Whit closed my hand between both of hers, rubbing them together as she said, “They were just surprised. That’s all.”
I wanted to respond. To agree with her. To believe that I hadn’t screwed things up with my team.
“Do you want to call them? It’s not too late.” She kept rubbing my hand. “Invite them over. You can talk and everything will be—I’m sure it will be fine.”
It took a minute to blink away the sand of this shock. “Can we stop at my place?”
“Yeah. Of course.”
She dropped a hand to my thigh as she leaned forward to speak with the driver while their reactions played on a loop in my head.
Was it reallythatbad? All this time, it’d never crossed my mind that I should tell them about my relationship with Whit. Especially not during the transplant rotation. And the past month, everything was new and fragile. Even if I’d wanted to,I wasn’t sure how to explain this. Did “I met her at my best friend’s wedding and then it turned out she was my attending which meant I couldn’t touch her and now I don’t know how to exist without her” sum it up? Was that an adequate explanation of the past few months?
They’d understand. I knew they would.
Except—
Tori was like a dog with a bone when it came to anything she considered a betrayal. There was a page in her notebook where she kept a list of people who’d crossed her which included the coffee cart guy because he’d once given her oat milk instead of almond.
There’d been a week during the community general rotation when Cami barely spoke to me when she found out I hadn’t eaten the curry egg salad she’d made after I let her believe it was great. Egg salad just wasn’t my thing. The texture didn’t work for me. I couldn’t help it.
I didn’t know what to think about Reza. Short of insulting one of his cats, I couldn’t imagine him having any reaction whatsoever to my personal life, even if it did involve one of our supervisors. But he’d looked stricken. As if I’d gone so far as to suggest dogs were the superior animal.
When we arrived at my building, I led Whit up the front steps and into the vestibule, still sorting this all out in my head. I knew she was watching me closely. I could feel her gaze on the side of my face and I wanted to reassure her but the words stuck in my throat.
I just needed a minute to think and then everything would be fine. A minute to talk some sense into Tori and Cami, and to assure Reza that cats were wonderful. They’d understand because that was what they did. We accepted all the weird, illogical things about each other. Embraced them, even.
If I asked them to accept and embrace my relationship with Whit, they would. Even if they bitched about being the last to know. Even if they asked questions I wasn’t ready to answer, like what I’d do if I didn’t get a fellowship here or what would happen when Whit was inevitably recruited away to another hospital.
“They’ll understand,” I said, mostly to myself.
“Yeah, they will.”
We climbed the stairs to my third-floor apartment, vaguely aware of music and laughter coming from the other two units. As we rounded the second floor and started up the last leg, I noticed a figure up ahead.
I stopped a few steps from the landing, a hand on Whit’s hip. Slumped on the floor with a bottle of liquor tucked between his long legs sat a man who was a very long way from home.
“There you are,” Mason drawled, lifting his arm in a sloppy approximation of a wave. “How the hell are ya?”
“I could ask you the same.” My stomach sank as the pieces fell into place and I was suddenly aware that, if he was here and diving deep into a bottle of bourbon, we now had much bigger problems than whether I’d pissed off my team tonight.
“Not great, man.” Mason pulled himself to his feet as we approached, still holding the liquor close by. “My marriage is over. Just like you said it would be.”
Twenty-One
Henry
Pediatric Surgery Rotation:
Day 6, Week 4
I’d always knownMason’s marriage would fall apart.
I’d known when they got engaged and I’d known the first time I showed him the evidence of her infidelity.
I’d known it back when they started dating and Mason swore she was the one because her sister, the woman who handed my attachment issues to me on a platter and dared me to fix them, often let slide Florrie’s conflicts with monogamy and how she’d never, ever be content within its confines.
But I hadn’t planned on Mason flying all the way to Boston, getting drunk on my doorstep, and telling Whit that I’d flake out on her one of these days because I didn’t fuck with relationships.
