Page 58 of Hate To Want You
Max
The last month of Heidi’s residency is going to steal my sanity, I just know it.
Four weeks until I can claim her as mine.
Four weeks until I don’t have to hide how I feel.
Four weeks.
We’ve started talking about how we’ll handle it at work, the plan being to meet with Clarence first. A niggling voice in the back of my head has been saying we should’ve gone to him right away. Because even though I know there’s been absolutely nothing he could question in terms of our professional boundaries so far, the right thing to do would have been to be up-front from the start and have Heidi reassigned.
Except I was selfish and wanted her to myself. Thank God my role with Heidi is purely as supervisor and mentor. If she were an intern, or anyone I had to evaluate somehow, this would have been a disaster. But aside from a few situations when she was just too fucking tempting and we risked it in an empty conference room for a few stolen kisses, we’ve kept it very professional. No preferential treatment, I openly challenged her on a judgment call I disagreed with, and she has continued to push back and question me.
Granted, now those challenges and pushback moments act as a torturous form of foreplay. There’s nothing better than getting her home after a shift when she’s pushed my fucking limit of control. The sex is always amazing between us, but those days it’s even more explosive.
I knew I needed someone who could keep up in bed. I’ve got an appetite, for all that it hasn’t been fulfilled in a long fucking time. And Heidi meets me every goddamn time, giving me what I need and taking what she does in equal measure.
I would have never though I’d be the kind of man to say this about someone, but she’s perfect.
Four more weeks.
Maybe I got cocky. But I don’t see the freight train coming until it hits me.
“Hey, buddy,” I say, walking into the patient room. We’ve known Carson for almost as long as we knew Teagan. The two of them were friends, and I know her death likely hit him hard.
While not a cystic fibrosis patient, Carson has pulmonary hypertension that, sadly, went undiagnosed for too long. I’ve wanted to submit paperwork for a long time to have him assessed for a lung transplant, but he’s managed to have lab results just good enough to make him ineligible.
“Hey, Doc,” he says, giving me a weak smile from the bed. The kid doesn’t look good and my gut sinks. I’m not sure how our team could handle another loss if that’s where this goes.
“I know you missed the food around here, but we gotta stop meeting like this.” I try to inject some levity, and I’m rewarded with a laugh. We fist bump and I turn to his mother, who sits at his bedside. “You know the drill, we’ll get some updated images, keep the high flow oxygen on, and start some diuretics to remove the fluid buildup.”
Carson’s mom nods in understanding, just as Heidi and the bedside nurse walk in to join us. I pass my orders on to the nurse and step back to let Heidi greet Carson.
The rest of the day goes by and part of my mind is still in that room. I flash between seeing Carson, to seeing Teagan in that bed. And the desperation builds in my mind —I can’t lose another patient.
“Max, what’s wrong?” Heidi’s worried whisper has me jerking my head up from the lab results I’ve been staring at for way too long, wishing they said something different.
I lean back and rake my hands through my hair. “Aside from Carson being back and me not knowing how we’re going to help?”
She sits down beside me and lets her hand subtly brush my side. I know she means it to be comforting, but it isn’t.
“We need to give the treatment protocol time. We can get this under control.”
“For how long?” I ask, the words coming out sharper than she deserves. “For a month? Two? Then he’s back, and all we’ve done is give him two more months of waiting for the next episode.”
“We’ve given him two more months of living,” she replies firmly. “You know that, Max.”
I push back from the desk and stand up. “I need to… I just… I’ll be back.” I walk off the unit without looking at another person. She doesn’t follow me, and I’m glad. But on the heels of that relief is guilt. I was unfair to her; I took my worries out on her and was a fucking asshole. Again.
After grabbing a coffee from the kiosk in the main lobby, I head outside. The warm sunshine feels like an insult, as if it shouldn’t be a beautiful day out here, when inside the building behind me so many people are suffering.
I walk briskly around the large block the hospital sits on. And every bird chirping, every person laughing, every dog barking, all of it fuels the injustice boiling up inside of me. How can life go on out here when there are children dying inside that hospital?
In the distant recesses of my mind I know my thoughts are irrational. So much has happened in the last few months, all of it has me on edge and not thinking clearly.
When I eventually return to the unit, I check in with the nurse in charge to let them know I’m back. There’s no sign of Heidi or any of the other residents, for that matter.
Something crossed my mind when I was outside. I didn’t give it any thought at the time because I know it’s wrong. I know what I fleetingly considered doing would break so many rules. But now, surrounded by sick kids and scared parents, listening to the background noise of beeping monitors and hushed conversations, I can’t shake the idea from my head.
