by Melinda Minx
I sighed and shook my head. “Maybe I’m meant to be in the sand trap.”
“Loser talk,” Grussler said. “Right, Noah?”
Noah nodded as he drove. “Ignore your dad, man. He’s a fuckup, and you aren’t.”
“Being a shitty father is hereditary in my family.”
Noah looked back over his shoulder at me. “Naomi and Ava would say otherwise. I’m sure Lacey would too.”
“I just play with them. It’s different than being a father.”
“My kids count on you, man,” Noah said. “You’ve been with Naomi for eight years. You’ve never let her down. Remember when Ava got sick and you took Naomi for what, three days?”
I nodded. “It was just three days. That still doesn’t make me good father material.”
“You’ve always been there for my kids.”
“Stop sucking his dick, Noah,” Grussler said. “He’s gotta find a way to dig himself out of this hole. If he doesn’t want to do it on his own, he’s never going to be able to do it.”
I got out my sand wedge and assessed the situation. I was at least thirty feet off the green, and ten feet deep in the sand. I could probably guarantee that I’d get out of the sand, but if I actually wanted to stay competitive I needed to risk overshooting the green and landing in the water on the other side of the fairway. If Grussler was going to try to correlate every single fucking thing I did in this stupid golf game into my real life, then I wasn’t going to take half-measures here.
I squared my shoulders and hit hard, aiming for the fairway. I overshot a little bit, and the ball hit the fairway hard, then kept rolling. It went off the green, but not into the water. I was only a little bit behind Grussler and Noah now.
Grussler put a hand on my shoulder. “Good. You didn’t pussyfoot around there. That’s what you’ve gotta do, Winters. Just swing hard and trust your aim.”
I looked Grussler right in the eyes and patted him on his hand, which was still on my shoulder. “As much as I appreciate your advice, Grussler, putting it all into golf analogies isn’t actually helping me. You realize I don’t like the game, right?”
He laughed. “Golf’s always been a compromise, Winters. My real love is fishing, but I heard you hate that even more.”
“That’s it,” I said, realization dawning on me. I’d suddenly thought of a way to get Emily to talk to me again. “Fuck, Grussler. Fishing! That’s my sand wedge.”
Grussler tilted his head at me.
“You two mind if I get out of here? I need to take my shot with Emily.”
19
Emily
My mom was sitting in the kitchen and doing a dinosaur jigsaw puzzle with Elijah. I had my white coat on and was getting ready to leave for work.
I’d been doing a very good job forgetting about Silas by throwing myself into my work. It was harder when I had a day off and spent all day alone with Elijah. He’d been asking when we were going to see Daddy again.
I wasn’t planning on keeping Elijah from his father, but I’d had to drastically re-assess what would happen between us.
I believed he could be a good father, and I wasn’t going to ruin that by throwing myself into a relationship with him that was doomed to fail.
Maybe he was just meant to be a three-day-per-week father, and that was enough for him to be in Elijah’s life.
My mom kept looking at me with this annoying, smug face. She thought she understood everything after being here for only five days. I’d told her why Silas was out of the picture for now, and she’d not said a word about it since. Still, from the looks she’d been giving me, I knew she was letting it all build up until she thought the time was right. By my estimation, I had maybe three or four days until she sat me down to have a talk about it.
She was going to sleep at my place tonight while I worked a night shift. I’d see her again in the morning.
I decided I didn’t want to wait around for it. I wanted to hear what she had to say right now, if only to stop her from giving me those looks.
“What do you think Jillian should do?” I asked her.
“Jillian? Who’s Jillian?”
“On the soap opera,” I said.
I didn’t watch soap operas, but Mom did. I wasn’t going to talk about things with Silas in front of Elijah, but I needed to talk.
“Oh,” she said, looking up at me. “Jillian.” She shrugged and put another piece into the puzzle. Elijah shot her a thumbs up. “Why would I know what Jillian should do?”
