I watched his eyelids twitch in his sleep and snuggled closer to him. I wondered what he was dreaming about. It seemed like it must be nice. I secretly hoped that he was dreaming about me.
He looked younger and happier in his sleep. More carefree. Not that he was old or anything, but while he was dreaming, he looked more like the teenager I used to know than the confident doctor that put Melinda in her fucking place yesterday and saved me and Martin from disaster. By my count, this was the third time he’d saved me. It was really becoming a habit for him.
I had to admit to myself that he was very much behaving like a man that was in love with me. I’d never had a man in love with me before—lust, yes, but not love. I’d never put forth sufficient effort with the men I’d dated to make them love me, mostly because I didn’t ever see any potential in loving them. But this was different.
Brandon knew me. He knew the pudgy, awkward girl I used to be, and he knew the odd, somewhat obsessive adult I’d become. I knew I wasn’t an easy person to be with. I was eccentric. I kept odd hours, I worked too hard, and I never really knew how to relax. But right now, here in his bed, I felt more at ease than I could ever remember feeling.
I decided then that I would give this—whatever the hell “this” even was—a try.
“You’re awake,” he said some indeterminable amount of time later. “And you’re still here.” He sounded somewhat awed.
“You’re shocked I didn’t run off?” I teased.
“I’m really happy that you didn’t.” His answering grin was brighter than the morning sun. He kissed me on the forehead like he’d won a wonderful prize.
“Me too.”
“Do you want to go get waffles?” he asked me. “There’s a pretty good place around the corner.”
“Yeah, that sounds great.”
46
Brandon
Waffles with Aimee turned into a post-waffle walk around the nearby park. The walk turned into an afternoon together. Soon, the entire day was gone, and I’d never felt it passing at all. For the first time in a long time, I had a perfect day.
“We can’t tell anyone at the hospital about this,” Aimee told me as we were sitting on a bench next to the pond.
“The ducks?” We’d been talking about the ducks having nests hidden in the reeds. I didn’t think anyone would care about the ducklings.
Aimee smirked and shook her head. Her golden hair danced in waves around her shoulders. She hadn’t brushed her hair today and it was crazy and loose instead of being carefully pulled back in a professional, doctorly style. I liked it like this.
“About us.”
“Why?”
“I don’t want Martin to know.”
My heart thumped in my chest. “Why?”
Her eyes darted to my face and then skittered away back to the ducks. “You’re not going to stick around, Brandon. I am. I don’t want this to be something that creates an issue down the line.”
“Because you’re basically his daughter and I’m his son? Like a weird incest thing?” I asked.
Aimee stared at me to check if I was joking. I was, but she was learning that my sense of humor could be a bit strange. “No, not like that.” She sighed. “I just don’t want this thing between us to compromise the relationships that either of us have with Martin… he means a lot to me and I just can’t…” she trailed off. “You’re going to go back to the army. He’s always going to ask me about us, and he’ll never let me forget…”
I nodded. “You don’t need him to know about every guy you see. Especially me. I get it. He’s the only dad you’ve ever had and you don’t need him knowing about your private life.”
“He’s the only dad you’ve ever had, too,” Aimee reminded me.
I nodded again. “Yeah, unfortunately that’s true.” Somehow, we’d mostly avoided talking about my dad all day, but it seemed like he was the elephant in the room. It’s not like I suddenly adored my dad. Did I still hate him? I didn’t know anymore, which was progress. But change doesn’t happen overnight. “I’ll keep us a secret if that’s really what you want. It’s not like I talk to my dad that much anyway.”
I didn’t like it, but I couldn’t find fault with Aimee’s reasoning. She wanted to keep the relationship she had with my dad, and although I was fairly certain that he’d always take her side in any nasty breakup we might somehow have, I could empathize with her concerns. Besides, she was right. Eventually I would get released from my purgatory at St. Vincent’s and get redeployed. I could understand why she wouldn’t want to create a permanent record of me in her life and with the people she cared about, even if it hurt my pride a little bit.
