Chapter 8 #2
“So, Harper.” My mother’s voice carried across the table, cutting through the chatter. “Anything interesting going on at RMC?”
“Uhm…I mean, always. We’re dealing with a complicated case right now.”
“You’re always dealing with a complicated case.” Alicia didn’t look up from her plate. “Every time I text you, you’re late for a meeting. When was the last time you had a day off?”
“I take days off, Licia. Why are you on my ass today?”
“Language,” my mother lobbed gently from the end of the table.
“‘Cause I don’t want you to die in your office at RMC,” Alicia said.
“Harper is ambitious,” said Dad, cutting into his pot roast. “Doing big things up at RMC. She’s a director—that ain’t nothin’ to sneeze at. Nothing wrong with it.”
“Right,” I agreed. “What Daddy said. Nothing wrong with that.”
“Sweetheart, you don’t have a life outside that hospital,” my mother argued. “You’re nearly forty and you deserve to have someone special. A partner. Someone who comes home to you at the end of the day.”
“I don’t disagree, Mom. I just think it’ll happen when it’s meant to happen.”
“You need to help things along. Get a matchmaker. Join a dating site—it’s just not natural to be alone.” She reached for her tea, ice clinking against the glass. “And don’t think I don’t know you’ve been avoiding Sunday dinners because you don’t want us asking about your love life.”
“And yet, here we are, talking about my love life.” I wanted to roll my eyes but didn’t want to suffer her wrath. Instead, I filled my mouth with more pot roast.
“I’m not trying to pressure you, baby. I just want you to be happy. And it seems like you spend all your time taking care of other people and none of your time letting anyone take care of you.”
I set down my fork with more force than necessary.
“Okay, look. I work a lot. I like my job, I’m good at my job, but it’s a lot of responsibility and there aren’t too many people that look like us in administration at RMC, so I’m trying to stay in the admin wing.
We have a case coming up involving a patient death and Diane Hart—y’all know who she is? ”
A glance around the table brought nods.
“She’s involved. It’s the most important file I’ll work on all year. I’m focused on this. I’m working. Hard. Am I clear?”
“I still think you’re hiding a man from us,” Naomi said. “Maybe he’s new or—”
“Alright, enough,” came a booming voice at the head of the table. My father was not much of a yeller, so when Byron Sutton spoke, everyone listened. “Let’s find a different topic of conversation.”
“Thank you, Daddy.”
My mother picked up her fork. The conversation shifted. Aaron started complaining about his ex-wife’s new boyfriend. Mia asked if she could get her hair done in braids for the upcoming dance and lobbied for her and me to shop alone without Aaron.
The normal chaos of a Sutton family dinner returned. But I felt Alicia’s eyes on me through the rest of the meal.
Watching. Calculating. Figuring me out the way she always did.
Nosy ass.
After dinner, Alicia cornered me in the kitchen while I was helping put away leftovers.
“I’ve known you my whole life, you know. You taught me how to ride a bike. You held my hand when I got my period for the first time and thought I was dying.”
“This is not kitchen conversation, Alicia.”
“My point is I know you. You don’t have to tell me anything, but don’t bullshit me. You’ve never been good at that.”
My mouth went dry. All the vulnerability, all the restless energy that Cole had stirred in me over the last week surged up and made me want to scream. Instead, I wiped my hands on a towel and spun on her.
“You obviously don’t know me well enough to know to back the fuck off.”
Before she could respond, my mother swept into the kitchen.
“Harper, you should take some of this roast home,” she declared, already reaching for foil. “It’s just your dad and me and we won’t eat all of this. And I made some greens on Friday, you can take those too. And butter beans; they’ll go with the cornbread. Don’t forget the macaroni and cheese—”
“Mom, I don’t need all that food. Send it home with Aaron,” I cut in, but she was already halfway to the fridge.
“Yeah, send it home with me.”
“I am sending some home with Aaron, but you’ll take some too. Men like a woman with meat on her bones.” She pressed a stack of plastic containers to my chest, insisting. “Load up. That wasn’t a request.”
I left my parents’ house with my car loaded down, enough leftovers in the passenger seat to last me at least a week. The drive home was nothing but quiet highway and Mary J. Blige thumping through the speakers.
A check of my phone reported that there was still nothing from Cole.
I had more important things to worry about than a man who could kiss me in a parking lot like that, then disappear into the ether without so much as a “hey, that was fun, let’s do that again and more.”
By the time I made it home, a mood was coiling through me. Not anger, exactly. Because, if I wanted to, I could text him. I could be a modern woman who didn’t wait around, who sent the first message with no worries about rules and norms. Nothing was stopping me from being her.
But I wasn’t going to be the one who chased, who put herself out there to be left dangling in the breeze. If he wanted me, he could come get me.
I scooped up my leftovers, headed to the elevator to my apartment, and tried to ignore how ridiculous I felt for letting a man I’d only met last week and kissed exactly once get under my skin like this.
