Lakeside Hospital Box Set

by Cara Malone

  Then again, she supposed that she really hadn’t been working all that hard over the last couple of weeks. She could have been doing better, studying more. Bringing her notes to Chloe’s apartment and glancing at them in between moments of intimacy wasn’t exactly the same as a hard night of flashcard drills at the library.

  Suddenly Ivy was feeling very guilty and wondering if the past couple of weeks had been real or merely a lapse in judgment. Being at home, having to justify her performance at school to her parents and her hyper-competitive brother was a wake-up call and everything that she’d been working for so hard came flooding back to her.

  She looked across the table at Chloe. God, she was so beautiful, so smart, so effortlessly perfect. But could Ivy really have it all, or was that just a lie she told herself so she could be with Chloe?

  18

  Chloe

  Chloe and Ivy didn’t stay overnight again. They got precious few breaks from their rotation schedules and the hospital had only given them two days for Thanksgiving – Chloe and Ivy both had shifts the next morning, so a couple hours after dinner, Victor drove them to the bus depot.

  The drive was tense and Chloe had seen first-hand the type of pressure Ivy was under from her own family. She sat in the back seat on the short trip to the depot, observing the competitive streaks that were strong in both Ivy and her brother. Ivy struck the first blow, accusing Victor of timing his announcement specifically to deflect attention away from her. He shot back with a retort about how Ivy used medicine to steal their father’s attention every chance she got. Chloe tried to diffuse the situation a couple of times with a joke or light-hearted comment, but it was to no avail.

  Finally, when they pulled up in front of the bus that would take the two of them back to Evanston, Ivy relented. She said, “Good luck with your interviews, little bro,” and even though her voice sounded a bit terse, the sentiment was friendly.

  Victor nodded at her and then turned around to face Chloe in the back seat. He smiled at her – definitely more than just the friendly smile of a friend’s sibling – and said, “I’m sorry you had to see Ivy’s ruthless side. I hope it doesn’t deter you from coming back – I’d love to see you again.”

  “I bet you would,” Ivy grumbled and Chloe could practically see the steam coming out of her ears. Victor was clueless, but it was clearly grating on her to have to watch her brother hit on Chloe.

  “Thanks,” Chloe said, trying to be magnanimous, and then Victor winked at her.

  It sent Ivy over the edge and she growled at him, “You don’t stand a chance. Come on, Chloe.”

  She threw open her car door and was halfway out of the car – Chloe climbing out of the back seat behind her - before Victor said, “No way. You two? Seriously?”

  “You two what?” Ivy asked, bending over to look into the car at her brother. Chloe had to admire how quickly she covered her tracks after losing her temper, but Victor had figured it out.

  “You’re together,” he said, the smile on his face growing comically large.

  “You’re a very imaginative person,” Ivy said. “I bet you’ll make a great prosecuting attorney.”

  Then she slammed the car door and marched across the parking lot toward the bus, trusting that Chloe would follow her. By the time Chloe found her on the bus, she’d slumped down in her seat and she had her arms folded across her chest.

  Chloe sat down beside her and took her hand, careful to do so below the windowsill so that if Victor was watching from his car, he wouldn’t have any further evidence to back up his assumption about them. Then she asked quietly, “Do you think he’s going to tell your parents?”

  “Not until he needs a weapon to prove to our parents that he’s the better child,” Ivy said, her voice filled with annoyance.

  “I’m sorry,” Chloe said.

  “For what?” Ivy asked. “I’m the one that screwed up.”

  “It wouldn’t have happened if I wasn’t there,” Chloe pointed out, and Ivy patted her hand as the bus doors closed and it began to roll out of the depot.

  Ivy sighed and said, “That’s just life in the Chan household. If it wasn’t this, then Victor would have tried to hold something else over me.”

  “That sounds like a really difficult way to relate to your family,” Chloe said. She was trying to be sympathetic, but Ivy had become unreceptive the moment she marched away from Victor’s car and it felt like her words were falling on deaf ears.

