by M. K. York
Eli’s eyes opened at that, and he raised his eyebrows consideringly at Neil. “Are you sure?”
“Yeah, sure.” Neil tried desperately to sound casual and like he did this all the time.
“You’re getting the short end of the stick.”
“You can owe me one.”
“Sounds good.” Eli tipped his head back again, letting his eyes drift shut.
Neil dropped his button-up in a pile on the floor next to his bag before he went to sit on the edge of Eli’s bed. It was as close as they’d been since the plane, and he picked up one of Eli’s feet, resting Eli’s ankle awkwardly on the crook of his own knee.
The noise Eli made when Neil dug his thumbs into the plantar fascia was enough, all on its own, to make Neil regret offering; he didn’t know how he was going to hide what those sounds did to him, but thank God, Eli kept his eyes shut, even as he moaned and whimpered his way through the massage.
Neil finally let Eli’s second foot drop. “Do you mind if I get my shower now instead of in the morning?”
Eli shook his head, eyes still closed. “Go right ahead. I’m just going to be not moving.”
Neil chuckled, though it felt forced, and escaped to the bathroom. He didn’t jerk off, but he did turn the water up as hot as it went and let it pound on his tense shoulders for as long as he thought he could get away with.
When he came back out, Eli was snoring softly, mouth slack again. He’d pulled the sheet up over himself, and he was still wearing Neil’s shirt.
Neil flipped the lights off, lay down in bed, and tried to pretend that everything was all right and he didn’t feel a huge empty yawning ache in his chest, his skin hungry for human touch.
Less than a year left of residency. Then he could be free. Go be an attending, anywhere.
That thought didn’t help, either.
* * *
He woke up the next morning slowly, before his alarm, dimly becoming aware that he was lying facedown on the bed, hard and aching for it. He didn’t quite realize where he was in time to keep himself from grinding his hips down into the mattress once, a long rolling push against his sensitive cock that dragged an almost inaudible breathy sound out of him.
He froze immediately, heart starting to pound as his brain came back online. Eli was—Eli was just in the other bed, he wouldn’t—but as he listened, Eli didn’t stir, though he wasn’t snoring.
Small favors, he thought. About ten minutes later, his alarm went off, and he got up to use the bathroom. By the time he was finished, Eli was waiting to take his shower; Eli didn’t meet his eyes as they traded places.
* * *
The hotel was insanely full that day; everyone who’d skipped the skills-session days had showed up. They were mostly at different panels, but Neil did show up for Eli’s talk. He was missing a panel on general surgery, but he couldn’t bring himself to care.
It was really something to see Eli talk. He was wearing one of Neil’s shirts again, which drove Neil a little bit insane, the bright outline of cotton just visible through the thinner fabric of his button-up.
They met up with Wei and Liddell that night for dinner. Wei was crabby about how his talk had gone—somebody had asked “the dumbest question I’ve ever heard, and I’ve heard some prize foolishness”—and Liddell dug out his phone and a scrap of paper and a pencil to give his nephew’s phone number to Neil. Neil badly wanted to point out that he had his own phone and he could easily just type it in, but it was too funny to watch Liddell squinting laboriously at his phone, copying out the number.
He resolved to lose the number immediately. When they made it back up to the room, straightened and tidied by housekeeping, he dropped it in the wastebasket.
Eli saw him do it and laughed as he got settled in front of the television. “Not sure you’re up for going on a blind date with a Liddell?”
“I told you, I’m pretty sure he just wants a dynasty. I’m all wrong for that.”
He found himself telling Eli about the date with Ming back in his first year. Eli was listening attentively, and when he got to the rejection, he sighed along with Neil.
“I’m sorry it’s been so hard for you,” said Eli. Neil had to look away; there was genuine sympathy in Eli’s eyes. “I know I haven’t had it in me to date much since Tricia and I split up.”
“She seemed—really nice, at her talk.”
“She is. She’s a great person. But there’s this quote, I think it’s Elvis, or maybe Elvis Costello? Whichever one it was said, ‘You can love someone but still be wrong for them,’ and I just kept thinking about that during the divorce.”
“You can love someone but still be wrong for them,” echoed Neil. The words stung, but like rubbing alcohol on a cut. Sanitizing.
“Have you talked to Justin lately?” Eli was fiddling with the edge of the blanket, picking at a stray thread.
Neil swallowed hard, feeling traitorous prickles in his eyes. “He’s, uh, he’s seeing someone.” And he’d kept posting more pictures of the two of them; if Neil wasn’t mistaken, they were on the fast track to a house in the suburbs and two point five dogs.
Eli made a soft sympathetic noise. They watched the television after that, the news and a terrible sitcom that had Neil muttering unflattering things about heteronormativity under his breath.
Eli laughed after Neil made a crack about the way they’d written the wife. “You’re very, uh, perceptive.”
Neil snorted. “Don’t let the attendings hear you say that. You’ll get their hopes up.”
“You realize I am one,” said Eli mildly.
“Yeah, but not in my department. You’re not in my chain of command.”
