Outside in the hall, I take a few deep breaths before I get another page, this one for a new admission.
Later in the evening, I wind up with Landon in the donut room. He’s standing at the fridge, crooked-smiling down at his cell phone with a charmed look on his gorgeous, five-o’clock-shadowed face. For a sick second, my stomach curls into a ball as I imagine who he might be texting. Then he lifts his head and nods me over.
I step closer to him, and he turns the phone to me. I blink at a picture of a Welsh Corgi.
“Gertrude.” He grins.
“Oh my goodness. She’s— he’s…very pretty. Total Gertrude right there.” I smile, because the dog really does sort of look like a Gertrude.
“I know, right?”
I laugh. “Oh yeah. Do you think she’ll get to see Gertrude soon?” I ask, meaning the patient.
“What do you think?”
I brushed up on the girl’s charts after our earlier encounter. She had a benign brain tumor removed. I shrug. “As long as there’s no infection, I’d presume so.”
“Would you?” he asks.
“Would I what?”
“Presume so.”
Is that the ghost of a smirk? I give him a brows-raised look. “Are you making fun of me, Dr. Jones?”
“Who, me? Never.” But he can’t resist: his mouth curves up on one side.
“Was it the word ‘presume’? I would presume you’ve heard it before.”
He smiles, then tries to stifle it, and then succeeds. “It wasn’t that,” he says softly.
“What was it?”
“I just felt like teasing you.” His face is solemn. It’s the face of someone who’s done something wrong. Who should be pledging never to do that thing again—but isn’t. As I look at him, the air around us simmers. It’s making my pulse race, so I step closer to him.
I brush his coat collar, and Landon looks down. When he does, I thump his nose.
His jaw drops in mock fury.
I dance over to the door, and Landon stalks me, even as I wrap my hand around the handle.
“I know you didn’t thump me on the nose, Evie. Presumably, you know that’s not a smart idea…”
I laugh. “Well, I’m not that smart.”
I press myself against the door, and Landon closes the distance between us.
“Oh, I beg to differ,” he says. “I think you just want a fight.” His eyelids are lowered, his jaw tight as he reaches out and tugs a strand of my hair. “Am I right?” He presses his thumb to my lower lip.
I whisper, “Yes.”
Then the door behind me shakes.
“Hello?” a voice says. I move away from the door, and Audrey Kim, our fellow first-year resident, comes in, bearing a heaping plate of cafeteria spaghetti.
She looks from me to Landon. “What’s up?”
I laugh, because it’s what I do when I’m uncomfortable.
“Did I miss something funny?” she asks.
Landon shows her the picture of Gertrude and tells that story, and I notice Audrey’s eyes flit to him as she sits down to eat her dinner.
“Sounds like you have a new patient friend,” she says. “You must be good with kids.”
My stomach bottoms out.
“I think they’re little snots,” she says as she chews.
Landon shrugs. I watch him as he turns and grabs a bottle of cold brew coffee, downs most of the bottle, and tosses it into the garbage on his way out the door. He doesn’t look back.
I’m still feeling shell-shocked when Audrey murmurs, “He’s a catch.”
I blink. “Who’s a what?”
“Jones. Who else? That man is hot as fuck. The stubble…” She runs her hand over her own face. “Mmm-mmm, come to mama.”
I swallow, careful with my face as I delve into the refrigerator. “Yeah, a man with some stubble is my favorite.”
“He’s my favorite. I’ll have our babies. He can raise them. I want like, one kid. That’s it. Just the token doctor’s snot, and that’s it.” She holds her hands up, and we shoot the shit for a few minutes while I inhale a chocolate chip muffin.
That night as I drive home, I look for Landon on the empty sidewalk.
I try to accustom myself to his presence. I start counting, and I find I see him an average of nine times every day. He smiles, tells jokes, charms patients, and moves in and out of the OR, just like I do. I hear other people talk about him like he’s theirs instead of mine. Because he isn’t mine.
One night, as I walk past the donut room, whose door is open, I hear one second-year resident tell another: “I heard that new guy, Jones, got in on Eilert’s big craniopharyngioma resection. Helped with the endoscope. Eilert said he has great hands.”
“So fucking jealous,” the other one says.
“You can tell he’s the kind of dude who—”
That’s all I hear as I pass by them, rushing to check on a patient with a leaking stent. I’m helping stabilize her for half an hour before she goes into surgery with Squires, one of the older attendings. By then, it’s almost 9 o’clock in the evening, so I take a seat in the donut room and start tackling my twenty-some remaining floor notes as fast as possible.
I’m on the fourth note when my primary pager buzzes. It’s an emergent summons to OR 4. I grab my stuff and race over. When I reach the area, I find it packed with residents—including Landon.
I watch as Dr. Kraft, one of our two chief residents, raises his arms and looks around the room, at the six of us.
“We’ve got something rare right here in OR 4—a microvascular decompression being performed by our attending, Dr. Nate, on a five-year-old girl with intractable hemifacial spasm. Nerve and vessel will be separated by a tiny Teflon sponge. These surgeries are not common and complications from them are. Pediatric HFS is exceedingly rare, and even more complex than usual. Bettie and Stern, scrub in. The rest of you, you’ll want to watch footage of the procedure at your leisure and follow-up with Dr. Nate with any questions. He’s one of the best so pick his brain before he retires.” Kraft looks down at his own pager, then back up. “Jones and Rutherford, you’re wanted down in the ER.”
Landon’s eyes find mine, and I can tell he’s disappointed, just as I am, not to scrub in for the MVD. Kraft is right—it is a fairly rare procedure, and to see a pediatric MVD is even more interesting. I sigh, and Landon and I head for the room’s back door. He pushes it open, nodding me in front of him. I can feel his eyes on my back as we head down the hallway, toward a staircase that will deposit us near the ER, on floor one.
“Wonder what this is,” I mutter as we hit the stairwell.
“Probably a hemorrhage,” he says dryly.
Older people with hypertension-exacerbated brain bleeds are some of our most frequent, and least interesting, customers.
“Or a herniated disc. Totally bet it’s a herniated disc. We’re the only ones available since everyone else is either in surgery or not quite here yet.”
Landon winks as he opens the door at the bottom of the stairwell. “You can take that herniated disk. I’ve got thirty floor notes to finish before we hit The Fourteener for that Deltoids gig.”
“Um, what?” I ask as we make for the ER door.
“The Fourteener? That’s the resident Friday night hangout, Evie. Haven’t you been keeping up?” A glance reveals he’s joking.