Chapter Twelve Hailey #2
Eventually we wind down, both wiping our eyes. I feel lighter than I have in days.
“Poor guy, though,” she finally says, sobering. “Is he going to be okay?”
“Dr. Gupta thinks so. ‘Cautiously optimistic.’” I make air quotes with my fingers. “He came in just in time.”
We sit in companionable silence for a moment before Rachel’s expression shifts. I watch it happen in real time—the joke fades, replaced by something more serious. Here we go.
“So.” She stabs another forkful of pasta but doesn’t eat it.
“What else is wrong? I didn’t find you sitting in here with that look on your face because some guy shoved ketchup packets in his dick.
Just because I’m starting at the PT clinic soon doesn’t mean you stop telling me 150 percent of your thoughts and feelings. So spill.”
“It’s nothing, really. I’m fine. Just something Marco said.”
She gives me a look. The Rachel Look. The one that has gotten me to spill my deepest secrets.
I sigh and tell her about the call Marco took.
Rachel sits straighter and leans forward. “What?”
“They wouldn’t give their name. Hung up when Marco asked who was calling.”
“Okay, that’s creepy as hell.” She sets her pasta down, her full attention on me now. “Did you tell security?”
“It’s probably nothing.” I fidget with my phone case. “Could’ve been a wrong number, or someone trying to reach me who didn’t know the right way to ask.”
“Or it could be connected to the other stuff.” Rachel’s eyes narrow. “The note. Your car.”
I wince. I shouldn’t have told her about any of it. I knew she’d worry.
“We don’t know that.”
“We don’t not know, either.” She leans forward, her expression shifting from concern to frustration.
“Hailey, someone is harassing you. First the note, then your car gets keyed, and now someone’s calling the hospital asking about your schedule?
You can’t tell me it’s not Lars Winters doing all of this.
The guy’s a fucking creep. This is a pattern of gross behavior. ”
“It’s not—”
“It is.” Rachel cuts me off firmly. “And you know it. You need to tell security. Like, yesterday.”
The familiar resistance rises in my chest, that instinctive pushback against involving anyone else in my problems. “And say what? ‘Hey, I got a weird note and some scratches on my car, please solve this mystery for me’? I’ll be the doc who cried wolf.”
“Scratches on my car? Are you really trying to reduce what happened to scratches? And so what if security thinks you’re making a fuss over nothing? At least there’s a record of it and they can keep an eye out here for you.”
“I just…” I trail off, struggling to articulate the knot of feelings tangled in my gut.
“I don’t want to make it into a thing. If I start reporting stuff, suddenly everyone’s going to be watching me, asking questions, treating me differently.
I’ll be the woman with the stalker problem, instead of the capable doctor on the floor. ”
“Better than being the doc who ignored red flags and ended up—” Rachel stops herself, pressing her lips together. “Sorry. That was too far.”
“Yeah.” My voice comes out smaller than I intended. “It was.”
A heavy silence settles between us. Rachel picks at her pasta without eating it, which is how I know she feels genuinely bad. Rachel never lets food go to waste.
“I just don’t get it,” she finally says. “You’re one of the smartest people I know. You handle crisis situations in the ER like it’s nothing. But when it comes to your own safety, you just…shut down. Why?”
I stare at the table, unable to meet her eyes. The truth is complicated—layers of I don’t want to be a burden and I’ve handled worse on my own and if I admit this is serious, then it’s real. But underneath all of that is the truth.
“My entire childhood, my parents diminished everything,” I say quietly.
“I was too anxious. Too dramatic. It was always it could be worse or we have it good, Hailey—be grateful for what you have. Or my dad’s favorite: Strong girls don’t get scared.
They just get stronger. It was made abundantly clear to me that fear and complaints made me weak, and being weak made me…
” My throat goes tight, and I have to swallow hard before I continue.
“Being weak made a person unlovable. Plain and simple.”
Rachel’s expression softens. “Hailey…”
“And look, maybe they were right.” I shrug, trying to make it seem casual even though my chest feels tight. “Maybe I was just an anxious kid who needed to grow a backbone.”
Rachel reaches across the table to touch my hand.
“Look at me.” When I hesitate, she gives my hand a squeeze.
“Nothing should make a child unlovable to her parents. Especially not being afraid. And while I hope you decide to exorcise those demons in therapy, let me give you my non-professional but totally correct opinion on this: What’s happening with Lars Winters isn’t you being a scared little girl.
There is actual, tangible evidence that he is paying way too much attention to you.
I believe you have a reason to be scared, and I don’t think admitting it makes you weak.
In fact, I think asking for help right now is the smartest, strongest thing you could do. ”
I don’t respond. She’s right, and I know it. But her words have set something loose inside me, and it’s robbed me of all my words.
Rachel sighs and pulls her hand back. “Will you at least think about it?”
“Yeah,” I say. “I’ll think about it.”
She watches me, something conflicted in her expression. Then she picks up her pasta again and changes the subject.
“Did you see that Dr. Martinez grew a mustache?”
I blink at the whiplash. “What?”
“A mustache, Hailey. On his face. It looks like a caterpillar died on his upper lip.”
“That’s…vivid.”
“It’s almost hypnotic. I couldn’t look away during rounds.”
I snort despite myself. “You’re the worst.”
“I’m the best, and you know it.”