“I might as well be, though.” Eli turned his head toward Neil; they were both sprawled over their beds, loose limbed and tired. His eyes were serious. “I’m your superior. Just because I’m not your direct superior doesn’t mean I couldn’t make problems for you if I wanted to.”
Neil frowned at him. “Do you want to?”
“God, no.”
“Then I think we’re fine. Right?”
“Sure,” said Eli, turning to stare back at the television. “Sure.”
Neil snuck a few more glances at Eli, but Eli kept his eyes glued to the program.
Chapter Fifteen
The next day Eli said, “There’s an actual forum on transplantation today. Should be good.”
He was hunched over a cup of coffee, drinking the whole sludgy mess down with apparent relish. Neil sighed, swirling his own, hoping the grounds would magically dissolve and create something more drinkable.
“That’s good. I’ve got hepatobiliary today.”
“When’s your talk again? Tomorrow?”
“Yeah, at least I’m not on the last day.”
“Perks of being a fifth-year. They assume you know what you’re doing.”
“I wish they hadn’t given me half an hour, though. I don’t even know what to do with ten minutes.”
“You’ll be great.” Eli’s face softened, and he looked up at Neil. “You’re good at this.”
Neil ducked his head, taking another sip of his coffee.
* * *
That day wore them both out to the point where they just got room service again. Neil was stuffing his baked potato into his mouth (Eli’s had looked good) and telling a story about a time in med school when his lab mate had gotten a spray of liquid in the mouth off their cadaver.
“I was trying to—” he gestured with his fork “—kind of scrape back the fat, and he leaned in over my shoulder, and bam! Right in the mouth! You should have seen his face! Just pure resigned horror. He was very noble about it.”
Eli was laughing hard, shoulders quaking as he leaned forward over the slice of quiche he’d ordered. “I can’t belie
ve you,” he gasped out. “Don’t you know good knife etiquette means never getting fat in someone’s mouth?”
“Well, I know now.”
Eli laughed harder. He drew in a whoop of breath. “Did I ever tell you about the time I dropped our cadaver?”
“What? No! I’d remember that.”
“We started out—you started out with a frontal cut, right?”
“Right down the chest.”
“Well, we started out with the back. And we had to roll them over. So it’s me and, uh, oh, what was his name, I think Bill, the biggest guy in our group, the other two guys didn’t want to be dirty hands that day. So Bill and I grab the cadaver, he’s got it by the armpits and I’m holding on to the leg and the hip, and we try to roll it, and—”
“Oh, no, tell me this is not going where I think it’s going.”
“We roll a little too vigorously, and it just goes rolling right over, off the edge of the table. Boom. A probably hundred-and-fifty-pound cadaver just falls right off the edge of the table onto the floor, and makes a noise loud enough to—well, I was going to say wake the dead, but that would be in poor taste, wouldn’t it?”
Neil was howling. “Oh my God! Did it—what did it do? Did it explode on impact?”
“Not quite, but we had to pick it back up, and that wasn’t fun, I thought I was going to break my back. And the looks we got. The professor just about tore my ear off lecturing us on appropriate respect for the cadavers.”
“Right, I’m sure you were never disrespectful again.”
“I was terrified to touch it! We made it through, but we had to wipe up a big old wet patch on the floor. I thought Bill was going to throw up.”
“It’s always the big guys who crumble. We had a former linebacker who passed out on the first day.”
Eli shook his head. “I can’t believe there was somebody bigger than you.”
“Hey, I’m six foot, but I’m not a beast.”
“And the linebacker was?”
“Well, yeah. Six two, two fifty, probably. When he went down, nobody even tried to catch him.”
Eli set his plate down on the nightstand. “Is there no charity left in the human heart?”
“We were going to get squashed! So, no.”
“Did you want to go over your talk before tomorrow?” Eli nodded at Neil’s laptop. “I’d be happy to listen to you.”
“Are you sure?” Neil felt a bubble of anxiety in his chest. “I don’t want to impose.”
“I wouldn’t have suggested it otherwise. Hit me.”
Neil took a deep breath, pulling out his laptop as Eli muted the television. He ran through the talk quickly—it was pretty straightforward, just his work on a set of biomarkers as they related to the success of abdominal surgeries in different categories. One of the attendings had already collected the data set on them.
When he finished, Eli solemnly clapped a few times. “Bravo, bravo. No, seriously, I think that’s good, very well paced. You’ll want to make sure you make eye contact with the crowd more.”
“When it’s a crowd of one, it feels a little too intense, bordering on creepy.”
Eli laughed. “Good point.”
“Will you come to the talk?”
One corner of Eli’s mouth lifted in a smile; Neil realized he was watching too closely, blinked to refocus on his eyes. “Of course,” said Eli, and it was soft and fond.
Neil had to look away then.
* * *
His talk did go well. He still wasn’t sure whether seeing Eli in the audience made it easier or harder, but he felt like the whole thing flowed well, and there weren’t any questions that were real stumpers, though a couple of surgeons had questions that suggested they hadn’t been keeping up with the field since they’d had to memorize key papers in the 1970s.
Afterward, Eli came up to pat him briskly on the shoulder; there were a few people hovering with questions they hadn’t had time for during the question period. “Lunch after the next panel?” asked Eli.
