by Juniper Hart
I am going to be chief this time next year, he thought happily as his mind succumbed to sleep. And my first order of business will be getting rid of Griffin.
6
I need a break. I can’t go on like this. Kate sat at the table in the small kitchen, suddenly unable to rise. She had been running herself ragged for almost two months, and her body was beginning to show signs of severe stress. She couldn’t remember the last time she had consumed anything more than a bite of a sandwich or a swig of coffee.
She warned herself that she needed to drink something or risk worsening her dehydration, but despite the understanding, she found herself unable to function. A slow panic began to fill Kate, yet she willed herself to remain calm. She just had to take a deep breath. It was mind over matter. She was off today. She needed to get her health back on track: forget about going to the lab, ignore any of Dr. Griffin’s texts, stay home, eat well, sleep, and take a bath. She had earned it.
Still, Kate found herself eyeing her cell phone, a sick feeling of dread in the pit of her stomach. It was only seven o’clock in the morning. She knew, however, that within the next hour, Griffin would be texting her with an assignment, and she would be powerless to say no.
You can say no. Why can’t you say no? she yelled at herself with as much gusto as she could manage, but even that internal turmoil was causing her more exhaustion. Kate dropped her heavy head into her arms, feeling the sweet feeling of slumber wash over her.
“I know your bed is crappy, but it has to be better than sleeping at the kitchen table.”
Kate did not look up to greet Lisette, her foggy brain in and out of consciousness. For a moment, she was sure that she was dreaming her roommate.
“Kate, you’re going to die if you keep this up. You know better than anyone how important it is to keep your immune system up and functioning,” Lisette rattled as she made coffee. It was one of those rare occasions when the two found themselves with the same day off. Kate selfishly wished she was alone.
“Are you going to the hospital today?” she croaked without raising her head. Lisette scoffed.
“Of course not. I, unlike you, treasure my days off. Why are you asking?”
“I wanted you to get me a banana bag.”
Lisette grabbed her roommate’s head between her palms, her dark grey eyes lit with annoyance as their gazes met. “First of all, you need sleep and real food, not an intravenous of electrolytes. Secondly, we both know that Dr. Slave Driver is going to be texting you any second for some asshole reason, and you’re going to jump. When that happens, you can get your own damned banana bag.”
Kate was too tired to protest either point and, as if on cue, her cell chimed, indicating a message. Before she could react, Lisette dropped her face and snatched the device from the table, promptly placing it atop the fridge.
“Give me the phone, Lis,” Kate mumbled, finally lifting her head. Lisette returned to making her toast and shrugged indifferently.
“It’s on the fridge. Go get it yourself. You’ve got two feet and a heartbeat… for now,” she replied flippantly. Kate looked longingly at the appliance, willing her legs to move, but they would not oblige. “You’re stuck there, aren’t you?” Lisette asked, sighing heavily. Kate groaned and dropped her head back into her frail arms. “If you keep pushing yourself like this, you can kiss your residency goodbye,” Lisette warned her. “You think your immortality makes you invincible, but that’s not true. You need to take a day to yourself. Screw Griffin. He’ll get by without you one day. He’s gotten by this long.”
Although Kate understood the truth in her best friend’s words, she knew she would not be able to deny her boss’s texts. It was not like he was asking her to pick up his dry cleaning. He needed her to do important research for him. Lives hung in the balance as she moaned about being tired—lives like Veronica’s.
She envisioned the neurosurgeon waiting by the phone for her response, and a sudden burst of adrenaline coursed through her.
“You have got to be kidding me,” Lisette muttered as Kate stumbled toward the refrigerator to retrieve her phone.
“That’s not so bad,” Kate commented mid-yawn after reading what he was asking of her. “I can do that from here. I’ll just lie and tell him I did it from the lab. Just this one time.” As if he had heard her, Griffin texted again. Reading the new message, Kate’s face fell.
