Page 33 of Doctor Dilemma

That wasn’t true, of course.

Hearts get tired like all other muscles, but they keep moving along because it’s what you need to live. And there was only so much heartache one could deal with in their life. I was done fighting it. Whether or not she was good for me, Hannah was right for me, and deep down, I wondered if that’s what my heart was trying to tell me.

It would have been so easy for me to pick up my phone and call her, but I forced myself not to. I turned the phone off and put it in my room, plugging it in for tomorrow, promising myself that I wouldn’t turn it back on until the next morning. Going back to Hannah would be a big decision, and I at least owed myself the opportunity to sleep on it.

The night went on and I tried going to bed early, but couldn’t sleep. I contemplated grabbing my tablet from the other room and watching something, but all the literature says to avoid blue light before bed if you want to fall asleep. Ideally, I should have grabbed a book and read in the other room for a while, but in my haste to leave, I didn’t bother to take any paperbacks with me.

So I just stayed in bed, staring at the ceiling as Bagel stayed next to me, occasionally twitching in her sleep or snoring. Whenever she’d start to whimper, I’d wake her out of the nightmare, but she’d fall right back to sleep. It had been a busy, exhausting day for her at daycare, or so I’d been told.

At some point before sunrise, I did eventually manage to nod off, though I doubted it was for more than an hour or so. When the alarm rang the inertia of sleep was begging me to fall back into bed, but there were patients to see, and I had to start my day.

Something had happened, though, in that sleep. Maybe it was a dream I hadn’t remembered, or maybe it was just a little bit of temporal distance, but I’d lost the desire to call Hannah. When I turned my fully charged phone back on, I just checked my morning news and email, and that was it, before hopping in the shower and beginning my day.

I must have been slow getting ready because Mila came into the apartment before I had a chance to leave. It was uncomfortable. Things had felt so easy in the office the other day, when our roles were predefined. I was her doctor, and she was my patient. Now, we were in a sort of limbo, afraid to get too close to each other. Afraid to tempt each other with the possibility of hope once more.

“How are you feeling?” I asked.

“Not bad,” she said, trying to figure out if I was asking as her doctor or her neighbor. In my head, I was trying to make it clear that I was in doctor mode, but that was just a trick so I could be at my best. I might have been asking as her doctor, but it was me as a person that cared how she answered. “A little cramping, like you said, but nothing I can’t handle.”

“Good,” I said.

“Leo,” she said. “Doctor Maxwell…”

She trailed off. Did she expect me to tell her which one to address me as? Because I wasn’t going to.

“…do you think it took?”

The way she was looking at me, pleading, it was as if she wanted me to tell her what she wanted to hear and not the truth. But that was something you learn very early on in your internship: always tell your patients the truth. Be as realistic as possible and if you’re not sure, err on the side of pessimism. Hope is a drug with a short half-life. And if you’re not perfectly honest with your patients, they will come back at you with a vengeance if things take a turn for the worse and you haven’t prepared them.

“There’s no way of knowing for sure,” I told her. “We just have to wait.”

“I’m not asking what you know. What do you think?”

I wanted to tell her everything would be all right. I wanted to convince her that she was definitely pregnant and we could move on to the next step now. But I knew better than that.

I just repeated myself. “We just have to wait.”

“But…”

“Try not to think about it. Two weeks will go by quickly. That much I can promise.”

I looked over at my dog. “Bye, Bagel,” I said and then looked over at Mila and nodded before heading out. I was fast enough that I didn’t give her a chance to ask any more questions that I couldn’t answer.

As I drove to work, I had an awful thought. I wondered what would happen if Mila really just couldn’t get pregnant. The second the idea popped into my head, I tried to push it away. It wasn’t just a thought, it was almost a wish. All she wanted out of life was to have a baby. Why would I be so cruel as to want to deny her that just so I could be with her?

I contemplated pulling my phone out of my pocket and removing temptation from my life. If Hannah took me back, I could move back in with her and never have to worry about Mila again. At least not personally. I could still see her as a patient, I suppose.

But I went all night without calling Hannah. If I could make it this long, then I could make it forever.

I pulled into the office lot, pulled out my phone, and pulled up her number. If I wasn’t going to call her, I should delete her number. The delete and block button was right there, and I put my finger over it, hovering. As soon as I pressed it, she wouldn’t be able to contact me anymore. I knew it was what I should do. With a calming deep breath, I pushed down, getting an immediate sense of relief that she was gone from my life forever.

But a window popped up asking me if I was sure, and, for some reason, that was just too much for me. I pressed cancel and swiped back to the home screen, returning the phone to my pocket.

Hannah wasn’t quite out of my life just yet, but not because I liked her or truly wanted to be back with her, it was because I wanted to forget Mila.

CHAPTER15

***MILA***

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