But I looked again, stared at her this time. I memorized her big, dark eyes and the tears shining back at me. Her pinched brow, her bottom lip snared between her teeth. Her glossy hair sliding loose from her bun, one tendril after another. Her arm folded over her waist, the other across her chest as if protecting her vital organs.
Stella broke me and I'd asked for it.
I cut a wide swath around her, calling over my shoulder, "You can let Harry know you're free this week."
31
Cal
"Hey."
I opened my eyes and found Stremmel staring down at me, his arms folded over his chest.
"What are you doing here? Tonight's game seven of the Stanley Cup Finals. Doesn't your girlfriend get free tickets to those things? Shouldn't you be with her?"
"Not my girlfriend," I answered, shutting my eyes again.
I'd managed to steer clear of this conversation in the handful of days since running out of Stella's house like my hair was on fire. It meant dawdling in post-op and spending an excessive amount of time drilling my residents during rounds and inviting myself into a few cath lab cases to avoid lunch with my friends but I didn't count that as a loss. No, the real loss would've come in the form of Nick and Alex blinking at me with a mixture of pity andwe told you so. Them reminding me I'd spent eight months imagining her, and in the two months I had her, never relinquished my Stella-in-the-sky ideals. Never believed her when she told me where she stood and what she wanted.
"I don't care if she's Joan of fuckin' Arc, if she can get you into that game, you're morally obligated to go," he cried. "Can she get tickets for me? If she did, I'd be her personal pony and let her ride me down to the Garden tonight."
You and Harry.
I wanted to slap myself. I hated the noise in my head right now. Resenting her for doing exactly what she told me she did wasn't helping anyone. But I was finished hating her. If I ever did. Probably not. I missed her and I ached for her, and I wanted things to be different. I wanted to be enough for her. I wanted to change her too, but only this one small issue.
It was small but it was major.
"That paints a picture," I grumbled.
"Hartshorn," he snapped. "Seriously. What the fuck is going on with you? What are you doing on the floor?"
I pressed the heels of my palms to my eyes with a groan. God, I was tired. Even with claiming an extra hour of sleep because there was no fucking way I could go back to the pond, I was exhausted and sore. I'd never known the pain of heartbreak, never considered it manifested itself as true physical distress. And this was one heart I couldn't fix.
"I'm on the floor because I dropped my pager and I didn't feel like getting up after I put it back together."
He circled his hand at me, wanting me to elaborate. "Why are you here?"
I shrugged. "I'm here because I was paged."
Stremmel rolled his eyes at the ceiling. "This exchange is not amusing," he said. "You're not on call. Who paged you? Better question, why are they paging you when you're not on callandyou should be at game seven? Have we no values around here?"
I considered him for a moment. "You're a hockey fan, Stremmel? Wouldn't have guessed that."
Another eyeroll. I could almost hear it, like winding an old-fashioned clock. "I'm a fan of championship games," he said. "That shit is far more interesting than slogging it out through the regular season. I know that knocks me down a few pegs as far as true fans go but I won't apologize."
"Wouldn't ask it," I replied.
"Who paged you?" he asked. "I want to know who doesn't respect protocol. I want to yell at someone."
I waved him off. "It's not that," I said. "My resident paged me instead of the on-call attending because he knew the on-call wasn't going to handle the issue the way I wanted. My resident did everything right."
"Which one?" he asked, glancing down at his phone. "O'Rourke? Or Popov?"
"O'Rourke. How'd you guess?"
"Your favorites are easy to spot. For a guy with your background, you're not so good with the poker face." Stremmel motioned toward my clothes. "Whatever it was, it couldn't have been that important if you haven't changed. And I'm still annoyed you're here over a page that didn't require scrubbing."
"You keep on being annoyed," I replied. "It works for you."
