Chapter 17
SEVENTEEN
LUKE
“I like that girl,” Austin remarks, once Melissa and Sophie are out of earshot.
“We noticed,” Drew says dryly. He glances my way, and I’m sure he noticed that I like Melissa too. Drew doesn’t talk much, but not much escapes him.
“She’s got a girl next door vibe,” Austin continues.
“A girl next door who just got divorced,” I point out. “You should be careful with her, Austin. She told you she’s not ready.”
“She just meant she’s not ready for dinner,” Austin says. “But dinner isn’t really essential for a relationship.”
“You knew what she meant. The last thing she needs is to be your next fling.”
“Who said anything about a fling?” Austin asks. “Maybe I’m ready to settle down. She seems like a really nice girl.”
Sure. Austin started flirting with Melissa within five minutes of meeting her because he recognized her nice personality. It had nothing to do with the nice way her shirt stretched across her chest.
“My family would love her,” Austin continues. “Naturally gorgeous, single mom . . .”
“They like the idea of you dating a single mom?” Drew asks.
“It’s a hell of a lot better than dating a married mom,” Austin says with a grin. “Adultery doesn’t play well politically. But a single mom, maybe with a deadbeat ex . . . the optics could be good.” He turns to me. “Do you think her ex is a deadbeat?”
“No idea.” I’m pretty sure Troy’s not a deadbeat, but I have to maintain the fiction that Melissa’s just a casual acquaintance. “He might just be an idiot.”
“Oh, he’s definitely an idiot,” Austin agrees. “You’d have to be, to let a girl like that get away.”
“Do you know what’s going on with Ethan?” Austin asks as we walk home from the coffee shop. We’ve just said goodbye to Drew, which means we’re free to discuss things we don’t want the chief of surgery to hear.
I’m seriously considering telling Austin about my history with Melissa. I want her so badly I ache with it, but I’m afraid to make a move because I operated on her kid.
Austin’s not a bad guy, and I know if I tell him about my past with Melissa, he’ll back off.
And that’s probably why I’m hesitant to tell him—underneath the swagger, he’s not a bad guy, and I’ve never seen him treat a woman badly.
Maybe he is ready to settle down, and even if he isn’t, maybe he’ll show her a good time.
I get the sense her idiot ex did a number on her confidence, and Austin might help build it back up.
“Luke?” Austin asks.
“Sorry, what?”
“I asked if you’d heard about Ethan,” Austin repeats.
“You mean the lawsuit? I haven’t wanted to ask about it,” I admit. “Why, have you heard something else?”
“Not about the lawsuit, no. But apparently he reamed Grace out in the OR Friday morning. His case was going badly, and he said she wasn’t handing him his instruments fast enough.”
“Huh.” This is bad. Grace is an OR nurse, and one of the worst at the hospital.
She’s really slow, and half the time she hands you the wrong thing, which is stressful when a case isn’t going well.
But she tries really hard and she’s sweet, so people put up with her.
“No, I haven’t talked to him. How’d you hear about it? ”
“The nurses are all talking. Apparently Grace left the OR in tears. They swapped her into Beth’s OR for the rest of the day so she wouldn’t have to work with Ethan again.”
“You think Drew heard about it?”
Austin shrugs. “I don’t know. If he hasn’t yet, he probably will. I think the nurses are going to complain to their manager.”
Yep, this was bad news for Ethan. “In that case, Ethan should talk to Drew himself. Make sure he knows his side of the story. Let’s face it, Austin, Grace is a nice person but an awful OR nurse. They should probably move her out of the OR, somewhere she won’t do as much harm.”
“Maybe,” Austin agrees. “Anyway, you know Ethan pretty well, so I thought you might want to talk to him.”
“Yeah. Thanks, Austin.”
I’m struck by a wave of guilt. I’m one of Ethan’s best friends in Somerset, and I knew he was struggling. I should have made more of an effort to support him. I’ve been distracted by the situation with Melissa, but that’s got to change.
As soon as I get back to my condo, I grab my earbuds and head back down to the gym.
Since the run was cut short, I didn’t get much of a workout this morning, so I lift weights while I think about how to approach Ethan.
