“NEW GUY!” Eve yells as soon as we’re inside. “WE HAVE AN EMERGENCY!”
The reception area is empty and quiet except for the buzz of the fluorescent lights, the daytime staff long gone. It’s creepy. Standing here, inconveniently high and half-naked beneath a towel in front of the kids’ area with its disappointing wooden toys, feelsespeciallywrong. Footsteps hurry from the back, and I blink as the new guy’s face comes into focus. Dark, wavy hair parted on the side, the tips ending in springy little curls. A pair of gold-rimmed glasses shoved high on a long, straight nose. Behind them, big, blue eyes stare at me in disbelief.
No.
The broad-shouldered man in the white doctor coat freezes. His face turns pale and ashen, as if it’shisvulva that’s hemorrhaging. “Nomi…Wyeth?”
“No!” I try to step backward, but Eve’s there, blocking my exit.
“Yes, that’s her name!” Eve speaks loudly from behind my back. “Her big flap’s bleeding out, doctor. I think she’s confused.” Eve, who clearly hasn’t evenlookedat New Guy, corrals me toward him. I’m still clutching my area, too afraid to let up the pressure, and her shove knocks me off balance. I tip over, my face smooshing against the name embroidered in blue cursive over his chest pocket, confirming that,yes, my worst nightmare is happeningright now.
Dr. Julian D’Angelo.
First my high school rival, briefly my… I don’tknowwhat, then my absolute nemesis and now, apparently, mydoctor? What’s he doing here? He lives in Philly—works in an ER there, last I heard. He hates Sparrow Nook!
Julian catches me by the elbows with a sharp intake of air as he clocks the blood running down my legs. The horrified recognition of who I am is replaced with professional medical urgency.
“What happened?”
Before I can stutter outclearance rack electric razor, Eve gasps, mentally a moment behind us.
“Julian D’Angelo?!” Her hands go distressingly slack, and then, I feel it: the cool kiss of air on my ass as Eve drops the towel. In the immortal words of Kate McKinnon, I’m now Porky-Pigging it in my cropped T-shirt and nothing else in front of Julian fucking D’Angelo.
Maybe I should just bleed out.
Julian eyes us. “Are you onrecreational drugs?”
Eve blurts out “No!”—a juvenile reflex to Julian’s big cop energy, though cannabis is fully legal. The obvious lie is undercut by my stupid T-shirt featuring a red-eyed Colonel Sanders holding a bucket of green buds labeledTHC, which our eyes flick to simultaneously.
Julian’s jaw clamps shut, and then hepicks me upprincess-style like I weigh nothing. In high school, Julian was a string bean of a guy—all height, spite, and sharp elbows. ButDr. Julian D’Angelois—wow. Somethingaltogetherdifferent. I stare up at the freshly shaven line of his jaw and try to process this stunning turn of events as my life force drains from my vulva.
Julian was the first person I met at Sparrow Nook High. I’d just moved to the sleepy,almost-a-shoretown from Atlanta two weeks before my senior year. As a quiet, southern goth girl with a perfect GPA, themove up north felt tantamount to social annihilation. A feeling confirmed when I walked into the debate team’s practice after school hoping to find my people and found Julian instead. He took one look at my dyed-black hair and skull-patterned fishnets, rolled his bespectacled blue eyes, and said:Detention’s down the hall.
I’ve been pissed at him ever since.
Julian was completely obsessed with prestige and being the best. The best GPA, the best SAT scores, first place at every debate tournament—he won every single accolade.
Until I snatchedvaledictorianout of his maniacal hands. Which are now, coincidentally, about to inspect folds town.
“Tell me what happened,” he orders.
“Pube chores!” Eve yells just as I say, “Shaving accident!”
I moan, more from mortification than pain at this point.
Julian enters Patient Room #2 and lowers me gently onto a white table-cot that I immediately ruin, then pulls out the stirrups for my feet. “LET GO OF YOUR VULVA,” he commands at an insane volume, but I shake my head furiously.
“I can’t, I can’t!”
“Yes, youcan.” The latex glove slaps his skin as he pulls it on. He glares at me as he approaches with an epic amount of gauze. “I have to look at your—”
“—area,” I mewl.
Julian’s face is redder than I’ve ever seen it. “—vulva,” he corrects, which is so much worse. Oh, God. Julian D’Angelo’s going to see myvulva.
“Where’s the injury?” he barks.
“She said somewhere left of center,” Eve supplies from the doorway. “In folds town!”
