Chapter 2 Aaron
Iwas already having a shitty day.
To make up for the two horrible days, I was supposed to leave early today, but that was thrown out of the window when a patient of mine reported to the ER complaining of an acute cardiac arrest. The most irritating thing about it was that the patient has a longstanding history of noncompliance with diet and exercise and remained on his steady diet of bacon cheeseburgers, even after his stent replacement, which is probably why he had his second heart attack.
“Dr. St. James.” Mr. Wallaby grins at me, clutching his chest as I walk in. His voice is strained and thin, and his breathing is labored. He says, “You’re not going to believe what happened.”
“Is that so?” I raise my eyebrow at him, not in the least bit amused by his antics.
His wife, who told me that Wallaby refused to eat any of the healthy things she made for him, looks tired and stressed, likely from having to parent her husband.
To make things worse, the man has two other kids in high school who are no doubt worried about their father’s eating himself to death.
“Yeah,” Wallaby continues, oblivious or perhaps uncaring of my bad mood. He sniffs around the oxygen tube in his nose as he continues, “So I was out fishing with the boys, you know, at the ravine, and I saw the biggest damn pike you've ever seen. I swear the sucker was fifteen pounds.”
“Are you trying to die?” My words cut through the atmosphere like a knife, and for the first time, the amusement on his face disappears. “I’d like to know so I don’t keep wasting my time on you.”
I hear a light intake of breath from behind me, probably from the nurse who walked in with me. She seems surprised. She must be new, I think, amused. Because my lack of what HR calls 'appropriate bedside manners' is already known by everyone in the hospital.
Besides, I already tried being nice to Mr. Wallaby, and it clearly isn’t working. It looks like it’s time for me to play bad cop.
“I genuinely want to know,” I repeat in the pin-drop silence. “Because another surgery is going to be pointless if you just go back to your old ways. You're wasting your family's money, my time, and the hospital's resources.”
Mr. Wallaby's face sinks.
For a few seconds after my speech, I think I got through with him. I think he can sense the gravity in the silence, where there’s no sound except beeping and his lightly wheezing breath.
But then Mr. Wallaby breaks the silence by bursting out into raucous, wheezing laughter.
“Man, Dr. St. James.” He coughs. “You’re a hoot. I knew there was a reason why I liked you.”
My frustration spikes, and I feel a little like strangling the man and being done with it.
But I don’t have time to clean up his dead body, so I turn to the nurse and say, “Keep him on the heparin. And monitor his oxygen levels overnight.”
“Yes, Doctor.”
I nod to his wife and leave, trying to control the anger rising inside me. I don’t know how the man can be so damn irresponsible, putting his family through that, including his kids.
People don’t fucking think about what it takes to have families nowadays. They pop out kids willy-nilly like it's a hobby, like it's their God-given right to bring someone into this world. They don't think of the responsibility they hold in taking care of those children till they’re grown.
I've always thought that having kids is one of the decisions you have to make completely unselfishly. If you have kids, you need to be there for them, no matter what. They didn't choose to have you as a parent. So it's your responsibility to do all the emotional heavy lifting, too.
That's the reason I never wanted kids, even from an early age.
Because of my lifestyle, I barely have time to feed and take care of myself, much less, an extra person.
And any time I have that’s not dedicated to my career is spent trying to keep my little brother out of trouble.
Which is another reason why I’m so irritated.
Because I was supposed to go visit him in juvie today, but it looks like that's not going to happen.
I'll probably have to go over the weekend, which means he'll probably talk my ear off about the fact that I missed two visiting periods in a row.
You don’t care about me. I can hear him now. You’re just biding time till I'm out here so you can abandon me like Mom and Dad did.
Little brat. The irritating thing is that I'm pretty sure he knows that it isn't true. I don't think he believes it, either. He just finds it fun to guilt-trip me.
And I don’t know why I still let him.
Either way, I'll see him on Saturday, when I have a full day off. Until then, I need to get to work.
On my way back to my office, I slow down and stop around Zach's office. I remember he told me to stop by before I left because he needed my help with a patient. I might as well get that over with right now so I can tick something else off my list.
I don't bother knocking, opening the door to check if he's in.
And when I do, I freeze in the doorway. My already bad mood takes a nosedive.
A shirtless Zach is with Beth, standing only a hair's width apart. Their eyes are fixed on each other so intensely that it looks like neither can stand to look away. Zach licks his lips as his eyes flicker down to hers, and I can read the clear arousal on his face. It matches that on hers.
There's something else on Zach's face, a hint of an expression I had never seen, not even when he was with his ex-girlfriend.
And Beth...fuck, she's staring at him like he hangs the moon.