  Ivy said, “It’s been that way for as long as I can remember. Do you mind if I try to get some sleep on the ride back? I want to be well-rested for surgery tomorrow.”

  “No, of course not,” Chloe said, releasing Ivy’s hand. She curled up with her forehead against the window and Chloe dug a book out of her gym bag to keep her occupied. She didn’t read right away, though. Instead, she slowly stroked Ivy’s silky black hair, smoothing it down her head until she heard her breathing turn into the measured cadence of sleep.

  She looked vulnerable with her eyes closed and Chloe had a powerful urge to scoop her up in a tight bear hug and protect her from all the bad things in the world. Ivy tried so hard to be fierce and tough – she deserved someone who could take some of the weight off her shoulders from time to time. Chloe had tried to do that this weekend, but she wasn’t sure how well she’d done.

  They arrived in Evanston around midnight and Ivy sat up, wiping the sleep from her eyes as the bus pulled to a brake-squealing stop.

  “We’re here?” she asked, looking to Chloe and then out the window at the harsh glow of streetlamps. She was cute when she was disoriented, and she had sleep lines on her cheek from the seam of Chloe’s hoodie. She’d shifted away from the window about an hour into the ride and slept against Chloe’s shoulder the rest of the way back to Illinois.

  “Yeah,” Chloe said softly. “Home sweet home. Hey, thanks again for bringing me to your family’s Thanksgiving.”

  Ivy reached for her backpack, which had slid under the seat, and said, “I couldn’t let you spend the holiday alone in your apartment.”

  “I had a nice time meeting your family,” Chloe said.

  The bus driver was waiting patiently while they got their things together – he’d made a couple other stops along the way and they were the only two left on the bus by now. Ivy seemed like she was still mostly asleep, keeping her head down as she pulled on her coat and headed for the exit.

  “Thank you,” Chloe said to the bus driver as she followed Ivy out to the parking lot. He nodded and closed the door, then Chloe slipped her hand into Ivy’s and asked, “Back to my place?”

  “Oh, Chloe,” Ivy said, finally turning to her. Her face was a map of agony and it took Chloe off-guard.

  “What’s wrong?” she asked. “Are you feeling sick or something?”

  “No,” Ivy said. The bus pulled away and it was just the two of them in the middle of a large, asphalt lot now. She squeezed Chloe’s hand tighter, then said, “I’m so sorry. I can’t do this anymore.”

  Tears began streaming down her cheeks the moment the words escaped her mouth and it felt like someone had punched Chloe in the sternum. She suddenly had trouble taking a full breath and she asked, “You can’t do what?”

  She knew the answer – with the amount of emotion that Ivy was displaying, it could only be one thing. Chloe didn’t want to hear it – she was confused and angry and stunned.

  “I can’t keep seeing you,” Ivy said, her words barely audible through the torrent of tears. She released Chloe’s hand and wiped the wetness from her cheeks, then took a moment to breathe deeply and attempt to compose herself. Then she said, “I don’t know what got into me. I’m less than a year away from my residency and I can’t afford to get distracted right now.”

  “Shit,” Chloe said, although it came out more like a squeak than a swear word as she pinched back tears of her own. This was exactly what she’d been afraid of after her first kiss with Ivy – she’d told Chloe flat-out that her education took priority ov
er everything else in her life, and Chloe had chosen to ignore that warning because it had felt so good to fall for her.

  Now she was getting her heart broken in exactly the way Ivy had forewarned her.

  “It doesn’t have to be one or the other,” Chloe begged, taking Ivy’s hand again. It was damp with her tears but Chloe didn’t care. She held it to her chest and forced Ivy to look into her eyes, then she said, “You have feelings for me. I have feelings for you, too. Hell, Ivy, I think I might even love you, and I don’t think it’s going too far to say there’s a chance you love me, too.”

  “It doesn’t matter-” Ivy started to say, but Chloe cut her off.

