I always knewI was headed for some kind of whole-life implosion, but I never expected a screech owl plastic surgeon would press the detonator.
I knew it would be bad though I hadn't anticipated quite this much destruction. I didn't think I'd go to bed feeling like a pitted cherry and wake up with the exact same through-and-through wound the next day—and I didn't think it was possible to experience that for days on end.
The unfortunate truth was that I couldn't avoid Sara, not in any practical sense, and trying to avoid her only made this worse as I never stopped thinking about her. It was bad enough with wondering what her t-shirt said today and whether it was a crouton day or she was back on the trail mix, but now I had to watch from the third floor landing while she wrapped a scarf around her neck and buttoned her coat before leaving the building. I had to listen from around a corner while she rounded with her residents and I had to take my life into my hands every time I ventured into a stairwell.
I didn't like to devote a lot of time to flipping through the implosions of my past, but I knew this one was the worst of them.
We had the whole deadbeat dad thing and that had been pretty awful, though in all fairness to my mother, I wasn't the one who got fucked all the way over in that situation. She took the brunt of that bullshit, but it definitely left me with the knowledge that the people meant to love you couldn't be relied upon to do that. They'd leave, and life would be really shitty and you'd always wonder what you did wrong, even when you knew there was nothing valuable to be found by mining that cave.
We had some run-of-the-mill heartbreak in college, then again in med school, and once more as an intern, and those had seemed significant at the time, but now resembled obviously poor choices that ended in dramatic if not inevitable ways. Nonetheless, I'd devoted a load of energy to convincing myself that opening up to another person was a terrible idea, and those breakups stood as my incontrovertible proof. The risk outweighed the reward. It was a fool's errand to go looking for love. I'dprovenit.
And then we had my time here in Boston where it was easier to be a wrecking ball who systematically flirted with an unavailable colleague—and literally everyone else who crossed my sight line—than acknowledge the fact I was lonely as hell, and making some uncomfortable eye contact with the possibility that this was it for me. That I was meant to be on my own. That things wouldn't magically work out and I wouldn't grow out of my bullshit. That college cheerleading, the quest for one good avocado, and tagging along with Hartshorn and Acevedo and their families was all I had. It was all I'd get.
I hated thinking it wasn't enough because it was a lot more than most people had to their name, but it just felt so fucking wrong. Like I'd missed a turn somewhere and now I was barreling down a whole different turnpike and heading in the opposite direction, but there were no exits, no getting off. And even if I did manage to turn this shitshow around, where would I go? Sara didn't want me the way I wanted her. She didn't want me when I was an asshole and she didn't want me when I'd presented her with all the things I'd never dared to share with anyone else.
I was too old to pick myself up and try again. I didn't care if forty was the new whatever the fuck. I couldn't do this again. I couldn't wait around for another person to show me that I was right, the people meant to love me couldn't do that for more than a minute. I couldn't arrange my existence on a silver platter again only for someone to look it over and choose to walk away.
Like I said, I'd proven this point.
Chapter31
Sara
One of thethings I'd learned in the past few years of getting my shit on track and not allowing myself to self-destruct was that kids who grew up in chaotic homes were often highly sensitive to the smallest shifts in tone, behavior, energy. They learned how to protect themselves by picking up on subtle changes that often led to bad situations. They knew the pattern.
I'd known all of my parents' patterns. I knew when someone was going to start an argument, when someone was going to storm out of the house, when I'd need to close myself away in my bedroom and stay quiet. The piece I hadn't noticed—probably because I was busy patrolling two grown adults who were hooked on the drama of fighting with each other—was that I didn't have anywhere to put the adrenaline that came with all that vigilance. I didn't see that binging and then purging was an attempt to calm myself down after listening to another blowout from the people who were supposed to be in charge. I didn't recognize my ritualized food and activity tracking as one tiny, hollow attempt at dragging some order into my life. I didn't notice that my frantic, obsessive attention to schoolwork and college admissions was a desperate desire to find an area where I could earn a steady stream of validation and approval.
And I wasn't aware that it was worth identifying as a really bad situation until I was in my early thirties and my body was breaking down because I'd convinced myself I could outrun, outwork, outperfect a whole lot of family garbage. The kind of garbage that didn't stop when I moved out because that stuff knew no limits, no boundaries. The kind of garbage that shaped me—a double board-certified surgeon who was really fucking good at her job—into someone who lost her shit at the idea of meeting my father for a meal. Someone whose first instinct was to gallop in the other direction when a good man offered his love.
Another thing I hadn't understood was that paying attention to all these little cues for all those years turned me into a dysregulated wreck. I'd been working on straightening out my nervous system for years now. But I still hadn't sorted out the contradiction inherent in desperately,desperatelywanting to be deemed worthy—mypick meproblem—and refusing to believe that anyone could ever want me because I was an epic mess.
Want me, please, though you won't and you absolutely don't so leave me alone at once.
Big old messy mess.
That was the state in which I found myself stalking the halls of the surgical wing on Tuesday evening. I was finished with my cases for the day, but I didn't know where Sebastian was—and I needed to know.
The thing about us grown kids of chaotic homes was we never stopped noticing everything. Maybe we weren't living on the edge of that knife anymore, but there wasn't a time when we stopped tuning into tones and behaviors and energies.
I knew Sebastian wasn't thrilled with me right now, and that was why I needed to keep an eye on him. Not because I was concerned about running into him. Not forme. No, my concern was for him. I had to make sure he was all right. The way we'd parted in Jamaica was not the best, and even if I could've done better in those moments, that didn't change my need for time. Another thing I needed was to keep Sebastian in one piece while I worked through this. All I had to do was keep an eye on him. From a distance. Without him noticing.
Nothing messy about that.
I dropped my hands to my hips as I stalked back to the top of the hallway. There were tons of hiding spots in this hospital. I knew because I'd played this exact game with him before and it had taken me an eternity to find him camped out in that weird little exam room in the ER.
As I hooked a right down another hallway, I spotted a familiar face. I held out a hand to stop him. "Hey. Hi. You're the trauma fellow, right?"
The man grabbed the badge clipped to his waist, the one that announced his name was Bay O'Rourke and he was a surgeon, and he frowned at it for a moment. He appeared confused by the information he found there which wasn't a great sign. "Yeah. I guess so."
"Right, then, do you know where I can find Dr. Stremmel?"
His gaze sharpened as he stared at me. "I know where he is, yeah."
"And?" I crossed my arms over my chest. "Will you tell me where he is?"
He gave me an all-over study, the kind that said he didn't know me but he already knew he didn't like me. Then, "No, I don't think I will."
These freaking trauma surgeons. They were made of stubborn stuff. "Why not?"
