"Are you hungry?" I ask as the doors slide open. I reluctantly let her go so she can precede me into the elevator.
"I could eat something," she says as she taps the lobby button.
I step back and lean against the wall. "Let's stop at Five Guys and grab some burgers. I've got beer at my house. We'll work on the puzzle until you're too tired to see straight, and then we'll call it a night."
Josie turns to face me, leaning her shoulder against the wall. She shoves a hand down into her pocket. "This is sort of weird and also not weird, you know?"
"Granted, it's a little weird someone goes into labor--"
"Not that," she says with an eye roll. "You and me. Our friendship. It's really sort of weird, and not weird."
"Why would it be weird?" I ask her.
I don't get an eye roll, but a spectacularly cocked eyebrow that's fully loaded with skepticism. "Name one other good friend that you've hung out with that is a female."
My mind whirs and flits, mentally flipping through all the women I've been with in the last few years. Every fucking one of them has been a loose, casual sexual relationship. I even push back further in time, all the way to high school. I've never been one to have platonic female friends. I was always the jock who hung with my buddies, much as I do now with Marek and Holt. Women were, I'm ashamed to say, not worth much of my time.
Until Josie, that is.
"Okay, maybe it's a little weird," I admit in defeat.
"It's weird," she says staunchly. "For me too, though. I've never had just a guy friend. It's kind of cool."
"So you're saying sex is off the table?" I ask her with a lewd smile.
Josie looks me up and down, giving an exaggerated grimace as she takes me in. "Yeah...not going to happen."
"Whatever," I tease her as I motion with my hand to my fabulous body. "You'd fall down in worship if I let you have a crack at this."
"I think we need to make a stop in the neurology department," she quips as she turns away from me. "You need an MRI of the brain or something."
The doors to the elevator open up to the lobby, and I laugh at our easy bantering, knowing deep in my heart that there's something underneath all this friendly ribbing. I loop my arm back around Josie's neck, again the way a brother might do to show affection to his sister, but only I know that I'm doing it because I happen to the like the way she feels against me.
Chapter 6
Josie
"Dr. Ives," I hear from behind me, and turn to see one of the nurses poking her head into the on-call office.
"What's up?" I say with a smile. While most nurses are all about brisk efficiency in their communications, I always make sure I have a welcoming tone when they need something. I've seen too many asshole doctors cause undue stress on nurses with their attitudes.
"Dr. Mills asked for your assistance in exam number two," she says. "Six-year-old needing some stitches."
I nod and push up out of my chair, bending over to lock the computer screen on the keyboard. I head over to exam two with my shoulders squared, because putting stitches into a kid is often a job for two doctors.
Kevin Mills smiles at me when I walk in. He's sitting on a stool next to the bed, a little blond boy lying there with a piece of gauze taped to the top of his forehead. On the other side of the bed is a young woman in her midtwenties whom I presume is the boy's mother.
"Ahhh, here's Dr. Ives now," Kevin says to the little boy as I walk in. "She's the best doctor in the entire emergency room, next to me of course, so she's going to help me make you all better."
The little boy looks at me dubiously with the threat of imminent tears shining in his eyes.
"Dr. Ives, this is Peter. He took a little fall off the monkey bars and has a bit of a cut on his head."
I give Peter a warm, reassuring smile as I step forward to take a look.
"Hi, Peter. My name is Dr. Ives, but you can call me Josie. I'm going to take a quick peek at the cut so we can decide how to best fix you up."
More tears well up in the little boy's eyes. A quick glance at his mom and I see she's got matching ones in hers. I smile confidently at her and turn back to Peter. When I pull the bandage back he asks me in a tremulous voice, "Are you going to stick a needle in me?"
I take in the laceration, which is only about a centimeter long, but it's deep. It's near his hairline, so scarring won't be much of an issue.
Pressing the bandage back down, I bend over and give him a tiny tap on his chest. "Peter, we are going to have to put a few stitches in your skin to close the cut. But you won't feel it because we're going to give you some medicine first."
Apparently this is not Peter's first rodeo because he says, "But you have to put a needle in me to give me the medicine, right?"
I look at him knowingly. "Have you done this before?"
He shakes his head and the first tears slide down his face. "No, but my big brother had to have them once."
Peter's mother leans over and strokes his face. "It won't hurt very much, honey, and then you won't feel anything."
Little Peter isn't having any of it. He starts shaking his head and crying in earnest. "I don't want to. Please don't make me, Mommy."
A slight glance over to Kevin, who shoots me back the same knowing look.
This is not going to be easy.
But with kids, it never is.
--
"I owe you one, Josie," Kevin says as we walk out of the exam room. Helping him put stitches in the little boy put me forty-five minutes over my shift. But that's okay. I can't remember a day I ever left the emergency room on time, and that's just the nature of the beast.
"Not a problem," I tell him as we walk down to the medical staff's locker room. "It will be less than two weeks before I will need your assistance in the same exact way."
Kevin laughs as he follows me into the locker room. "How is it that either you or I could single-handedly work on a traumatic brain injury case or a gunshot wound to the chest, but give us a little boy with tears and we can't do it alone?"
"That's why pediatrics is a specialty all unto its own," I say with a chuckle. I go to my locker, unlock and open it to pull my purse out. Most doctors bring in a gym bag with a change of clothes, but since I never go anywhere but home, I'm comfortable wearing my scrubs out of here.
Kevin's also off shift, so he pulls his stuff out of his locker at the end of the row. He gives me a quick glance and says, "We never
had that golden touch that Aiden had with patients. He could calm a snarling, drunk beast with a broken leg or have a kid smiling as he stitched him up."
A simultaneous feeling of fondness and bitterness hits me all at once at the mention of Aiden's name.
Kevin doesn't notice and continues to ramble on. "Remember in residency? Most people felt he was just cold and detached, but he really wasn't. He just projected such utter calm that people were naturally put at ease by him."
My throat closes and I have to cough to open it up. "Yeah...He had that special gift."
"Oh shit, Josie," Kevin says apologetically, and I turn to look at him. His expression is regretful. "I wasn't thinking. Just memories came flooding back."
Boy, did they come flooding back. I can go most days without ever thinking of Aiden. Three years of residency at Duke together where we fell in love and planned to conquer the world together. Kevin and Aidan were pretty tight during those years, and the three of us hung out a lot along with a fellow colleague that Kevin had been dating at the time.
"It's all right," I assure him as I hitch my purse over my shoulder while giving him a lackluster smile. "Those were good memories."
His eyes are doleful as he returns my gaze.
Knowing.
I hate myself for it, but I clear my throat, fiddle with the strap on my purse. Not able to look him in the eye, I ask, "Have you heard from him lately?"
Kevin's silent a moment and it forces me to look up at him. He thankfully wipes his face free of sympathy or pity, and shakes his head with a wry smile. "Nah...he's too much of a globetrotter to stay in constant contact. I got an email from him about six months ago. He was in Yemen. Battling a cholera outbreak in the middle of a war."
My stomach flips and threatens to hurl on me. The thought of Aiden in so much danger, all while still being pissed at him for choosing that life over one here with me, causes extreme emotions within me. That's why I try not to think of him most days, and most days I'm pretty damn successful.
"Saving the world," I mutter under my breath, then I change my expression to one of cool indifference. "Well, I got to get going. Lots to do tonight."
New puzzle of kittens playing in a basketful of yarn.
God...no wonder Aiden chose a dangerous, exciting life working in impoverished war-torn countries. How could I have possibly kept his interest for the long term?