Little better. Less like I got run over by a truck.
I stared at the words for a minute until my vision started to blur. Then I added:
Maybe just a van. Twice. And then again.
He replied so quickly that I wondered if he’d been waiting for it. The idea tugged somewhere warm and sweet behind my navel, even as I reassured him that while I was still running a fever, Neil was taking care of me. Sam, too—she’d returned home Sunday afternoon from some guy she’d been dating. “Nothing serious, but he knows how to use his hands and tongue, if you get my drift.”Since then, she’d stopped by several times to bring me soup and tea, less sympathetic than Neil but still so very, very appreciated.
I’d clearly won the roommates lottery, and I was pretty sure I’d told them that at some point last night, half-asleep but fully grateful.
Speaking of…
“Hey.” Neil rapped his knuckles against the frame of a door I’d left ajar, just in case I perished in my sleep—I didn’t want them to find me five days later. “Drama queen,” Sam had told me when I’d mumbled something along those lines. She’d also fed me more soup, so on balance, it had felt like a win.
I put my phone down and managed a smile. It tugged somewhere behind my forehead, tension still pressing in, but nothing like yesterday’s sickening drum beat. “Morning, Neil. How was your night shift?”
“Managed to grab some actual sleep, so, y’know. Not shabby.” He leaned against the doorframe, eyes warm. “You look vaguely alive.”
“Feel it, too.”
“Progress, then.”
“Yeah. It’s as if Pinocchio is a real boy now.” I slumped against a pillow I’d propped up against the headboard, pretty sure I still looked sleep-matted and worn. “Thanks for taking care of me, by the way. Above and beyond the job description.”
He shot me a grin. “Feed me leftovers sometimes and we’ll call it even.”
“I can do that.” I was a decent cook when I made the time, certainly better than the sorry choices the hospital cafeteria offered. But cooking for just myself often didn’t seem worth the effort. “Actually, I can do breakfast?” I still had eggs and milk, pretty sure, and flour must be hidden somewhere in the kitchen cupboards. “Like…pancakes?”
“Nowyou’re talking. Also, glad you’ve got an appetite.”
Yeah. It was minimal but there. “Proof of life, right?”
“Clearly.” Neil watched me roll out of bed, disheveled and greasy as I was. Should maybe take a shower, except that felt further out of reach than mixing some ingredients into batter and spooning it into a frying pan. That I could do.
I grabbed a new T-shirt, though, and cracked the window open wider so the room could air out while I was gone. Neil waited, totally unabashed about hanging around while I changed. I liked that about him—some straight guys would have made it a point to look away, while he just didn’t seem to care about drawing unnecessary lines, easy like it had been from the very start.
“Hey,” he said as we moved to the kitchen. “Speaking of job descriptions—pretty sure taking you home was far outside of it for Jesse.”
Yeah. It had been.
I hesitated. But—fuck it. I needed to talk to someone who was actually, physically here, not some talking head on a screen or a four-hour drive away like Eli. Someone outside the hospital universe who wouldn’t judge, just listen.
“Remember the guy I mentioned before?” I asked Neil.
His eyebrows rose. “The ‘it’s complicated because we hooked up before the program’ guy?”
“Yep.” I opened the fridge and fought a brief bout of dizziness, steadying myself against the door. “Well—that’s Jesse.”
Neil whistled. “He’s older, right? Senior resident?”
“Try ‘senior fellow.’” Milk. Eggs. I blinked them back into focus. “Bonus? Up until a week ago, he was my supervisor.”
“Whoa. The one you saved the baby with?” Neil dropped onto a chair and, at my nod, pursed his mouth in thought. “Okay, yeah, ‘complicated’ is putting it mildly.”
It was—and I hadn’t even mentioned our post-blackout slip-up just yet. I got a bowl for the batter, every move taking metwice as long, thoughts slow like mezcal legs running down the side of a glass.
“Tell me about it,” I muttered. “It’s like… He stepped back as my supervising fellow, but it would still be bad optics, you know?”
“Yeah.” Neil fell quiet for a moment, nothing but my shuffling attempts to crack eggs and measure milk, the low drone of our neighbor’s TV and the ever-present hum of New York traffic. “You want more, though.”