It didn’t help that I’d spent the last few days imagining him fucking me senseless, over and over, every time I closed my eyes.
That probably wasn’t helping.
* * *
Mondays at Ridgeway Medical Center were always the same, a little parade of things I didn’t want to do, emails I didn’t want to answer, meetings I definitely didn’t want to attend.
Since I was in the middle of four distinct cases, my desk was a mess, which was unusual—file folders in a slouching stack, sticky notes migrating off the edge, my tablet wedged somewhere between two compliance manuals.
My coffee had been cold for at least an hour, but I was still drinking it out of stubbornness. I was too lazy to drag myself all the way to the break room to warm it up and I wasn’t about to ask Rowan to do it either. They weren’t my lackey.
But they could at least pick up on the fact that I needed a refill.
So I was still sipping cold coffee when my internal line rang. The little screen announced Dr. Rice. Figured. She never went through Rowan so they could pretend I’m not available.
“Harper Sutton,” I answered, balancing the phone between my ear and shoulder.
“Harper, hi.” Her voice came through, brisk as ever. “The Hart family meeting is scheduled for tomorrow. It’ll be you and me, Legal, and Dr. Webb.”
“Okay. I’ll be ready, I guess.”
“Good. Two o’clock, twelfth floor conference room.
” That was all it took for my stomach to take a deep dive.
The twelfth floor conference room was reserved for the highest-level, most strictly confidential meetings; using it meant this meeting was a top priority.
“I need comprehensive case documentation—timeline, intake, communications, treatment plan, post mortem. The full arsenal. Have it ready by end of day.”
“That’s a lot to pull together in one day.”
“I’m aware. We may not need it all, but we need to be ready. Harper, this is your opportunity to demonstrate we’ve handled this appropriately.”
Which meant this was my chance to make the hospital look good.
“I’ll have it ready,” I told her. “Should I alert Dr. Vaughn?”
“No,” she said, and if it was possible for one syllable to be clipped, that’s what it sounded like.
I waited for the explanation I assumed was coming. When none came, I prodded her. “Any reason? You had me interview him and prep him for—”
“Dr. Vaughn will not be attending. We’ll handle any clinical queries through the department chair.”
“But Dr. Vaughn was the surgeon on call. Excluding him makes it look like we’re hiding something.”
“We’re managing the optics. Keeping the audience small is in our best interest.”
“It’s really not.”
The silence on the other end of the line stretched out so long I thought she’d hung up. “Have the materials ready by end of day,” she finally said.
The line went dead before I could respond.
I stared at the phone for a moment, then set it back in its cradle with more force than necessary.
I spent the rest of the day buried in files. When I finally surfaced, the admin wing had gone quiet, everyone else having left at five like normal people.
Rowan knocked on my door frame at six fifteen, looking apologetic. “I pulled everything you requested per your instructions. I’d stay longer, but my partner has class tonight and I’m on kid duty—”
I glanced up from the stack of medical records I’d been cross-referencing with our incident reports. My neck cracked when I turned it.
“Oh, God, Rowan. I am so sorry. I didn’t mean for you to stay so late. Please apologize to Nicki for me.”
“It’s okay. Tomorrow is a big deal. You’re here, so I’m here. And you’ve been here all day. You didn’t even break to eat.” They nodded toward the half-sandwich that had grown hard and crusty and the soup that was cold and congealed.
“I’m fine. Promise.”
“Mmhmm.” They didn’t believe me. I didn’t believe me either. “Don’t stay too late, Harper. Remember, you like to go to war over people.”
“Yes. I know. I’m going to finish this, send it off to Dr. Rice, and go home.”
“Promise?”
A few minutes and pinky swears to go home in an hour later, Rowan left, pulling my door closed behind them.
They were right. I’d been running on coffee and not much else and it was not doing me any favors.
Over an hour later, I’d finally assembled everything Dr. Rice had asked for.
I sent them over, waited for the cursory acknowledgement, then backed everything up and shut down my laptop.
I needed to drop off some paperwork in the ER on my way out, so I grabbed the folder from my desk and headed downstairs.
The ER had a mood to it. I felt different when I walked into that department. I wasn’t sure I could spend a career in that unit, but some people were clearly born for it.
I weaved between gurneys and staff to reach the unit clerk’s station. Behind the counter sat a vaguely familiar woman, her fingers hammering the keyboard at warp speed.
“Help you?” she called.
“Harper Sutton, Risk Management and Patient Advocacy,” I said, extending the folder. “Dr. Smith requested this paperwork.”
She glanced up just long enough to take it. “I’ll see he gets it.”
I turned to leave and walked straight into a wall of muscle.
Cole was in rumpled scrubs like he’d been wearing them all day, sleeping in them all night. A stethoscope hung around his neck. His beard was unkempt and his eyes were bloodshot. He seemed tired but alert, like he was running on too little sleep and too much caffeine.
My stomach flipped and flopped at the sight of Cole Vaughn. Relief. Anger. Want. All of it hit me at once and made me dizzy.
“Hey.”