“What d’you mean?”
He looked at her, surprise written all over his face, matching ours. “I mean, how did you know?”
She stepped back with a frown. “I work here. This is my hospital.”
“Is it? I thought you were...”
She stared, waiting for him to finish his sentence, although it was clear he didn’t know how to. “Yes?”
“I don’t know, sorry. I didn’t realize.” He rubbed the back of his neck.
She narrowed her eyes in disbelief. “This has only ever been my hospital since med school, for almost as long as you’ve been at the Rangers. You’ve visited me here. I’m an orthopedic surgeon on the Sports Surgery program. Do you ever listen to anything I say?”
“Yes, yes, of course I do, sorry. We all just jumped in the car and I didn’t pay attention to where we were. Hospitals all look the same and I wasn’t expecting to see you. Why are you here?” he snapped.
She turned to the doctor next to her. “Please excuse my brother; he gets hit in the head a lot.”
The doctor chuckled. “No problem. You catch up, I need to update the nurse.”
He walked out.
Molly shook her head, hands on her hips.
Cooper rubbed his face in frustration. “Fuck, Molly, gimme a break. Look, Felix had an accident, a bad one. Can you find out what happened to him and how he is?”
“Give you a break?” She looked at him, her head tilting. “Why exactly do you think I’m here, Coop?”
Cooper stood there, clueless, until he wasn’t, and his eyes widened along with the rest of us.
Fuck.
Little Molly.
Guess she wasn’t that little anymore.
I crossed the room and hugged her tight. “Molly, did you operate on him? Oh my God, how is he? Sorry, we’re just all in shock.”
She pushed me away as the door opened and another doctor walked in.
“Hi, guys, how are you all? Great to have you here. Big fan. Sorry about the circumstances.”
No one answered, ignoring him and the fake smile plastered on his face. We were all trained on Molly.
“It’s fine, I know this has been a lot tonight.” She rolled her eyes, clearly pissed at Cooper. “Tu es parfois un imbécile. Je ne suis pas un enfant que tu connais?”
Cooper stepped back once she’d finished swearing at him in French, his head shaking. She turned back to the rest of the room.
“Yes, I operated on him, and he’s good. It was a good surgery, went well.”
Ford and Erica moved to stand with the rest of us gathered around Molly.
Ford held out his hand. “Hi, Doctor Marks, I’m Doctor Burroughs and this is Doctor Brooker.”
It was so weird that doctors always introduced themselves as doctors to each other.
“We’re the Rangers’ assistant physicians. Can you tell us how he is?”
“His patella was fractured from the impact and he has an anterior cruciate ligament tear. His femur was easier to fix as it snapped clean, so it wasn’t hard to stabilize, and we’ve inserted a rod through it to keep the alignment in place. For his knee we needed to pin it, but he will require another surgery to repair the ligament.”
