“Yeah? Why?”
The question is simple. Genuine. He turns back to the cutting board and keeps chopping while he waits for the answer, giving me space to talk without the pressure of his full attention on me. I don’t know if he does that on purpose. I think he might.
“My father had a doctor. Dr. Volkov. He patched up the men who came through our house. Gunshot wounds, broken bones, knife cuts. I wasn’t supposed to watch, but I was nine and small and good at being invisible.”
Johnny adds the garlic to the pan. The sizzle fills the kitchen, warm and sharp. He doesn’t interrupt.
“I used to hide outside the door and try to peek through the crack. I got caught eventually. I thought I was in huge trouble, but Dr. Volkov just looked at me for a long moment and told me to sit in the corner and keep my mouth shut.”
A small smile I can’t help. I trace the edge of my water glass with my thumb.
“So I did. And he’d talk through what he was doing while he worked. How to pack a wound. How to find internal bleeding. How to keep someone breathing when their body wanted to stop. I memorized every word.”
The pasta water hisses as Johnny adds the noodles. I’m talking more than I planned to. My fingers have stopped picking at the counter. I’m sitting up straighter.
“Looking back, I think I was just drawn to the one person in that house who was putting things back together instead of tearing them apart. And at some point I realized I wanted to be that, too.”
The silence after I trail off has a weight to it. Johnny’s watching me now, and I can feel how much of myself I just handed over.
I shake my head, clearing it. “Anyway. It doesn’t matter. It’s not like I’m going to med school.”
“Why not?”
I give him a look. “You know why not.”
“Yeah.” He holds my gaze. “And it’s bullshit.”
I open my mouth to argue and nothing comes out. Because he’s right.
It is bullshit.
I’ve spent my whole life dressing it up in the language of obligation and duty, telling myself this is just how things are, because the bare truth hurts too much to sit with: I want something, and I will never be allowed to have it.
The sausage sizzles as he adds it to the second pot. Steam curls toward the ceiling, pushing away the November chill.
“Okay, so what I’m hearing,” Johnny says, stirring the sauce with a wooden spoon, “is that you’ve been secretly studying medicine behind your family’s back for years, you can name parts of the brain I didn’t know existed, and you basically taught yourself triage by eavesdropping on a mob doctor when you were a small child.”
“When you say it like that, it sounds...”
“Like you’re kind of a badass?” He tastes the sauce, adds something from a jar I didn’t know I owned. “Because that’s what it sounds like.”
“I was going to say nerdy.”
“Also that.” He points the spoon at me. “The two aren’t mutually exclusive.”
I laugh, shaking my head.
“Okay, you’re now officially the most interesting person I’ve ever met,” he says. “Which, granted, is a low bar given my current sample size.”
“Shut up.”
“No, I mean it.” He turns back to the stove, and his voice drops. “You grew up in hell and you taught yourself to heal people. That tells me everything I need to know about you.”
My hands go still on the counter. His words hit me in a place I wasn’t expecting. The place where I store the version of myself I’m not allowed to be. The one who finishes her degree and works in a hospital and has a life she built with her own hands instead of one that was built around her—like a box she’s supposed to stay in until someone opens the lid.
I blink hard. My vision swims for a second before I get it under control.
He plates the pasta in silence. Penne drowning in a red sauce that smells better than anything that’s come out of this kitchen since I’ve been here. He slides my plate across the island and takes the stool next to mine, near enough that his arm presses warm against mine.