I sighed and rolled my eyes. “You keep looking like you know what she should do, so maybe you should just come out with it?”
“I think Jillian has the right idea. It’s fine to take some time to stew. Just not too much time.”
“Frank really messed things up,” I said, “it would be really annoying to see Jillian go up and beg for him back when she didn’t do anything wrong.”
Mom nodded and locked an edge piece into the puzzle. It had a brontosaurus head eating a leaf. “I don’t think Jillian should beg, but I do think she should be receptive.”
“Receptive?”
“She’s not even letting Frank give his side of the story.”
“Frank is wishy-washy. What if she takes his side of the story, and they end up—I don’t know—moving in together? Then a month or two later he decides that—oops!—he wasn’t ready for this and he wants to undo it. Where does that put them with…” I realized then that Gillian and Frank didn’t have a kid in the soap opera that Mom watched.
“With the baby,” she said. “Well, Gillian should be receptive is all I’m saying. If she hears Frank out and Frank is still giving off a wishy-washy vibe, then she can shut the door right in his face again.”
I turned the TV on and put on some loud and annoying cartoon. Elijah moved right over to the couch, and I gestured for Mom to come into the kitchen with me.
We talked in low voices, and there was no way Elijah could hear us.
“It’s really hard for me to resist him,” I said. “I’m trying to be strong, you know? If I just let him charm his way back in, I’ll feel weak and foolish if things fall apart somewhere down the line.”
“You have to be willing to take some amount of risk. I’m not a doctor, Emily, but say you’re doing open-heart surgery—”
“I’m not a surgeon, Mom.”
“And I’m not a doctor. But say you’re doing open-heart surgery, and you get the heart open, and you see that you have to cut out one of the valves—”
“That’s not how it works—”
“Shhh,”Mom said, putting a finger in my face. “So you’re afraid to cut it out because it’s scary, but if you just close the chest back up, you know the heart is never going to work right.”
I rolled my eyes. “I think my heart will work fine with just Elijah.”
Mom pointed a finger to my chest. “Something is hurting you in there, Emily, I can feel that. I think it’s worth taking a risk.”
“I’ll think about it,” I said.
It was a slow night at the hospital. Probably the slowest night since I’d started working here. Normally that would have been a blessing, but I’d wanted something to keep my mind occupied. I didn’t want people to actually be hurt—that was the tricky thing when you were a doctor wishing for more work—but if people were going to get hurt, I wanted to be the one to treat them.
I wanted to keep my mind off of the conversation I’d just had with my mother, and I’d also wanted to keep my mind from drifting toward that morning on the doorstep of Silas’ building.
I’d asked myself a few times if I had been over-reacting. What if I’d just given him a hug and said that I cared about him and hoped we could be together?
I started second-guessing everything in my mind. Sure, I could have done that, but then how fucking stupid would I have felt if he decided he wasn’t cut out for this and wanted to break up with me?
I had a big stack of paperwork on my desk. Treating patients consumed my full at
tention, but filling out paperwork was just tedious enough that my mind was fully free to wander as I worked.
I had an appointment with a patient that I’d need to prep for in about an hour, so I tried my hardest to focus on the paperwork and not on my love life—or whatever it is I wanted to call the thing between Silas and me.
I grabbed my patient’s case file early, hoping it would be something interesting, or at least time consuming. Unfortunately it was just a check-up for an old wound that had been treated months ago. I over-prepared for the patient anyway, and when she finally came in, I gave her the most thorough six-month checkup possible.
It still only ate up thirty minutes.
Then I remembered what someone had said to me in passing the first day I’d started. Dr. Strosser from the ER had said I could reach out to him and spend a shift in the ER if I was ever having a slow day.
I got a coffee, nearly chugged it down, and got ready for a full Emergency Room full of patients just waiting to be seen.
When I got there though, Dr. Strosser forced a smile. “Hey, Dr. Engel, what can I do for you?”
