"Let's just call it professional discretion," O'Rourke said. "Judgment call, you know?"
I pressed my fingertips under my glasses, to my eyelids. I was exhausted yet too wound up to get much sleep. I just needed to buy myself a little time and then everything would be fine. Everything would settle down. "Myprofessional discretion suggests you should tell me where to find him."
"Is there a specific reason I should do that?"
I did not need any more power struggles in my life. I didnot. "I need to check on your boss. If you don't tell me where he is, I will assume you don't know and have been wasting my time. I'd prefer to not waste my time."
"Why do you need to check on him?"
"I see you've conceded to wasting my time." I turned on a heel, my sneaker squealing against the tile. "Thanks."
I didn't make it two steps before O'Rourke called, "I sent him home."
I swung back to face him. "You sent Stremmel home? Are we talking about the same person? Because the Dr. Stremmel I know takes orders from just about no one."
O'Rourke laughed. "I wouldn't say he takes them, no, but he needed to go." He shoved his hands in his coat pockets. It was obvious he didn't want to elaborate. It was also obvious I wasn't leaving without more information. "He has a migraine. Depth perception"—he waved a hand in front of his face—"all fucked-up. I took his last case of the day and kicked him out. He needs to sleep it off."
He'd held my hand.
That was all I could think.
When I was sick and struggling, he'd held my hand and teased me enough to get my mind off my stomach. He'd stayed with me while I vomited in a bush and he'd gathered up my hair, kept it away from my face. I didn't know when it was that I'd convinced myself I didn't need that, but I did. I needed someone who would stay when I wasn't pretty or perfect, who didn't expect me to hold myself in or smooth down any of my savagery.
And if I needed that, Sebastian did too.
"Okay. Thank you." I went to leave, but quickly realized I needed a little more. "O'Rourke. Do you know where Dr. Emmerling is right now?"
He let out an irritable snicker. "Do I look like a switchboard? Wait. No, don't answer that. Forget it. No one from my generation should know what a switchboard looks like. Emmerling went into the OR the same time I did. Probably closing now, if she's not already done."
"Thanks," I called.
"He doesn't let me slack off when he's fucked up," O'Rourke said. "Don't fuck him up again, okay?"
"Can't promise that," I said to myself.
I caught Alex as she exited from her OR, her hair in two perfectly plaited French braids and a slight imprint on her forehead from wearing a headlamp and loupes for hours.
"I need your help," I blurted out.
"Can you walk with me to post-op?"
I grabbed her by the shoulders. "Send your residents to post-op. You don't need to go with them. They don't need you to micromanage and you don't need to waste your time doing their work for them."
"Wow. We are having some real talk and you're telling me how to get my house in order tonight. Okay, then," she mused. Before I could apologize—my good girl wasdyingfrom all this—she gave orders to a pair of residents. When she was finished, she leaned back against the wall. "What's up, babe?" She ran the back of her hand over her mouth. Her stomach growled loudly. It sounded like a jungle cat. "Ignore that. I just need thirty or forty tacos. I'll be fine."
My stomach gave a matching cry, though this one was lessfeed me tacosand moreall the stress hormones you're dumping into your bloodstream are gonna mess up your gut for days.
"I'll ignore yours, you ignore mine," I said. This was it. This was how a bitch leveled up to best friend status. Out with it in a surgical hallway while one person's stomach yelled for tacos and the other's threatened an irritable bowel war. "That thing you asked me about? With Stremmel? Yes. Okay? Yes. For the past two months."
With both hands, she mimed an explosion. Then, "That's awesome. I like both of you. Now I get to like you together."
"Really? Oh—I mean, thank you?" I waved that away. "You told me once that you had keys to my place and Stremmel's. That Hartshorn and Acevedo had given them to you back when they lived in the building, and if I ever needed someone to water plants or be there for a delivery—"
"Right, right. Yeah." She frowned. "You need my keys? Why? If the sounds I've heard coming from your place are any indication, I think he'll be happy to see you." The shock must've registered on my face because she pushed off from the wall and wrapped an arm around my shoulders. "What I meant to say was let's go down to the locker room and I'll get you that key. Also, good for you. I know you're super private and I have to remind myself to respect that—"
"It's difficult for me," I said. "Being open with people. Private is so much simpler, you know? I can keep on pretending that everything is fine, everything is just as perfect as it looks on the outside, and no one has to know about the mess on the inside." I ran a finger across my forehead. "I'm an enormous mess, Alex. So much of me is a mess. It doesn't even make sense how much of a mess I am. How is anyone allowed to be my age and do this job and also be"—I waved a hand at my scrubs—"held together with nothing more than a stretched-out hair tie and five dozen wonky medical t-shirts?"
She gave my shoulders a squeeze. "I'd give my left tit for your t-shirt collection."
