She met my gaze for all of a second before the laughter died on her lips and her light expression faded into something chilly—and pained.
That was when I realized this wasn’t a matter of pushing me away, not when it hurt her too. I hadn’t imagined her leaning into me during that conference last week, just as I hadn’t imagined our connection at the wedding or the way it roared to life when we started talking on Friday.
I stared at Whit, silently willing her to know that we could figure this out if she let us.
As Dr. Salas exited the bathroom and wanted the lab coat that she tasked me with holding during these breaks, Whit walked in the opposite direction.
I hadn’t been able to find an answer in her eyes, but I knew what I had to do.
In the end,it hadn’t taken more than a few well-placed comments.
I’d started with Dr. Shapiro, one of the attendings from our burn surgery rotation. As expected, she had no interest in playing softball, but she promised that her friend Dr. Emmerling would jump at the opportunity to “run around in the dirt and antagonize residents.”
From there, I made a point of talking about the upcoming game with the pediatric surgery cohort while Dr. Acevedo was nearby. They were pumped about this in a puzzled, happy way that told me they’d have a lot of fun in the outfield. More importantly, I could tell Dr. Acevedo was the kind of guy who liked a good ball game.
It wasn’t long before attendings were stopping Copeland in the hall for the details about this game and asking if it was too late to order a jersey.
So I was hardly surprised when the Chief of Surgery showed up pushing a double stroller on Friday evening, or that his wife and Whit were a few steps behind him. This was the beauty of working with people who drank their coffee with an extra shot of competition every morning. We did not like to look around and realize we weren’t doing as much—if not more—than our peers.
It was almost comical to see all these people blindly diving into a resident softball league on the basis of rumors about “everyone” showing up for the first game. The real humor was in how easy it had been to get the wheels turning.
Cami and Tori interrupted their intense warm-up routine when they spotted Whit and jogged toward her. Even from the opposite side of the field, I knew they were hard-selling her on getting in the game.
Just as I’d hoped they would.
I glanced beside me at Reza as he palmed a softball. He wore a McGill School of Medicine t-shirt and hummed a song I didn’t recognize.
“How much are you hating this?” I asked.
He thought it over for a moment and gave a slight shrug. “‘Hate’ is an oversized word for this situation. This is not my preference, though I don’t hate it.”
I nodded. “Fair enough.”
“It’s your preference.” He shot me a sidelong glance. “You find enjoyment in these social events.”
The thing about Reza was that he didn’t say much. Even when a surgeon put him on the spot during rounds or in the OR, there was an economy in his language. He only said exactly what was necessary. Which was why I was stunned silent now.
“Yeah, I guess you could say that.” I glanced around the infield and at the crowd congregated in the stands. Whit and the chief—Dr. Hartshorn—were deep in conversation, seemingly immune to Copeland and O’Rourke frantically revising their starting lineup right in front of them. “We work damn hard all day—and sometimes all night—and it’s good to have some fun when we have a minute off. But I understand that not everyone recharges the same way.”
After a drawn-out moment, Reza said, “Should I expect events after the game? Will we relocate to a bar or restaurant?”
“Some will.” I said this while watching Hartshorn ticking something off on his fingers while Whit nodded along. She was wearing jeans and a button-down shirt knotted at her waist, and her hair was tied in a little ponytail. She looked good enough to eat. Gulping down the finer details of that thought, I added, “Cami’s leaving afterward to catch a train to New York to visit her husband, and a bunch of these people are holding pagers so they won’t be going far. You’ll be able to duck out if you want to skip that part.”
Reza didn’t respond and that was for the best because then O’Rourke dug a jersey out of his duffel bag and handed it to Whit—who proceeded to pop the buttons on her shirt and shrug out of it, leaving her in a black tank top. I wasn’t sure I was able to speak. She pulled the jersey over her head and—fucking kill me already—opened her arms to him for a hug. Which he enthusiastically accepted.
I had to force myself to look away. Hadn’t planned on seeing that when I’d constructed this house of cards.
The game got underway with the senior surgeons packing the starting lineup while I leaned against the fence with Cami, Reza, and Tori, who kept muttering, “This is bullshit.”
Hartshorn had a solid swing and Emmerling had a real talent for hurling insults while she rounded bases, but the truly astonishing part was how bad Whit was at softball. I wasn’t talking about a few strikeouts. No, the girl had no stance, no swing, and no sense of how to coordinate her body to play this game. Even when they slowed the pitch down to kindergarten T-ball levels, she almost knocked herself flat on her ass with that shitshow of a swing.
It took everything in me to stay on that fence and keep my mouth shut.
When they finally sent her to first—because there were no rules here—she tripped over the base for no good reason at all.She tumbled to the ground, a cloud of dust floating up with her laughter. I was pretty sure I heard a snort too, but I was a little busy with my heart stopping for a second to be sure. Emmerling jogged over and helped her up, and they laughed as they brushed dirt off her jeans.
I couldn’t help it. I laughed too. How could this woman, this profoundly talented, sophisticated woman, be so fucking bad at softball? Everything about surgery demanded more focus than what she put into that swing. Walking around in those heels of hers required more coordination than jogging to first. She wielded a greater amount of competence in the first five minutes of her day than anything she could ever bring to a softball game.
And I knew she had moves. They’d been burned into my skin’s memory the night of Mason’s wedding. But this…thiswas something else.
