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“We have a patient of yours here from Mass General; she says she just has some questions about her ongoing care from an operation you performed?”
That was odd. I had thought I’d spoken to all my patients about follow-up, and I’d only had a handful of my more complex cases ask to follow me to my new position.
“Did she bring her file with her?” I asked wearily.
I had forty minutes before my next patient and was just doing paperwork, so it couldn’t hurt to ease her concerns after traveling all the way to New Hampshire for answers.
“No, Dr. Price, but she says it’s urgent.”
I sighed. I hoped it was someone I remembered well—sometimes patients would wash up from months or years ago and expect me to remember every detail of their medical file. It made my job really difficult. Luckily for whoever it was, I was feeling generous.
“Send her in,” I conceded, and the LNA nodded.
I finished up the notes I was making and splashed some water on my face in hopes I could look a little more awake. I straightened my coat and turned as I heard the door open.
Standing there, in the doorway, wearing her scrubs under her coat and her hair in a wild bun on top of her head, was the girl I was sure was going to be the death of me. Her face was serious, her mouth pressed in a thin line, and her eyes vulnerable.
“Tell me you love me,” she said simply.
“What are you doing here?” I asked, not taking my eyes from her.
“Tell me you love me,” she repeated.
“Who told you where I moved?”
Her mouth grew into an almost invisible line as she pressed her lips even tighter together.
“Tell. Me. You. Love. Me,” she demanded.
“You know I do,” I said finally, but her face didn’t change. When I stepped towards her, she took a step back.
“Say it. The words.”
“I love you,” I acquiesced.
Her entire face changed with those three little words. She seemed to melt, tears sprang to her eyes, and she marched toward me with determination. Her hands, so precious to me, held my face like I was the one that was breakable, like I was the one that had spent months being carefully put back together, like I was the one that might flee and imagine this all as a fanciful imagining.
She watched me carefully, those hands on my face, those eyes looking into mine—and there were no words needed. She hadn’t needed to say it for me to know that multiple times, she had almost given up on me, on her own life, because sometimes, fighting was too hard. It broke my heart in the same way she healed it with the simple act of living.
When she kissed me, all was forgiven.
Her eyes closed, and I let mine fall as well. It was different than other times. The skin on the corner of her mouth was rougher where there was a small scar from road rash. Where my hands traced her arms, I felt the scar on her bicep. It wasn’t just the sensation though. It was knowing that, no matter what happened now, we were each other’s destiny, and we were each other’s answer to a question we’d never asked. Never dared to ask.
“You need to say it too,” I pulled back.
“I love you,” she answered without hesitation. “I love you, I love you, I love you.”
I kissed her this time, and it was soft. We took our time with the kiss because nothing was ever going to take me away from her again. I didn’t care what had to happen, but I wasn’t losing her again. We had all the time in the world to kiss, to love, tobe.
But, of course, something interrupted my train of thought.
“Your father,” I stated, pulling back. “He won’t let us be together.”
Her face was a storm.
“Fuck him,” she said. “I thought Mass General was everything I needed, but you, you wonderful, stupid, self-sacrificing man, you’re the one that proved to me that it isn’t. I told him I was going to be with you, and if that means transferring, then so be it. If that means working under him and dealing, then so be it. You and I, Adrian, we haven’t done anything wrong, weneverdid anything wrong, and his fucked up view of the world and my fear from what happened to my mother are stupid reasons to be kept apart.” She looked down at the floor before speaking again. “I trust you to not ruin whatever reputation I might have, to be the man I can love alongside my career, and to be a source of strength and never a weakness. I trust you to love me.”
I tilted her chin back up to me, making sure her gaze met mine, and then pulled her into me.
