Page 33 of The Ripple Effect

I thought helping them meant one day they’d help me in return. I thought theycared.

But I was a mark.

“Then one night I went to the doctors’ lounge for a snack.In the fridge, there was milk for coffee. All the staff doctors contributed to the coffee fund. That was the rule. Forty bucks a month—not cheap. But I couldn’t drink coffee. I’d been doing all the work my colleagues didn’t want, and on top of that, I’d paid for their coffee with my money, my time, my body, mysoul. And I just… reached for a carton of milk. Put it in my backpack, zipped it up, done.

“When I turned around, my department chief was standing in the doorway. Thewayhe was smiling.” I shiver, remembering. “I could’ve fought back when he asked me to resign, but for what? A job with people who hated me for holding them accountable? Doctors are supposed to be better than that. They’re supposed to do no harm. Ilovedbeing a doctor, and after they took it all away… yeah. I was so ashamed of getting taken for a ride, I didn’t even tell Liz. I left town and told mybest friendI wanted to explore rural medicine. Pretty fucking sad.”

I lie there, eyes dry and hot. McHuge doesn’t rush to fill the silence. I love that about him—that he’s willing to let things take as long as they take.

“They didn’t steal everything,” he says, after a while. “They took a lot, but you kept yourself. When you walked out the door, your talent and drive and creativity went with you. They lost a lot when they lost you.”

The simplicity of it takes my breath away. I’ve heard “it’s their loss” before—when I’ve gotten dumped, been passed over for an award, suffered injustices large and small.

But “their loss” isn’t the same as “you kept yourself—good job you.”

I swallow. “No one’s ever said that to me before.”

For the first time, I believe the hospital lost something when they lost me,and they know it. For the first time, I realizethat when Liz saidyou need something, she understood I was afraid I couldn’t hold on to anything—including who I was.

McHuge makes a considering sound, slow and deliberate. “Someone should have, because it’s true. If you could go back, would you do it differently?”

“No.” The word is out before I even know I’m going to say it. “I mean… mostly no. I’d leave, but I’d try to preserve my job options. Every hospital within a couple hundred kilometers of Grey Tusk knew my name after that. I was the angry woman who made damaging allegations against a department that needed to stay trouble free. I bean-counted everything and bitched to the scheduling coordinator and wanted to get as much milk as I paid for. ‘Stellar Byrd, milk vigilante: do not hire.’”

To my amazement, he laughs. Until this moment, I would’ve sworn he laughed all the time. Now that I hearthislaugh, I know I’ve never experienced the real thing before—warm and low like an outboard engine thrown into gear.

“Stellar Byrd, milk vigilante,” he repeats, and I can hear his smile through the soft patter of drizzle. “Well. I’m glad I got the chance to hire you, Stellar Byrd. Going to steal any milk?”

“Are you kidding? Jas would murder me. I may not be afraid of you, but Iamafraid of him.”

I’m not sure that’s exactly true, though.

After tonight, I don’t know if I have it in me to be angry with McHuge anymore. His laughter shrank my fear and shame into a shape that was tiny and bittersweet and more than a little sad. That version of me I told him about—she tried so hard and cared so much. I feel her stir deep down, the Stellar who believed in things.

Even if McHuge himself doesn’t scare me, the possibility that I’m about to start believing in things and putting my heart on the line again—thatshould scare me plenty.

Chapter Nine

I’ve never been a good sleeper, so it’s a surprise when I drift from soft blackness to the sun filtering through the bright-orange walls of my tent.

Correction:ourtent.

My eyes fly open at the sharp realization of exactly whose pencil is scratching along industriously behind my back.

Last night’s confession rushes back at me, along with the world’s worst vulnerability hangover. I don’t know why I didn’t make up some bland fake story about a dating disaster. He’d never have known, and I would have stayed safe, a dragon atop my hoard of ugly truths.

I roll over, cracking one eye.

McHuge sits on one of the camp chairs, wearing nothing but a pair of olive-green shorts, those professorial square black glasses, and a headlamp trained on a hardcover journal withFIELD NOTESembossed in gold on the cover. He doesn’t sit on so much asinhabitthe chair, relaxing bonelessly into the canvas fabric.

His shorts areshort, or maybe it’s that his legs are long, stretching out for ages. The hair dusting his thighs is gold rather than ginger, his skin a light champagne color interrupted by a density of freckles above his knees. His farmer-tanned torso gives the impression of useful power, and plenty of it; but his belly is soft, rounding a little over the waistband of his shorts.

If he were a truck, he’d be a vintage pickup, cherry red, with a bed made of wooden slats: somehow very cute with all those rounded planes, but underneath the hood he’s got twelve cylinders if you should need them.

I’m seized with the desire to press my face into his stomach, to feel the comfort of him against my cheek, to hold on tight until I feel better.

“Marcus Aurelius, huh,” I croak, because I absolutely cannot continue to lie here and drink him in.

He looks up, eyebrows cocked. “Good morning to you, too. And I like the classics,” he says, tapping the slim volume ofMeditationsunderneath his field notes. “Marcus Aurelius happens to be extremely relatable for someone who lived two millennia ago. Feeling connected to people across time makes me more empathetic toward all people, which makes me a better therapist. ‘Kindness is invincible… what can even the most malicious person do if you keep showing kindness?’” he quotes.

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