Page 33 of Caught Up In You

You okay?

Wyatt

Just a shitty day. Nothing a glass of wine and a bath hot enough to cook a shrimp can’t fix

I let out an involuntary groan, my eyes closing as I conjure up the image of Wyatt’s tight little body in a bath, the water sluicing over her breasts. I think about sitting beside her tub, running a soapy washcloth over her perfect skin, dragging my fingers through her damp hair, gripping it to pull her lips to mine…

Fuck the ibuprofen, that’s whatIneed.

Unfortunately, not even my prescription pad can help me with that kind of relief. No, I’ll be stuck with my usual method of stress relief: a long, hot shower alone with my hand.

Alone.

I’m suddenly very tired of being alone.

When Francie and I broke up early in our last year of residency, I was in a bad place. I was overworked and underslept. I was eating whatever crap I could scrounge up from vending machines or fast food restaurants near the hospital. My blood was made up almost entirely of burnt break room coffee. I was a disaster waiting to happen.

And then there was no more waiting. Disaster found me.

When Dylan Anders, the smiling kid with the missing front teeth, showed up in the ER, telling me all about his new Minecraft builds while his mom explained that he’d taken a tumble at the playground, I wasn’t too worried. She assured me he hadn’t lost consciousness, hadn’t thrown up. He’d barely even cried, she said. She just wanted to be sure.

And so did I. So I ordered the head CT, laughed at his knock-knock joke, and moved on to the next patient. It was a busynight at the start of flu season, and everyone was coming in with wheezing and fevers.

When I heard the code blue, it didn’t even occur to me that it could be him.

Brain bleeds are like that.

I’d ordered the right scan, but I could have pushed, made sure he got it faster, not underestimated the danger. If I’d stayed with him, had a nurse stay with him, been clearer with his mom about the risks… Hell, if I’d wheeled him to CT myself and made the tech scan him right then and there, Dylan would still be alive.

Everything sort of fell apart after that. I kept freezing in the ER. I could barely sleep. I often forgot to feed myself, and when I remembered, everything sat in my stomach like hot coals. I was on the verge of quitting medicine entirely when I got the call from Dr. Putnam back home. She wanted to retire, and she offered her practice to me.

So I gritted my teeth through the last couple of months of my residency, and then I left Philadelphia.

Was it my plan to move back to my hometown?

No.

But it seemed like the right thing to do. Walking into the ER day after day was excruciating. I saw Dylan’s face on every child. Private practice would be better. It would be slower. I could get myself back on even ground.

Needless to say, dating fell completely by the wayside. I had a few hospital hookups, but they always left me feeling empty, like I’d just woken up from a hangover.

So I focused on the practice. Those first two years I worked myself to the bone, making sure every one of my patients got the care and attention they deserved.

By last fall, that same wrung-out feeling of desperation was starting to creep back in. My sleep grew sporadic, my headaches more frequent.

That was when I hired Fatima.

And things have been better since then. I trust her, and that means I can step back a little. Suddenly there’s space for me to feel alive again.

Unfortunately, there’s also space to want.

To want something I can’t have.SomeoneI can’t have.

“Look alive,” Fatima says as she steps into my office, tossing the on call phone at me. I jerk to attention and catch it just before it smacks into my chest.

Fuck, I forgot I was on call tonight.

When Fatima came on board, she brought a few new processes with her. Gone are the days of the after-hours line forwarding calls to my personal cell phone. Gone are the days of the after-hours line entirely. Now we have an app that allows patients to message us directly, including photos. It helps keep a lot of smaller-scale things from escalating, like they often can when you have a frantic parent on the phone.

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