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As was the custom of most time pressed interns, I took the stairwell—elevators were slow. After flying down one flight, though, I felt a desperate need to make a stop on the third floor. I opened the door and let my feet take me to the cardiovascular wing. I just wanted to see. It had been two weeks, and I had heard reports but hadn’t had the time to see for myself. With the awful injuries of a four car pileup and being ignored by the object of my affection, I needed some light in my day. I found the embodiment of sunshine in her room. She was smiling at her mother, sitting in a chair by her bed, and they were coloring together while they spoke.
Jasmine had gotten stronger. She had been allowed to venture to her chair and spent most of her day there, talking animatedly to nurses and doctors and anyone who would listen. She’d had a couple of people from medical journals ask to interview her and scheduled them for a time when she was home. It was amazing that home was in her future. She would need a portable driver and close supervision from the cardiac team, but Jasmine could go home. She would be homeschooled until she was as healthy as possible, at which point she could decide for herself if she would go to school. I had heard it all in the whispers, but it was nothing like seeing it for real.
The shadows were gone from under her eyes, and there was color in her cheeks. Even in the couple of weeks I hadn’t seen her, she’d filled out, fortified by hospital food and a working cardiovascular system. Of course, I knew there was always going to be fear surrounding her, but she wasaliveand healthier than she’d looked in a long while. I took a deep breath and figured if an eight-year-old girl could smile with an artificial heart in her chest, I could get over myself and get on with my job without pining over one of my bosses.
I headed back down to the ER and dove back into the work there. I paged the hand surgeon, took a load off of the trauma surgeons by attending to more regular cases, and reminded myself every five minutes that it didn’t matter if he chose to ignore me because I just had to get through the day.
* * *
That tactic worked for about four hours.
Eventually, all nine victims of the pileup had been attended to, the ER had returned to its usual hectic but functioning self, and I was told to go and get something to eat.
Instead of eating, I found an on-call room and collapsed onto one of the beds there. It was closing in on midnight, and I was dead tired, but the moment I let my head hit the pillow I couldn’t fall asleep. I only had thirty minutes, but my brain wanted to explore why Adrian might be ignoring me.
It was simple, really.
He had used me. The moment he’d brought up the board of directors with hesitant nerves in his voice, I’d known where it was going. He was going to tell me that I had to keep quiet on our rendezvous or risk the wrath of the board. I hadn’t wanted to hear it. I hadn’t wanted to hear that the man I’d lusted after and proceeded to sleep with—twice—had only used me for my body. I had left, and he hadn’t spoken to me since. Presumably, he wanted to put it behind him, to forget I even existed. It was a good deal easier for him to do when I wasn’t on his service. We still worked in the same hospital and saw each other regularly, but he had no obligation to speak to me, to mentor me. It stung, certainly, but my pride hadn’t allowed me to track him down like some desperate teenager and ask why he didn’t love me back.
When I’d woken up with my head in his lap, I’d known I was in trouble. My subconscious had hummed happily at being with him in such a calm way, just being near him and relaxing. From there, my heart had decided to join the symphony, and I found my whole body was singing at the thought of just enjoying that kind of clothed intimacy. I had known I was screwed, had been from the moment I entered his office, but I didn’t want to be the pathetic girl that slept with a man and then became infatuated to an unhealthy degree. In reality, though, I hadn’t even cared about the hour. I would have gone sleepless if it meant more time in the bubble of perfection that was Adrian and me.
I stared at the bunk above me and wondered if there was any point in trying to sleep. As much as my body was screaming at me to relax, my mind couldn’t shut off. It was playing channel Adrian, and the sick, masochistic part of me loved every second. The door to the on-call room opened and a figure stepped in. I could see in the light from the hallway that it was Adrian and he looked stressed. He was rubbing one of his hands over his eyes, and he clearly hadn’t noticed my presence. I wondered briefly why he hadn’t gone to his office to nap but remembered it was two floors above, and if he was as bone tired as I was, that was two floors too many of walking. I stayed as still as a statue, like an animal caught in headlights. I was scared if I moved, he’d see me. I wasn’t sure I wanted to see what his eyes had to show me. Once so caring and warm, I feared that they’d be cold.
The insecure child that I learned long ago to speak over reared her ugly head and told me that he wouldn’t even notice me. I wasn’t even a blip on the radar of a man like Adrian Price. I was nothing compared to him, and I had been foolish to entertain the idea of something happening that didn’t end with my heart broken and him on the same upward trajectory he’d been on since leaving medical school.
Then Adrian saw me.
He pulled his hand down from his face as he took a step into the room and carelessly flicked on the light. He stiffened as soon as he registered my presence, and I half-expected a look of disgust to creep across his face. I didn’t know when he’d become a stereotypical bully from a high school rom com but that was inconsequential.
Instead of disgust, I saw only one thing in his eyes: pain.
He was hurting when he looked at me.
He was gone before I was up, before I could say anything. I followed him out of the on-call room but had no idea which way he’d gone. I was too tired to try and chase him. I headed back into the room, laid back down, and considered what had just happened. It would certainly be a hit to my pride if I was wrong about him, but whatever was happening, I knew without a doubt that I just didn’t want him to be in pain. It didn’t matter if he reciprocated my feelings or not, I couldn’t be the cause of any kind of discomfort on his part. I had to speak to him, but I had no idea how to begin.
I closed my eyes, praying for an answer to come to me.
* * *
At first, I tried the cafeteria.
He was always there with Jonah when he wasn’t tracking me down and telling me to look after myself. Every time I had a break, I headed there and sipped coffee, just waiting for him to materialize like he always seemed to, but the man was apparently absent.
I briefly wondered if I started trying to work during my breaks, would he appear? He had a nose for people ignoring their wellbeing. I pushed that ridiculous thought aside and instead asked Jonah where he thought Adrian might have been. I tried to phrase it like I was looking for an answer to a question, but Jonah couldn’t help.
“Dunno, but the nurses need help changing the bandages on Mr. Wilkinson.”
So, I’d helped change bandages and then gone on my way. Lehaney—Jack—as I now knew him, was no help either, and as much as I wanted to confide in someone, I knew that these weren’t the kind of problems you aired.
I searched for Adrian for four days, but he was as elusive as ever. The few times I managed to find him, he was either on his way to an OR and “couldn’t talk” or was being pulled into some kind of emergency. It was infuriating and I was worried that my work was beginning to suffer because of my distraction. I began to wonder if my mother had been right when she called him that. While things had been forbidden and unsaid between us, the tension had been bearable. I had been able to work, but with the elephant in the room having grown to encompass the entire hospital, I started thinking that our whole engagement had been a terrible thing from the start.
* * *
It was a Monday, six days after the incident in the on-call room, and everything on the orthopedic surgical ward was suspiciously quiet.
Jack and I were stuck with Smith on a night-shift, and a call to the ER had revealed that even they didn’t need our help. So, the three of us were playing catch-up with paperwork. Quiet nights were always suspicious in the hospital, because it put everyone on edge. Horror stories of multiple patients crashing at once, huge accidents, and mysterious illnesses had been whispered throughout medical school and made us all wary. For people that believed so strongly in science, we were also surprisingly superstitious. So, we pushed through our paperwork, but stayed near the phones and repeatedly checked our pagers.
Somewhere around two a.m., I decided to take a walk. I headed up to the third floor. It had become a habit to check on Jasmine whenever I could, just to see her progress for myself. As I would hope for any eight-year-old, and especially one recovering from major heart surgery, she was asleep at two a.m. Her mother was still on the couch next to her, but even from the doorway, I could see how many of the worry lines had melted from around her face.