A growl escapes my mouth before I can stop it. Wrath whips through me, lashing me so intensely that my hands squeeze around the door handle. I swallow thickly as bile rises in my throat, and a riot of emotions overwhelms me.
Chief of them is a possessiveness that I should no longer fucking feel.
And now I'm mad because I still feel that way even after what she did. Fuck.
It's so unfair.
It's also unfair that because of her, my anger extends to Zach, a man I’ve come to consider a friend. A man who apparently is about to kiss my ex, the woman who tore my heart out and stomped it into the ground without mercy.
Zach tears his eyes away from her first and notices me standing by the door. He blinks in surprise. “Aaron.”
At the sound of my name, Beth's head also whips to the door. I see her dawning horror, the way her face pales, and her lips catch between her teeth as she stares at me. Shame soon turns her features red.
It does nothing to diminish my wrath. I keep my eyes on her, feeling a million different things that I have to wrangle into submission. I finally turn to Zach and ask cooly, “You said you needed my help with a patient?”
“Uh...” Zach releases Beth and rubs his palms over his pants. He looks around to get his bearings. “Erm, yes. One of my patients has been complaining of heart palpitations and a whole list of other symptoms. I’m having some difficulty identifying the cause.”
“What are the symptoms?”
“Headaches, stomach pain, heart palpitations, tingling in hands and feet.”
I think about it for a second, rifling through folders of conditions in my brain. “Is he on any medications?”
“Nope. No relevant family history either. Also crossed out dehydration, anemia, high blood pressure...you name it. I've reached the end of plausible causes.”
I nod. “I'll need to examine him to know more. Are you going to take me to him?”
Zach blinks. “Right now?” He glances back at Beth in clear hesitation.
Beth, on the contrary, finally jumps into action, picking up an empty urine cup and saying, “I'll just leave you to it then, Zach. I have to go get this taken care of.” She gestures to him with the cup. “Sorry, once again, about everything.”
“Erm, sure.” A puzzled expression sits on his face as he watches her scurry out.
Or at least she attempts to.
She stops when she reaches the doorway, her head ducked.
“Excuse me,” she murmurs in a low tone without meeting my eyes.
I don’t step aside all the way, so she has to squeeze herself to pass by me. Just the barest brush of her, as I catch her scent in my nostrils, has my body tightening and the memories flying through my mind. Sweet memories turned painful. I refuse to give into the space in my head.
I’m not ruled by my emotions, and I remind myself that this isn't the time to sort through my mess of complicated feelings towards Beth. I probably shouldn't even be angry because there isn't anything anymore between me and Beth.
Absolutely nothing.
“Alright,” Zach says and tosses the balled-up shirt in his hand onto a sectional. He goes to his desk, opens the drawer, and retrieves a fresh scrub top, which he pulls over his head. “Let’s go.”
I nod.
But even as we leave his office and walk down the hall together, I keep recalling the image of Zach and Beth standing together, with him about to kiss her. I try to put the image out of my mind, but it's damn near impossible.
Especially when Zach glances at me and says, “You okay?”
“Yeah. Why wouldn't I be?” Even I can hear the tightness in my tone.
“Because you kind of look mad,” he says. “Even madder than usual.”
I merely grunt, hoping he will drop it.
But, of course, Zach doesn't know when to quit.
“Does it have anything to do with the fact that I nearly kissed Beth?”
I glare at him, and he chuckles. “Yeah, I figured as much. You like her, don’t you? I mean, I like her too, but I didn’t think you liked her this much.”
“I don’t like her,” I tell him, then try to find a good explanation for why I'm in such a bad mood. “Maybe I just don’t think you should be messing around with anyone from work. It's unprofessional.”
“You have a point there,” Zach comments. “And I would believe that was all it was if you looked like a disapproving parent rather than like you want to murder me.”
I sigh. “Can we just drop this?”
“Sure.” He grins cheekily. “But if you have feelings for her, I can back off. Bro code and all that.”
“I don’t have feelings for her.”
“Right.”
By the end of the day, I was exhausted and irritated, but I still managed to call my brother on the way home. When he finally comes on the line, he starts with, “Let me guess, you're not coming.”
“I'm sorry, I have work.”
“As usual.”
“That's not fair. You know I would be there if I could.”
“Yeah, Mom and Dad used to say the same thing too.”
“Mom and Dad were drug dealers.”
“So are you, kind of.”
I pinch the bridge of my nose. I don't have time for his sulkiness, nor do I have time to entertain his implication that what I do is the same as our foster parents, who are currently sitting in jail.
“Look, I'm sorry, okay? I'll come on Sunday and bring something from that Indian place you like so much.”
“Yeah, whatever.”
Abel hangs up, and I stare at the sky and sigh.