AllFreeNovel
Share Us
There was a small crackling sound in her lungs. She’d developed lung scarring from either a virus or a lifetime of cigarette smoking, it was difficult to tell which. Sadie worried that Mrs. Rosen had a progressive condition. That would be the pulmonologist’s job to judge—Sadie was just her GP, advising on bloodpressure and such—but she’d have to put a call in. Mrs. Rosen had had such a hard life, anyway. A lot of Sadie’s private patients had been through hardship, but Mrs. Rosen had been a child in Germany during the Holocaust and spent time in one of the concentration camps before the war ended, which seemed like a different echelon of hardship altogether. Her heart went out to her.
Sadie’s empathy wasn’t confined just to her patients. She sought to find homes for stray cats, gave food to people she encountered in the long line of trailers parked on some of the side streets, and she couldn’t bear to watch any commercial having to do with any sort of call for charity donations for children’s hospitals for fear she’d burst into tears. It just was who she was, aware of and concerned for everyone’s struggles, generous with her time and money. Certainly it was why she became a doctor, though there were moments when her patients broke her heart.
She sat back and let the woman button her blouse. Mrs. Rosen’s living room had floor-to-ceiling bookshelves, matching Chippendale chairs, and a large oil painting over the mantel. Outside the bay window, Sunset Boulevard twinkled in the distance. An ambulance raced in the direction of the Chateau Marmont. “Any more questions before I go?”
“Will you play a quick game of Scrabble?” Mrs. Rosen asked, making puppy-dog eyes.
“Sure,” Sadie said, checking her watch. “I think I have time.” She didn’t, but she knew how happy it made Mrs. Rosen to play.
As Mrs. Rosen set up the game board, Sadie’s phone rang. She reached for it eagerly, thinking it might be the nurse from the IVF clinic. But maybe it was too early for them to call with news—her egg retrieval had been three days ago, and she was pretty sure they only reported on the embryos on day five, to see how many had made it to blastocyst. She’d been on high alert since the procedure.How many embryos would she get? Should she PGS test them or just transfer them untested? Should she transfer one or two? It was such a mindfuck, first deciding to be a single parent by choice and then going through all this fertility shit. Sadie wanted a baby, though, and she wasn’t getting any younger. She’d foolishly thought she and Jordan would have children—over the course of their nearly ten-year relationship she kept asking and asking and he kept putting her off,later later later,until she realized there would neverbea later. After Jordan was a string of bad dates, and then a reallyscarydate, and then no dating at all ever again…but the desire for a child remained. It seemed easier—safer—to go this route. Right, too.
But it was her friend Gillian’s name on the screen. Sadie felt a pinch of dread. Months before, she’d finally told Gillian not to call her during the workday. Gillian used to a lot, in the early days of their friendship, always needing something, and Sadie—being Sadie—always came to her rescue. But Sadie had to put her foot down. She simply didn’t have the time to react to twenty texts when she was working. She was too busy with patients. When she’d told Gillian, Gillian had gotten defensive. “I didn’t realize I had to schedule things with you,” Gillian said tightly. “But fine. I’ll leave you alone.”
Sadie answered the phone now. “Hey,” she said, slightly terse. “Everything okay?”
“I’m so excited for tonight, Len,” Gillian rushed in. Her voice was frothy and light. “I’m going to be so happy to get out of my prison.”
“Sorry?” Sadie frowned. “What prison?”
There was silence. The Scrabble tiles clicked together as Mrs. Rosen got the velvet bag ready.
“Gillian, it’s me.” Sadie switched the phone to the other ear.“Sadie. Did you call me by mistake? Were you calling someone named…Len?”
“Yeah, myfriend.Lenna.” Gillian gave the wordfriendweight. As if Sadie wasnother friend.
“And…where’s your prison?” Sadie pressed. “Work?”
“Just…never mind.” Gillian sounded flustered. “I gotta go, Sadie. I’mbusy.”
She hung up. Sadie stared at the phone. “You calledme,” she whispered.
Out the window, traffic on Sunset had come to a standstill. Sadie rubbed her eyes.
Gillian did this sometimes. When she felt insecure, she passive-aggressively insisted that she didn’t need Sadie at all. And things had been tense between them lately. She suspected that her pregnancy journey rattled Gillian. It was a boundary she’d drawn, an impending change. The more Gillian panicked—and lashed out at Sadie—the more resentful Sadie felt. Sometimes, Gillian just felt like an anchor.
“Dr. Wasserman?”
Mrs. Rosen had set up the Scrabble board. With a shaking hand, she held out the velvet bag so Sadie could pick her tiles. Sadie put the strange call out of her mind. A huge part of this job—maybe thebiggestpart—was attentive bedside manner. Making sure the patient felt heard and seen, loved, and cared for. She felt like a mother to hundreds sometimes.
Sadie had met Gillian at a party last year, after she’d broken up with Jordan and also after she’d had the terrifying experience on one of the canyon roads with the man that put her offdating, period. The party was thrown by someone she’d known as a resident in med school. Sadie hadn’t really wanted to go, but she didn’t have anything else to do that night, and it had been ages since she’d socialized.
She and Gillian happened to be at the snack table at the same time. Gillian caught her attention by looking around at everyone in the room and saying, in a very low voice, “What do you think the odds are that any of these men know where a woman’s clitoris is?”
“Pardon?”Sadie cried.
Gillian’s mouth twitched. Her cheeks flared. “Shit. Sorry. Sorry. Sometimes I just…saystuff.”
“No, wait!” Sadie said before she could scurry away. “You’re totally right. Guys strut around like they rule the world. But it’s like most of us are too afraid to tell them they’ve got it all wrong.”
Gillian’s smile was tentative, like she wasn’t sure if Sadie was joking. “Have you dated a lot of awful guys?” she asked.
“You could say that.”
She described Jordan—who, to be fair, wasn’tawful,just immature. Then Gillian—Sadie had to encourage her to talk, insisting that she was completely fine that a total stranger had come up to her talking about clitorises, and no, that wasn’t totally inappropriate—also spoke of a series of bad dates that had gone nowhere. “I blame my anxiety,” she said. “I swear the last decent boyfriend I had was when I was sixteen. He was a dream.”
“Oh yeah? Maybe you should call him up,” Sadie said.
But Gillian looked away. “Nah. He’s probably moved on.”