  “Thanksgiving was intense,” she said. “I could see how much your family’s approval means to you and I can see how that would spook you. But believe me when I tell you that I have no intention of holding you back. I want to see you become a kick-ass surgeon just as much as they do. We’ll set up more study dates and you’ll stop sleeping over every night. We’ll figure out how to be together without sacrificing anything at work.”

  “It’s impossible,” Ivy said, giving Chloe a pathetic look. “By very definition, being with you is sacrificing time that I should be spending on my career.”

  Chloe got frustrated, dropping Ivy’s hand and throwing up her hands. She raised her voice, shouting into the vastness of the parking lot, “We could make it work if you wanted to.”

  Then she stepped closer to Ivy again and looked deep into her eyes as she said, “You should want to. This isn’t some frivolous, casual thing. We both know that.”

  One more tear ran down Ivy’s cheek and she let Chloe wipe it away with her thumb. It gave Chloe hope and she was about to pull Ivy into a hug when she shook her head again. She said, “I wasn’t sleeping on the bus. I was thinking, and the whole way back, I didn’t come up with a single scenario in which I could actually have it all. Chloe, being with you is like taking the most wonderful drug in the world. I get to truly be myself for the first time and I get to experience a level of happiness that I never even dared to think existed. I can’t have that in moderation.”

  “I’ll force you to,” Chloe said with a desperate laugh. “One hour a day, and I’ll cut you off when you’ve had too much of me and it’s time to go be the world’s greatest medical student.”

  Ivy looked at her and seemed to be considering it, but then she sighed and shook her head, saying, “Chloe, I’m so sorry. I can’t.”

  Chloe swallowed hard, trying in vain to banish the lump that had formed in her throat. Ivy shouldered her bag and with one final glance at her, turned and walked across the parking lot toward the sidewalk. She’d have a long walk ahead of her back to the on-campus housing – it was at least fifteen blocks away – and Chloe had a number of blocks to walk back to her apartment.

  She didn’t move, though. For a long time, she just stood in the bus depot parking lot, watching Ivy walk away from her. She wondered what the hell had happened – their relationship was over just as fast as it had begun – and whether they might still be together if it wasn’t for Ivy’s parents’ influence on her.

  They hadn’t been that wrapped up in each other, had they?

  She wondered whether Ivy felt that her performance in the surgical rotation had actually declined in the last two weeks, or if this was a preemptive measure to make sure that it wouldn’t in the future. When she couldn’t see Ivy anymore in the dark, Chloe went back to her apartment. It was a little before one in the morning by the time she arrived and she had to be at the hospital in six and a half hours, but there was no way Chloe would get any sleep.

  19

  Ivy

  Ivy slowed down as soon as she’d walked out of Chloe’s sight, and by the time she got back to campus, it felt like her feet had been dipped in cement. There was not a single good thing about what just happened and the weight of it was settling on her shoulders, pulling her down. She barely had the energy to finish the walk back to her apartment because she knew there was nothing waiting there for her.

  Every single thing she’d said to Chloe was true and Ivy stood by the decision that she’d made for the sake of her career, but that didn’t keep it from being the worst thing she’d ever had to do.

  Ivy just wished that she’d been strong enough to resist the whole situation. She’d allowed herself to fall head over heels for Chloe when she should have just kept repressing those feelings. Now she’d not only lost something wonderful, she’d also drawn Chloe into all of this only to hurt her. If Ivy hadn’t made the first move, Chloe would still think of her as nothing more than a study partner.

  It was all over now, though, and Ivy realized they probably couldn’t study together anymore, either. It would be too painful to sit across a café table and pretend nothing had happened.

  As she walked up the sidewalk that led to her campus housing, she decided that was what would hurt the most. They wouldn’t be able to go back to the way they were. Chloe was a good friend and a great study partner before all of this, and Ivy had ruined it.

