah. With their chiropractor. And one of his fraternity brothers. Also, their dog-sitter.”
“Jesus.”
“Yeah, she was pretty unhappy. Told him that, too. And then, when he sat up in bed and started screaming at her, she was even unhappier.”
“Julian!” My eyes nearly bug out of my head as I, too, launch upright in bed. “What? How?”
“When Gilroy was pestering me while I was trying to find the deceased man’s information, I inadvertently typed this other man’s name into the system—one that Gilroy was asking me to check on after a fairly minor stent procedure—instead.
My brain just… misfired. Daniel Van Dyke was decidedly not dead, and yet, I told his wife otherwise.
He was rightfully furious. With me. Philly Gen.
The Board of Trustees. And particularly his wife, Lillian Corrington Van Dyke. ”
“Corrington…your fellowship patrons?!”
“Yes.” Julian frowns miserably. “The hospital’s biggest donor family thrown into an uproar when the prominent son-in-law set to take over the family business was wrongfully pronounced dead only to wake up and find out that his wife came out as polyamorous to him when she thought he was dead.”
“Oh, Julian.” I press my hand to my mouth, muffling a single, shocked laugh. “Oh, no.”
Julian tugs me back down to the bed, his own smile reluctantly pulling at the corners of his mouth. “It’s not funny.”
“I mean, wasn’t the husband visibly… alive? What about all the machines that beep because you’re alive?”
Julian sighs. “According to Dr. Riveras, Ms. Van Dyke was ‘overcome with grief,’ and this was ‘my fault’ because I ‘never listen’ and have my ‘head stuck up my condescending ass.’ But also, Mr. Van Dyke complained about the beeping and lights keeping him awake earlier that evening, and because he’s outrageously rich and important, the attending physician capitulated and let them turn off the monitoring equipment. ”
I whistle. “The perfect storm.”
“The Corringtons want me fired, but Dr. Riveras convinced them it’d look bad if the Corrington fellow was suddenly fired in connection to their son-in-law’s treatment.
If the press found out, Lillian Corrington’s secrets would be exposed, the family would pull their endowments as retribution, and millions of dollars would be lost. But it’d end my career, too.
Donor-killer? No respectable hospital would have me after earning that reputation.
So, I’m lying low until the Corringtons cool off and sign the check for the new hospital wing. ”
“Wow,” I yawn, then blink appreciatively. “That was a wild ride. I’m glad I coerced it out of you.”
He smiles. “Should I go now, Nomi? Let you sleep?”
“Let me sleep, yes. But stay, if you want.”
“Do you want me to stay?”
I let my eyes close, the answer frothing along the entire surface of my being.
“Yes.”
As bad as I’ve felt, I’m almost content now beneath the cool press of Julian’s palm against my cheek.
The care he’s shown me tonight, the simple, un-fussy way he met my needs without me asking, feels like a gift.
Maybe I don’t get to have a future without Crohn’s disease, but maybe I could have this future, where it doesn’t get to have all of me.