AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“With Connect? I’m sure we could use a medical consultant. Should I get started on adding one to the payroll?”
I didn’t know we had a payroll yet; we barely had a programmer. “No, but what job boards are we on?”
“We can be wherever you want,” Luke promised.
“Okay. We need to get a job ad sent to Dr. Cassidy Croft.” We’d pay whatever it took.
“Would you rather contact her directly?”
I hesitated. That might make sense, yes, but I’d seen that pain in her eyes that came just from talking to me. It would be better if she could choose for herself if working with me again was something she could bear. “No,” I said at last. “She has to decide on her own—but let me write the ad.”
Getting Angela and Carter all they needed occupied enough time that it took me until Tuesday afternoon to cry.
It was the stupidest thing: I turned to Phil’s windowsill in my bedroom to catch him up on all the things that had changed since we last talked—and then I remembered everything. I wasn’t sure what to do next with my life. Davis had been right; Dr. Donaldson was totally into me. Natalie was honestly doing most of the work, but I didn’t know how to be a parent all of a sudden. Phil was gone.
I might never see Davis again.
I should not miss him. A.) I didn’t deserve to after I’d meddled with his brother. I still didn’t know if I’d caused him problems. B.) We’d fought, like, all the time. Or we’d used to. Maybe I was out of line to bring that up on the elevator.
Like I had any room to criticize Davis for anything after what I’d done and how I’d treated him.
And now I couldn’t even talk to Phil.
I turned out the lights, curled up in bed, and bawled my eyes out.
It was nearly dark when Natalie tapped on my door. “The kids are having mac and cheese—uh... you okay in here?”
I’d cried myself out already but couldn’t fall asleep, left staring at the empty windowsill. “No.” My voice was creaky. I should have accepted Phil when he offered. Six weeks ago, I would have railed at him for being an entitled white dude presuming yet again that he could claim whatever he laid eyes on.
Which was a bit much, honestly. I was unsufferable sometimes. Who wouldn’t assume they could keep a plant you brought to their hospital room? Why hadn’t I bought him one of his own? And in the end he hadn’t assumed at all—he’d known and asked, and I gave it to him, like that might undo all the hurt or help him forgive me.
My bed sagged and I knew Natalie had sat down behind me. I hoped she knew what was wrong, because I was not about to talk about Davis. She’d heard enough about him—good and bad—for the last two months. There was nothing new to say.
Except that I was an idiot. And I’d never have another chance. Why had we never exchanged non-work email addresses? Text messages? Phone numbers? PushPin handles? Anything? When I had Davis’s phone, why hadn’t I put in my own number instead of meddling with his brother?
But I didn’t know what I would have said to Davis now.
“Come on.” Natalie took hold of my shoulders. “Sit up. You can have a whole pint of ice cream for dinner if you want, but wallowing in self pity in your dark room alone is too sad.”
I laughed, and then I started crying again.
“He’s pretty special to you, huh?”
“Yeah.”
“We could get another philodendron. Maybe a cream splash? Name it Philippa?”
I grabbed my pillow and tossed it at Natalie’s head. She batted it away. “You could ask for Phil back.”
We both knew this wasn’t about Phil. “I don’t have a way to contact him.”
“Maybe he’s hired an expensive PI, and you have an email sitting in your inbox.”
I rolled my eyes but obliged her by picking up my phone, trying to ignore the way my heart hopped with hope. My email only held NetWerk’s third email alert of the day. Like I needed to be reminded I was a board-certified infectious disease doctor qualified to practice and still unemployed. I absolutely intended to apply to every ID position in the greater Philadelphia area as soon as I recovered from this, so NetWerk could back off.
I tapped on the email to delete it, but it opened instead. Fine. I scrolled through the job listings. NetWerk had been taunting me with a job listing for a company called Connect. Surely there were other local companies with a similar name and it probably wasn’t Davis’s, but there it was every morning at the top of my email: MEDICAL CONSULTANT, CONNECT ENTERPRISES.
Maybe I could dismiss the job listing from the app. I clicked on the job title and scrolled to the bottom of the listing looking for a button or menu to block it. But then I stopped short.
