by Katy Kaylee
Should I still wear this? Or should I just take it off and quickly find something else? But it was the day of Halloween, finding a decent costume would be nearly impossible, and even if I did find it I’d probably have to fight through the crowds in the stores to get one. No way.
And Tabitha wanted me to wear this. She wanted the two of us to be a pair.
For her, I could do this. No matter how stupid or silly I looked.
Except for the uh, one particular muscle that was standing out.
I had to adjust myself a bit so that I wouldn’t scar any kids or offend the parents. But that should work. This was never going to be my favorite look of all time but at least there would only be a couple of embarrassing pictures to show for it and Tabitha would be happy—and really, wasn’t that all that mattered at the end of the day? That my girl was happy?
When I stepped out of the bathroom Tabitha clapped her hands in delight. “You look perfect Uncle Alex!”
I put the jaunty green cap with the red feather on my head and gave her an elaborate bow. “One Peter Pan at your service, Miss Bell.”
Tabitha giggled. “Peter would never talk that way to Tinkerbell, he’s not polite enough!”
“Well maybe I’m the polite Peter Pan. Someone’s got to make sure you learn proper manners around here young lady.” I gave her a mock stern look that just made Tabitha giggle even more.
Pippa was finishing up doing Tabitha’s costume in the back, adjusting the fairy wings. I noticed how she looked at me and had to struggle to subdue a smile, her cheeks getting a little pink. Once I would’ve perked up at that, and been ready to start flirting, but now… and it wasn’t even knowing the hospital’s policies that kept me from doing it. I just… genuinely wasn’t interested in Pippa.
She was a beautiful woman, with blonde hair and big blue eyes, and she had always been friendly to me. She was good with Tabitha and had a great sense of humor. It wasn’t anything wrong with Pippa herself. I was sure anyone would be lucky to have her.
But I’d had a taste of Claire Montague, and now that was all that I wanted. I wanted her, nobody else.
It was startling and surprising. I’d never been a one-woman guy like that. But something about her intrigued me. She was a challenge but not just the kind of challenge that would keep me occupied for a few days or weeks until I got her out of my system, but the kind of challenge that could keep a man occupied for the rest of his life.
“Looking good,” Pippa teased, winking at me.
I chuckled in response, flexing like I was putting on a show. Pippa laughed.
“Can we go trick-or-treating now?” Tabitha asked.
“Here, I’ll go check and make sure that everyone else is ready too, okay?” Pippa said. “We should be just about good to go.”
I gave Tabitha an orange plastic pumpkin sort of basket for her treats. I didn’t know how many of them she’d actually be able to eat with her condition, but I was sure that Dr. Montague and the other staff would know and be able to help out. And since the staff were all the ones who were giving out the treats in the first place, I had faith that they’d done their best to pick out things that would be all right for the kids.
Pippa poked her head back into the room as I helped Tabitha to get off the bed and onto her feet. “All right, everyone’s ready!” she announced, a big grin on her face. It was great to see that the staff were as excited about this as the kid were.
I walked with Tabitha to our first stop: the nurse’s station.
Tabitha held out her pumpkin. “Trick or treat!”
“Oh my God, you are just the prettiest fairy!” one of the nurses cooed. They all looked enamored with her. One of the men bent down with the bowl of treats and helped Tabitha to pick one out for herself.
As Tabitha showed off her fairy wings and did a twirl to show off her skirt, Pippa pulled me aside. “I just want to say in a totally non-creepy way that I think it’s really great, what you’re doing for your girl.”
“What do you mean?” Going trick or treating with your kid was pretty much one of the most basic things you could do as a parent, wasn’t it?
Pippa eyed me up and down. “The tights? Seriously?”
I laughed. “I’d do anything for her. Wearing tights seemed like a small thing in comparison.”