“Besides, we don’t need the hospital gossip mill getting ahold of this,” Aimee added. “We’d never hear the end of it and it’s technically against company policy to date coworkers. I think.”
I had no idea about the company policy, and honestly couldn’t care less if it were true, but she was one hundred percent right about the gossip; it was vicious, insidious, and everywhere. I certainly didn’t mind the idea of not being topic of every rumor for a while. It felt like I’d been starring in my own personal soap opera since arriving at the hospital. The last thing I needed was to have my relationship with Aimee become a new plot point.
Aimee smiled and grabbed my hand in her tiny one. “Thank you for understanding,” she told me. “I promise I’m not asking you because I’m ashamed. I’m not. I’m really happy to be with you.”
I believed her. She seemed content to be with me. The change was incredible. She used to loathe me. But even now, she was snuggling in closer and leaning her head against my shoulder. It was strange to get my wish. I couldn’t remember feeling better, although now that I had Aimee, the fear of losing her was a new, frightening obstacle on the horizon. Now that I knew what I had, I would also know what I would miss when it ended.
But I’d deal with that disaster later. A more pressing thought had just occurred to me.
“So, are we going to pretend to go on hating each other at the hospital?” I asked her. “To, um, keep up appearances?”
Aimee blinked at me. “I hadn’t thought of that, but I guess we should, huh?” She cocked her head to the side. “We don’t want to raise suspicions by suddenly being all nice to each other.”
I grinned at her. “This is going to be fun.”
47
Brandon
“Hey, Hellen Keller, get out of the damn way,” I snapped at Aimee as I passed her in the lab a week later. “Or are you just too lazy to let the real doctors work?”
“Eat a bag of dicks, Brandon,” she yelled back at me. “You don’t own the hallway.”
Nurses skittered around us nervously. They gave us a very wide berth and stared with frightened eyes. Aimee and I both bit back smiles and made grumpy faces. Pretending to absolutely despise each other was much more enjoyable than actually hating each other had ever been. I wasn’t exactly the greatest actor or anything, but I was pretty fantastic at being a loud, condescending, arrogant, unpleasant jerk. It was my superpower. Now, my talents were on full display. Plus, we currently had a vacancy in HR. There was nobody to tell us what to do.
Aimee was holding her own in public, too. She could be pretty nasty when she wanted to be. I was impressed by her commitment to her role and her creativity when it came to insults. So far this week she’d called me a “cock-juggling thunder cunt,” a “lint-licker” and a “bitch-face shit lord.” It was also possible she was sourcing all of these from the fourteen-year-olds on the violent video game Fortnite, which I learned she played during her time off. Either way, it was freaking hilarious.
Meanwhile, any chance we could get we were slipping away to make love in broom closets, empty exam rooms, and even Aimee’s undersized hatchback. We were fucking like rabbits, or worse, teenagers. I was happier than I could remember ever being. Having our relationship be a secret was actually pretty fun, too, even if it was like dating on ‘hard mode.’ I woke up every m
orning to a text from Aimee if she didn’t sleep over, usually with a suggestion of where we could secretly hook up. We were running out of new ideas and didn’t want to reuse old ones because it increased the likelihood of being caught.
“Meet me up on the roof at three thirty?” I asked her in a low voice. Then in a much louder one. “Why don’t you go do some paperwork and let me actually work and see patients? Or are you too busy being a waste of space?”
Her eyes widened. “The roof?” Then she smirked, winked, and said loudly, “Why don’t you take the stick out of your ass and shove that nasty attitude up there instead, dickwad?”
As Aimee and I settled into a new routine, I finally got her to join me at the Lone Star Lounge with Mark and Lara. We met up with them one Saturday on the patio.
When we arrived, Mark and Lara were engaged in a typically cutthroat game of cornhole. Lara, with her long arms and legs and preternatural agility, was winning. I was not at all surprised. You might think that she would take it easy on Mark, who was still limited to the use of one arm, but you’d be wrong. She was destroying him mercilessly and obviously enjoying every moment of it.
