I pushed to my feet as they stopped in front of us though I kept my head down. I needed another minute to figure out how the fuck I was going to handle this. It wasn’t as if I could throw her over my shoulder and charge toward the nearest empty room to ask why the hell she’d found it necessary to vanish on me. Was I even allowed to acknowledge that we knew each other?
And yes, I knew her. I’d drunk whiskey from her belly button. I could draw her nipples from memory. The soft, contented sighs she made as she drifted off to sleep were carved into my bones.
There were plenty of blanks to fill in, that was more than obvious, but Iknewher.
“Welcome to transplant surgery,” she said, and her voice unbraided the tension in my shoulders. “I’m Whitney Aldritch. I’ll be your attending for this rotation. As I’m sure Jenelle—Dr. Copeland—has discussed, you’ll see a full range of major organ transplant cases over the next eight weeks.”
I edged behind Reza as I opened my notebook while Whitney continued previewing the rotation. The guy was tall and reed-thin, but he was the only shelter I had in this storm. By my math, I could hide behind him for a handful of minutes before we started on rounds, but then I’d have to look Whitney in the eye and answer her questions.
I held my pen like I was jotting down everything, but I was busy drinking her in. She looked different here than she had in Tahoe. More serious, more composed. Everyone was more serious in a hospital though there was a calm confidence that radiated from her. It would’ve knocked me back a step if I hadn’t known how completely unhinged she could be on the dance floor.
She wore a creamy white shirt—something that probably qualified as ablouse—with soft trousers the same color as the whiskey I sucked from her skin. Made me want to drop to my knees and rub my face against the thick of her thighs. Shiny black heels peeked out from the hem of her trousers, adding a couple of inches to her frame. A few ultra-thin gold chains circled her neck. I was jealous of them.
She held a cup of hot coffee from a nearby café in one hand, a tablet tucked under her opposite arm. No cupcakes in sight.
“Before we begin, I’d like to take a moment to hear a bit about what brought you to medicine,” Whitney said. “Tell me why you’re here. I know you want to be the best—you wouldn’t have made it this far and into a surgical program as competitiveas this one if you didn’t. What I want to know is what started you down the road to medicine in the first place. For some, it’s loss. Losing a family member, a friend. Feeling powerless at a young age stamps itself on us and drives us to right that wrong.”
Down the hall, a large laundry cart squeaked by while someone was paged to the ER.
After a pause, Whitney continued, “For others, it’s the desire to care. To make things better, to solve the problems.” She glanced at Cami, who responded with another vigorous nod. Copeland sighed. “And there are others who are marched into medicine,fait accompli, and they find their own reasons along the way.” With a shrug, she added, “Some will confess their god complexes and others will make noise about money, though I have yet to meet a single surgeon for whom those are theonlytrue reasons. There has to be something more than a desire to be the best.” She motioned to us with her coffee cup. “Who are you and why are you here?”
Surprising no one at all, Cami went first. “Good morning, Dr. Aldritch. So good to meet you and very excited to learn from you. I’m Camilla Cortes-Dixon and I’m a caretaker,” she said, a hint of self-deprecation in her tone. “Also, I lost my abuela to an extremely aggressive cancer when I was a teenager. It was only three weeks between the diagnosis and when she passed. And you’re right, it is stamped on me.”
Reza lifted a hand, saying, “I’m Reza Ansari. Hello. I hail from a long line of physicians though I’ve always been drawn to working out problems and finding solutions after everyone else has already given up. Thank you.”
I felt Whitney’s gaze pause on me as she listened to Reza though I didn’t look up from my notebook. If she recognized me, she didn’t show it, but time was ticking down here. I needed Tori to go next even though she liked getting the last word in. Justanother minute to figure out how I’d get both hands around this situation, that was all I needed.
After a heavy pause, my teammate jumped in, saying, “Thuy Tran, call me Tori. I’m a competitor. For me, the only desire is to be the best. It wakes me up in the middle of the night. But it’s not simply a matter of being number one. It’s about zeroing in on the most pervasive issues affecting the most underserved populations, and making them my bitch.”
A noise belonging to the laugh family huffed out of Copeland while Whitney gave Tori a slow nod. For no good reason at all, I hated the sterile neutrality of that nod. I wanted to shake Whit until she belted out a belly laugh over Tori’s dramatics. I wanted to see one of her bright, wide smiles and I wanted her to criticize my wrinkled pants.
Whitney lifted her chin in my direction. “And that just leaves?—”
I stepped out from behind Reza as my heart hammered its way up my throat. In so many ways, I was balanced on the edge of a cliff with miles of air beneath me, and the rest of my life depended on this moment. “Henry Hazlette,” I said, meeting her gaze for the first time in too damn long.
Her lips parted and her eyes widened, and she wobbled on those heels like the ground couldn’t be trusted. I was pretty sure I heard her stomach drop to the floor. But then she fixed a stiff smile on her face, swallowed thickly, and said, “Dr. Hazlette. Why are you here?”
The multitude of answers to that question. If she only knew. “You could say I’m a fixer. Always have been. And I have a tendency to run headfirst into challenges.” I waited a moment for her to take that bait, but she went on watching me with the same cool equanimity she’d offered my peers. “I don’t always wear a helmet, even though I’ve heard I could end up with one helluva concussion.”
“What the fuck,” Tori coughed while Cami stared at me like I’d grown an extra eyeball. Copeland just shook her head and muttered something about being too old for this shit and Reza blinked in my direction which was the most aggressive censure I could receive from the man.
Whitney arched a single brow as she stared at me and I didn’t know if I’d fucked it all up or did this exactly right. And I wouldn’t know, not until I could get her alone. Which was the next impossible thing for me to figure out.
“Thank you all for sharing. Push yourself to keep those reasons in mind as you make your way through residency. It’s all too easy to forget why we chose this in the first place when we’re competing for procedures and hearing pagers in our sleep.” Whitney glanced at the smartwatch on her wrist and drew in a wavering breath. No one else noticed it, I was sure of that. But I did, and I knew she was on the edge of that cliff with me. “We’re due to begin rounds. Dr. Copeland, why don’t you get us started?”
Every minuteof the next hour was a study in Whitney Aldritch.
She was different here in ways I’d only begun to catalog. There was a rigidity in the way she carried herself, the way she spoke, and I would’ve fixated on that if I hadn’t been so busy being charmed at how fucking good she was at her job. She asked tough questions and pushed us hard, and I’d learned more from her in an hour than some other attendings in a whole month.
But it was nearly impossible to stay focused on the cases, and my team noticed. By the end, I was on the receiving endof a steady stream of pointed stares and barely concealed sighs. Even Copeland was giving me side-eye glances every time I was a few seconds late in responding to a question or asked for information to be repeated.
“Y’all are due downstairs for adrenal conference,” Copeland said, her gaze locked on her tablet. “Once that wraps up, you’ll meet me back in the clinic. We’re seeing a lot of post-op patients today so you’ll be busy. Get your bedside manner on.”
“Do you know where we’re going, CCD?” Tori asked when Copeland had disappeared down the hall.
“Of course I do,” Cami replied.
I glanced back to where Whitney leaned against the nurses’ station, her arms folded on the countertop. Two women behind the desk had her attention as they spoke with their hands. She dragged the toe of her shoe up the back of her leg and my mouth went dry.