“What does he want now?” Lisette demanded, taking in Kate’s crestfallen face.
“Nothing,” the brunette fairy lied.
Lisette snorted in disbelief. “Doesn’t look like nothing.”
Kate exhaled, trying to force back tears of frustration. “He wants me to clean the lab today,” she muttered, slipping the phone into her worn flannel robe. Lisette shook her head, a snide expression on her beautiful face.
“You better start laying down the law, Kate. Mark my words—you’re going to ruin your whole life with this guy, and for what? A few extra bucks?”
“It’s more than a few bucks, Lisette. It’s a chance to be a thread in the history of the Enchanted. It’s—” Lisette held up her hand, having already heard enough.
“Tell yourself what you want, Kate, but you know I’m right.” She didn’t give Kate a chance to respond and left the kitchen.
Kate shuffled back toward her room, a deep sigh escaping her lips. Of course Lisette was right, but Kate didn’t know how to get out of the mess she had created for herself.
Even though people were greeting her as she walked through the doors of the hospital, Kate was in self-preservation mode, determined to save every iota of energy she could to make it through the next few hours.
You can clean the lab in a couple hours and still have the entire day to sleep and catch your breath, Kate reassured herself. She knew she was not being unrealistic. The lab, while state-of-the-art, was almost brand new and relatively small. She had done her best to maintain its order and cleanliness throughout her time there, so the task at hand wasn’t overwhelming, even in her depleted state.
Somehow, she made it to the fifth floor, although later, when she replayed the events of the day in her mind, she could not specifically remember the elevator ride to Section B. She did recall looking around for Michael Walter as she moved.
He hasn’t been around the apartment much, Kate thought, making her way into the secure lab facility. Nor have I seen him since that night we talked in the ICU.
Not minding where she was going, Kate glanced up suddenly as she almost collided with someone exiting the labs.
“Wow, you look awful,” Nurse Creighton commented when she brushed past Kate. “Are you sure you can swallow everything you bit off, rookie?”
Kate almost didn’t hear the older woman’s taunting, her body too depleted to feel anything but a slight sense of resignation. They might be right—all of them. She was probably not going to make it one more week at this rate. How had the others done it? Had the others done it? Maybe they were all dead. Maybe that was why the interns never lasted in the labs.
Walking toward Dr. Griffin’s room, Kate’s heart froze. Graham Griffin was hunched over a high-resolution microscope in the center of the lab.
How the hell am I supposed to clean up the lab with him working in it? she thought with a spark of irritation. She used her key card to enter, and Griffin looked up. His brow furrowed in puzzlement.
“What are you doing here?” he asked, glancing at his watch. Kate stared at him for a moment, wondering if he was making an attempt at a joke. When she realized he was waiting for an answer, she ground her teeth.
“You texted me,” she replied shortly, dropping her bag on the desk she exclusively used. When she turned back to him, she found he was still watching her in confusion.
“It’s not even nine o’clock in the morning,” he informed her, and Kate could not resist responding.
“Oh, I know.” Because I should be sleeping right now, you dictator. It was taking everything inside her not to snap at him.
> “I have work to do, Dr. Luthor. When I asked you to clean the lab, I wasn’t expecting you to come this morning. I can’t work with you nattering around in here. You’ll have to return later.” Considering the conversation closed, he put his shining blue eye back to the microscope lens, leaving Kate to gape at him.
Come back later? He expects me to go home and come back when it suits him? Hell no!
Dr. Griffin’s head whipped up, and Kate suddenly realized she had spoken aloud.
“Pardon me?” he asked, cocking his head to the side as if he were sure he had misunderstood her. But Kate wasn’t contrite, not in the least. The stress and weariness had overtaken her slender body, and she could hold back no longer. Her intelligent, weary eyes clashed with his azure irises, and she folded her arms over her chest.
“No. I’m not coming back,” she told him. “I can do it now or I can do it another day, but I am not coming back today.”