“You’re supposed to throw the beanbag at the hole,” Lara was explaining as we walked up. She pointed significantly. “Do you need to get your eyes checked?”
“It’s not my eyes that are the problem. I think I need to get that last beanbag checked,” Mark replied. “I think it was weighted wrong.”
“Uh-huh.” She rolled her eyes. “Sure.”
“Go feel it,” he insisted. “It’s too light.”
“It’s not the beanbag that’s the problem, Mark. It’s your aim.”
“How do you know that if you don’t check?” Mark insisted.
She shrugged. “I think you’re just insecure because you’re losing.”
“I’m extremely secure. Are you afraid I’m right?” He challenged. “Scared you might only be winning because I’m at a disadvantage?”
Aimee looked at me sidelong. “They sound kind of like us.”
Mark and Lara looked up from their argument, saw us holding hands, and then awkwardly looked away from each other.
God, they were so obvious it hurt. They should just hook up already.
“Settle this argument for us, Doc,” Mark insisted. “Go feel that purple beanbag and tell me if it’s lighter than the others.”
“No offense, Mark, but feeling up your beanbags is not something I have any interest in,” I replied. “Let’s go have a beer, instead.”
Lara and Aimee giggled, and Mark rolled his eyes as we settled around a table. “This is a conspiracy. The whole world is against me. First, I screw up my arm, then the cornhole game is rigged, and now my dear friend Doc won’t even defend me.” He sighed theatrically. “At least I’ve still got my good looks, acting career, and winning personality.” If anyone else but Mark said it, he’d sound conceited, but not Mark. He was just being Mark. He was a dramatic guy. “How are you two doing?” he asked Aimee and me.
I shrugged. “Today I pulled an entire can of soda out of someone’s rectum.”
Lara and Mark made horrified expressions, but Aimee just looked mildly grossed out. Another day in paradise. Hospitals. We get everything. And everything gets put up people’s butts.
“What the fuck?” Lara asked after a few gaping seconds. “An entire can?! How is that even possible?”
“How did I get it out, or how did it get in there?” I clarified.
“Both, I guess?” She was looking at her can of beer and clearly trying to picture it. I now had it on good authority that it was entirely possible. Was it a good idea? No. Definitely not. Not even close. But it was possible.
“Well, I can’t say for sure how it got up there in the first place but I’m guessing it was, um, slowly and with a lot of lube,” I told her. “Of course, he said he ‘accidently sat on it’.”
Mark laughed. “Yeah, I know I hate it when I accidentally sit on a soda can and it goes straight up my lubed asshole.”
Lara grinned. “Yeah, it happens to you two or three times a week,” she said sarcastically.
Mark played along and nodded solemnly. “Maybe I do need to get my eyes checked.” He turned back to me. “So how did you get it out?”
“Magnets?” Lara suggested hopefully.
I shook my head. “I wish. Tin isn’t magnetic. Because of the amount of suction up there, and I’m talking a lot of suction, before we can pull the object out we have to equalize the pressure by sticking a thin, flexible tube between the wall of the rectum and the foreign body, taking care to make sure not to puncture—”
“—You know what,” Mark interrupted, looking disgusted. “I’m sorry I asked this question. I don’t want to know.”
“Yeah, the urban ER is no place for the faint of heart.”
“I bet you wish you were still patching up trauma victims in Fallujah, huh?” Lara said. “I know it was crazy, but you always loved task force work, too...”
“It was more interesting work in a lot of ways,” I admitted, feeling conflicted.
Task force work, that is, what Mark, Lara, and I did, was the unicorn of the medical profession. It involved going out into dangerous situations, getting very sick, very important people, and then transporting them to safety. Our unit had specialized in high profile extractions. Lara was the driver, Mark was the soldier, and I was the healer. Our threesome had done some pretty insane things over the years. They were both out of the game now, but I couldn’t wait to get back to it.
