By the time I reach the clinic, my shoulders are knotted with tension, but at least the drive has given me time to compose myself. I park in my usual spot and take a deep breath, steeling myself for whatever awaits me inside.
I spend most of the drive down trying to assure myself that Noah isn’t waiting at the clinic to tell me I’m fired in front of witnesses. Or worse, he is already on the phone with the medical licensing board, reporting me for designation fraud.
Both those things are less than I probably deserve.
Nothing can stop the mantra I take up in my head as I navigate down the mountain.
He hates me. He hates me. He hates me.
And I can’t blame him for it.
But as I step through the clinic doors, everything feels exactly the same. Greta looks up from her desk, her smile wide as she takes me in.
“Good morning, Dr. Chang! I see you survived your first Heat Mountain storm,” she says, her voice carrying a note of curiosity I’ve never heard before. “Dr. Klinkhart is waiting for you at the nurses’s station.”
My heart rate spikes, and I feel a corresponding pulse through the bond. Is Noah feeling my anxiety right now? The thought makes me even more nervous.
“Thank you,” I manage to say, hanging up my coat and heading toward the nurses’ station.
Noah stands there, his back to me as he reviews a chart with one of the nurses. Even without seeing his face, I recognize the broad set of his shoulders, the way he holds himself with such confidence and authority. Something in me responds to his presence, the bond humming between us like a live wire.
He turns as I approach, as if he sensed me coming. Our eyes meet, and for a moment, everything else fades away. I feel a surge of emotion through the bond, a maelstrom that doesn’t allow for any single feeling to rise to the forefront. Confusion? Anger? Hunger? I can’t tell, and his expression gives nothing away.
“Dr. Chang,” he says, his voice perfectly professional. “Good of you to join us.”
There’s no hint in his tone that anything has changed between us, no acknowledgment of the fact that less than twenty-four hours ago, I had my teeth in his chest, marking him as mine. The disconnect between that memory and this moment is so jarring that I swallow back a bout of hysterical laughter.
“I apologize for being late,” I say instead, matching his professional tone. “The roads are still pretty bad.”
Noah accepts my explanation without comment. “We have a full schedule today. The Frost twins are in Exam Room 1, waiting for their follow-up. Their bloodwork from the university was just faxed over and needs to be reviewed.”
Just like that, we slip into our roles as attending and resident, as if nothing has happened. But underneath the professional veneer, I can feel the bond pulsing between us, impossible to ignore completely.
Throughout the morning, Noah and I orbit each other carefully, maintaining a professional distance that feels forced and unnatural. We discuss patients, review test results, and consult on treatment plans, all without acknowledging the elephant in the room.
But I can feel his emotions leaking through the bond—frustration, confusion, and a yawning sense of grief that makes my already bottomless well of guilt sink even deeper. It’s distracting, like trying to listen to two conversations at once. I lose track of what patients are saying, having to ask them to repeat themselves.
By lunchtime, I’m exhausted from the effort of maintaining my professional facade while simultaneously trying to block out the emotional feedback coming through the bond. I retreat to the small break room, hoping for a few minutes of solitude to collect myself.
And also starve, because I didn’t pack a lunch like I normally do. There is no way I can make it to the town’s only restaurant open for lunch and back before an hour is up with the roads still so bad.
Noah appears in the doorway just as I’m unwrapping a granola bar I found in my bag.
“Dr. Chang,” he says, his voice softer than it’s been all morning. “I thought we might have lunch together. There are some things we should discuss.”
My heart rate spikes again, and I feel an answering pulse from his side of the bond. There is no way to completely hide my reactions from him now, which only makes me more anxious at what he might be getting from me through the bond.
“I’m not hungry,” I lie, even as my stomach growls traitorously. “And I have charts to review.”
Noah steps fully into the room, closing the door behind him. The small space suddenly feels much smaller with his presence filling it.
“Holly,” he says, using my first name for the first time today. “I can tell that you’re starving. And anxious. And trying very hard to pretend that everything is the same as it was a few days ago.”
I freeze, the granola bar halfway to my mouth as he sets down a fancy, reusable thermal lunchbag and unloads several containers of food.
“We’re not going to talk about it right now. Because we’re at work and I need a bit of time to get my thoughts back into a logical order,” Noah murmurs as he takes a plate out of the cupboard and systematically serves a balanced selection of baked chicken, scalloped potatoes and grilled vegetables. “But we will talk soon. For right now, I really need you to eat so I can focus on my actual job for the rest of the afternoon. Your empty stomach is practically screaming at me. It’s distracting.”
He sets the full plate in front of me, along with a fork resting on top of a folded paper towel. When I take a bite and realize that he took the time to warm up the containers before serving me, I feel inexplicably near tears.
