I didn’t know what the hell was wrong with me. I really didn’t.
But I needed to fix it.
“And the case she’s working on is really interesting,” Cami added. “I wanted to scrub in, but I’m already over my max hours for the week and Copeland told me there was no chance in hell she’d ignore that since I was over last week too.”
“Such a hard-ass,” Tori murmured. “She probably wanted that case for herself.”
“She’s over her hours too. I think every resident on transplant is over,” Cami replied. “I heard Hartshorn scrubbed in to assist. He pulled a few fifth-years off cardio-thoracic too.”
I was going to have to screw my head on straight real fast. I could not spend all my time swimming around in my feelings when Whit was busy grinding through surgeries.
“He did and she’s eating them alive.”
I shifted to face Reza. “I don’t know what to do with the evil amusement in your tone, Ansari. It’s freaking me the fuck out.”
Cami rolled her brown eyes. “He got another cat and it’s changed his whole personality. See? These are the things you miss when you’re off being Salas’s special project.”
“And he’s hooked on spicy jelly beans,” Tori said, motioning to Reza. “It’s got him all pepped up this afternoon which is great because we’re going to need some pep to win the game tonight.”
Reza gave a slight nod in response.
“Right. Okay.” I shrugged into my fleece jacket and headed toward the door. I had more important places to be. “I gotta go.”
“You’ll be at the game, right?” Tori called.
I didn’t answer.
I watchedfrom the gallery while Whit transplanted a new heart into a nineteen-year-old woman who’d been waiting for this day for nearly three years. Donor lists could be unpredictable, but that was a long time and I had to imagine those had been hard years for her. No one lived on the list. They survived.
If I didn’t know Whit had been working virtually nonstop for three days, I wouldn’t have guessed from watching her. She was as sharp and focused as always and had no patience for these fifth-years on loan from cardio-thoracic. It came as a slight relief to me that I wasn’t the only one too slow for Whit’s liking. The only times I saw the strain was when she stepped away from the table to roll her shoulders or get a sip of water. She chatted with Hartshorn about his kids and wife, who was some kind of big-deal sports publicist, and their plans to visit his parents in Oregon for the holidays. I didn’t know how she managed it, but she didn’t even sound tired.
The procedure was tedious and complicated, but that new heart didn’t waste a second getting to work. It was almost ten o’clock when Whit and Hartshorn walked out of the OR to speak to the patient’s family. I intercepted her a few minutes later and I knew from her glazed eyes and unsteady steps that I’d made the right call.
One of the crazy things about the human body was the ability to push through intense situations for longer than logical. Whit could stand at the operating table for days on end with minutes of rest and she could do it with incredible skill—but the second her body knew the work was over, she’d crash.Hard.
“This way,” I said, guiding her into the elevator.
She rested her head on the wall and closed her eyes as the car climbed to her floor. After a moment, she said, “You were in the gallery for hours.”
I bobbed my head. “Yeah.”
“Why?”
She had her hair in two French braids that’d seen better days. There were purple circles around her eyes and deep, red grooves on her face from her mask and surgical glasses. She was perfect and all I could give her was complete honesty. “I wanted to see you.”
She slow-blinked like she wasn’t sure she believed me.
When the doors opened, I said, “Let’s grab your things and get you home.”
She stepped out and headed toward her office. “No, I’ll just crash here.”
“The fuck you will.”
Whit stopped in the middle of the hall, her hands on her hips. “What was that, Hazlette?”
She was working hard at giving me her most serious glare though the effect landed closer to loopy and cross-eyed. Loved it so much. “I said, the fuck you will. You’re not staying here tonight.”
“At the rate I’m going, I’ll get paged before midnight.”
