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“I’m only four years older than you!”
“And in four years, I, too, will be an old man,” he cackled.
Stephanie watched the whole exchange with wide eyes.
“Wait, so that makes you…” she said slowly.
“Thirty-five,” I stated.
Oh crap. I knew I looked younger than my age, but was she finding it creepy that I had gone home with her? I already knew that she was some kind of genius, having graduated two years earlier than most. That would make her twenty-four.
So, she had slept with a man eleven years her senior and was probably regretting it. Those eyes were unreadable though. I had a feeling they’d be unreadable even if she made direct eye contact with me. I couldn’t tell what she was thinking, but I could guess it was nothing good.
“Yeah, I dragged him through medical school,” Jonah said nonchalantly. “The old man probably wouldn’t have graduated if it weren’t for me.”
“Says the kid that was still stuck in his party phase in senior year,” I grumbled. “The only way you helped me was by making sure your lazy self got to class.”
It went without saying that a kid that graduated four years ahead of everyone else wasn’t lazy, but Jonah still pretended to look aghast at the accusation and went on to tell Stephanie that I was another one who would just be jealous of her genius. I was truly grateful for my friend at that moment, because Stephanie laughed at him; and when she laughed, she could power an entire city with her smile. I couldn’t risk staring for too long though, in case I was blinded.
“So, what was the great emergency today?” Louise queried. “I never asked.”
“I left my fellow in charge, and one of my patients didn’t want someone else performing his CABG,” I sighed. “It was either go or let the fellow be kicked out of the OR by a distressed man resisting anaesthesia.”
“Ah,” she said. “Yeah, I’ve had a mother or two call me in when someone else just wouldn’t do.”
I smiled and settled into a conversation with her about the difficulties of getting patients to trust other surgeons. It was a much easier thing to discuss than my future in the hospital with the stunning girl next to me.
I was only at the brunch for a grand total of forty minutes. I found myself in my car again, with Angela in the front seat and Jonah relegated to the back for being a loudmouth. I had offered to drive them back to the hospital, but my thoughts were anywhere but at my workplace.
The short ride seemed faster than usual, and without registering parking or saying goodbye to my coworkers, I was in my office. There was a pile of papers on the desk, things that needed sorting, things that needed approval. I sat for only a moment, before putting down my current project and standing. It was all wordy jargon. With as calm a mannerism as I could manage, I strode over to the blinds that let me look out onto the ward and pulled the string. One of the nurses gave me a strange look, but I just smiled at her. They probably assumed I was going to change.
Instead, I did something I hadn’t done since my senior year of high school. I pulled the sofa from the wall and lined it up with the empty side of my desk, with only enough space for me to fit between them. I sat in the middle of the sofa, placed my forehead on the edge of the desk, and stared at the floor.
I was sure I’d look strange to anyone that happened to walk in, but the perks of having your own office meant people had to knock first. When my mother passed away, I had done this every morning. It had helped me center myself before dealing with school. I had spent ten minutes feeling everything that my mind and body needed me to feel, and then I would get back up and continue on with my life. As ridiculous as it sounded, it had kept me sane.
Now though, I felt like it had the opportunity to only make things worse. Instead of confusion and fear washing over me like I had expected, memories from the night before came in spades. Stephanie spread out below me, her curls a halo, her mouth open in a small “O”. I felt myself driving into her warmth, again and again, as her eyes rolled back in her head and her thighs began to quiver. I had never seen a more beautiful sight than her last night, and definitely hadn’t expected to find that kind of beauty in a stranger.
I couldn’t deny that part of me that also remembered how fuckinghotshe looked. I felt my blood run south, and my unruly mind instead imagined her bent over the very desk my head was resting on, spread out on the sofa where I was sat. I imagined taking her apart a hundred different ways. I’d make her scream and cover her mouth so only I could hear.
I stood abruptly, pushing the sofa away from the desk. I couldn’t work like that, with a tent in my pants and the girl in my head. I tried to banish the thoughts, but they stuck around. Furious that I was sporting such a puerile reaction to attraction, I imagined my ex-girlfriend under me, and jerked off into a tissue that then went into my personal garbage. I told myself that it didn’t matter that the girl in my fantasies had changed, morphing into the very face I was trying to remove from my memories. I didn’t have a boner anymore, so I opened my blinds, washed my hands in the bathroom, and headed back out to work.
I could do it.
I could be perfectly normal around her.
* * *
Apparently, I couldn’t even be perfectly normal in the ER.
I was supposed to be manually tracking a heart rate. Things were serious, and still, Stephanie’s face floated in my mind. I would have growled if it wouldn’t scare the girl and her mother in front of me. I tried to center myself and glanced at the two of them. The girl was someone I had operated on only a few months ago, and until a couple of nights ago, everything had been okay. Then she came down with a fever, which then led to her hands and feet swelling and a feeling like she couldn’t catch her breath. Of course, this was all without her mentioning the dizziness and strange heartbeat she’d felt in her chest for a week and a half before. I had been called to meet them in the ER, but we all knew it was going to end in admission.
“Jas, I’m just going to talk to your mom for a moment, alright?” I asked of her.
She nodded and I could see how exhausted she looked. She looked almost worse than her preoperative state. Jasmine’s mother, Kayla, followed me behind a curtain, and I told her what I knew she was most afraid of hearing.
“I want to get Jasmine a bed and send her for an ECG. You two will also speak to the medical side of cardiothoracics again. If I’m being honest, Kayla, I’m worried that Jasmine’s body has begun to reject her new heart.”
You could always tell the mothers that had spent a lot of time in hospitals by the way they reacted. Kayla’s eyes tightened and her lips pressed into a thin line of worry, but she just nodded.
