I look at him sternly. “Spill it, Julian.”
He sighs heavily, his head leaning back against the couch as he regards me. “I’m physically and emotionally unable to deny you anything.”
I smile, satisfied. “Sucks to be you then, because I’ve long suspected I’m a raging brat. Tell me everything.”
“Fine, but you have to understand it was the full moon,” Julian begins. “And full moons meanchaos.”
“Did they teach you that at the Yale School of Medicine?”
“They did, you little smart ass, and I didn’t believe it then, either, but it’s a hundred percent true. Ask any hospital employee you know—if you’re scheduled on a full moon, everything will go wrong. That night the ER was slammed, every room taken, and we were severely understaffed because a horrible stomach virus decimated our ranks. It was a terrible night. I hadn’t had a bathroom break or a single cup of coffee since I’d clocked in six hours earlier.”
“Yikes,you? No coffee?” I lean over and take a sip of water, emptying my bottle in the process. “The story could end here, honestly.”
“Unfortunately, it doesn’t.” Julian takes my water bottle, heads to the kitchen, and begins to hand-wash it at the sink. I follow him meekly, mesmerized by the rightness of him in my space.
“A nurse that I don’t care for interrupted me for the fifth time that night to demand that I come up to the cardiac unit, which wasn’t even my floor, and I became extremely annoyed.”
“Why don’t you care for this nurse?” I take the clean, freshly filled water bottle that he offers me and take a long drink. Why is there nothing better than cold water that someone else has poured for you?
“He microwaves leftover fish.”
My eyebrows rise. “So he’s evil. I see.”
Julian offers me his hand, and I take it, letting him lead me to my own bedroom. “Also, his name is Gilroy, and I resent having to make those two vowel sounds back-to-back.”
“Ooh. Yeah.” I wince. “Gilroy.”
“So, Gilroy the Inconsiderate asks me to stop what I’m doing,again, to come pronounce this cardio patient dead.” Julian takes my favorite sleep shirt off the hook on my bathroom door and lays it on the bed.
“Oh,no.” I’d never considered Julian in that role. Standing over someone’s bedside at the end of their life, confirming someone else’s worst nightmare. “That’s so sad.”
“The worst part of the job, honestly. That, and making the call to their family afterward. May I?” His voice is low as his hands trail down my sides, tugging lightly at the hem of my hoodie.
I nod, not wanting my voice to crack, and raise my arms to let him lift it over my head. The soft cotton drags against the tender flesh of my stomach, ribs, and breasts. He sucks a short breath in as it comes off, my hair billowing down around my shoulders. Looking over my shoulder at us in the mirror, he meets my eyes there. But, with a look of serene discipline, Julian slips the large sleep shirt over my head.
“What happened next?”
“Bathroom first.” He nudges me toward the door, and when I return, freshly washed up, brushed, flossed, and relieved, he’s got the bedroomlighting down to the warm, honeyed glow of the bedside lamps, my covers pulled down, phone plugged in, and water bottle waiting. I slide into my waiting bed and sigh, audibly, as he pulls the covers over me.
“Will you get in, too? And finish the story?” I yawn and pat the other side of my bed.
He shucks off everything down to his boxer briefs and climbs into bed. “I didn’t want to wear outside clothes in your fresh sheets,” he explains, as thoughthat’swhy I’m staring at him.
Facing each other on our sides, our hands tucked beneath our cheeks, he continues. “I follow Gilroy up and pronounce this poor patient dead, so the next step was calling his family. And the whole time I’m searching for the patient’s information, Gilroy was yapping in my ear nonstop about all the things he needed me to do. I found the number, called, and the patient’s wife answered.”
Julian swallows.
“She couldn’t believe it. ‘I was just there two hours ago, and he was fine! You all told me he’d be released tomorrow!’” Julian blows out a breath. “I felt bad for her, but I wasn’t this man’s doctor, and I couldn’t really answer her questions. Based on his file, there’s no way that man could’ve been released the next day—he’d been fighting for his life all week—but denial is powerful when facing the death of a loved one. So, I told her again I was sorry, her husband was deceased, and she needed to come to the hospital to make arrangements.”
“God.” I whisper. “How awful.”
“The woman arrived extremely upset, and they let her in the room with her husband to say her goodbyes. She had this long, tearful conversation with him, and apparently, she’d been having an affair and needed to get it off her chest.”
“Oh, shit.”
“Yeah. With their chiropractor. And one of his fraternity brothers. Also, their dog-sitter.”
“Jesus.”
