The midnight hours drag on. By the time I finish my last patient, my feet ache, and my brain feels like mush. I slump at my desk and scribble notes into the last of my charts when my phone buzzes again.
JAGGER
Doc…
Yes, Jagger?
See you tomorrow night
I stare at the screen, a slow smile spreading across my face.
This shift is ticking by ungodly slowly. I am pretty sure that watching paint dry would move along faster than checking the clock every three minutes, waiting for midnight.
Zahra has been staring at me for the last fifteen minutes. Not in absentminded casual glances between charting updates, but full-on, chin propped on her hand, elbow planted on the nurses’ station counter, and eyes narrowed like she’s in the middle of solving a murder.
I ignore it… for a whole thirty seconds. After dropping my chart onto the counter harder than necessary, I snap, “What?”
She tilts her head slowly to one side, her gaze dragging from my scuffed sneakers to my face, like she is cataloging me for evidence. “You didn’t,” she says on an exhale.
I freeze mid-reach for my next chart. “Didn’t… what?”
She lifts her hands, palms up, gesturing broadly at melike the answer is beyond obvious. “This. Whateverthisis. This is not the Blake I know.”
“What?” I scoff. “I’m literally just standing here filling out charts.”
“No. You’re not swearing at the broken printer or rolling your eyes when Dr. Klein asks stupid chauvinistic questions.” She shakes her head and gestures at me again. “Nope. This woman is chipper. This woman is practically glowing. I mean, yousmiledat a patient.”
“Ismileat patients.” I laugh.
“Youtoleratepatients like him,” she corrects. “You’re walking around here smiling like someone who got laid.”
Heat doesn’t just creep up my neck and over my face. It blooms instantly over my cheeks and ears, burning hot. “Shush!” I hiss, my eyes darting around as my heart nervously races to see is was close enough to hear her. A couple of orderlies linger nearby, and one of the residents is scrolling on his tablet. None of them is paying attention, but still… “What are you? Fucking psychic?”
Zahra’s mouth spreads into a feral grin. “Was I right?”
I don’t answer—I don’t need to. The crimson glow covering my face is traitorous and undeniable. I feel it happening, but there is nothing I can do to stop it.
Zahra lets out a delighted bark of laughter that she barely manages to smother with the back of her hand as she struggles to keep from cackling.
“Oh myGod,” she says once she regains control. “You slept with the tattooed military guy.”
“I did not—” I start, then stop, then drop my head with a quiet groan. “Okay. I did. But you cannot ever say that sentence ever again.”
She leans closer, eyes sparkling as she raises a knowing brow. “Trouble?”
I close my eyes, and images of his warm hands and mouth on my body flash through my mind. I’m unable to stop the grin tugging at the corners of my lips when I sheepishly answer. “Somuch trouble.”
She laughs so hard that tears well in her eyes. “I told you. I absolutely told you. And to think, you almost never listen to me.”
“Youabsolutelydid.”
Zahra wipes at the corner of her eyes as her amusement softens, her playful curiosity giving way to something more somber. “And? Are you seeing him again?”
I hesitate to answer just long enough to decide what to reply. “Actually. He’s coming here tonight…. for dinner.”
“Oh…” Her smile falters slightly as that single syllable carries a thousand questions and probably an equal amount of concern.
Before she can ask any of them, I reach behind the nurses’ station to grab the canvas tote bag I tucked there earlier. It’s heavier than it looks when I pull it over my shoulder. “Can you cover for me?” I ask, tapping the bag. “I need to take care of something.”