After our most recent deployment, we’d all needed a serious mental health break. We’d been in a near-miss helicopter accident that ended up killing our patient and nearly taking us all to an early grave. The other three members of our unit died. After that, Lara and Mark had chosen to resign their commissions. I’d experienced a ton of insomnia and enough night terrors to result in my assignment to therapy, but I still couldn’t imagine never doing that sort of work again.
Aimee was looking at me with an unreadable expression. I’d told her a little bit of what I’d done overseas, and she’d met Isaac, and I knew she thought I was a bit crazy.
In truth, I’d only told her the very most tame part of it for fear of scaring her off, but the thought of returning to my work overseas was still tempting to me. I felt like it was what I was meant to do. Every night when I collapsed into my bed, I knew that I’d saved lives that definitely, with one hundred percent certainty, wouldn’t have made it without my intervention. There were never enough doctors in warzones. Never enough people that were willing to take the risk to save the lives of the best, the most patriotic, the bravest people in the world—our US service members. I felt like it was my patriotic duty, because I could do it, to be there in the thick of it.
But at the same time, I knew that it had taken a heavy toll on me. The therapy I’d been going through over the past many months had helped me to sort out some of the things I’d seen. Horrible injuries. Catastrophic burns. Violence that left lasting scars on my patients’ bodies and on my brain, forever. I wasn’t the man that signed up all those years ago. I was older, harder, and more damaged. Even though I still wanted to go back, I wasn’t as sure that it was the right thing for my mental health anymore.
“You’ve only got, what, six more months on your jail sentence?” Lara said.
I nodded, looking at Aimee and thinking that it was going to fly by. Aimee was the opposite of a jail sentence. She was paradise. “Yeah. Six months.”
48
Aimee
“Do you miss it?” I asked Lucy when we met to see a movie about a month after her last day at the hospital. “Do you miss St. Vincent’s?”
Lucy grabbed a handful of my popcorn and shoved it in her mouth. “I miss you. But the hospital? No. Not really.” Her hair had been blonde when she was working at the hospital, but since quitting she’d put a few bright green streaks in it. The vibrant color suited her.
“I miss you too!” I could hear the whiny to
ne to my voice, but I hardly cared. It was true.
I missed Lucy so much it wasn’t even funny. I could barely believe I’d survived a whole month without her. Although I’d known that I depended on her a lot to make my days more bearable, I hadn’t really fully understood just how lonely I would be without her. It’s true that I had Brandon now, but we kept our distance from each other when we weren’t playing at hating each other.
“How’s the new job?” I asked Lucy. “You seem really happy.”
“I am happy,” Lucy said. “This production I’m about to start working on is going to be amazing. I mean, it’s still early but it’s all going well so far. I heard they cast the lead actor the other day. It all just feels like a dream.” She shook her head in apparent disbelief. “So, what happened with Dr. Koels after everyone found out about his MS?” Lucy asked. “That was one crazy last day.”
I half-heartedly swatted her wandering hand away from my popcorn before answering. “Nothing really. It was not how he wanted people to learn about his condition, obviously, but after the way everything went down, nobody wants to mention or discuss it. I’m not sure what exactly Melinda was expecting to happen, but this has to be the exact opposite of it.”
“So, nothing is going to change for Dr. Koels?” she asked, sneaking in for more popcorn. “He’s still not going to retire?”
I shook my head. “No, he is going to retire. I think in some ways this was the final straw for him. He’s just over it. Having Melinda stab him in the back made him realize he doesn’t want to do this for the rest of his life.”
“Good for him. I’d retire too if I were him.” She grabbed for popcorn again and I let her have it. It was clearly a losing battle. I should have just gotten a large because I was clearly going to share with her.
“If I were him, I’d slash Melinda’s break lines” I replied. I’d definitely considered it. Sadly, I didn’t know what she drove and vandalism wasn’t really my style anyway. I was too much of a coward.
Bad For You: An Enemies to Lovers Romance Page 19