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“He’s a kid,” I say, my voice low and my stomach in knots. I hate traumas on kids. They’re the worst.
“A kid?” Bennett questions as he scrubs his knuckles.
“He looked like he wasn’t a day over fifteen. Big body, but young face.”
Bennett curses under his breath. “We didn’t have a ton of gunshot wounds in Minnesota. I mean, I’d float up to Mayo in the Twin Cities and we’d see more there, but not that often. Not like we did when I was in Baltimore or LA.”
“We don’t get a ton here either.”
He shoots me a sideways glance, lingers for a second, as if he’s about to say something, but then thinks better of it and heads into the OR. I suck in a breath, hold it in my lungs, and then follow after him. Being around Bennett is like being on a rollercoaster, and while it’s sometimes thrilling and fun, it’s also spinning me through more loops and drops than I can take.
Bennett and I spend the next few hours working quickly and tirelessly to save this kid’s life. We hardly speak to each other unless it’s about what we’re doing, and anytime we do, it’s as strained as it’s been all evening. Something shifted between us, and it doesn’t take a brain surgeon to figure out that it’s related to what happened this morning.
But the real question is, what the hell do I do about it?
Chapter Eight
“Cricket, are you listening?” I snap my fingers at her, wanting to get the hell out of here. I’m meeting Owen, Rory, Keegan, Kenna, and Vander at Stella’s restaurant. Stella Fritz is best friends with Layla and biological cousins with, well, everyone else except for Vander and me.
“Yes,” she clips out, though she hasn’t removed her eyes from Bennett, who is giving a report to the attending coming on. Somehow my schedule this week has been almost identical to his, but in the last five days that we’ve shared this floor, the ORs, and the ER together, I think we’ve maybe said a total of ten words to each other that weren’t work-related, and most of them were good morning or good night.
I’ve caught him watching me several times, a serious look in his eyes, but I haven’t had it in me to call him out on it. I’m terrified he’ll encourage me not to try to get pregnant. That he’ll tell me it’ll hurt my shot at this fellowship or at finding a good attending position. Only that’s bullshit.
I know plenty of doctors who have gotten pregnant or had babies and were still at the top of their game. Mason’s and Owen’s mothers for starters. And frankly, it’s none of his business. It’s mine, but… any comfort or even friendship we had been building seems to have evaporated, and I don’t know what to do about it.
I shouldn’t—I know I shouldn’t—but… I weirdly miss him. I liked the way he talked to me and the way he looked at me, even if I knew it would never lead to another dark-corner kiss. But since Zane, Bennett is the first man to get my heart going again, and it felt fucking good. Like he was my secret. Like our past was something between us that no one else here knew, and with that, it fed into that something else.
Now that’s all gone, and I’ve spent this week telling myself that I’m not only relieved it is, but that it’s for the best, as anything else is an unnecessary and frankly unwanted complication.
“Then perhaps you should focus on what I’m saying instead of your boss.”
She rolls her eyes, looks at me for two-point-five seconds, and then returns to Bennett. “He’s going to give me the fellowship.”
“Oh? He told you that, did he?”
My sarcasm finally manages to catch her attention, and now she’s eyeing me like a cat eyeing a mouse they’re about to pounce on and eat. “Wes isn’t in charge anymore, so you’re no longer the favorite simply because you were born into the right family.”
I give her a bored look. “You know I wasn’t born into the Fritz family, right?”
Another eye roll. She’s famous for them. “Whatever. You know what I mean. It’s an even playing field now between us, and I’m going to get that fellowship because I’m the better surgeon.”
Cricket Peterson is a pain in my ass. She’s been a pain in my ass for the last four years, and I know this last year of residency won’t be any different. She’s general surgery with a focus on trauma, same as I am, and we both want that coveted fellowship spot. And before this, I would have laughed in her face because that fellowship was all but mine. Everyone, including her, knew it.
Now nothing is a guarantee. Far from it.
For the first time since I started my residency, I’m worried about her as an actual competitor, if for no other reason than my current standing with our new chief of trauma surgery.
Only she sucks, and I’m awesome, so…
I shake my head. “I’m sorry to be the one to tell you this, Cricket, but it’s never been an even playing field with us. Never.” I stand. “Have fun kissing ass tonight. Dr. Iverson really enjoys it when you do that. Especially on a night shift.” I give her a saccharine-sweet smile and then walk off. She can figure out what the patients need on her own. I’ve documented everything in their charts anyway.
I fly down to Keegan’s floor, and then the two of us hop in an Uber and head across town to pick up Vander from his cave before we head to Stella’s. This restaurant might be my favorite in the city, and it has nothing to do with the fact that Stella is my godmother. Keegan hasn’t stopped talking the entire way, gabbing on about a patient with a placenta previa and one of her interns who she thinks is cute but a little brainless. Vander is doing God only knows what on his phone and has generally ignored us.
“Well, now I’m officially competing with Cricket,” I inform them as we take our seats at our regular table by the end of the bar. “My boss hates me. He overheard Zane talking about the baby stuff, and then when he asked me about it, I told him. I mean, I didn’t tell him I was looking into sperm donors, and I didn’t tell him I was thinking of trying soon so I could have a baby between the end of my residency year and the start of my fellowship, but it didn’t matter. He knows what I’m planning to do, and since then, he wants nothing to do with me. It’s like I’m mommy-tracked without being a mommy yet. Plus, I think he thinks it’s weird that I want kids without being married or something.”
“Does he know why you want kids, even without a man as part of it?” Vander asks, rolling his tongue ring between his lips, his colorful tattoos on full display beneath his T-shirt that matches his green eyes.
I look down at my hands. “No. That’s personal. I shouldn’t have to tell him.”