“I agree, but I don’t know a lot of guys who’d be caught dead in them. It’s pretty clear that you’d do whatever to make her smile and I wanted you to know that we all see and appreciate that here in the ward. And I promise you that it’s making Tabitha happy and it’s helping in her recovery.”
My heart soared to hear her say that, even as I chuckled at the bit about the tights. I was glad that I could do anything to help Tabitha, and if this was helping her then dammit, it was worth it. It was all worth it.
“You know,” Pippa went on, “I’m having a Halloween costume party later tonight. Would you like to come?”
Oh. Um. Huh.
For the first time in my life, I was wrongfooted about being asked to a party. My usual response to something like that would be yes, definitely, but what about Tabitha?
“Usually I stick around here until Tabitha falls asleep,” I said. I did like the idea of going to a party. It had been forever since I’d been social outside of chatting with hospital staff or talking with Tommy on the phone. But Tabitha was my priority and I wasn’t going to leave her for a party—no social event was that unmissable.
“Oh, don’t worry,” Pippa laughed. “The party won’t even start until ten. I have to get off work and set up, and I have friends who are parents or who need to get off work. And it’s not far from the hospital at all, so you can get back to Tabitha quickly if you need to.”
That was good. Ten p.m., Tabitha would have been asleep for hours by then. I could go out to the party for a couple of hours, go to sleep, and see Tabitha in the morning like usual. It would be good, a chance to relax and have some fun. Tommy was always reminding me to take care of myself during this whole process, put your own oxygen mask on first, etc.
“Besides,” Pippa said, “some of the other hospital staff will be there.”
The look she gave me was sly and knowing, and I knew exactly what she meant. I hadn’t exactly been the most subtle in my attraction to Claire and it was obvious that Claire and Pippa were close. They were always chatting together, laughing, and tended to share the same shifts.
Seemed that even if Claire was unsure about what to do with me, Pippa thought that I should go for it.
Huh.
It was probably a bad idea but I couldn’t resist. I wanted to talk with Claire and see if maybe we could… work something out. I wanted to see her again in a more personal setting, to be with her properly. She was the flame to my moth and I felt myself nodding even as I knew that this could easily end in disaster. “I might be able to squeeze the party in.”
Pippa grabbed a spare piece of paper from the nurse’s station and jotted down her address. “Here you go! I’ll buzz you in, no problem.” She grinned. “You’ll be the most handsome boy who never grew up at my party.” She winked at me.
I rolled my eyes, chuckling as Pippa practically skipped away, laughing at her own joke. I was definitely changing my costume before tonight.
I wanted to sweep Claire off her feet.
10
Claire
I was trying to make my rounds, but it was Halloween, and that meant one thing: kids trick-or-treating in the hallway.
I was glad that the kids were having fun. They should get a chance to relax and actually be kids for a while instead of being patients. It was shocking, really, when you thought about it, how dehumanizing it was to be in a hospital day in and day out. We thought of dehumanizing as something done consciously, with malicious intent, like putting people into camps or using slurs. But there were other ways that it happened. In saving the lives of these kids, we were also keeping them from getting to be who they really wanted to be, who they deserved to be: kids who could go o
ut and play and be themselves without thought.
This was one of the few nights where they could do this, and I kind of envied them, actually. I hadn’t gotten to be carefree like that in years. Not since my mom had really started pushing for me to work hard and to be all that I could be. A lot of the time I was grateful for it because I liked my job and I liked to work hard, and I was competitive. And a perfectionist.
But other times I wished that I’d had a bit more time to be social and to relax. Even now I struggled with it—with finding ways and times to just be, instead of always rushing around, being a workaholic.
For all of my good intentions, though, it still frustrated me a bit that the kids were running around like this. It made doing my rounds difficult.
Festivities like this were important to healing kids. You couldn’t just treat the body, you had to treat the mind, the heart, as much as you could. Emotional healing was as important as physical healing and often even more difficult. But we tried our best.
