And unfortunately, she had opinions about all of it, too.
He could still hear Emily humming on the other side of his door. She only hummed when she was pleased with herself, and she was never pleased with herself about anything worth being pleased about.
Kazeyuki returned to his patient files. He reviewed the notes for his four o'clock. He responded to two emails from the department head. He signed off on a referral. He did these things the way he always did them: thoroughly, gently, and with the immaculate focus of a man who had built his entire life around the principle that kindness was not a feeling but a discipline.
But the clock was now reading 3:27, and Katherine McKenna was still not here.
His pen slowed against the page, and without warning, he found himself thinking about the phone call.
It had been a few weeks ago. He'd just come back from his rounds, and she hadn't known he was there yet. She'd been standing at the far end of the hallway near the stairwell, her back to the corridor, phone pressed to her ear, and her voice had been low in a way that wasn't like her at all. Katherine McKenna was not a quiet person. She was the kind of person who said everything at full volume and then looked horrified when she realized what she'd said, which was most of the time. But that day, she'd gone out of her way to make sure no one heard, tucking herself into the corner where the hallway met the fire exit, and he'd caught only fragments as he passed.
"That's really sweet of you, but..."
A pause.
"No, it's not that, it's just...."
He'd kept walking. It wasn't his business. But he'd noticed her feet. She'd been shifting her weight from one foot to the other, the way people did when they were uneasy. Or the way they did when they were interested but trying not to be.
At the time, he'd thought it was the former. Unease. A man she didn't want to hear from, calling at an inconvenient time.
But what if he'd misread it?
He was no behavioral expert. He cured brains, not hearts. He could map the neural pathways that governed emotion but had never once claimed to understand the emotions themselves, and what if that shifting of her feet wasn't discomfort at all but the kind of restlessness that came from being flattered? From beingwanted? From a man who had probably asked her to dinner, and Katherine, who was kind to everyone, who couldn't even dislike the women she was jealous of, had turned him down kindly because she was Katherine and that was what Katherine did?
But what if he'd called again?
And what if this time, she'd said yes?
The thought left a bitter taste at the back of his throat. He set his pen down and reached for his coffee, but it had gone cold, and that only made it worse. He pushed the cup aside.
This was a medical concern. Nothing more. Katherine McKenna was only two years out from a brain aneurysm. She was a walking miracle, and the fact that she was still walking at all was because he had been in that ER at exactly the right moment with exactly the right training. Any significant change in her routine could be a sign of elevated stress, disrupted sleep patterns, hormonal fluctuation. A new relationship could affect all three. It was simply his job to make sure she stayed the way she was.
Alive. And walking.
That was all this was.
The humming had stopped by the time the clock read 3:58, and that should have been his first warning. But Kazeyuki merely rose from his desk, fastened the middle button of his white coat, and stepped out of his office to begin his rounds.
And unfortunately, another thing that people in Emily's age range were not particularly skilled at?
Keeping their mouths shut.
Because by the time the elevator doors opened on the third floor, it was obvious. The charge nurse at the station glanced up from her screen, caught his eye, and looked away too fast, pressing her lips together in a way that was not subtle. Two residents passing in the corridor developed sudden, intense interest in a fire extinguisher. A lab tech he had never spoken to in his life gave him a thumbs-up from behind a supply cart.
Emily had told everyone he had asked about Katherine.
And now they were all adding their own color to the whole thing, twisting it into something it was not.
Head Nurse Jada was waiting for him when he stepped off the elevator on the fifth floor. She was a tall woman with short silver hair and thirty years of surgical nursing behind her, and in her hand was a plastic party trumpet, the kind sold in packs of twelve at dollar stores, and she blew it the moment he came into view.
"Congratulations, Doctor."
"There is nothing to congratulate me for."
He kept walking. Jada fell into step beside him, and the trumpet disappeared into the pocket of her scrubs with the ease of someone who had been planning this ambush since lunch.
"I need the labs for room 514."