“I wanted to volunteer for the ER tonight.”
“It’s pretty slow,” he said.
“It couldn’t be slower than my department.”
“Alright, there’s nothing for you now, but I’ll give you a pager. Sound good?”
I took tight hold of the pager, but I locked eyes with him before taking it from his hand. “Do not hesitate to page me. Even if you think it’s below my pay grade or something.”
I could tell I was weirding him out, but he nodded nonetheless.
It wasn’t until hours later, just when I thought I was going to be totally consumed by my thoughts of Silas, that my pager buzzed.
I leapt out of the chair and all but raced through the corridors from Wound Care to the ER. When I got there, Dr. Strosser grinned sheepishly at me. “Sorry to bother you, Dr. Engel, but we have a tricky situation that my nurses can’t handle. Dr. Brochek said she’d take a look, but she’s tied up with—”
“What did I say? I told you to interrupt me at the first hint of something I could do.”
“Oh,” he said, “I didn’t think you meant…”
“Show me to the patient.”
My heart was pounding. I was giddy, and walking with a spring in my step. All I needed was to get one good patient, one person who needed my care. Preferably they wouldn’t be hurt badly, but the wound would be something that required periodic supervision all throughout my shift. I could bring my paperwork over with me, and every twenty or thirty minutes I could come back and check things over to make sure the patient was still doing well.
It would keep my mind completely off Silas. I decided before even seeing the new patient that I would dedicate my entire shift to them. They would be the person to rescue me from these infuriating and confusing thoughts about Silas.
“Right this way,” Dr. Strosser said, gesturing toward a privacy drape, “I think it’s in there pretty deep. It’s barbed for sure.”
My heart pounded even harder in my chest. “Barbed?”
Dr. Strosser nodded. “Yeah, a fishing hook.” He leaned in close to me and grinned. “It’s stuck in the poor guy’s nipple. Must have been his first time fishing. Though even if I’d never fished, I think I could do better than catching myself.”
No. It couldn’t be. Silas wouldn’t dare.
I walked up toward the privacy drape, put a hand on it, and held my breath. I steeled myself for what I expected to see. I was in some kind of superposition at that moment: I didn’t know if I actually wanted to see Silas in that bed, or if I would be furious to see him. All I know is that I felt immense pressure and tension in my chest and heart, as if the uncertainty of it was about to swallow me whole.
I let out my breath and pulled back the curtain.
Silas grinned up at me. He looked just like he did the first time I’d met him. Shirtless, smirking, and with a fishing hook in his nipple.
“I don’t think it was his first time fishing, Dr. Strosser. I’ll take care of him, but if any patient that needs more immediate help comes in, page me right away.”
“Thank you, Dr. Engel,” he said.
When he left, I took a step forward and closed the privacy curtain behind me.
“Dr. Emily,” Silas said.
“You’re an idiot,” I said, summoning all of my strength not to smile at him, or to let the tears almost forming in my eyes get out.
I said I didn’t know if I wanted to see him or not, but now that I had, I realized I did want to see him. I still wasn’t ready to admit as much to him, or to even show him with body language that I was glad to be in the same room as him.
“I knew I should have learned my lesson the first time,” he said, shaking his head and tapping the end of the fishing hook gently with his index finger.
“This one looks to be even deeper in.” My voice was flat and deadpan. Emotionless. It took real effort to keep it like that.
“One of the male nurses tried to have a go at it,” Silas said. “He wasn’t as gentle as Nurse Emily had been, nor as skilled. He said a real doctor would have to look at it.”
“You got me, Silas.”
“Do I? You’re like six feet away from me, it’s going to be hard to examine the wound from so far off. I’m not a doctor though, so what do I know.”
I sighed and approached him. I pulled up a stool and sat down just across from him. I leaned forward and probed gently at where the hook had gone in.