“I see,” Graham Griffin said, but the look on his face told her that he did not see at all. Instantly, Kate felt a stab of panic. She was going to lose her job. She couldn’t afford to lose it, she had to apologize.
Dr. Griffin walked around the corner of the counter and stared at Kate as she opened her mouth to speak. To her surprise, though, words of regret didn’t spill forth.
“This is not what I signed up for,” she heard herself say. A voice inside her screamed at her to stop, but the frustration of her situation had possessed her body. She had finally been driven over the edge.
“And what exactly did you sign up for?” Griffin snapped, his own face a mask of annoyance.
“I was told twenty-five hours a week. I’m pulling at least forty. I haven’t slept or eaten or showered in days. I’m a zombie, and my rounds are suffering. I want this job. I need it, frankly, but I can’t be at your beck and call anymore.”
Shut up! Shut up! Shut up! But it was too late, and the silence which hung over them was heavy and awkward. Swallowing heavily, Kate went to brush past him, no longer caring about the research lab or Dr. Griffin or even about being a doctor. She just wanted her bed.
Surprisingly, Griffin put his hands on her shoulders and spun her to face him.
“Go home,” he told her, and she nodded curtly. Now he was going to make a big production of terminating her. The guy was unbelievable.
“That’s where I’m going,” she retorted, trying to move past him, but he held her firmly in place.
“Come back at eight o’clock tonight.”
She gaped at him in disbelief. The sheer gall of this bastard! “I just said—”
“I would like to take you out for dinner.” Kate’s jaw almost hit the floor of the lab.
“You what?” she croaked. Then, for the first time in two months, Dr. Graham Griffin smiled at her, and she felt her insides melt into a puddle. Why hadn’t he done that before? He was so handsome when he smiled.
“You just said that you haven’t eaten or slept or showered in days. Go home, take a shower, get some sleep, and I will take care of feeding you. Is that fair?”
Unsure if her vocal cords would cooperate, she only nodded again, and Griffin released her shoulders. She remained in place, staring into his impossibly blue eyes, and he maintained the small smile on his full lips.
“What are you waiting for?” he asked, and Kate shook her head, squeezing into the small space between the counter and the neurosurgeon, her heart thumping wildly. She caught a whiff of his smoky cologne as she passed, and it made her realize she had never been so close to him.
Grabbing her purse, she kept her head down, shuffling past him again, feeling his eyes boring into her.
“Eight o’clock,” he reminded her as she walked out. Kate offered him a timid smile.
“I won’t forget,” she assured him, turning to leave before he could see how pink her face had become.
“I know. You don’t forget anything,” he replied, and the words stuck in Kate’s head as she floated back into the lobby.
He’s only extending an invitation as a courtesy. He can tell you’re on the brink of having a nervous breakdown, and he likes the work you’re doing, so he wants to keep you happy. That’s all this is. Yet all the way home, Kate could not help hoping she was wrong.
“That didn’t take you long,” Lisette called from the miniscule living room where she was smoking a cigarette. She put it out guiltily and peered around the corner, but Kate was too distracted to notice her roommate’s infraction of smoking in the house—again. “Hey, you okay?” Lisette called as Kate headed directly into her room without answering.
“Huh? Oh, yeah, yeah, I’m fine,” she said, flashing a quick smile at the brunette. “I’m going to sleep.”
“Okay,” Lisette replied slowly. “Listen, if you’re feeling a little more human later, some of us are going out for dinner and drinks at the Observatory.”
Kate paused and looked at her, a dozen thoughts flying through her mind. Immediately, she shook her head. “I can’t. I have to go back to the lab,” she said, and Lisette’s mouth dropped into a frown.
“Oh, come on, Kate. This is becoming ridiculous!” she snapped, but Kate only shrugged.
“What can I do?” she asked innocently. “When you work for a world-class neurosurgeon…”
“You work for a world-class jerk,” Lisette retorted, and Kate chuckled.
