Page 61 of Knight
I choked on my martini.
“Camboy?” I rasped. “Seriously?”
Shiloh shrugged, looking a little nervous. “Does that bother you?”
“No!” I took another quick gulp to soothe my throat after damn near aspirating. “Just hard to imagine Holden meeting a camboy.”
Emory snickered. “Right? We were all shocked!”
Shiloh’s smile turned naughty. “Oh, you all have no idea how dirty that man can be.”
Bailey spluttered on his drink this time. “TMI! Brother at the table here.”
Shiloh sighed. “Fine. I’ll give you the PG-13 version. Holden has touch aversion.” I nodded. Flynn had told me as much so I wouldn’t overstep with Holden when we met. “He wanted to feel close to people, so the cam sessions were the next-best thing.”
“Until you needed a sugar daddy,” I said.
Everyone laughed. “It didn’t go down exactly like that, but he did save me from a lot of trouble,” Shiloh said.
Shiloh and the guys shared pieces of their history with meand we ate our weight in carbs and drank too much. It was the most fun I’d had since that wild night in Omaha with Knight.
I didn’t have all the inside stories yet. Didn’t know all the jokes. But they were inviting me in, and even if it was only while I was here this year, I didn’t want to be on the outside anymore.
Didn’t want to be alone.
Maybe being strong and independent didn’t have to mean staying isolated. Maybe, even if it was just for another eleven months, I could experience a new kind of family. One of my own choosing. Full of love and laughter instead of rage and pain.
“Remove the clamp.”
I leaned forward for a better view of the heart—with its newly repaired aortic valve—beating on its own once more.
Dr. Rose had invited me to come in early to observe an emergency surgery. That was six hours ago. I was tired from staying up far too late with Knight, both of us so insatiable, but I’d gotten my ass out of bed at five a.m. anyway.
Totally worth it.
Dr. Rose glanced over her shoulder at me. “Not too bad for a day’s work, is it?”
“It’samazing.”
Dr. Rose lived up to the hype. She made the complex procedure look easy. Foley was in sync with her, anticipating her every need.
She turned back to the table. “All right, let’s place the TEE and then close. Dr. Foley, would you do the honors?”
“Of course.”
The TEE was an ultrasound probe that was placed in theesophagus to verify the valve was working correctly. Once Dr. Rose was certain there was no leakage and the repair would hold, she motioned for me to follow her out of the OR.
She pulled off her surgical cap and mask and pushed them into a recycling bin. I followed suit.
“We got lucky with this one. If he hadn’t gotten that free health screening, he’d have been dead before he made it to my table.”
My chest tightened. It was sad that so many rural residents didn’t have easy access to routine health care. Between money and travel time, many of them skipped doctor’s visits. Without the free screenings held in several rural towns, Theodore Pascal’s aortal stenosis diagnosis might have come too late. But those screenings took place once or twice a year, at most. It wasn’t enough.
I tugged off my gloves, adding them to the bin. “It really puts my research into perspective. Before it was just data, but now…”
She started walking briskly down the hall, and I fell into step with her.
“You’re seeing it in action. The work you’re doing could directly impact patients like this one.” Her pager beeped, and she glanced at it. “I’ve got to update the family. Go grab some lunch. I’ll check in later.”
