“Yes,” Will corrected.
“Dr. Viswanath started his shift an hour and a half ago. You’re meant to be off.” If Will was meant to be off, then so was Abraham. But he supposed it wasn’t worth it to point it out.
“I’m doing notes.”
Except that he wasn’t. In fact, at some point, the screen saver had come on. He nudged the mouse with the edge of his hand. “This computer is broken.”
Amara, the nurse in the chair beside him, made a noise. He looked over at her, and she stuck the straw of her water bottle into her mouth and raised her eyebrows while she took a big drink. She’d already told him to clear out twice because she said he typed so slow it made her want to murder him.
Will sighed and stood up. “Fine,” he muttered, patting at the chest pocket of his scrubs, then at the waistband. His favorite pen, check. His badge, check. Amara’s smirk of victory, check.
“I’ll walk you out,” said Dr. Abraham, and Amara chuckled quietly.
“I need to stop by the workroom, get changed.”
“I’ll wait.”
Will hustled down the hall and into the workroom, changing out of his scrubs as quickly as possible, wanting to get whatever Abraham had in store for him over with. When he walked out, bag over his shoulder and bike helmet under his arm, the man was there waiting, paging through the small leather notebook he always kept in the pocket of his white coat. Probably he never wrote anything likesock history/hamster???in there.
They fell into step silently, Will altering his strides to accommodate Dr. Abraham’s. He was going to get a lecture; he couldsenseit. He knew he’d been off since he’d been back, but surely that was normal after such a long break. Surely he hadn’t done anything to warrant—
“You gave my wife two kittens.”
Will almost missed a step. Hehaddone that.
“My ex-wife,” Dr. Abraham corrected.
“It wasn’t so much that Igavethem to her,” Will said.
“She’s very taken with them. She’s named them—”
“Quincy and Francis,” Will finished. “I know.” She’d sent him a few more videos, all received while he’d been at the hospital. He’d saved every single one and thought about sending them to Nora.
But thought better of it every time.
“Sally often lobbied for a pet, during the time we were married.”
Oh,Jesus. What kind of mess had he stepped into here? A month ago, walking these halls with Abraham, he’d had the sense that there was something different about his boss when he talked about his ex, but back then, Will was still his mostly normal self, and that meant he didn’t get near anyone’s sloppy romantic problems. Unfortunately, Will was currently his mostly abnormal self, with a head full of memories he didn’t want and a heart in his chest that felt like it was made of cracked glass.
“You didn’t want pets?” Will said, abnormally.
Abraham cleared his throat. “Sally and I had different ideas about what made for a comfortable home.”
Even from the brief time Will had spent with Sally, he could tell thatwhat made for a comfortable homewas probably only one item on a very long list of things she and Dr. Abraham had different ideas about. The truth was, Will couldn’t imagine how they’d gotten together in the first place. And that was the hell of it, wasn’t it? People did all kinds of wild shit for love, and this was only one of the bad ways it could turn out: getting divorced and then trying to initiate an awkward conversation with a colleague about your ex-wife’s adopted kittens and your disparate household management preferences.
Rash, reckless, selfish, he thought, with renewed conviction. Enough of counting days, of staring blankly at scribbled notes and computer screens, enough of thinking about Nora’s skin and her smell. He didn’twantmess like this; he never had. Up ahead, the exit doors promised a colorful sunset, and that was a time of day he ought to celebrate, because it didn’t make him think of Nora at all.
“Would it be odd, do you think,” Abraham said, which is right about when Will realized he hadn’t ever responded. “If I also gave her one?”
Will stopped in front of the exit doors, turned and blinked down at Abraham, breaking the long-unspoken eye contact rules. “If you . . . gave her a kitten?”
Abraham smoothed his lapel. “Yes. As a gesture.”
A gesture of what, Abraham didn’t say, but despite thesock history /hamster???brain sluggishness, Will had enough of his wits about this to see it for what it was. Gerald Abraham was trying to reconcile with his ex-wife, and wanted Will’s advice. Truly a reckless move. What did Will know about reconciliation? He’d never tried such a thing in his life, because it’d never been necessary. You never needed to have a breakup if you never let things go beyond a night or two, if you only shared those nights with people who also weren’t looking for anything more.
Still, that lapel-smoothing. It got right in there, up against that cracked glass in Will’s chest. He took a breath and thought about Quincy and Francis, who were in fact enjoyable to look at on a phone screen but a lot of work outside of that.
“Two is enough,” he said, and Abraham nodded gravely, looking toward the doors Will was about to go out.