“See you later,” she called, closing her bedroom door behind her. She leaned heavily against the flimsy wood and exhaled. If this is just a friendly business dinner, why did you lie through your teeth to your best friend about it?
Long after Kate Luthor had left the building, Graham wondered what had inspired him to ask her to dinner. Perhaps it was the naked plaintiveness in her expression, or the anger she had managed to muster despite her obvious worse-for-wear state.
Over the past months, Graham had been pleasantly surprised by Dr. Luthor’s contributions to his research. He had never had an assistant with her tenacity or intelligence and quickly found himself checking his Dropbox for her notes. While she was still new to the world of medicine, her mind was open, and her ideas refreshing. She had not made any suggestions which stood on their own merit, but her thought processes had led him to investigate avenues he would not have otherwise considered. It was evident that Dr. Luthor was going to be a brilliant doctor when finally thrown from the nest, and Graham selfishly wanted to be a part of watching that growth.
All our correspondences have been electronic. I have never sat down and spoken with this woman face to face. The least I can do is take her to dinner, he reasoned, but even as he thought it, he wondered if he was lying to himself.
Kate’s furious diatribe had inspired guilt in him as he recognized the truth in her words. He had been calling her at all hours, and she had always responded without question or complaint. Was he so out of touch with what it had been like to be in her shoes? He had been a first-year once upon a time, not so long ago. She truly had not signed up for this treatment. He didn’t know how she had managed so long. She was a remarkable woman.
Graham turned back to his experiment and tried to push the image of Kate Luthor’s face from his mind. It is a friendly dinner among colleagues. Nothing more.
He ignored the voice in his head which demanded to know when he had ever asked another doctor to dinner. Sure, he had bedded dozens of interns and residents, nurses, even pharmaceutical reps, but never, in his career as a doctor, had he asked one out to dinner.
There is not another doctor like Kate Luthor, he thought to himself, and for the first time since he could remember, Graham was excited.
7
“Did you catch up on your sleep?” Graham glanced at Kate, who fiddled nervously with her hands in the passenger side of the Mercedes. She turned away from the window and nodded quickly. Then she let out a laugh and shook her head.
“No,” she answered truthfully. “It’s hard to catch up on eight years of sleep in one afternoon.”
Graham chuckled, making a
right onto 82nd Avenue. “I guess that’s true,” he replied dryly.
“Does it ever get better?” Kate asked, turning her entire face to him. He maintained a wry smile on his face and shrugged.
“That depends on what you consider ‘better’. Do you ever catch up on your sleep? No. But is it more rewarding as time goes by? I suspect in your case, it will be.”
Kate blinked, seeming unsure of what to make of the comment.
“In my case?” she echoed. “What makes my case different than anyone else’s?”
Graham was silent for a moment, and he turned left onto Stark Street.
“I suspect that you have the drive and desire to make it all worth the torture,” he told her quietly. Kate moved her head to shift her gaze out the window again. A gasp escaped her lips as Graham pulled into a parking spot. He watched as she seemed to sink back into the leather seat.
“Oh,” she whispered, her face paling when she realized where they were. Graham looked at her, his eyes narrowing.
“Is something wrong?” he demanded. Kate was reluctant to answer, her eyes darting about his face. He could read her reluctance to confess the problem.
“We can’t go in there,” she breathed, her face flushed with embarrassment. A flash of irritation shot through Graham, but he managed to keep his composure.
“Why not? This place has great reviews, and it’s got a good menu. I’ve been here a few times,” he offered. Kate shook her head again.
“We can’t,” she told him again, but this time, there was a firmness in her voice. Sighing, he put the keys back in the ignition and started the car.
“Fine,” he said shortly. “Where would you like to go?” Kate didn’t answer, her mouth pursed into a miserable line.
“I lied to my best friend,” she suddenly said, and Graham glanced at her uncomprehendingly.