With a few more clicks, I wrap up my charting and head toward the OR. That’s, of course, when Jocelyn appears. She’s frowning at her phone but walking my way. Every molecule in my body contracts at the sight of her.
Should I run?
Play it cool?
Pretend like I don’t see her?
Others traverse the halls between us—nurses and surgeons and scrub techs—so maybe she won’t see me...
She slips the device into her pocket and looks up. Ahh! Haven’t made up my mind. I panic like a kid out of bed after bedtime and dive through the closest door.
What is this? Is this... a closet?
Jesus.
Light’s off, so I bang my knee on the edge of an electrosurgical tower.
“Damn it!”
I’m rubbing my knee when the door opens. Fluorescentlight pours through the gap, and Joss stands on the other side, the skin between her eyebrows deeply creased.
I jerk upright. “Oh. Hey, Joss. I—just—I—um—live in this closet now.” I set my elbow on the electrosurgical equipment beside me and rest my head on my fist.
A bewildered chuckle answers me. “What are you doing?”
Hiding.
“Nothing.”
She rests her back on the door frame and sighs. “Cassie assigned me somewhere else today. I fought her, but she wouldn’t budge.”
“Oh. Oh, that’s—” Prickles wake along my nerves. “That’s too bad.”
Her head tilts. “We’re okay, right? I think we need to talk.”
The open door isright there. Escape is within my grasp. How rude would it be to push her out of the way?
“Can’t talk now,” I say. “Have surgery.”
Her brown eyes stare without blinking, and her shoulders fall. “Okay. Maybe tonight?”
Desperate, I squeeze past her in the doorway. Refuse to breathe while I do it, of course. The hypnotic scent that clings to her skin is hardwired to pain receptors in mine. “Can’t. Have plans.”
She frowns. “Oh. What are you doing?”
I pause in the hallway and brave the storm of her eyes. “Sorry. I really can’t talk right now. I have a case. Let’s talk later.”
Except we don’t talk later. I finish my cases and head to the office for my afternoon clinic patients without seeing her once.
We don’t text.
We don’t talk at all.
It’s what I wanted, so why do I feel ghosted?
How the hell did I end up here? My life is so pretty on the outside. On paper, I’m killing it. In truth, it’s like someone threw a grenade, and I’m bleeding in the fragmented remains, ribbons of red marring my stellar résumé.
Broken hearts are asinine. What good can come from pain like this? It’s useless. Meaningless.
