Twenty-Four
Oliver
There’s something surreal about waking up next to someone that you never want to leave.
In recent years, I’ve been so intent on not getting attached, for fear of someone getting to know the real me and wanting out. I’ve rarely entertained the possibility that I could ever be with someone long-term.
But as I stand here, the smallest ripples of sunlight peeking through the plain curtains of the apartment windows, making lines on Elle’s pale face, I realize something.
I don’t want to be apart from Elle Thompson.
And that is equal parts exhilarating and terrifying.
I reach my hand out and gently smooth her hair away from her face. I don’t want to wake her up, but leaving a note doesn’t feel right after last night. And I want to see her eyes before I leave for work.
I manage to extract myself from the twisted sheets without waking her.
Once I’m dressed, I kneel next to the bed and gently rest my arms on the mattress next to her.
Her lips are pursed, like they’re begging to be kissed.
But I’ve never kissed a sleeping Elle before, and I’m not sure if it would end with me being punched in the face.
Knowing her, that is a very plausible outcome.
I caress her bare shoulder blades and see goosebumps start to spread across her skin. I lean forward and place a kiss on her shoulder, eliciting a quiet moan from her. Her eyes scrunch, but don’t open.
“Do that again,” she whispers in a hoarse voice. The corner of my mouth lifts up. I kiss her in the same place, letting my lips linger there for a moment longer. And then I blow a small puff of air on the spot.
A longer moan this time.
She rolls over, the sheet dropping below her breasts, and I’m struck again by how gorgeous she is. She smiles lazily before squinting her eyes open. When she sees me in my scrubs, she pouts.
“You’re dressed,” she mumbles.
“I am,” I say with a nod. I crawl my hands towards her and trace one finger over her breasts. “But you, beautiful, are not. And that is fucking killing me right now.”
Her pout lifts slightly. “Then join me,” she replies, and I nearly give in.
“I would love to, but duty calls,” I respond as I stand up, adjusting my pants in the process. I have to cover a day shift, today of all days, even though I’d like nothing more than to get right back into bed.
“You don’t even like your job, just quit and stay here. I could plan a much more fun day for us than saving lives,” she says, wrapping the sheet around her and sitting up.
“I don’t doubt that for a second, sweetheart.” I say, the pet name rolling easily off my tongue.
Elle runs her fingers through her knotted hair and turns to face me.
I lean down and kiss her plump lips, still swollen from all the times we woke up during the night and found ourselves kissing again.
She puts a hand around my neck and tries to pull me towards her but I resist. I let my tongue touch hers for just a second, give her one last peck, and pull away.
I look at the clock on my nightstand. “I have to go,” I say, leaning over the bed to kiss her on the forehead.
“Ugh, you can’t do that,” she groans.
“Why?”
“Because a forehead kiss is one of the most endearing ways a love interest shows affection. And we don’t know what we are yet.
” She looks up at me from underneath her full lashes.
Something feels uneasy in my chest when she says that, but I try to ignore it.
We clearly can’t have the “what was last night” talk right now, and she respects that.
“Right, uh—” I stutter. Then, awkwardly, I put my fist out. “See you later, bro.”
Elle tilts her head at my fist and scrunches her face. “Better. I guess,” she says, giving me a fist bump. “Later bro.”
I turn to leave and Thor jumps up on the bed to join Elle.
She plops back on the pillows and allows Thor to cuddle up beside her, both of them knowing full well he is not supposed to be on the furniture.
I shake my head fondly. Leaving that sight to work for twelve hours. I should get a fucking medal for that.
*
“Dr. Cole, can you consult on a broken arm in Room Three please?” the nurse at the station asks me without looking up from her clipboard. I rub my eyes from exhaustion and immediately regret it. Germs. I cringe and promptly take some hand sanitizer from the nurses’ desk.
“Sure,” I say with a yawn, looking at the clock. One hour left on my shift. One hour left until I can see Elle again. “Has it been splinted?”
“It has, but they need sutures as well. Some glass is stuck in the wound on the same hand. Car accident. Ortho was consulted but Dr. Penistown didn’t have time to evacuate the contents and suture it before a trauma came in,” she explains.
She finally looks up from her chart, realizing what she just said.
I’m taken aback and widen my eyes at her. She does the same. “I’m so sorry,” she stutters. All of the color drains from her face and I’m worried she might pass out from the shock of what she just did. “I meant Dr. Penniston. Dr. Penniston wasn’t able to—”
“I like Penistown better, frankly,” I say with a chuckle.
The nurse’s shoulders relax and relief floods her expression.
She’s an older woman, with black hair braided into cornrows that lead to her ponytail.
I don’t remember her name, but she’s always been stoic with me. Until now, that is. I grin at her.
“I’m so sorry,” she repeats as she shakes her head. “It’s a name one of the other nurses came up with as a joke and I wish I never heard it.” She places her palm over her forehead.
“I don’t, just made my day. Penistown is a turd,” I whisper to her, taking the chart from her hands and winking as I walk towards the exam room.
Penistown. I can’t wait to tell Elle about this.
I can’t wait to tell Elle about this.
Shit. I shouldn’t think like that.
I brush it off as I pull back the curtain on Exam Room Three, and I’m surprised when I see a young boy sitting on the bed.
He has dark hair and eyes, which are swollen from crying.
His mother is sitting next to him on an uncomfortable looking plastic chair and is absorbed in something in her phone.
I should have read the chart before I came in, but for some reason, I wasn’t expecting a pediatric patient.
“Hey there,” I say, jolting the mother to attention.
The boy looks up at me with a miserable expression on his face.
A quick look at the first page of his chart tells me he is five.
He is wearing a blue Spiderman shirt that is spotted with blood on the sleeve and Spiderman shoes that look too small for his feet.
