“Are you sure that’s the only think that’s humbled you?” she asked.
I loved how feisty she could be. How she could give me a challenge.
I wanted her again, right then and there. I went over to her and kissed her, and she kissed me back, passionately.
But just when we were starting to get it on again, our phones chimed in unison. We both went for them as though we had practiced it. It was like a scene in a silent comedy.
“I’ve been called in,” we said in unison.
“I’ll do the dishes,” I said, breaking out of the sex spell I had been under and going over to the sink before she could object.
Listening closely, I heard her go into the living room to wait for me. I did have the car, after all.
It sucked that our second time couldn’t happen because it got ruined. But I planned to keep doing what we had done again and again in the future. So, it could wait, for now.
After scrubbing and drying as quickly as I could, we went through the door to the garage, our masks ready for the walk into the hospital to get our PPE.
It was like déjà vu all over again, the odd silence joining the hum of the car as we drove to the hospital. I couldn’t help but think of our drive out to my house, back when neither of us ever suspected how far things would go between us. It seemed like an eternity ago even though it had just happened.
After we went our separate ways at the desk, even though we worked in the same department, I couldn’t help but feel a pang of loss. I’d only really spent a day with her one on one, but it had been enough.
All the feelings I’d once had for her were inching toward their opposite. I no longer hated her. I could confidently say that much.
The fates could be funny sometimes, especially when they decided to be kind. Mere hours after our parting, I was reunited with Julia under the least auspicious of circumstances— a patient who had collapsed and needed resuscitation.
The alarms sounded like an air raid. An event as rare as it was terrible, the colored lightbulbs flashed once in a blue moon. At least in usual times. Since the pandemic started spreading, it was more of a weekly occasion. All the best qualified doctors, at least those on that floor, came rushing through, with Julia and I competing for the lead.
It was an organized sort of chaos. Shouted-out instructions were followed by immediate action, with time being very much of the essence. The patient needed to be stabilized and put on a respirator if they wanted to see another sunrise.
Julia was amazing. I knew she’d been better than me at dealing with patients in medical school— everyone had, but she was the best— yet now I saw just how good of a doctor she was all around. I’d never paid enough attention to her progress in medical school, being far too focused on my own high standard of achievement, which was mostly foisted on me on my parents.
But now, steely-nerved and level-headed, Julia took easy control of the situation. I followed her lead, and together we worked in sync. I was beginning to realize just how great of a person she was, and I never wanted to let her out of my life.
Epilogue - Julia
It shouldn’t have been a surprise that Jake and I had worked together so well to save the patient. Jake’s achievement in medical school should have been enough to mark him out as brilliant, but theory and practice could have a chasm of difference between them. Particularly in life and death situations— a boot camp versus combat sort of thing.
Jake had followed my directions to treat the patient without question or hesitation, both of us working at our maximum ability. There was a life hanging in the balance, after all.
Suddenly, all the work he’d put in during medical school, despite his grumpy demeanor about being forced to do it, made sense. He might have been an Iceman, but he was also a damn good doctor. It was a fair trade-off.
Things with us from there proceeding the opposite way from how things were supposed to go. According to the conventional wisdom, it was supposed to be friends, then lovers.
Yet, in defiance of all logic or convention, we had done hate-fucking almost at the beginning, and then started to ease into much warmer feelings that were grown and cultivated over the next several days of required cohabiting.
Much of it was spent at work, with call-ins coming nearly every other day, but we always went home together. Sure, it was his home, but that was a technicality, further softened by just how splendorous the house in question was.