Page 129 of Love Sick

My voice sharpens. “What did you hear, Julian?”

His sigh shreds through the speaker. “Maxwell heard you went down to the radiology reading room the other day and someone caught you with two fifth-year residents.”

I lean against the window. “Doing what?”

“What do you think, Grace? Do you really want the details?”

“Yes.”No.

“Well, I’m not giving them to you. I told him it wasn’t true.”

I surrender to the tears. “Hoffman asked me about it.”

Darkness overtakes his voice. “What?”

“The rumors will get to the attendings, then to my future employers. Medicine is a small world, Julian. This could ruin my life.”

“We’ll deal with it.” He pauses. “What if—what if we showed our relationship publicly? People would—”

I scoff. “The rumors would go nuts. Don’t drag yourself down into my mud.”

A long silence follows. A blue sedan circles the parking lot beneath me.

Lot’s full, buddy. I can see it from here.

“Maybe I want to be in the mud with you,” Julian murmurs.

At those words, a tiny bit of the ice inside me melts. He’s so sweet. So loving.

But it isn’t enough. People would talk about what we do together. Where we do it. They’d probably ask him how I like it. Then rumors would spread that I cheated. They’d pity him for staying with me. They’d laugh at him behind his back.

He thinks he wants to roll in the mud with me, but eventually bitterness would grow. Resentment.

This will be the thing that drives him away. With Matt, our lack of sexual chemistry—and his narcissistic tendencies—ruined us, but Julian…he’ll decide I’m not worth the hassle of having to scrub my shitty reputation, of constantly defending our relationship.

I swallow. “Let’s talk about it tonight.”

“All right, Grace. Don’t cry about this, okay? Don’t catastrophize. It’s not worth it.”

Nodding even though he can’t see me, my voice shrinks to a bare rasp. “Bye, Julian.”

“Bye, Sapphire.”

That name pulls a laugh from me, and I hang up.

When I return with his Starbucks, Hoffman is cold and complains they put too much foam in it. I fantasize about pushing him out the window of his sixth-story corner office.

Mandy has descended past the level of Nasty and arrived at Satan. She turns on the fake falsetto and hands me a note from John. “Really nice you can take a coffee break in the middle of the day. Dr. John asked me to give you this. He needs records from your clinic EMR for this patient.”

I glance at the note to find a patient name and birthday. “Did he say wh—”

“I believe I asked you not to speak to me.”

Would her blood even be red if I stabbed my pink pen into her throat?

I march away without saying anything else.

In a corner of the copy room sits a janky computer on its last breath. This is the computer I’m allowed to use. I power it on and rack my memory on how to remotely access our clinic EMR. It’s such a complicated process that I’ve only done it one other time.

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