I even had a satchel of treats with me that I would give out as I visited each patient, to get into the spirit of things. Although I wasn’t dressing up. I drew the line at that. I was still on call and I still had to be prepared to be a doctor and perform my duties, and I couldn’t do that if I was walking around dressed like a witch, or something.
As I waded through the chaos, dispensing treats and checking on patients, my heart gave a twinge for the kids who were too sick to participate. The ones who couldn’t have treats, who couldn’t get out of bed to dress up. The other kids were encouraged to stop by and say hello, show off their costumes but… it just broke my heart to have to go into those patient rooms, to see the kids’ faces, kids who knew they were missing out on the fun yet again.
I spent some time with one of my patients who was like that, trying to give extra attention because, well, it’s the least I could do, and then walked out into the hallway.
“Claire!”
I turned to see Tabitha hurrying towards me, dressed as Tinkerbell. She was absolutely adorable. I was glad to see that she had the strength to go running around like this, but I was wary that she’d tire out and collapse any second. She could go from bouncing around to asleep in a matter of minutes, and we weren’t out of the woods yet. I was still worried that she could take a turn for the worse, even though Alex was optimistic about her.
Alex’s determined optimism was good, honestly, Tabitha needed him to believe in her. It was my job to see the risks and the pitfalls that we might still hit. His job as the father was to be the cheerleader.
I smiled at Tabitha as she ran up. “You look magical!”
She gave a twirl. “I love my fairy wings!”
“I think they’re perfect, they suit you.”
Alex walked up behind Tabitha and I raised my head. I had given up on trying to call him Mr. Conner in my mind. Not when I was constantly replaying our kiss in my head, either just daydreaming or touching myself in bed. I craved him like a drug and it terrified me.
And then—holy shit.
I realized what he was wearing.
Alex walked up to us in what was obviously a Peter Pan costume, but—what a costume. I couldn’t stop staring. I knew I was staring, I knew I should close my jaw and pop my eyes back into my head, get a goddamn grip, but I couldn’t. I was fixated.
Before, Alex had only ever worn some variation on suits. I hadn’t seen him in anything really casual. He once mentioned something about dressing up for Tabitha and it had, despite my best intentions, melted my heart just a little bit. His clothes had always looked good on him—made him look dashing and cosmopolitan—but they didn’t exactly reveal his body. They were conservative that way, which was appropriate given that he was around a child all day, in a children’s hospital.
But oh my God. Now—now—
Now he was wearing this costume that clung to him almost like a second skin and I could see, well, everything.
Alex Conner was a fucking knockout.
I could hardly breathe. My heart was racing and I could feel heat racing through me as I continued to take in the sight of him. He was all muscle in a way that I hadn’t suspected. Well, sure, I’d known he was strong, known he was healthy, but this was a whole other level. He looked like he could lift me up against a wall without even breaking a sweat, and it made butterflies erupt in my stomach. I could picture it so easily…
Too easily. My cheeks were heating up. I was on duty, at work, in front of kids! I shouldn’t be thinking about this!
Before, my fantasies about him had been a bit, well, blurry. I didn’t know what his body looked like. I’d had to imagine and had sort of come up blank. Thanks to this costume I definitely knew what he would look like naked. The suit left next to nothing to the imagination. I had to work to keep my eyes focused on his face, uh, or, well, okay, his chest, instead of diving my gaze down between his legs to see if I could see just how big he was.
My mouth watered at the idea of him inside of me. If he’d peeled off that costume and taken me into his arms I wasn’t sure that I’d be able to say no and the idea both thrilled and terrified me.
Alex must have known my thoughts. He had to, because he gave me a devastating smile, wide and welcome, charming as all get out.
I turned away quickly, my cheeks feeling like they were on fire, and focused back on Tabitha. “You know, you’re supposed to say…”
Tabitha laughed and held out her pumpkin-shaped basket. “Trick or treat!”
I dug into my satchel, pulling out a treat. “I suppose this time I’ll go with treat,” I told her, winking. “But you’d better have a trick ready just in case! You never know.”
