Page 11 of Seduction
Penina Ross
Ihadn’t meant to do it, but I walked right past Bellies and headed home. I had a lot on my mind—plus, I was so exhausted that I could barely stand, let alone sit at the counter, eating chicken wings. I also wanted to preserve enough energy to confront Zara. I was shocked that she’d left without even finding me and telling me what happened. It wasn’t as if I didn’t know the answer. But I wanted to hear it from the horse’s mouth.
She lived in the apartment next to mine. When I knocked on her door, I got no answer. I stood there for a good while, my knuckles hitting the wood.
“Looking for Zara?” someone behind me asked.
I whipped around to see Jen Lovely, an internal medicine resident who lived in the apartment across from mine.
“Yes.” I sounded desperate.
“She’s gone.” Her tone was casual.
I jerked my head forward. “Gone? Did she move out?”
“No,” Jen said, shaking her head emphatically. “She said something about going to DC for some rally. You know how political she is and shit. Someone said she quit her residency today, though. Did she?”
Talk about someone with diarrhea of the mouth.I could neither confirm nor deny whether Zara had flushed thousands of dollars of education down the toilet, so I wasn’t going to voice whether she had or not.
I shrugged. “I don’t know. I haven’t spoken to her.”
“Isn’t Deb Glasgow your chief resident?” Jen sounded anxious. Her eyes were glossy, and she had an intense look on her face. She was obviously determined to get the details before anyone else. She prided herself on knowing things first. I swore she should’ve been a journalist instead of a doctor.
“I haven’t spoken to Deb about Zara. I was too busy working a very long shift.” I thumbed over at my door. “So, if you don’t mind, I’m going to bed.”
Jen took a step back. “Fine,” she said, shrugging one shoulder jerkily. Then she turned her back on me, swung open the door to her apartment, went inside, and slammed the door behind her.
I rolled my eyes as I shook my head then entered my own domain. Once inside, I dropped my shit on the sofa. Then I went to the kitchen and took some Chinese takeout out of the refrigerator. It was from five or six days ago. I smelled it.
“Humph,” I grunted.
It was still good, so I microwaved it.
As my food was warming, I leaned against the counter, attempting to deconstruct what had happened in the patient’s room that morning. Sparrow had walked in as if he owned the world. I gathered that he was one of those boys who came from a lot of money. They were usually the most fucked up, sort of like Zara. They were only surgeons because they were fulfilling their parents’ expectations. Usually, the rich boys were more artful at blowing up their careers, though. They often ended up being kicked out of the program for stealing medications, reporting to their shift high one too many times, or continuously failing tests. But according to Melanie, Dr. Sparrow was kick-ass at his job. However, he was still a jerk.
I sniffed bitterly and muttered, “Douchebag moneybags.”
But he’d said aloud that I saved Mr. Sharp’s life. If he was such a bad guy, then it was weird that he would pay me a compliment like that in front of two burly men who were obviously hitting on me. Sparrow was just so damn confusing. The only way for me to stop thinking about him was to go directly to sleep.
The microwave dinged, and I took my food out of it. I grabbed a fork and scarfed down as much Kung Pao chicken as I needed to make my belly full enough to help me sleep well. Next, I stripped out of my clothes, and without showering this time since I didn’t see a need to be clean while sleeping, I crawled into bed and drifted off to dreamland not long after my head hit the pillow.
* * *
I woketo an incessant sound of sirens blaring. The more alert I became, the closer the noise felt. Then someone banged on my door, and I knew that whatever was happening was occurring in real life.
Jumping out of bed, I grabbed my cellphone. The action was automatic. The world could be ending, and a doctor knew she’d better have a means of communication on her person. Since I was naked, I jumped into an oversized T-shirt and a pair of plaid pajamas then yanked my robe off the hook on the bathroom door. Smoke was settling in the room. When I opened the front door, smoke filled the hallway.
Amy, one of the assistants who worked in the office and lived on the premises, was banging on everyone’s door, screaming, “Fire! Exit the building through the stairwell!”
I could hardly believe my luck.
“Damn it,” I mumbled, cursing the inconvenience. I was still as tired as hell. Whatever was happening didn’t feel fair at all.
I needed shoes and to change into warmer pants, so I scuttled back inside and put on jeans and tennis shoes. I also grabbed my purse and my workbag then headed back out into the cloudy hallway.
As we padded down the stairs, I kept my hand over my mouth like the other tenants. It had been a long time since I’d seen a lot of them. We were all in distress.
We waited fifty feet away from the building, watching the fire trucks casting their lights against the brick. A whole host of firemen had already raced inside. There was a lot of smoke but still no flames.
