Page 38 of Obeying

Then she catches herself. I see the moment it happens, the stiffening of her finger. She pulls her finger back, but not her hand, and looks at me.

"Logan." She says my name, and it sounds different from how it used to. "This is complicated."

"I know."

"The complaint. The investigation. If anyone saw us⁠—"

"I know. I'm sorry."

"Don't be sorry." She pauses. "Just…I need you to know that I can't do anything about this right now. About whatever this is. Not with everything happening."

"I'm not asking you to."

"Then what are you doing?"

I look at our hands, still barely touching. "I don't know," I say. And it's honest. It might be the most honest thing I've said to anyone in years.

She doesn't move her hand, and neither do I. We stay like that for a few more seconds that feel much longer, and I can feel her pulse under my fingertips—or maybe that's mine—and the clock keeps ticking, the vending machine hums, and neither of us breathes.

Then Kristen pulls away. Gently. She goes back to her notes, and I go back to my chart. Neither of us says anything else.

But we crossed a line. Quietly and carefully. And we both know it.

She leaves first. Says goodnight, and I say it back, then she pauses at the door like she wants to say something else, but she doesn't, and she's gone.

I sit there alone in the break room with a chart I haven't read a single word of.

She's right. This is complicated. I press a hand to my chest to steady it. Complicated, but I can't seem to stop myself.

Kristen Portland isn't a project. She's not a puzzle to solve or a resident to mentor or a professional obligation I can file under 'departmental responsibility'. She's the only person who's ever made me want something that isn't on the Maxwell checklist or something my parents didn't plan for. Something I can't control, optimize, or engineer a perfect outcome for.

My phone buzzes, and I glance at it.

Dad

Heard about the situation at the hospital. Call me when you can.

News travels fast in the medical world. It travels faster when your last name is Maxwell.

I stare at the text. I know exactly what that call will sound like. He'll ask me what's going on, I'll tell him, and he'll be quiet for a moment, the way he always is when he's calculating, and then he'll tell me to protect the name. To distance myself. That's what Maxwells do. We calculate. We don't gamble on people.

I put the phone facedown on the table.

All my life, I've done everything right. And right now, sitting alone in this break room, I'm about to do something my father would never understand.

Every fight I've ever had was for a title, a position, a name.

This is the first one that's mine.

And I'm not backing down.

13

KRISTEN

Tonight, some of the residents are celebrating Brennan's birthday. They insisted I come, and I said yes because I'm trying to be the person who says yes to things now. The person who has friends and goes out and doesn't spend every evening alone checking the locks.

The bar is loud and crowded with everyone laughing and taking shots, and I try. I really try. I smile. I clink glasses. Brennan blows out his candles on a cake someone smuggled in, and the whole bar sings happy birthday off-key. He turns red, and I clap along and feel almost normal.