“Oh don’t worry, I know lots of tricks.” Tabitha took the treat and skipped away down the hall to find the next stop.
Alex paused in front of me before following Tabitha down the hallway. I had to fight to make eye contact with him, feeling embarrassed and wrong-footed.
He looked me up and down, raising an eyebrow in an attempt to look stern even as I saw the corner of his mouth twitching upwards into a smirk. “Your costume is pretty unoriginal, Dr. Montague.”
“I—I’m not wearing a costume,” I replied stiffly. I wasn’t sure if I was glad I sounded so cranky or not. On the one hand, Alex was a good person and I didn’t want him to think I hated him. We just couldn’t date or anything, that was all. On the other hand, I didn’t want him to know just how badly he affected me, just how much I wanted him, thought about him, like a stupid teenager with a crush, feeling twelve-years-old all over again.
Alex shook his head. “Pity.”
Then he grabbed his cap—the distinctive green felt with the red feather that Peter Pan wore—and placed it on my head. “You should try and get into the spirit,” he told me, winking.
I hated that there was a swoop in my stomach, hated that I was blushing and that I wanted to smile at him and crack some kind of joke in return.
So instead I just stood there like an absolute dork while Alex left, following Tabitha to keep an eye on her.
I reached up to grab the Peter Pan cap, tempted to take it off… but I paused, my fingers rubbing the felt. I mean. He was right, wasn’t he? I needed to get into the spirit just a little. It wasn’t going to impede my ability to do my job if I needed to take care of a kid, I’d just throw the hat off, and it looked fun in the meantime. It made me feel a bit lighter inside.
Watching the two as they stopped at the next treat station, it was clear that Tabitha was having the time of her life. I smiled dopily, probably looking like an idiot, but not caring so long as Alex couldn’t see me. Tabitha was just so happy and so full of life.
And Alex obviously cared about her and about giving her his full attention and a fun time. He was wearing this costume for her, that was clear. It showed his body off to the point where I was practically drooling but it didn’t seem like the kind of outfit he’d pick out for himself. He was trick or treating with her, and goofing off with her, and getting into
the spirit of things without a thought to his own preferences or dignity.
That warmed me up in an entirely different way from my desire for him to fuck me. It made me feel a little bittersweet, too, like a lingering feeling in my throat.
My father and I didn’t really… well, before the divorce, he hadn’t really been a huge part of my life. He’d always been working. Or so my mom had said. She would pick my costumes out every year, these big elaborate costumes, and have the time of her life dressing me up. I’d known, even as a little kid, that it was more about her than it was about me. It was about her getting to do this with me rather than what I wanted to wear and do.
I was pretty sure that my father was actually too busy with work to do a lot of things with me, but now that I was so much older, an adult who could see my mother’s flaws, I couldn’t help but wonder if maybe he would’ve gone trick or treating with me, or carved pumpkins or something fun and Halloween-y, if I had asked him. If he would have made the time. Maybe he didn’t know what my mom was saying to me, just as I hadn’t known what my mother was saying to him.
By the time the divorce happened I was twelve and had decided that I was too old for Halloween. I’d been prepping for college by then, speeding through high school, determined to be the best and my mom had been my number one cheerleader. Honestly, part of it had probably been a coping mechanism from the divorce. No shit, Sherlock, yeah, I get it, but I was a kid at the time, I couldn’t recognize my own psychological motivation. Hindsight was 20/20 and all that. I hadn’t had a relationship with my father and I hadn’t been able to control the divorce but I could control my academic skills and my career so I had worked on that instead.
Most of the time I didn’t really think about it. Everyone had their struggles and their stories. Some people didn’t have a father in the picture at all, some people had fathers who hit them, others had no mother, some had two mothers, some had wonderful parents but struggled with depression and mental health… the list went on. I never pitied myself or thought much about my own situation, really.