He’s sitting at a ninety-degree angle because his arm is placed on a tray table beside the bed.
There is a soft cast on the underside of his wrist and the wound on the top of his forearm is covered with gauze.
He looks terribly uncomfortable, and also like he could fall asleep at any moment.
I wonder how long he has been sitting in this position, unable to move his arm. It’s probably numb at this point.
I tilt my head at him and something comes over me. I’ve never been a kids guy, but in this moment, I find myself wanting to make this kid a little less miserable.
And for some reason, making shit up is the only way I can think to do it.
I sneak another quick look at the chart before speaking. “I’m sorry, but are you Riley? The hero who saved the neighborhood?”
“Huh?” he says in a weak voice.
I look at the chart again. “Riley Chen, the kid who used his spidey senses to stop a bank robbery and save the neighborhood. I heard all about you. You’re a superhero!” My feigned voice is pathetic, but I try not to let my internal cringing show on my face. I’m doing my best.
The kid’s shoulders straighten as he tilts his head. His interest piques at the mention of “spidey senses.”
“That’s how you hurt your arm, right?” I raise my brows at him, trying to get him to play along with my game. I pull a wheeling stool up to his bed and sit on it. I give him a reassuring smile and his lips lift a little.
“Yeah, I was, um, battling the Green Goblin,” he says, a hint of excitement in his eyes.
“Wow, you are so brave. The Green Goblin scares me so much! I always have nightmares about him.” That isn’t entirely made up. The Green Goblin from the live-action Spiderman movies actually scared the crap out of me when I was a kid.
“I used my webs to trap him!” Riley squeals back.
“Nice work, man! Tell me all about it while I wrap up this arm.” I slide closer to the table where his arm is laying and I see his little fingers are so swollen they are touching each other.
“Make sure you look at Mom the whole time though. She wants to hear the story too.” I smile at the mom, and she gives me a knowing smile back.
“Eyes on Mom, okay kiddo? I’m just going to check out these web shooters on your arm, but keep telling me, what did you do to the Goblin?” I squeeze a small amount of skin to distract him from the pinch of the needle that I use to inject lidocaine near his wound.
The kid regales us with a made-up story of how he defeated the Green Goblin, and by the time he is done, I have his arm stitched and wrapped.
Not only was it a good stitching job, but I was also proud of myself for being able to make this kid’s day after it started out with an accident that landed him in the ER.
When I walk out of his room, I have a grin on my face until I have that unnerving thought again.
I can’t wait to tell Elle.
That thought makes something squeeze in my chest, an all-too familiar feeling of dread.
A flood of thoughts fill my brain: images of my night with Elle, her smile this morning, her comment about “what we are.” The scene of her consoling me on the treadmill pushes in, followed by a made-up image of her being hurt, or in danger.
I shake my head and try to push those thoughts away, and replace them with reality.
Elle is fine. She’s home with Thor. She was in my bed this morning. And I loved it.
I pinch the bridge of my nose as I make my way to the on-call room.
I need a second to myself. I can feel panic rising in my chest, and I need to get a handle on it.
I can’t fall apart, not here. There’s a flare of anger in me—I was literally fine a minute ago, helping a nice kid and feeling proud of myself, and now…
now my mind is trying to sabotage me. As per freaking usual.
I close the door behind me and lock it. The stress of this shift is evident in my shoulders, and I turn my head to crack my neck, trying to release the tension from my muscles.
The on-call room consists of a twin bed and a desk, much like there would be in a prison cell.
The walls are white cinderblock and the chair is a rickety swivel chair that could collapse at any moment.
I sit in the desk chair and hang my head between my legs, trying to steady my breaths.
The intrusive thoughts about Elle fade, replaced with questioning ones about my job, my future, and what the hell I’m doing with my life… and now they’ve circled back around to how, or if, Elle is going to fit into that. God, my mind is such a fun place.
My thoughts drift back to all of my conversations with Elle and Henry about my job.
And then to what I said to Henry last night.
I could never really quit residency, could I?
I am anything but spontaneous. My life has been planned since my first science class.
How could I throw all that away now? That moment with the kid was good, right?
Maybe I could find more moments like that?
I can’t make so many decisions at one time. I’m not hardwired for it. Last night with Elle was amazing, so amazing I can’t imagine it ever being better than that. But I got swept up. She was dancing and then the other guy… I acted completely on impulse.
And now, I am freaking the fuck out.
I can’t do this. I can’t commit to her when I don’t even know what I’m doing with my life.
“Ow!” I look at my hand to see that I’ve pulled a cuticle off of my finger as I was sitting here.
I didn’t even realize I was doing it. A small line of blood drips down my thumb, and I grab a tissue and apply pressure to it, cursing myself.
I am unhinged. Of course I can’t do… whatever this is with Elle.
A guy like me can’t make her happy. Everything about my life is so unstable right now. What am I thinking?
Inhale, Oliver. Five, four, three, two, one.
Exhale. Five, four, three, two, one.
Inhale.
My pager buzzes on my waist. I pull it off of my scrubs and throw it across the room. It smashes against the far wall and the batteries roll across the floor. Good. That really helped the situation.
Inhale.
Exhale.
Inhale.
Exhale.
Not everything I think is true. Not everything I think is true.
When my own mind works against me, it’s really hard to decide what is real and what isn’t. Right now, everything feels out of control.
But nothing is going to be solved by me sitting in this windowless room.
I walk across the room and retrieve the broken pager, putting it back together with shaky hands.
Then, I walk to the nurses’ station and bandage my finger.
I hide all these small signs that I’m slowly falling apart from the inside, put on my white coat, and go cure my fourth pneumonia patient of the day.