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“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.