“Yeah. Well.” I shrug, because I don’t have much else to say to that.
We’re facing each other now in our cushy office chairs. He looks down again.
“I wish we could start over,” he says. “I honestly think we’d have some interesting things to talk about.”
“Without our clothes on, you mean?”
His unrepentant grin sends this little jolt of lightning through my abdomen. He leans back, and I let my gaze roamover his smooth skin, his long eyelashes, his prominent biceps. I’m sure a lot of women would be into a cute orthopedic surgeon, but he isexactlymy type: a buff blond with a penchant for stony-faced expressions, like a hotter, broodier Ken doll.
“I actually do like you,” he says. “You’re fun. I would want to know more about you, if you didn’t hate me so much.”
“Yeah? What do you want to know?”
He studies me. “Tell me about a patient you’ll remember forever. I know you have one. We all do.”
“I have a few. You go first, though.”
“A kid I treated last year,” he says without hesitation. “He almost lost his leg in an accident. Almost lost his life, for that matter, and we saved him. I thought I would have done absolutely anything to keep him alive. I would have given my own life, I swear.”
I gulp. I think he means it, and it’s so hard to square this version of Grant with the tormentor of my youth. What happened, to change him so much?
“When I was working labor and delivery, I was assigned to this woman who had just given birth to her fifth kid,” I tell him. “She was a refugee. Didn’t speak fluent English, so we had an interpreter there. She admitted to us that her husband was abusing her at home.” I can picture her face even now, sweaty with exertion and fatigue, detailing the unspeakable tragedies she’d endured with what looked like shame. “I think about how we give women advice on what we can do to get ahead, to succeed. The things I had to do. But what the hell isshesupposed to do? That advice does fuck-all to help her. Our stupid platitudes are meaningless if we can’t do something for her. She was trapped.”
Grant watches me, his face intent. “What happened to her?”
“We got social work involved. If I’m not mistaken, though, I think she ended up going back home with him. I haven’t seen her since, so I’m not sure where she is now.”
“Damn.”
“I think about her all the time. It made me feel useless.”
“I know what that’s like. You just can’t solve everything, though.” He scoots a little closer to me. “I don’t think you give yourself enough credit for how far you’ve come in your own life.”
I shrug.
“I’m serious,” he says. “You and your brother. You’re so fucking resilient.”
“Don’t start talking about him like he’s a hero. He hates that. He’s just a person.”
“That’s what I mean, though. He had this catastrophic injury, then moved on with his life. I can’t imagine everyone would handle it like that.”
“Maybe not. He’s fine, though. People want to assign all kinds of meaning to it. I’ve learned that he wants to be treated with the same dignity and respect as everyone else, but he doesn’t want to be a tragic story or be put on a pedestal. He’s still my annoying brother.” I smile.
“I feel like I can’t win, no matter what I say,” Grant mumbles.
“Probably not. I kinda like challenging you. Makes me feel alive.”
“I’m not being patronizing when I say I’m impressed by you. I always was, even when I was angry about how you always did better than me in school.”
“You might feel that way, but I had a lot of help escaping my situation. Scholarship money. Some people who really made a difference for me. Not everyone gets the opportunities I did.” My stomach dips. “I’ve got close friends who have to deal with things I’ll never understand. As for me, I was just trash, right?”
“Did I call you that or something?” His voice is quiet.
“Fucking verbatim.”
“God.” He covers his eyes with his hands. “Kendall. How can I ever say I’m sorry?”
I pull his hand away from his face. I can’t believe my own brazenness. “Tell me what you’ve done since then,” I say, “to have changed so much.”