Under other circumstances, I’d invite him out for a beer, but since alcohol seems to be part of his problem, that doesn’t seem like the best option.
So when I’m done at the gym, I text to invite him over to watch the hockey game tonight.
It’s the kind of thing we sometimes did before he got together with Jessica, and also the sort of activity she’s unlikely to want to join.
Since I suspect she’s part of the problem too, this is a crucial part of my intervention plan.
Ethan doesn’t reply until the evening, and when he does, it’s to say that he’s taken Jessica to Montreal for the weekend.
I text back to wish them a good time before stretching out on the couch to watch the game myself.
I’d invite Austin over, but I won’t be able to look at him without thinking about the way he flirted with Melissa.
As the game’s ending, my phone buzzes with a text.
Melissa: How’s your leg?
It takes me a second to remember what she’s talking about.
Me: Better. I’m fine.
Melissa: You never had a cramp, did you?
I guess I’m not a very good actor, but I won’t apologize for faking it. It was clear Melissa was struggling on the run, and equally clear that she wasn’t going to stop until she hurt herself.
Me: Of course I did.
The three dots appear, disappear, and appear again.
Melissa: Thanks, Luke.
On Wednesday, I have a bitch of a day at work.
The morning starts with the news that naturopathic treatments didn’t work for Mrs. Meecham’s colon cancer, and she’s in the Emergency Room with a bowel obstruction.
I have to cancel my first case of the day—an elective gallbladder operation—to take her to the operating room.
“This would’ve been a hell of a lot easier if we’d done it last week, before she obstructed,” Nick remarks, as we carefully dissect around the swollen bowel.
“Yes, thank you, Nick.”
“And I read a study looking at outcomes,” he continues, oblivious to my irritation. “The risk of complications more than doubles when this surgery is done on an emergency basis.”
“I’m aware, thank you, Nick.” I should have tried harder to talk Mrs. Meecham into having surgery last week; if I’d kicked her daughter out of the room, I might have been able to convince her.
Mercifully, Nick finally picks up on my frustration, and he keeps his mouth shut for the rest of the operation.
The afternoon is taken up by another colon cancer case, which is somehow even harder than Mrs. Meecham’s. By the time I make it home, I’m spent. I spend an hour at the gym, but it doesn’t fix my mood.
After a shower and a frozen dinner of rubbery macaroni, I stretch out on the couch and flip on the TV.
Nothing on Netflix looks interesting. I finally settle on a mystery about a serial killer, but I can’t focus on it, and when the credits roll after the first episode, I don’t have a clue what happened.
After the second episode, I give in to temptation and text Melissa.
Me: You gonna make it to our hockey game Thursday?
Melissa: Yeah. Sophie’s cousin’s going to babysit
Me: Are your kids asleep?
Melissa: Yep
I punch the button to call her.
“Hey, Luke.” She sounds surprised to hear from me.
“Hey, Milly. What are you up to?”
“Lying on the couch watching Netflix. There are about a million other things I should be doing, but I’m too tired.”
“I know that feeling.”
“What are you doing?”
“Lying on the couch, wishing I’d chosen a different career.”
“Bad day?” she asks sympathetically.
“Awful. Sometimes I wonder how I managed to get this job.”
“Want to tell me about it?”
I sigh. “Remember the lady with colon cancer, whose daughter wanted to go the naturopathic route? She came in with a bowel obstruction and needed urgent surgery, and it was a mess of a case. I should have convinced her to have it done last week.”
“Don’t be silly, Luke. You couldn’t talk her into surgery if she wasn’t ready.”
“Maybe not,” I admit grudgingly. “Then, the second case was colon cancer again, and it was even worse. Even the healthy tissue looked like it would fall apart if I looked at it wrong. The guy seemed okay when I left, but I’m worried his bowel will fall apart overnight.”
“But the nurse will call you if something’s wrong, right?”
“I’m on call tonight, so yeah. I’m still worried, though.”
“And here I thought you never worried about anything, Luke Carlton,” Melissa teases.
