“Wait—you just got paged?” Ken asked, loud enough that everyone heard.
“Is everything okay?” my mom asked from way down the table.
“There’s an emergency,” I said, and left it at that. I bit my lower lip, so I didn’t keep trying to explain.
Because there was—I had to get away from Dr. Hair, STAT. And my mother as well, before I irreparably damaged our relationship. So I wasn’t really lying, was I?
“This late at night?” my dad asked.
I smiled. “Oh, you know, medicine is never nine-to-five.” I stood and placed my napkin definitively on the table, avoiding my mother’s gaze. “Great to meet you, Mr. Langerman, everyone. Mom and Dad, thanks for a great dinner. Sorry to have to leave.”
Chapter Eight
Adam
The fact was that I couldn’t focus on anything.
I was still at the hospital at ten that night, when my shift had ended at seven.
I’d done so much administrative work that I actually felt caught up, which never happened.
I kept trying to compose the right text.
Yes, we have a relationship.
That wasn’t good. That sounded…pervy.
Yes, we have a friendship. We might have a friendship. We want to have a friendship. We might want to have more than a friendship.
Oh, come on, Adam, I chided myself. Friendship was the very last thing on my mind. Ani was beautiful, fun, charismatic, and interesting. If I saw her across the room in a tropical location and our eyes met, I’d be completely drawn to her physically.
Oh, I’d done that already.
But now I was also drawn to her mentally.
Maybe I always had been. Which might be a terrifying revelation considering the state she was in when I first met her.
One look at you and I lose all my words.
I definitely wasn’t sending that one.
What I should have said but never would: You scare the shit out of me. You are a problem that I do not know how to solve.
I erased the first sentence and kept the second. And then I pushed send before I lost my nerve. And because I was an ER doc, not a writer, I stopped critiquing my prose and gave myself points for being as honest as I knew how to be.
And then I spent the next ten minutes trying to figure out how to un-send a text, but it was too late. Note to self: Learn the nuclear option first.
What had I done?
No three moving dots in sight. No answer at all.
I paced my office. Then I headed down the long corridor away from my staff because if they saw me, I had one hundred percent certainty of being pulled into…something.
Suddenly, a text popped up.I’m going to go cuddle that baby. And then,Want to join me?
Yes! I fist pumped and texted a thumbs up, lest I get too exuberant and drive her away with too many emojis. I forced myself to sit and send a few emails, so I didn’t look too eager. Finally, I closed up my office, walked down the long corridor, got in the elevator, and punched the fifth-floor button.
It was nearly midnight as I walked down the dim hallway of the postpartum ward. It was strangely silent—not a peep out of any of the newborns, many of whom roomed in with their moms.
