She answers after one ring. “Hey, Luke. Missing me already?”
And just like that, I know, and a weight lifts off my chest. It’s my girl’s voice, not the voice of a girl who’s still pining for her ex. Melissa is over Troy Thompson.
“Hey, Milly. You okay?”
“Sure. It’s not like I didn’t see it coming,” she tells me. “Apparently, I’m invited to the wedding.”
I laugh at the absurdity of it. Only Troy Thompson would invite his ex-wife to his wedding so soon after their divorce. “You gonna go?”
“Maybe. Claire’s going to be a bridesmaid and Liam will be the ringbearer, so that’d be fun to see.”
“Are you taking a plus one?”
“Only if you’re available.”
“I’m available, Melissa.”
“You don’t even know the date,” she says with a laugh.
“I’m available, Melissa.”
On Monday, my scheduled surgeries go smoothly, but my call shift is an exercise in frustration. The resident scheduled to work with me calls in sick, and there’s a new ER doctor who seems to want a consult on every single patient with abdominal pain. By two A.M., I’ve seen seven patients and sent six of them home. Only one actually needed surgery, a straightforward appendectomy.
It’s close to three in the morning by the time I get home, and I have to peel myself out of bed at seven-thirty to go to the Bed Capacity Committee meeting. This week’s meeting seems like a repeat of the last one; despite everyone’s hard work, the hospital is still overcapacity. I don’t even pretend to take notes.
Next comes a full day of clinic, and as usual, it’s overbooked. At lunchtime, I text Melissa and imply that I’m working so hard to save lives that I barely have time to eat. It’s an exaggeration, of course, and she knows it, but she takes the hint and invites me to dinner. I offer to pick something up on the way, but she says she’s already planning to make chicken pot pie. It’s something to look forward to, at least.
The clinic runs late, and it’s after six o’clock by the time I get to Melissa’s. Like last time, Liam reaches the door first, with Melissa chasing after him. This time, though, Melissa greets me with a kiss on the lips, in full view of her kids. Claire giggles, and I give her a wink as we walk to the kitchen.
The chicken pot pie is perfection, and I’m pretty sure I eat almost half of it myself. There’s homemade apple crisp for dessert that looks like perfection too, but before I cantaste it, my phone rings. I pull it out of my pocket to silence it, then see that it’s my resident, Nick Decarie. I’m not on call—Ethan’s on tonight—but Nick wouldn’t call unless it was important.
After an apologetic look at Melissa, I hit the button to take the call.
“Luke.” There’s an urgency in Nick’s voice I’ve never heard before. “Can you come in? We’re having some trouble with a cholecystectomy.” A cholecystectomy is a procedure to remove an inflamed gallbladder. “I think Dr. Atwell’s, uh . . . sick.”
Shit. Reading between the lines, Ethan’s probably been drinking.
“Yeah, of course, Nick. I’ll be there in twenty minutes.” I give Melissa another apologetic look as I start toward the door, and she follows with a sympathetic smile that tells me she gets it.
“Thanks, Luke,” Nick says. “And, uh, Dr. Atwell doesn’t know I called you. He kicked me out of the OR when I suggested we call for help.”
Worse and worse. The fact that Nick went over Ethan’s head and called me anyway means things must be really bad.
“So who’s in the OR with Ethan now?”
“Kevin Talbot.”
Yep. Really bad. When the operation went south, Ethan banished his senior resident—the man who’s less than a year away from being a fully qualified surgeon—and kept the third-year medical student.
“Okay, Nick. Fifteen minutes.”
I hang up, and Melissa hands me my coat. “Work emergency?” she asks.
“Yeah. I’m sorry.”
“Me too,” she says, “but I get it. Come back when you’re done, if you want.”
“Yeah? It might be late.”