“Yeah, sounds great.”
He and Eli caught up after, and took off to a greasy burger joint. Neil browsed through his program, looking at the next day’s schedule.
“Ooh, there’s a session of Surgical Jeopardy. Teams of two. Come on, Eli, we have to do this!”
“Do we?” asked Eli drily.
“I’ve seen you watch Jeopardy! I know how you are. Come on.”
“I’m not a surgeon.”
“Don’t make me beg.”
Eli sighed in showy annoyance. “Fine. Fine. When is it?”
“It’s after your town hall and before my luncheon, so it doesn’t conflict at all. I’ll meet you there.”
Neil caught Eli sneaking a fry off his plate and laughed. “You’re a cardiologist! Aren’t you supposed to be loaded? You should have gotten your own fries!”
Eli shrugged, raising his eyebrows, fry halfway into his mouth. “Stolen fries always taste better.”
Neil couldn’t bring himself to tell Eli to stop. Eli was telling him a story about summer camp as a kid. “It was not like Wet Hot American Summer,” Eli mumbled around another filched fry. “Though I think we did have a gay counselor, actually.”
“Oh, really?”
“I mean, it was the ‘80s. It’s hard to be sure, everyone had such terrible fashion sense back then. But he wore awfully tight bicycle shorts all of the time.”
“So what I’m hearing is that it was exactly like Wet Hot American Summer. Was it Michael Ian Black in disguise? Maybe he had a time machine?”
Eli shook his head, laughing, but then he seemed to lose the laugh halfway through, and he looked back down at his plate, like he was lost.
“What is it?”
Eli sighed. “I just—that was around the time the AIDS crisis started, you know? It just hit me. I don’t know if—whether he made it through that.”
That sat between them in silence for a moment.
“That must have been rough,” said Neil quietly. “You started med school in, what, ‘92?”
“Ninety-three. By the time I was an intern it was ‘97, and things were starting to get a lot better, but—those first few years. Just brutal. One of the neighbor kids died, and no one would even go to see him in the hospital, because they were afraid they’d catch it.”
Neil pushed a fry back and forth aimlessly through a puddle of ketchup. “Maybe it’s selfish of me, but I’m really glad they had it mostly figured out by the time I came along. I never—I mean, there were things I had to worry about, but I knew what those were, right?”
“Did any of your friends—?”
“No. Well, one of my friends was already—he’d already tested positive before we met. That was in college. But he was on a good medication regimen, and he’s still—we’re still friends on Facebook.”
Eli nodded slowly.
“Did you lose anyone?” asked Neil.
Eli had given up on even pretending to eat. He was staring at his plate. “No. I suppose I was lucky.” He shook his head; he looked—angry, Neil would have said. “Let’s finish up and get back, there’s a session I need to see this afternoon.”
* * *
Neil did manage to sleep in that morning. He was almost getting used to Eli wandering around without a shirt on, which was to say, not at all used to it but able to stop staring after a reasonably brief period of time.
The upside to being asleep while Eli was getting ready was that he could just barely crack his eyes open—he would still have looked asleep—and watch Eli move, bending over his suitcase, hair still shining wet in the dim light from the bathroom and the edges of the curtains.
When Eli stood up and turned his back to Neil, Neil realized with a jolt that Eli must have put his boxers on before he real
ly dried off; they were damp, clinging to him, almost transparent. The curve of his ass was outlined like an artist’s brushstrokes.
Eli paused before leaving, glancing back at Neil.
When Eli had gone, Neil pulled himself up to sitting. He rested his elbows on his knees and dropped his head to his arms. “Fuck,” he whispered to the empty room.
* * *
At the Surgical Jeopardy session, they managed to snag spots as competitors. “We are going to crush this,” Neil whispered, closer to Eli’s ear than he’d intended, lips almost brushing its curve.
Eli chuckled. “Are we, now?”
“You know we are. You take cardiac, I’ll get whatever else I can.”
There was more screaming than Neil might have expected from a room full of adults, but it was as hilarious as advertised in the program. They did not, quite, crush it, but they did do respectably well, and afterward Neil got some magnanimous high fives from winning teams.
* * *
Since he’d gone to the lunch meeting, he didn’t see Eli at all during the rest of the day. As he left the last session, he texted Eli, dinner?
It took a few minutes for Eli to reply, Sure, just downstairs?
Sure.
The hotel had a couple of restaurants; they picked the more formal one, which seemed to have fewer surgeons packed into it. They still had a bit of a wait, but even though Eli looked tired, Neil made him laugh with biting impressions of some of the presenters from that day.
“Are you all right?” asked Neil, finally, as the line scooted forward slowly—they were next up for a two-person table.
Eli shook his head. “I’m just tired. These conferences take a lot out of me.”
“I know what you mean. I’ve been working on a headache for hours.”
“I’ve got Excedrin up in my bag if you want some later?”
“I would say yes, but I’m afraid of caffeine at this time of night, when we have morning sessions and the flight back tomorrow.”
Eli nodded. “Do you know your seat?”
“No, haven’t checked it yet.”
Eli was slowly buttoning and unbuttoning one of his cuffs. “You weren’t bad company on the flight out.”