“Or the surliest. Between you and Tristan, there'd be surly on both sides of the family.”
“Outweighed by your dulcet goodness.” Roan’s hand was playing with the wetness increasing at her slit. “The caveman would keep you pregnant all the time. Everyone would see you and know what he’d been doing.”
“Dirty dirty.” She arched her back, her body voting for more.
“Thing is, Caveman isn’t quite sure how babies are made. He’d fuck your pretty kitty a few times first.” The fingers slipped a few inches backward to the rosette of her rear entrance. Coated in her slick, his thumb breached the hole without resistance. “Then he’d go here. Gotta be sure.”
Yep, her Daddy Roan was going to make this the best final day off ever.
PART TWO
DO NOT LET US MISTAKE NECESSARY EVILS FOR GOOD.
CHAPTER 6
Two weeks into March and back on call, Clarissa decided a few parts of the outpatient adolescent psych rotation weren’t bad. Specifically, the patients were relatively low key, because if they were well enough to be outpatient, they were mostly relatively stable. The majority of the problems were some version of ‘Teenager mourning the end of their first relationship and the ex doesn’t care’ or ‘parents going through divorce.’ The serious problems weren’t handled in the outpatient counseling building.
The worst part was the end of the day when she had to walk through the cold to the chilly doors of MetroGen. The ice she felt had nothing to do with the shadow of the building blotting out the sun. She had to leave the world of psych and enter the realm of pediatric hematology-oncology.
After a trip to the thirteenth floor for signout from the actual heme-onc team, she was on her own for the twenty patients on their service and whatever admissions showed up.
Heme-onc had its own special section cordoned off on the seventh floor and required no one with a fever or any appearance of communicable illness enter its confines. Their large number of children without immune systems required numerous special infection control procedures.
She was approaching the special doors with the temperature scanner when she passed her friend and first-year attending, Lillian Hernandez, suited up for the snow. Lillian asked, “Are you on call tonight?”
“Yeah.” Clarissa shrugged. “Finished outpatient psych to cross-cover hem-onc.”
Lillian didn’t appear thrilled. “That's not exactly going easy on you.”
“Well, there's easy and there's easy, I guess. Hard would be adding yet another ICU rotation. So, I should be grateful I just got heme-onc.”
Her breezy explanation didn’t convince Lillian. “I thought you were on lighter rotations.”
Clarissa shrugged. “Yeah, apparently, per Dr. Gallo, time to put my nose to the grindstone. MetroGen Peds residents must do three more ICU residents than those ‘other wimpy programs.”
Her friend hmphed in the back of her throat.
“What?” Clarissa said.
“Nothing... I’d tell you to talk to the chiefs, but I doubt it’d get you far.” Lillian’s expression showed more than a little displeasure when referring to the three pediatric chief residents, Diamond, Addison, and Olivia.
To be selected for the extra fourth year of residency—called the chief year—was supposed to be an honor and an exclamation point on the resume for future fellowship opportunities. However, the main job of chief resident was to manage the junior residents by creating the call schedules and advocating for their residents in hospital personnel issues.
This year’s slate of chiefs, who had been selected over the far more competent Lillian, spent most of their time attending meetings and butt-kissing the higher ups. They avoided taking call themselves like a plague and acted as part-time hospitalist team and nursery attendings, unlike Lillian who seemed to be perpetually on service. Despite their supposed job of helping residents, they had been suspiciously absent during Clarissa’s assault in Labor and Delivery.
She’d gotten an exactly one-line email from them informing her of options for counseling. Actually being on her side must have been too risky for their fellowship applications. If these chiefs were anything to go by, Dr. Gallo’s open discouragement of Clarissa applying for a chief position ought to have been a relief.
“Don't worry, I’m gonna put my best Clarissa sparkle on for another night fighting cancer. If I run out, I’m gonna have to steal some of yours, because you are glowing.”
Lillian flushed all the way up to the tips of her ears. “Sean's picking me up.”
“When am I going to meet him?” Clarissa asked. “You're engaged to the hot cop you hooked up with, and, if it weren’t for that ring on your hand, I’d be suspicious that he didn’t exist. We’ve got to change this.”
Now that she considered it, Lillian had been acting rather mysterious lately. Then again, so had Clarissa with her whole love affair with the anesthesia chief. It seemed that, like Lillian, they’d kept details about their relationship thus far out of the MetroGen gossip machine.
“It's been complicated. There was this whole issue with his brother. Introducing him to you took a backseat,” Lillian explained, fiddling with her engagement ring before squeezing Clarissa’s hand. “Are you willing to be one of my bridesmaids?”
That brought a grin to Clarissa’s face. “Really? Of course. When’s the big day?”