Strangely enough, even though my patient was Silas, examining him did somehow take my mind off things. Maybe it was just that the metaphorical bandage had been ripped off already. I’d seen him again, and I was even touching him, and yet the world wasn’t ending. I wasn’t as afraid as I’d been. I was willing to—like my mother had said—be receptive. He’d need to say the right things, of course, but I was at least receptive to hearing them and going from there.
“Why did you put it in so deep?” I asked.
“It was a fishing accident—”
“We both know that isn’t true.”
“I had to make sure they’d call a doctor over to get it out. I knew you were on shift because your mom’s car was parked outside.”
“Stalker. You got it way too deep, Silas. And it’s barbed, too?”
“If I wanted to recreate the first time I met, then of course it had to be barbed.”
I finally cracked a smile, and I finally looked him in the eye. It felt good, because he smiled back at me. I had to bite my lip though to keep the tears from rolling down my cheeks. “Silas, do you really think this is romantic?”
He reached up and put a hand on my arm. He nodded and grinned, dimples forming in his cheeks. “I do. I think our first meeting was the most romantic thing that’s ever happened to me. I hope you feel at least part of that.”
“It was romantic,” I whisper. “But you intentionally stuck a barbed fishing hook into your nipple, Silas.”
He smirked conspiratorially at me. “To show you how sorry I am.”
I smiled despite myself. “I’m the one who has to take it out.”
“If Nurse Emily can do it, then I bet Dr. Emily can do it blindfolded.”
“You really don’t want me to do this blindfolded, Silas. There could be permanent scarring.”
He shook his head. “I was worried about that last time because I still thought I had to play the field. I still was worried about what women would think when I took my shirt off. I’m not worried about that anymore. As long as you don’t mind a weird nipple scar, then it’s fine with me. Your opinion is all that matters.”
“Scars are permanent, Silas.”
“And we will be too. I had it in my head that I couldn’t handle it, or that I was bad for you and Elijah. Maybe it was some last-moment jitters, or maybe it was just me being terrified at the fact that I was truly happy for the first time in my life. Whatever it was, it was stupid, and I’m over it now. I want
to be with you and Elijah, Emily.”
His hand moved from my arm to my hand and squeezed. He sat up, then jumped off the bed.
“I still need to get the hook out, Silas,” I said in a whisper. Tears were streaming down my face. I was hyper aware that only the thin privacy curtain was keeping everyone’s eyes off of us, and that Dr. Strosser or a nurse could barge in at any moment.
“The hook in my nipple can wait,” he said, falling down onto one knee.
I put a hand on my mouth, which had opened wide. Mostly from shock.
He pulled something out of his pocket—though I already knew what it was—and he popped it open. The diamond was so large and shiny that it nearly blinded me.
“Dr. Emily Engel, I never want to be without you again. You are everything I’ve ever wanted. I spent the last four years wondering if I’d ever see you again, and then you came back into my life. Not just you, but you and our son—like a gift from the heavens—and I would have to be the stupidest man alive to not fight for that. Marry me, and you won’t regret it. I’m in this for the long haul.”
I looked up and suddenly saw Dr. Strosser and a nurse looking down at Silas. They’d opened the privacy curtain as Silas was proposing. Also, every single person who worked reception had crowded around behind the desk and was gawking at us.
Dr. Strosser looked at me with the most confused face I’d ever seen, and the nurse giggled excitedly and looked at me as if she couldn’t wait to hear what I was going to say.
“I do!” said. I was still crying, but they were tears of pure joy.
“Save the ‘I do’ for the wedding,” Silas said, standing up. He slid the ring onto my finger. It fit perfectly.
“God, I meant I will, or okay. Or I love you.”
“I love you too,” he said, grabbing hold of me and kissing me.
People started cheering, and as Silas pressed into me, his muscles tensed, and I heard him hiss in pain.
Dr. Strosser winced and looked up at Silas. “You probably want to get that fish hook out before you consummate the marriage, Mr. Winters.”