I steered him to the couch and sat him down. “No more drinking.”
He smirked. “Unless you’re staying over, I don’t know how much of a say you have.”
“You want me to stay over?”
“If you do, I can promise I’ll make it worth your while.”
I was tempted. But again, drunk.
“Maybe tomorrow, if you stay sober.”
“You’re coming back?”
“Someone needs to feed you and make sure you stay alive.”
His smile slowly disappeared. “You’re not my girlfriend. You don’t owe me anything.”
I curled my toes and took a breath before answering. “I know that,” I said slowly. “But without me, you’re going to spiral into self-pity and alcoholism, and honestly, that would be a fucking waste of your talent.”
“Ah, thank you,” he said, smiling again. “I knew you cared. About my talent, at least.”
“Don’t be a dick. Seriously, don’t.” I walked toward the door. “No more drinking.”
“I guess I’ll see you tomorrow then, darling.”
“I guess you will.”
I went to leave, but he called my name, and I paused, looking back.
“You showing up was the highlight of my day,” he said, eyes looking tired and glassy—and yet still handsome, despite everything.
I felt a little thrill, and hid the smile by leaving, and closing the door behind me.
He was a goddamn mess. Without his job, I could only imagine what he was going through. He spent his whole life in that hospital, and basically treated this apartment like some place he had to go to between shifts. Surgery was his entire life—and now, his life was crashing down.
He needed me, like I needed him—and maybe even more.
26
Piers
I woke up hungover again, but at least the sweet memory of Lori cooking me dinner and making sure I didn’t drown myself still lingered in the back of my mind like a soothing balm.
Even if I knew it was wrong to want her to keep coming back.
I showered, made coffee, and was tempted to break into the bottle of vodka I had hidden in my closet—but decided against it.
Drinking wouldn’t solve my problems. I was being pathetic, and I knew it. I was wallowing in my anger and self-pity, all because I didn’t have any other direction in my life. I’d spent so long becoming a surgeon, then defining myself through my work. Without it, I didn’t know what I was, or what I’d do.
But Lori showed me something by coming to my apartment, despite everything.
She gave a shit about me, and maybe I could give a shit about myself, too.
I turned on the light in the small office I had next to my bedroom. I barely used it, since I spent all my time in the hospital, but now I went through my filing cabinet and began to amass a pile of patient charts and folders that I’d kept over the years.
I was meticulous about my charting, to the point that I made backup copies, just in case something happened at the hospital. My patients came first, always before my loyalty to the institution. Unfortunately, I didn’t have the most recent charts—these covered my early career, up to about a year ago, when I started to keep everything in my office at the hospital. Which meant Gina and Caroline had all of those.
Still, it was a good thing I started out so intense about my paperwork, because buried in the relatively large stack I had balanced precariously in front of me on the kitchen table were several very rich and very old patients that might be my ticket back into the administration’s good graces.
Or might be my ticket into a job somewhere else in the city.
I wasn’t sure which I wanted yet, and right now, it didn’t matter.
I sat and thought of Lori. She wanted to fight, even if it seemed like fighting was worthless. She believed I could be better, and rise above it all—to the point where she was willing to keep coming over, even when I thought it was done.
Once again, she showed me that I had to be better.
I spent all of the morning and most of the afternoon skimming through those files. I was looking for a particular kind of patient: someone wealthy, and someone that might need my kind of services. I whittled it down to a slightly smaller stack of files of potential candidates, then I began making phone calls, one after the other.
The first ones were unbearably awkward.
“Hello, yes, is this Mrs. Mayer?” I asked.
“Yes,” she said, her voice a smoker’s croak. “And who the heck is this?”
“My name is Dr. Hood. I’m a surgeon at Westview General. I was wondering if you’re in need of any procedures.”
A long, painful pause, in which I’m pretty sure I died a few times. “Are you calling to ask me if I need surgery?”
“Yes, ma’am,” I said. “Or if you’re looking for a new surgeon or a new doctor.”
“Do you do this a lot?” she asked. “Randomly call people, asking if they need surgery?”
“No, ma’am,” I said.
“Then why are you doing it now?”
“New thing, ma’am.”
“Right. I don’t need surgery.” And she hung up.
It went about the same for the next few calls, and I quickly realized why doctors didn’t do this sort of thing.
It was unquestionably weird, calling people up and asking if they needed surgery. Most of the time, patients had no clue whether they needed a surgeon or not—but I still had to try. It felt like I was breaking some kind of rule, or maybe bending my ethics a little bit, but I knew that if I was going to improve my current position, I had to do it with a roster of new patients that needed my services. It wasn’t enough
