It took a couple of minutes, but I found an empty seat on the left side of the auditorium that wasn’t being aggressively held by a med student or stab-happy resident.Feralwas the right word for it and it was exhausting.
On most days, I didn’t feel almost a decade older than many of my first-year peers. That was largely due to the fact I didn’t care, but also, the averages didn’t speak accurately to the whole. My man Reza went off and grabbed a whole other chemistry degree before starting med school. Mama Cami had taken two gap years to work in Central American clinics. Tori was the only one in our cohort who’d done the straight shot of college, med school, and residency. None of us could say we’d taken the path that was right for everyone, but we knew it had been the right one for us.
Days like today, however, when I had to fight my way through a sea of twentysomethings who hadn’t yet realized their career didn’t hinge on sitting near the doc they idolized or coming up with a clever question to ask the presenter, I felt my age. I wanted to tell everyone to calm the fuck down and be quiet.
Fortunately, the lights dimmed and the conference started, and I didn’t have to yell at anyone to get off my lawn. Especially since the guy next to me tucked his arms into the body of his fleece jacket and promptly fell asleep.
If I had to choose which of the twenty or so conferences, multidisciplinary meetings, and other convenings we had each week to sleep through, I’d probably go with inflammatory bowel disease conference over morbidity and mortality, but everyone’s priorities were different.
Halfway through the first presentation—a necrotizing fasciitis case with a good patient outcome though a loud and clear reminder that minutes mattered with that shit—the person on my other side, not the snoozer, received a page and headed for the door. With that seat vacant, I unpacked myself a bit, spreading my knees and elbows until I no longer felt like I was crammed into a tin of sardines. I used that space to rest my head on my palm while I took down the important highlights of this presentation, my notebook balanced on my thigh.
I didn’t notice someone shuffling along the row until they plopped down beside me. There was a second when I assumed it was the person who’d left, but then I breathed in the warm fruity-flowery scent that had followed me everywhere since June and I immediately turned to the left.
And there she was.
It was always like that with Whitney. She just…appeared. At the wedding and here at the hospital, in the coffee shop and then in the elevator. Like a hummingbird, stopping only long enough to fuck me up.
Her hazel gaze collided with mine for a moment that boiled over as we blinked at each other. As if I didn’t know what she was doing, she swept a quick, furtive glance around the auditorium. There were no other seats, and though I didn’t doubt she’d stand in the back because she didn’t care if her moral high ground was comfortable, I was curious whether she’d get tired of running away from me.
I was trying to do this right, to follow her lead, but that elevator killed all my best intentions. I’d always been good atlying to myself though it was dense of me to think I’d be able to lie about how much I wanted her. How much the feel of her hip had made my fucking day. How I’d only reached for her to prevent her from backing into me, and then realized that her objectively terrifyingdon’t fuck with mestare was a serious turn-on for me.
“Dr. Hazlette,” she managed.
I stared at her for longer than could be considered polite before nodding. “Dr. Aldritch.”
She tipped her chin toward the stage, a firm reminder of where my attention belonged. Fine. I could get through this. Just another seventy-five minutes of my brain carrying on a debate as to whether her scent was peaches or plums, and if I even knew what plums smelled like, or perhaps it was a flower, and did I have any idea which flower? This led, predictably, to thinking about the way she tasted, which was far better than any scent. She tasted like sex and summer and all the things that made me really fucking happy, and she wasright hereand I couldn’t even look at her the way I wanted to without her closing in on herself.
What was another seventy-five minutes when I’d already survived three months? When I had at least another two months to go? Or longer, assuming I even had a chance here. I didn’t know. I didn’t know if things would change when I wasn’t reporting to Whit anymore, if she’d ever be able to see past our respective roles. If she wanted to see past those roles.
I could’ve deluded myself into believing it was nothing at all, but I wasn’t so good at lying to myself when it came to Whit. I didn’t know what that said about me and I sure as shit didn’t know what it said about her, but I was smart enough to avoid making eye contact with any of the possible answers.
From the corner of my eye, I noticed Whit patting her pockets and then rustling in each of them. She made sweet little frustrated sighs when she didn’t find what she was looking for.She leaned back and drummed her fingers on a small leather-bound notebook.
I plucked a pen from my pocket and handed it to her without taking my focus away from the stage. The pause between my offering and her accepting was ridiculous, but eventually she did, whispering, “Thank you.”
I murmured in acknowledgment and assigned myself the task of copying down everything on the presenter’s slides just so I didn’t do anything stupid like press my face to her neck or ask why she left the way she did after the wedding.
She clicked the pen and I heard, “Oooh.”
I watched as she examined the pen like it was the most marvelous thing she’d ever seen. Her shoulders bounced and her lips curled into the first real smile I’d seen from her in this city as she tested it out. If she knew I was drinking in every ounce of her joyover a pen, she didn’t let on.
I flipped to the last page in my notebook and wrotepens. I addedcupcakeson the next line.
The next case presentation started, this one focused on post-operative infection rates for patients with gunshot wounds, and I listened closely. The assumption had always been that I’d pursue trauma surgery. I didn’t come here believing that I already knew everything there was about trauma, but I’d lost track of the number of compound fractures I’d managed on mountainsides while blizzards whipped around me. I knew more than most. Being here for the past few months, however, had dimmed the brightness of that assumption. Some of the best trauma surgeons in the world worked here and I’d heard great things about the fellowship program, and I knew I’d do well there but it was no longer my only option.
Dr. O’Rourke was deep into discussion of a data set when Whit’s elbow connected with my arm and all I could do was slow-blink in her direction.
“Sorry,” she whispered.
I refused to let my gaze drop to the spot where her elbow still nudged my arm. If I did, she’d move, and I was a floundering, helpless fool who’d live off these tiny interactions indefinitely. “No problem.”
She scrolled through an NIH journal article on her phone while she tapped the pen to her notebook. I had the sense she was listening and reading at the same time, which only reinforced the fact that she was gifted in many insane ways. Some I knew all too well.
As I shifted to get a better view of O’Rourke’s slides, my knee pressed against Whit’s thigh. We both stared at the spot where my navy blue scrubs seemed to dissolve into her black pants. It took a minute for me to stop thinking about her soft, thick thighs and get the manspreading under control.
“My bad,” I murmured.
“You’re fine,” she replied, though the tightness in her tone suggested otherwise.
