"Not recently," I admitted. "I usually practice on my residents at the start of their trauma rotation. Gets us off on a good, abusive foot and it helps me rank them by vascularity. Least being best, of course, since they'd never get pulled off the floor to donate blood. It comes back to haunt them when they're inevitably enrolled in a clinical trial."
"You're such an asshole," she said, but there was no heat behind it. She almost sounded amused.
"And what about you? When was the last time you started a line?"
She set her fork down and busied herself with the napkin on her lap. "You have no idea what I do, do you?"
I dropped a piece of crust to my plate. "Plastics. You make people look pretty after I put them back together."
She dabbed her lips—they were so pale, barely even pink—and set the napkin beside her mostly untouched pasta. She'd moved it around plenty but she'd hardly made a dent.
And then she held up her phone to me as the timer counted down the final five seconds she'd set for us. After swiping away the alarm, she slipped the index card off the table. "I didn't get yours, so you're not getting mine."
Sara pushed away from the table and I had no choice but to watch her cross the restaurant. She didn't bother with backward glances, not when she was busy walking like the floor owed her money.
I returned to my beer and pizza, and attempted to figure out what the ever-loving fuck happened here tonight. I was halfway through the last slice of pizza when my phone buzzed in my pocket. I assumed it was Sara texting me a thesis on my arrogance though I was wrong. When I saw O'Rourke was calling, I tucked the phone against my shoulder, saying, "What's up?"
The blaring roar of the emergency room came through the line before he said, "I'm early but I gotta deal with an issue. Consider this your fake crisis call so you can get the hell out of whatever you've gotten yourself into now."
"I don't get myself into things," I said, dropping the last of the crust to my plate. "I actively avoid getting into things. I hate things."
"Yeah, yeah. I don't have time to unpack any of that tonight but maybe tomorrow if you buy me lunch."
"I'm not buying you lunch."
"That's cool. I'll get Acevedo to pick up the tab. He'll want to hear about this. He pays for updates on your misery." A siren wailed nearby and O'Rourke groaned. "Really gotta go now. Be good."
He hung up as the server came to gather our plates. I pointed at Shapiro's pasta. "She said no arugula. What does this look like to you?"
The server frowned at the dish. "Why didn't she say anything?"
I motioned to the empty seat. "And you think I have any idea?"
Chapter5
Sara
My good girlalways did her homework. She couldn't live in a world where she didn't comply fully and confirm to everyone that she was perfect and worthy of the little slice of space she occupied.
That good girl was shaking in her boots as I jogged up the stairs to Milana Cuello's office, right on time for this week's session. The other side of me welcomed the opportunity to show off Stremmel's epic inflexibility. Milana was sure to see how that man wasimpossible. She'd sympathize with me. She had to.
As I exited the stairwell and approached her office, I found Stremmel leaning against the wall, his gaze fixed on Milana's door as if he could force it open by will alone. He wore the same dark blue scrubs as last week and hadn't yet realized his forearms were too profane to flash around these halls. Unfortunate. Someone really needed to talk to him about modesty.
I stopped several feet from him and grabbed my phone. I had no intention of speaking until the session started and I'd divert myself by any means necessary. Even when the session did get underway, I intended to let Sebastian implode and prove my points.
However.
"Last chance," he said.
"Excuse you?"
"Last chance, " he repeated with a scowly side-eye. "Still have that index card?"
"You had plenty of opportunities to take advantage of my index card. You chose not to and that was all your decision."
"Hmmm." He crossed his arms over his chest and went on staring at the door. Then, "Hmmm."
"What?" I snapped.