“What?” If she only knew. “That’s ridiculous, Milly. Of course I worry. And now I’m trying to stop myself from driving back in to the hospital to check on him.”
“Oh,” she says thoughtfully. “Would that be so bad? Maybe you’ll sleep better if you check on him and see he’s fine.”
“Oh, he’s probably fine,” I agree. “But if I go in, I’ll alarm the patient and the nurse, and probably talk myself in to ordering a CT scan to make sure there’s no bowel leak.
And then I’ll have to call the radiologist to ask him to read the scan, which will probably be normal.
So the patient, nurse, and radiologist will all think I’m crazy. ”
“I see,” Melissa replies. “So you want me to talk you down from doing this?”
“Please. I know it seems silly, but—”
“It doesn’t seem silly,” she interrupts. “You care about your patients. I worry about sillier things all the time.”
“Like what?”
“Promise you won’t laugh?”
“I won’t laugh, Milly.”
“Okay.” She pauses. “It’s hard to know where to start.”
“Don’t overthink it.”
There’s another short pause, and I imagine her chewing her lip. I wonder what she’s wearing, if she’s changed into the slouchy pink sweatpants she wore the night she baked me cookies. The ones that rode low on her hips and showed a sliver of skin.
“I got a part-time teaching job at Brookline Academy,” she says slowly. “Through a connection of your mom’s, actually.”
“That’s great, Melissa.”
“Yeah, I guess. It’s just a temporary contract because someone took a leave last minute, and they couldn’t find another woman qualified to teach math.”
“It’s still great, Melissa.”
“But I feel like an impostor, Luke. I don’t have a teaching degree, and my computer science degree is almost ten years old. I was a stay-at-home mom, so I don’t have any real work experience—”
“Milly, that school is lucky to have you.”
She sighs. “I don’t know. I might not even last the year. There’s this one girl, Vanessa Abernathy, who’s like, the queen of the mean girls. She talks on the phone during class and everything. But I get the sense she’s Daddy’s Princess, and if I try to discipline her, it’ll backfire on me.”
And just like that, I hate Vanessa Abernathy. “I don’t have any brilliant suggestions, Milly, but I’m sure if anyone can handle her, it’s you.”
“Thanks, Luke,” she says with a laugh.
“Okay, what else are you worried about?”
“Well, my mother thinks I shouldn’t have taken the job at all,” she says slowly. “She thinks it will distract me from parenting.”
“Well, that’s just crazy. Didn’t you say it was part-time?”
“Yeah, only mornings. When Liam’s in preschool.”
“So your kids won’t even notice.”
“Hopefully not.”
“Definitely not. Let’s move on. What else worries you?”
“Well, I read an article about black plastic kitchen utensils, and apparently they’re toxic. A chemical leaches out when you cook—”
“I’ll throw mine out immediately. Nothing but takeout from now on.”
“Apparently the black plastic takeout containers are toxic too.”
“No kidding?” I tease. “I guess we should just stop eating. What else?”
“I read that drinking too much coffee will give you osteoporosis. And sometimes I drink, like, four cups a day—”
“Well,” I say, fighting to keep my voice serious, “that’s actually quite a reasonable concern.”
“Really?” I can tell she’s surprised I didn’t dismiss that fear like I did all the others.
“No, Melissa,” I say with a chuckle. “Not really. I don’t treat osteoporosis, but I’m pretty sure there are good drugs for it now. But you’re thirty-one. You’ve got years before you have to think about osteoporosis.”
“But time moves fast, you know?” she says. “I worry that one day I’ll wake up and Claire and Liam will be adults, and I won’t know what happened.”
“Sometimes I worry I’ll wake up and realize I forgot to have kids.” The words spill out of my mouth before I know what I’m saying, and they keep coming. “And then I’ll be too old.”
“But Luke,” she begins, and I can guess what she’s about to say.
“I know. It’s different for men. I could theoretically have kids in my sixties, but I always imagined teaching them to play hockey and to swim, and—”
“Luke,” she interrupts. “You’re what, thirty-two? You’ve got years before you’re too old to have kids.”
“I guess.”
“And it’s not like you’d have trouble finding a woman to have kids with.”