Page 43 of Careless Whisper

I glanced at his angry face. “Why?”

“What?”

“Why do I have to protect myself? Why can’t we work in an environment where that isn’t necessary? Why is an attending being allowed to bully me?”

Elias rolled his eyes. “Stop being dramatic. No one is bullying you. We’re all under pressure because of these trials, and we’ve applied for private funding, which we won’t get if we fuck up.”

He meant, if I fuck up, didn’t he?

I shook my head. There was no point. Just yesterday, I had looked up flights to San Miguel de Allende.

“Yes, Dr. Graham,” I said emotionlessly. “Is there anything else?”

He opened his mouth, closed it, and then, after giving me a disgusted look, left.

That night, Luther insisted on driving me home because I was in no shape to drive myself. In his truck, he gave me a hoodie because I was shivering. It was eighty-two degrees outside, and I was shaking.

“The way you’re working and not eating, you’re a prime candidate for a nasty infection,” Luther muttered. “You’re not okay.”

He ordered Thai, and I ate some tom yum soup but couldn’t stomach the pad Thai. Luther was right; I was not okay. I knew what this was. I stopped eating when I was depressed—which brought anxiety alongfor the party and left me feeling like I was right now—blank.

The opposite of depression was not happiness but engagement with the world and yourself. I was living in a dark cloud and feeling helpless.

“You want to tell me why Maren Loring is after you?”

I sat on my couch, hugging a cushion to me. I was still in scrubs and Luther’s hoodie. One of the best ways to deal with depression was to talk about what was pulling you down—I knew that from my psych rotation.

So, I told him everything about what happened in Boston. The patient’s death. The lie. Maren’s threat. Elias’s betrayal. How I stood in front of a review board, stripped of my confidence, and watched the man I loved say nothing while I drowned. I told him how I begged for my job and left with nothing but shame and how I built myself back, brick by brick, in Seattle. And how, now, it was all happening again, and I was…

“I’m so tired, Luther,” I whispered. “I’ve worked so hard to stay on top of being a good nurse, being professional. And it’s never enough. I always have to prove myself twice over, and one whisper from someone like Maren undoes everything.”

He wrapped an arm around me, and I let myself cry for the first time in months. Ugly, gasping, hot tears that I couldn’t stop once they started.

After my crying jag, Luther made me chamomile tea.

“You need to take some time off,” he advised. “You can’t keep going back to the same place that’s doingthisto you.”

“I’m not going to run,” I protested. “I’mnotweak.”

But I felt so fucking weak. I used to love my job, and now I hated going to work, hated the anxiety that was slowly giving me an ulcer, the heart palpitations that came when I thought about what was in store for me.

“How have I allowed Maren to do this to me? I should be stronger than this,” I lamented.

Luther kissed my forehead. “Why do we have to be stronger than cruel people? Why can’t people do better? I hate that the onus is on the victim of bullying to fight it, not on the bully to become a better person.”

“The onus is on the…survivor”—I was no one’s victim—“of bullying because it’s the survivor who is suffering, not the bully.”

Luther was about to reply when my phone rang. It was the concierge.

“Hi, Quinn,” I said wearily.

“There’s a Dr. Elias Graham here for you.”

I looked at Luther in confusion. “It’s Elias,” I whispered.

Luther took the phone from me. “Hey, it’s Luther.” Quinn knew who he was as he came here often with his partner Giovanni. “Send him up.”

“What the fuck?”

---