“I don’t need you to do that.”
“You don’t,” he said simply. “But I want you to let me do it anyway.”
He settled his palm on the back of my neck. I glanced around. We couldn’t do this here. It was such a bad idea, all of it. And yet I didn’t step away. My voice was pathetically small when I asked the one question I hadn’t been able to get out of my head since he promised we could get through this. “Why?”
He stared at me for a second, his dark gaze sweeping over my face, down to the chains around my neck and to the fingersI drummed against my thigh. He didn’t smile or laugh or offer any of his usual charm, all of which made it clear that I’d created a terribly vulnerable position for myself. Not only did I want him to provide an emotional bibliography for his claims, but I’d kicked open the secret compartment where I kept my self-worth issues for him to see, all with one word. All while my sister was passed out in Emergency.
I was nothing if not efficient.
He drew his thumb over my cheek and down the line of my jaw. “Because I like you, Whitney Aldritch. You’ll just have to deal with it.”
My lips parted as the most desperate of survival instincts told me to shut this down, push it away, reject reject reject. Because I knew I was hard to like and harder to love, and if I let this continue, I’d be forced to look those truths in the eye all over again.
Somehow, I said, “I’ll try.”
He swept a hand down my back, ending with a swift slap to my ass. “Yeah, you will.”
I couldn’t help it. I pressed my forehead to his shoulder and laughed. “I need to get in there and—” My phone buzzed again. I sighed as I read the message. “Looks like I’m transplanting a heart tonight too. Awesome. Perfect timing. Not like I have anywhere else to be.”
Nodding, Henry led me to the door. He unwrapped the lanyard from my hand and gave me a look likethese crazy things you doas he swiped my badge. “Then put me to work. What do you want me to do? I can prep your patient, I can scrub in, I can?—”
“I can’t let you scrub in with me.” We cut through the back corridors of the hospital, quiet and dim in the slowdown of Sunday night. “I know you don’t see it the same way but?—”
“I do see it,” he interrupted. “And I see that these boundaries are important to you. If that means I don’t scrub in with you once in this rotation, I can live with it.”
As we closed in on the Emergency Department, I glanced over at him. “You should, considering you had a private lesson tonight. Don’t mention that to your cohort until I figure out how to do the same for the rest of them.”
“I’d really prefer if it’s not theexactsame for them,” he murmured.
I swatted his thick bicep. “We don’t talk about that here.”
“Yes, ma’am.” He held the door open for me. “I’m going upstairs to change. Text me when you decide how you want to use me.”
“I—um.” I blinked up at him, my cheeks suddenly hot. “What?”
A dark cloud blew over his features. “I’m not going to say anything because we don’t talk about that here and”—his brow quirked up as he leaned in just enough to tell me a secret—“you should know by now that I don’t require much direction.”
Again, all I could manage was, “What?”
A cheeky smile pulled at his lips as he pointed down the hallway. “Go. We’ll talk about it later.”
Since I didn’t have time to waste and this conversation was headed down a thorny path, I followed those orders and headed straight for the Emergency Department. I only glanced back at Henry when waiting for the automatic double doors to open enough for me to slip inside. Gaze steady and arms crossed over his chest, he gave me a quick nod.
He could’ve meant any number of things or nothing at all with that gesture, but to me it saidI want to keep an eye on you.
Warmth filled my chest like a gulp of too-hot coffee. I looked away. I had an hour or two before the donor organ arrived and that was hardly enough to get Brie’s situation under control.
Dr. Chaudhry gave me a full update while walking me to the room where they were treating Brie. She had a raging infection that they’d classified as “five minutes away from sepsis,” a mild concussion from hitting her head when passing out, and the still unexplained bleeding. There were more tests to run and procedures to schedule, but the antibiotics and pain meds were flowing and her vitals were stronger than when she’d arrived.
I glanced at my sister. Dark smudges circled her eyes and her lashes fanned out over her cheeks as she rested. The side of her face was pale and lightly scraped from the tumble she took down the stairs. I wanted to believe this infection blew up out of nowhere even though I knew that wasn’t how it worked with her. It was always a slow, steady build. “Page me directly if anything comes up.”
“You’re not staying with her?”
“I’ll be here all night,” I said, already tired. My phone started buzzing again. I ignored it. “But I was just called into a procedure and I need to get upstairs. My circulator will have my phone.”
They regarded me for a moment. Eventually, they said, “Your ethics program is a pain in my ass. One of my residents thinks he’s being mistreated every time he doesn’t get the exact cases and procedures he wants and I’ve had to sit through three so-called productive dialogue sessions with him because of it.” They glared at me for a heavy second and it seemed like tonight was descending even further into battle mode. I felt the sigh start somewhere in my toes. “It is annoying and cumbersome. But it helps. It does what it’s supposed to do for the people who need it.”
Battle averted. For once. “Then that’s all that matters.”
