“Can we talk for a second?”
She blinks, “Of course. Sienna, you good without me for a sec?”
“Sure,” the other woman—Sienna—says, her flat voice only just tinged with amusement. “I might actually be better without you here to break all the product.”
Juliette blushes and ducks out through a door in the back, hugging her arms around herself as she comes around the side of the booth to talk to me.
I open with, “How is Gus doing?”
Her eyebrows pinch down slightly, and she says, “Good. We hadn’t fully run out of the script, so the medication wasn’t interrupted.”
“That’s good. Listen, I made a call to the insurance company today. They’re going to get back to me tomorrow.”
Juliette makes a face like,yeah, doubt that. “Okay.”
“…I just wanted to check—is there anyone who could help with the cost? I really think it’s in Gus’s best interest to have it as soon as possible. Do you have a co-parent, or grandparents that might be able to help out?”
Juliette swallows, looks away and picks a piece of lint from her sweater, “No. Just me.”
My chest tightens at the thought of that—raising a boy with a heart condition without even the support system of grandparents around to help. But it’s also enlightening. There’s no dad in the picture for Gus.
I think of my own childhood, growing up without a mother. Single parents do their best, but there’s always something missing when you have just one person to go to, one parent upon whose shoulders all the weight of the family rests. At least Gus is an only child.
“Jules!” Sienna calls from the booth, poking her head out the back. “I need your help with this display.”
Juliette says good-bye and ducks back into the booth, and I watch her go.
It could work.
But there’s also plenty of reasons not to do it—including how it will look to my peers. The other surgeons and doctors at the hospital, those on the board. It’s not exactlyillegalto date a patient, or the parent of one, but it’s not like they’re going to be all that impressed with it.
Doing something like this could damage my career. Especially considering the fact that I must have at least a decadeon her. And something like this would require us to be around one another quite a lot.
Would I be able to spend time around her without wanting, or giving into a physical relationship?
No. She would be completely off limits to me. The only thing worse than my recent bout of being alone would be having her dangled in front of me, even without her ever being a real option.
When another gust of wind cuts through the Christmas village, I stick my hands in my pockets and start the walk to my condo. It’s not like I want to be wandering around on Halloween night, anyway.
Even though I know it would never work, the idea persists in my mind, weaseling in further, especially when I can’t think of a single other person who might get enough out of the whole thing to agree to marry me.
I go through my evening routine—reviewing journals and studies, reheating the tandoori chicken in the fridge, setting my sunrise clock to low, red light.
And throughout it all, I can’t get the image of Juliette Harper out of my head.
Chapter 8
Jules
UNKNOWN NUMBER:Hey, this is Russell Burch.
Before I know what I’m doing, I smile down at the phone in my hand.
Around me, Christmas music plays softly, and other market-goers walk around the little tent we’re in. Gus sits to my right side, working on his Christmas letter with the top of his little pink tongue sticking out the corner of his mouth.
All day, I’ve been keeping a close watch on him. After what Dr. Burch said the other night, I haven’t stopped thinking about what might happen if Gus doesn’t get the surgery. The chances are low, but he could develop a permanent arrhythmia, need a pacemaker. Or the hole could get bigger, cause a clot.
My own letter to Santa is abandoned in front of me as I bite my lip and stare at the little screen in my hand. How did Russell get my phone number? Apparently, I don’t care, because, my body is reacting with a smile to this man despite the fact that I’ve already decided I want nothing to do with him.
