Page 32 of The Ripple Effect

“Why don’t I go first then,” he whispers.

My skin pulls tight under my shirt. Outside, it’s still twilight, but in here the darkness is the perfect density to hold a whisper, making words last long after the sound dies.

Even with the visual impact of him covered by night, McHuge still has the power to wallop me with that gentlewhy don’t I go first. With him, the most unexpected things reach inside my heart and hammer something that echoes and echoes.

“The worst thing I ever did,” he says conversationally, “was fracture a kid’s skull for taking something from my locker. He was hospitalized for a month. I almost went to juvie.”

“Holy shit. You?! No.” Shocked, I roll onto my side, facing his half of the tent. “Really?”

“Really,” he says, calm like we’re discussing the time he smoked a cigarette and learned his lesson like Deanna in Season 4 ofCow Pie High.

“What did he take?”

“A family photo. He didn’t want the pic—he wanted to fight me.”

“Were you the school badass?” I try and fail to imagine McHuge with an attitude. McHuge hurting someone.

“No. But when you’re my size, it’s kind of all people see. I was like Everest—they wanted to fight me because I wasthere. There was this kid a grade ahead of me who goaded me for months. Stepped on my feet, knocked my lunch onto the floor, dumped milk into my backpack. He was looking for the red button, and he found it. He even threw the first punch.”

“Hestarted it, and he was older, andyoualmost went to juvie?” I’m angry for little Lyle McHugh, who even then was big Lyle McHugh.

“He gave me three stitches in my eyebrow. I gave him major surgery and an ICU stay. And it was worse because I chasedhim. He was running away, and I—” He clears his throat. “It was super hard on my family. My younger brother Tavish was sick at the time. Leukemia. My mom was so pissed at me for taking her away from his chemo to go to my legal appointments. I never wanted to feel that way ever again. And mostly I haven’t. I try to be the bigger person whenever I can.”

He tries hard to be kind, instead of right. God, I’m an asshole.

The only thing I can think to say is, “I’m sorry that happened to you.”

He takes a long breath, in for maybe fifteen seconds, out for the same length of time. “Thank you,” he says simply.

And now I’m on the hook. He shared his, now I have to share mine. I want to; I’m afraid to.

“Promise you won’t tell.” My voice sounds small and uncertain, two things I hate being.

“Promise.” He’s not making fun of me even a little.

“The stupidest thing I ever did was steal a liter of milk.” I wince, glad he can’t see me. “No, forget it. I’ll think of a better one.”

“Sounds like a good story to me.”

He’s so convincing. After a year of trusting hardly anyone—not even myself—I’m perilously close to believing anything he says. Just the thought is dizzying and dangerous.

“It’s ridiculous. It’smilk.”

“Somehow, I don’t think it’s about the milk.”

It is and it isn’t. “Five years ago, the media got a tip about Grey Tusk General. Their chief of emergency medicine hadn’t hired a female doc or approved a rotation for a female resident in sixteen years.”

“I remember that. It was national news.”

“It was,” I say, bitter regret rising in my throat. “They didgood crisis PR: Fired the old chief, hired me and another new female grad named Kat, and hunkered down until the news cycle moved on. They made all the right noises about culture change, equality—all the DEI buzzwords. They told us we were lucky to be there.”

Ihadfelt lucky. I’d wanted to live near Liz, but with three years of residency training instead of the more desirable five, I never thought I’d get a position with the exciting scope of practice Grey Tusk had.

“It took me four years to figure out Kat and I were getting the shaft.” My hands clench around my sleeping bag. “Twice as many night shifts, weekends, and holidays; all the unpaid committee work that didn’t count for promotion; none of the shifts with senior residents who could lighten the workload. I spent months putting together the data, then presented my findings to the department.

“My colleagues couldn’t deny my numbers. But they could, and did, vote down my motion to investigate how it happened. And refuse to make up the financial and career damage to me and Kat.We need to put the past behind us, they said.

“But I couldn’t. I’d given everything to that place. The only thing that got me through the pandemic shit show was feeling like even if I’d lost faith in the system, I could believe in my colleagues. I trusted them when they said they were ‘immunocompromised,’ so would I please intubate their COVID patients. I put my life on the line for them, and in return they acted like their bad behavior wasn’t a problem, but my being angry about it was.”

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