  Ivy swiped her university ID and went inside the dormitory, then took the elevator because she didn’t have the energy to climb two measly flights of stairs feeling the way she did. She opened the door to her apartment and flipped on the light, muttering, “Home, sweet home.”

  Then an acrid smell hit her nose and she grimaced.

  Ivy hadn’t spent much time here over the last couple of weeks, and while she ignored her apartment – and everything else except Chloe - something had been rotting. She set her backpack down just inside the door, then went over to the kitchenette to look for the source of the smell.

  The apartment was barely more than a studio – the living area was roughly the size of her bedroom at home, with a countertop and studio-sized kitchen appliances along one wall, and a desk in the center of the room. That was where the bed had been on the day she moved in, but Ivy had shoved the bed against the wall, and in the little alcove outside of the bathroom where the desk should have been, she’d stacked the rest of the living room furniture – a loveseat and coffee table that she had no use for.

  She located the offenders, a bowl of apples that she’d bought over two weeks ago and forgot all about. They were growing hairy and soft on the counter and Ivy curled her lip as she scooped them into a trash bin, then carried it down the stairs to the dumpsters behind the building. It must have been past one in the morning by then and the first few snowflakes of the season were beginning to fall, glittering against the streetlamp by the dumpster. Ivy might have even thought they were pretty if she wasn’t feeling so miserable.

  She threw open the dumpster lid to empty her trash… and a fat raccoon bumbled over the edge of the dumpster, hissing at her. Ivy shrieked and dropped her trash bin, the dumpster lid falling shut with a loud bang as the raccoon scurried across the parking lot. Ivy’s heart was racing and she looked down to see that her trash had scattered, the fuzzy apples rolling across the pavement.

  “Fuck!” she shouted into the darkness, grateful that the raccoon was the only one around to witness her frustration. Ivy kicked the dumpster hard, then put her hands over her eyes and allowed herself to cry.

  Walking away from Chloe at the bus depot like that – choosing her career over something as intangible as love – wouldn’t have even been a question for the old Ivy. She never would have felt pain or guilt over it because she would know that prioritizing her career was the only option. Chloe had done something to her, changed her, and Ivy was no longer sure it was for the better.

  She took a deep breath, wiped the tears from her eyes, and gathered up her spilled trash. She threw it away, then went back upstairs and started organizing her notes for the medical licensing exam. She’d be taking it in just one month and she had to be ready, whether she had a study partner or not.

  Ivy did everything she could to avoid Chloe in the weeks leading up to the exam. She knew she wouldn’t be strong enough to keep her at arm’s length if they ran into each other
, and that she’d only end up hurting Chloe more than she already had. And, selfishly, Ivy knew what it would do to her focus if she saw Chloe.

  So she didn’t go to the hospital cafeteria, even on days when she’d had barely any sleep and her eyelids were drooping in the middle of rounds. Instead, she started frequenting the waiting area outside of the operating room, drinking bitter, weak coffee from the vending machines and scarfing granola bars behind the nurses’ station when she got hungry. She even found a seldom-used hallway with a gurney in it and slept there when she was on call instead of using the call rooms, just to be sure she’d never run into Chloe there.

  She just went to work, focused entirely on medicine, and turned herself into a slave for Dr. Isaac, doing all the scutwork that he could throw at her and scrubbing in on every surgery she could weasel her way into.

  Then in the evenings, Ivy went back to her apartment and kept right on working so that her mind would never have a moment of idleness to think about how badly she’d screwed up with Chloe, first by falling for her and then by breaking her heart. She took out every single flashcard and page of notes that she’d written in the last three and a half years and spread them out across her apartment. By the end of the first week, Ivy had them all sorted by medical specialty. Then she started taping her flashcards – over five hundred in all – on the wall in neat rows so she could walk back and forth and quiz herself on any subject she liked.

  It wasn’t quite as good as having a real person to study with, but it was somewhat affirming to see her color-coded notes taking up almost an entire wall in her living room.