Like clockwork, Whit would call around nine thirty or ten, make it sound like she had one quick, important thing to tell me that wasn’t important at all, and we’d listen to each other breathe for a minute before the rest of the conversation started. From there, it didn’t stop until one of us yawned too many times to ignore. If sleep hadn’t been a factor, we’d have gone for days without stopping. There was never a shortage of material. Hell, we’d spentallof Friday night on the varied styles of pizza around the country and which toppings were acceptable in which cities.
Maybe it didn’t sound like much, but it wasn’t just pizza. It was pizza and a story about Whit and Dr. Mercer getting lost on Long Island. It was pizza and my stunningly bad med school interviews in San Francisco. Pizza and Whit’s sister sending a Chicago deep dish back because she thought they’d forgotten the cheese. Pizza and all these little pieces of ourselves.
I was probably being irresponsible with myself for this, but I was starting to see some possibility on the horizon. If we could do this, if we could talk for hours about pizza and everything else, maybe there was a chance we could pull it off after this rotation ended.
Whit asked me to come over around six tonight to work on my surgical technique, which I interpreted as an easy cover for spending time together without eyes and ears around every corner. That meant I devoted most of the afternoon to debating whether to bring flowers or wine—or both—before deferring to the only right answer when it came to Whit, which was cupcakes.
With a dozen mini cupcakes in hand, I hiked the cobblestone streets toward Whit’s place. I knew her younger sister, who I’d learned was visiting her for a bit, was supposed to be out tonight but she had a tendency to be unpredictable and I should be prepared for anything.
I’d responded to that with some comment about my last gig equipping me pretty well for such things. She said I hadn’t met Brie yet.
My phone buzzed in my pocket and I was relieved to find it wasn’t Whit canceling our skills session. But then I was confused as hell that Mason was calling. “Aren’t you supposed to be leading an expedition today?”
“Hello to you too,” he grumbled.
“Don’t tell me there’s snow already.”
“No snow,” he said. “Just didn’t take my usual three-day trek this week.”
“Why not?” I stopped on the corner of Pinckney and Joy Streets. Such a cool, old neighborhood. I really had to explore more of this city, not just the hospital and a couple of random breweries. “What’s up?”
He was in his truck, the wind whistling through the window and some tunes playing in the background. If I had to guess, I’d say he was somewhere on the 80 near Truckee, just driving around. He always did that when he was in a mood—which wasn’t often. Mason Ballicanta wasn’t a moody guy.
“Nothin’,” he said eventually. “Just in my head.”
“Okay.” I glanced down at the cupcakes in my hand and then around the narrow intersection. “How’s it going, then?”
“Not bad, not bad. How’s that fancy East Coast prep school treating you?”
“Would you believe they’re letting me operate on people? I helped attach a new set of lungs this week.”
“They must not know you very well if they’re letting you near real patients.”
“Obviously not.”
He laughed, but sobered quickly. “How’d you know it was time for a change?”
“You mean, going to med school?”
“Yeah,” he said hesitantly.
“It was the year we got like twenty feet of snow in two weeks.”
“Don’t tell me the snow did you in.” He sounded infinitely disappointed in me. “Come on, now.”
“Not the snow. The storms are what made that year memorable because everything else blurred together,” I said. “After a while, it was the same rescues over and over. The same overly ambitious and underprepared people out in terrible conditions where they couldn’t see the hand in front of their face, but that didn’t stop them from going off the trails and flying straight into a tree. I realized after one rescue that I’d zoned outwhile prepping double tibial compound fractures for evac and that was a fucking problem.”
“Only you would get bored doing that.”
“You’re probably right,” I conceded. “But that was how I knew.”
After a moment, he said, “I guess Flor thought I was going to take a break from leading wilderness expeditions after we got married.”
Threading the needle between supportive friend andyeah, I fucking told you that would happenwas next to impossible. “Hmm.”
“Take a break,” he said, “or maybe do something else altogether. Like working for her dad.”
Considering I’d repeatedly warned him that this precise thing would occur, I was left with no other response than, “Yeah.”
