“Does he love you, too?”
His eyes flicked back to the screen and his belly tightened. “I…”
I hope so.
Fuck.
He scrubbed his hand over his face, “I don’t know.”
She sighed, “Well, I think you should invite him to Thanksgiving. Let mom gush and grill him.”
“I haven’t told her yet.” Not about Wyatt, he thought, but that her son is gay.
“So? She’s a grown-ass woman. She can handle it. She’s handled far worse, Johnny. We all have. Who you love doesn't matter to us. This is your life. We’ll love you regardless. You know that.”
Emotion welled behind his eyes and he smiled, “It’s always good to be reminded.”
“I’ll remind you every day if I have to because I have to meet the man who swept my brother off his feet.” Justine paused, seeming distracted. “Sorry, I gotta run. Olive is trying to feed Jake a potato chip.”
“I love you.”
Justine’s voice was lighter as she replied, “I love you.”
He spent the rest of his Sunday organizing, cleaning, and unboxing the last of his boxes. It felt surprisingly good. He ended the day watching a football game, drinking a glass of wine, and thinking of how he was going to ask Wyatt to move in with him.
John's heart skipped in his chest at the mere thought.
This is so crazy.
And it was happening so quickly. But he wasn’t sure he cared about social expectations or norms anymore. Not when it came to his happiness. Because Wyatt made him fucking happy, and he reminded him how to take care of himself again. If that wasn’t love, he wasn’t sure what was.
“…the fact of the matter is, John, that until your performance evaluations improve, we cannot start talking about staffing issues.”
John turned his head back to the conversation in Tanya’s office, frustration eating away at his patience. “Did you even hear what you just said, Tanya?”
She blinked.
“Did you even listen to what I said?” He asked incredulously. “How can we possibly meet your standards when we’re working purely in survival mode? You’re lucky Dr. Samuels, Dr. Walsh, and I don’t walk out of this hospital and find somewhere else that will treat us like human beings instead of robots and listen to our concerns. We are the best doctors in this city, and you know it. You let us walk out because you refuse to work with us, and that will get around,” John said firmly. “No doctor in their right mind would willingly come here and be put under the same pressures you are asking of us. I’m trying really damn hard to get you to wake up and work with me. Because out there…” he pointed to her closed office door, toward the emergency department. “People are going to die because you refuse to see the human element in all of this. You’re too focused on arbitrary numbers and your bottom line. That shit doesn’t matter. You can’t tell me you got into medicine to crush a doctor's ability to save a life.”
Tanya parted her thin red lips, about to reply, then sat back, her chin jutting out defiantly.
John sighed, his shoulders tensing, and he intentionally rolled them as he sat forward. “Look, clearly we want the same thing here, but we’re trying to go about it in our own way, without consideration for the other. Why don’t we try—just for five seconds, each sit in the other person’s perspective, and see if we can’t collaborate—not compromise—on a way forward.”
Tanya’s rigidity softened, and the taut lines around her puckered lips released. “All right, I think we can…”
The phone on Tanya’s desk rang, and she glanced at it, frowned, and answered it. Her frown drew tight over her face.
“Police are on their way?” Tanya asked. He hesitated and watched as her eyes snapped to his before hanging up the phone. “There’s a situation in the ED.”
John got to his feet, unfazed, and heard Tanya fumbling with her chair behind him to follow. Emergency medicine never stopped.
He pulled his stethoscope out of his back pocket and slipped it over his neck, jogging down the stairs instead of taking the elevator, knowing it was faster. Steph was already waiting for him at the back door.
“Police are on their way,” Steph informed him.
“I heard. Where’s Mendez and the others?” John asked, steeling himself and preparing for whatever was waiting for him behind those doors.
“Mendez and his team can’t get to him.”
