“Sure.” He grins. “I like sure. So I’ll call you after I check my schedule.”
“Or text me. We don’t have to talk. No one calls me except my dad. He doesn’t like to text.”
“What if I want to talk to you?”
I can’t imagine why that would be. Maybe he doesn’t know how to text, like my dad.
“Then you better call after I get home from school during the week … so after three, except on days I have clinical. Then it’s after four. Or you could call me after I get home from work on the weekends … so after eight-thirty.” I shake my head. “That’s not true. I walk for an hour and a half, so tack on ninety minutes to both of those times.”
He smiles like my parents smile at me and maybe a few friends I used to have, like Nicole. It feels comfortable like … acceptance. “Noted. I have to get back to work. I’ll call you.”
“Okay.” I start walking toward the hospital entrance. He walks beside me. “Did Dr. Hathaway listen to those burn podcasts? I bet she did. She’s so brilliant.”
“I didn’t ask, though I’m sure she did. Because, yes, she’s brilliant. She’s always on top of cutting-edge treatments in her field.” He exhales like his ex-wife, Boss Bitch, amazing doctor isn’t a great thing.
But she is. Julie Hathaway is the pinnacle of achievement for any woman in the medical field. I’d give my right nipple and even my clitoris on most days to feel that successful, confident, and generous.
“Was it weird? Asking her to look at your burns? I heard she left the exam room a bit aggravated.”
He pushes the elevator button and turns to face me, arms folded over his chest. “Just how much gossip about me do you hear on a daily basis?”
The doors open and I step onto the elevator first. “I’m not here that often. But if you divide the gossip into a daily amount and multiply it by seven, then I’d say it’s a lot.”
He follows me onto the elevator and leans against the opposite wall. I stare at his shoes. They’re older blue Nikes. Not great, but far from awful. And not on my No Way In Hell list. His sinewy arms and his genetically sculpted face make up for the worn Nikes.
“People feel sorry for me?”
“I don’t know. Maybe. They just talk about you and your …” I stop before saying hotness.
“My?” His eyebrows lift.
They’re good brows. Not a unibrow and not like some of the older doctors who get one long-ass brow that’s like an inch long and standing straight out, ready to stab someone. Whenever I see that, I just want to pluck the damn thing from their face. Do they not have a mirror or close friends to tell them about it?
“I don’t know … really.” And I don’t know for sure. I know a lot of the nurses whisper inappropriate comments about him. Inappropriate because of sexual misconduct rules at the hospital and inappropriate because they’re married with kids and attending church on Sundays.
My opinion of his hotness stays in my head. No one can fire me for my thoughts … except when I let them slip out to patients like, “Yeah, you might die.” A rare occurrence that happened only once, just after I started and at the end of a very long day when my brain felt ready to explode. In my defense, the boy was fifteen and knew he was dying. He just wanted one person to give it to him straight. And that just so happens to be my specialty.
But I never join in the break room chatter about Dr. Hotness Hawkins (not my label) and the speculation of his penis size in relation to his hand size and finger length ratio. There is nothing scientific to back that up. That I did mention in the break room once, but it wasn’t well received by my coworkers. I think they used the word “killjoy” to describe me.
“Finish what you started to say.”
“Oh shoot.” I grin as the doors open to my floor. “No time. Bye, Dr. Hawkins.”
CHAPTER FIVE
Meatballs
Elijah
Five days after our chat outside of the hospital and in the elevator, more alluding to my gossip popularity, I decide to call Dorothy. No solid reasoning backs my decision. I just know that my incessant need for things in my life to make sense has gotten me nowhere.
No clarity.
No family unit.
No wife.
No hope that it’s all just a bad dream.
So I change directions and let instinct guide me. My instinct says Julie would shed several tears if I died, but short of that, she wants nothing to do with me. My love rubs her like a splintery piece of wood someone impaled into her chest. Every move I make only intensifies her pain and angers her.