“So you’re nearly done, right? You’ll be an attending soon?”
“I wish,” she says with a laugh. “Neurosurg is six years, and then I’ll have to do a fellowship, which will be another two. And I’ll probably have to do a PhD on top of that.”
“Wow. That sounds . . .”
“Ridiculous,” Lucy supplies with a sigh. “Yeah, but that’s neurosurgery. The job market’s awful, and no one gets an attending job before they’re thirty-five.”
“Really?” I knew neurosurgeons did a lot of training, but I didn’t realize quite how much. “But Drew . . .” I let my sentence trail off. It’s probably not polite to point out that Drew’s only thirty-four, and he’s already been an attending for a few years.
But Lucy gets where I was going with that, and she doesn’t seem insulted. “Yeah, Dr. Malone’s kind of in his own league,” she says with a chuckle.
“Huh,” I say thoughtfully. “Because of the whole thing with the Tates?”
“Yeah, that’s part of it, I guess.” Lucy looks a little surprised that I have to ask. “But he was already an attending by then. He was like, thirty-one when Somerset hired him, which is insane for neurosurgery.”
“How did he manage that?” Thirty-one doesn’t actually seem all that young to get a job, but the entire field of neurosurgery sounds insane.
Lucy shrugs. “I think he went to one of the three-year med schools, maybe Calgary? So he started residency pretty young, and apparently he was just that good. For his residency research project, he developed a new type of aneurysm coil that led to a patent.”
“Wow.”
“Yeah, I was a first-year resident when Somerset was trying to recruit him, and all the attendings were talking about it. He did residency in Toronto, and apparently they really wanted him to stay. Montreal wanted him too, so no one thought he’d actually come here. It was big news when he signed a contract.”
I’d guessed Drew was good—they made him chief of surgery, after all—but I hadn’t guessed he was at this level. “What’s he like to work with?”
Lucy thinks for a minute. “Kind of intimidating at first, because he’s got high standards and he’s pretty intense. But operations are actually less stressful when he’s the attending,because you know that if there’s a problem, he’ll be able to deal with it. He never loses his cool, and he’s got great hands.”
Great hands.I know she’s referring to his surgical skills, but I can’t help remembering how his hand felt on mine in the ER this morning. Warm and strong. Capable.
“Are you okay, Ally?” Lucy’s looking at me with concern. “You look a bit flushed.”
“Yeah, sorry,” I say. “I just spaced out for a minute.”
“No worries,” she says easily. “Are you sure you don’t want me to do a coffee run?”
“Oh, no thanks.”
Lucy nods and finishes her sandwich. “In that case, I should probably head back to the clinic.”
“Sure. Thanks for keeping me company.”
Lucy smiles and heads off, and I go back to Netflix.
ButGrace Generalcan’t hold my attention. My thoughts keep drifting back to Drew, and hisgreat hands.The man I’m pretending to date, and whose condo I’ll be sleeping in tonight.
He promised he wouldn’t try anything, but if I’m honest with myself, part of me wishes he would.
SIXTEEN
ALLY
“Do you want to stop at your apartment before we head to my place?” Drew asks as we drive out of the hospital parking lot.
“No, I should be good. Provided you don’t mind sharing some soap and toothpaste.” My apartment’s in the opposite direction from his condo, and I can survive for one night without a change of clothes.
He smiles. “I might even have an unopened toothbrush.”
He slows as we approach the bike racks. “Did you leave your bike here?”
