He pointed to her as if to say she was exactly right. “I noticed that even one beer the night before would affect my precision the next morning. Not dramatically—maybe a millimeter. But in someone’s mouth, a millimeter matters. So I stopped.”
“In graduate school? That’s not easy when I suspect drinking with your fellow students is common.”
“Common? It’s an art form,” he said on a laugh. “But I tried that art in college and didn’t really like it. But now? My hands are my whole career.”
She watched his expression change from light to something like a bone-deep fear.
“Don’t worry,” she said quickly. “You’ll do the therapy, you’ll do rotations and residency next year, and you’ll be right back on track.”
“What?” He gave her a playful look. “You don’t think I’ll make it as your secretary?”
She laughed. “Admin. And I believe you have greater mountains to climb than the file cabinet at Acacia.”
He smiled, but there was enough sadness in his eyes that she knew he was very, very worried.
“Do you feel like you’re making progress?” she asked. “I know you go three mornings a week to PT. Is it working?”
He looked down at his right hand, back in the removable brace, and flexed his fingers slowly.
“Some days are good. I’m getting grip strength back. My therapist says the nerve is responding.” He paused. “But some nights my fingers still buzz. Like static. And my grip fades after about twenty minutes of sustained pressure, which is—not great, if you’re trying to do a two-hour root canal.”
“It will come back,” she said with the fervent belief that stating it would make it happen.
“But if it doesn’t?” He met her eyes. “Then I worked for two years to save the money and spent four years in dental school for nothing, and I have to figure out what else I’m good at.” He said it lightly, but the weight underneath was unmistakable. “I try not to think about that. But at three in the morning when my hand is tingling, it’s hard not to.”
Meredith understood that particular brand of middle-of-the-night terror better than she wanted to. She knew the quiet hours when the life you’d planned dissolved into the life you actually had.
They let it drop and checked out the orange-tinged sunset and the mellow crowd, ordering a few of the appetizers they both liked, growing more relaxed with each passing moment.
“So, are you ever going back to Atlanta?” he asked, clearly ready to delve into backstories. Except hers was not something to share over casual drinks with a co-worker.
“Well, I still have an apartment in Buckhead, and all my stuff is there, so eventually I will.”
“But you’re in no rush.”
She shook her head, digging for a way to answer honestly without opening a can of worms that would ruin her mood and the lovely atmosphere.
“This project is going to keep me here a while,” she said vaguely.
Plus, she never wanted a man who respected perfection to know her sins. Talk about getting a B. Having a fling with a man she didn’t know was married, getting pregnant, and subsequently losing that baby in a life-threatening medical situation?
No. Not tonight.
“So you didn’t…leave anything or anyone behind?” he asked, tempering the personal probe with a slight smile.
“Just my apartment, favorite yoga class, and…” She sighed, something urging her to be honest with him. But how honest?
She took a sip and he waited.
“I had a bad year,” she finally said.
“How bad?”
She laughed softly. “Not going to let me off easy, are you?”
“I’m just…interested.”
Not curious. Not nosy.Interested. He made it sound like…attracted. So this little buzzy feeling went both ways? What was she going to do with that? She couldn’t lie about what happened, but she simply wasn’t ready to tell him everything.
