I don’t have any other contact information for any of?—
Except yes, I do. I have Sage’s number from the bachelorette party she planned in Boulder for Angie.
I find her name in my list and?—
No.
I won’t be that woman.
The woman who calls an acquaintance and asks about her brother.
That’s not me.
I’m the woman who takes advantage of the amazing opportunity that just landed in her lap.
The surgical seminar.
I have an advanced reading assignment and only one evening to get caught up.
I won’t pine over a lost love that was never anything more than in my mind.
I will study. I will learn. I will excel.
I gather my reading materials and settle in at my desk. I try to immerse myself in the world of medicine again. Each word should be a lifeline, pulling me back to the world where I thrive, where I have a future mapped out, where there is no room for uncertainty or emotional turmoil.
But Henry Simpson has permeated even this stronghold. Every term, every theory, every case study… Somehow they all remind me of him. His intense blue eyes. His touch. The warmth that spread through me every time he looked my way.
I shake my head, try to chase away the thoughts. But they’re persistent.
I need to focus. I’ve got to get back on track. This isn’t a place for Henry. It’s a place for me.
I try to concentrate on the case studies spread before me, to lose myself in the intricacies of the human body. I rub my eyes and force myself to reread the same line for the third time.
“Patient presents with a perforated duodenal ulcer, requiring an emergency laparotomy.”
I trace the words with my finger. Ulcer. Perforation. Surgical repair. Blood loss, sutures, cautery. I should be thinking about anatomy, about the steps I’d take in the OR if I were holding the scalpel.
But instead, my brain keeps circling back to Henry. How he cut me open in a way I never saw coming, and how I’m the one left trying to stitch myself back together.
“No!” I say out loud again. “You won’t waste this opportunity!”
I bring my focus back to work when my phone buzzes.
My heart leaps.
It’s Henry.
I know it is.
Two
Henry
Darkness swallows me whole.
Not the kind you see when you close your eyes to sleep. This is heavier. Denser. It has weight. It presses on me the way the beam pressed down before everything went black, as if the universe itself has pinned me to the ground.
It all makes a strange kind of sense.
