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“No,” I tell him adamantly. “I don’t. My opinion of Layla Fritz as a student is that she’s extremely smart, dedicated, and hardworking. She sees details her peers miss. My impression of her work in the hospital is similar, but I’ll add that she doesn’t balk at being assigned scut work and has an innate compassion I’ve found lacking from other medical students, as well as many doctors, truth be told. And my general opinion of her is that I believe she’ll make an excellent doctor.”
“That’s your honest assessment of her?”
Guilt and even some paranoia claw at me. I’m more than tempted to come clean.
But my honesty won’t help her. In fact, it will only hurt her. If it were just about me, I’d tell him now. Putting the indiscretion of what we’re doing aside, if I tell him Layla and I are in a relationship, he’ll believe she’s cheating because I make up the case studies. If I tell him I simply care about her and work with her, he’ll investigate, and there is no way to prove she’s not cheating. It’s a no-win situation for her.
She’s already taking a risk by being with me. I promised her I’d be an adjunct, not a hindrance, and I have to stick to that. She’s worth more than my integrity.
What good can telling him bring other than assuaging my own guilt?
I run my hands through my hair and drop my elbows to my lap. “Layla isn’t cheating.”
“She could be asking her brother-in-law or one of her uncles for help. That counts as cheating.”
“She’s not.”
He chuckles lightly, almost incredulously. “How could you possibly know that?”
I need to keep myself in check. “It’s not who she is, sir. I’ve been working alongside her for a while now. She has too much pride and is too much of a natural competitor to do that. If you don’t believe me, review Layla’s performance throughout the year. It’s consistent. I went through everyone’s work when I first started. It sounds to me as though Murphy Wallace is saying whatever she has to to throw the heat off herself.”
He rubs at his jaw as his demeanor shifts yet again. “So what would you say if I told you that in addition to accusing Miss Fritz of cheating, Miss Wallace also accused you of having an affair with her and that you’re the one helping her cheat?”
And just like that, my world stops dead. He rocks back in his chair as he scrutinizes me with the diligent focus a detective would give a murder suspect. Silence. Heavy, deafening, consuming silence.
I can lie. I can try to cheat.
But it’s not who I am.
Besides, if I lie and he digs and discovers the truth, it’ll only be worse for Layla.
“If you believed that, you wouldn’t have offered me a position.”
“No. I wouldn’t have, and that’s because I didn’t believe her. Not for a second. But I’m looking at you now Callan, and you look like a man who is not simply defending a student, but defending a woman he cares about.”
I straighten my spine and meet his gaze head-on. “Layla is a woman I care about. Very much. She and I are together, but it’s not as scandalous as it sounds.”
“Shit,” he hisses, opening his desk drawer and pulling out an unlit cigar. He pops the unlit thing into his mouth and starts chewing on the butt of it, and I refrain from cringing at him. What sort of doctor does that? “Callan, are you kidding me? What the fuck am I supposed to do with that?”
He rises from his chair, agitated in a way I’ve never seen him.
I just dumped a scandal in his lap with the name Fritz on it, and I have to fix it, and fix it now.
I sit up straighter, refusing to cower even as my heart pumps a steady dose of adrenaline through me. “Review her work throughout the entire year. Review the case studies she did with Dr. Lawrence. Review her work in the simulator lab. You’ll see consistent work.” I stand now too. “You asked me my impression of her, and that’s what it is. I don’t cheat, and neither does Layla. She and I have only recently started a personal relationship, but it’s far from something sordid. I love her. Regardless of that, it doesn’t enter the classroom.”
“You want me to believe you’re having a sexual affair with her and you’re not helping her cheat or grading her differently than you are any other student? Come on, Callan. I wasn’t born yesterday.”
I try to hold in my ire because he has to ask that and if it were me in his position, I wouldn’t believe me either. It looks bad. It looks really fucking bad because it is.
“I’d never do that, sir. Ever. And neither would Layla.” I step forward, pressing against the edge of his desk. “You already said you didn’t believe the accusation, and that’s because you know me,” I throw at him instead. “I was a student here and you were my professor. You were also my clerkship and rotation adviser for my second and third years. You know me to be a man of my word and a man of integrity.”
He points the tip of the cigar at me accusingly. “Yet you’ve been hiding an affair with your student.”
“Affair sounds dirty. I have no wife, and I’m not cheating on anyone by being with her, nor is our relationship based on favors of any kind. I met Layla the night I agreed to this position and at the time, I didn’t know she was a student here. Once we discovered that, we both did our best to stay away from each other. Trust me, falling in love with one of my students was not something I anticipated or planned.” I shrug helplessly. “I love her, but that doesn’t make me a liar, and it certainly doesn’t make her a cheater. If you don’t believe me on that, take me out of the equation.”
He gives me a bemused grin. “Meaning what?”
I retake my seat, and he does the same, blowing off some of the steam he was building.
