The Anatomy of Perception

by AJ Rose

  He studied the side of my face. “I’d like you to be,” he said quietly. “I think about the last two months, five days, twenty-three hours and thirty or so minutes—” he looked at his watch with an upward curl to the corner of his mouth “—and I like what’s happening here. I’m hopeful. But I’m… not sure I’m ready to risk it again, Dane. I mean….” He stopped our progress outside the steps to the bowels of the subways and pulled me out of foot traffic. “I care about you. A lot. I never stopped loving you, but being in love with you,” he paused, blowing out a breath. “It makes my palms sweat and not in a good way.”

  I nodded and looked away, swallowing a few times to get my unsteady voice under control. “I understand,” I croaked, offering him a weak, wobbly smile. “Sometimes there’s beauty in the devastation, but then, sometimes there’s just devastation.”

  “No!” he yelled, frustrated. “The whole point of me introducing you to my class is so you can see that’s not true. But each of those kids has to work at it. They have to practice. They can’t just pick up a brush and start flinging paint around. Their perspective gives them unique vision, but they need a way to translate it. I’m teaching them the language of that translation in the form of acrylics and watercolors and charcoal and whatever else I think will help the world see their minds. They have to work for it.”

  I shook my head, confused. “What are you saying?”

  He smiled shyly, sliding his hands to my cheeks. My heart stopped at the gentle heat in his eyes. “Dating,” he said simply. “The answer to Sebastian’s question is we’re dating. Exclusively, at least on my end.”

  I snorted. “You think anyone else would put up with this hot mess?” I gestured to the paint in my hair. “Yeah, you’re the only guy I’m seeing.”

  “Okay, so no, you’re not my boyfriend yet.” He tugged me toward the steps and down to the train platform. “But you could be. I want you to be.”

  The air crackled between us, and though it wasn’t exactly an easy conversation to have, my body was brimming with hope. Each pass of his skin on mine electrified me while we waited for the train. I kept stealing glances at him, and him at me. We’d done things together I’d done with no one else. He’d touched parts of me no one else had touched. There were no surprises between us, yet the heat of our bodies felt new, unexplored, and full of promise.

  When we finally walked through the door of his loft, he turned and stared at me. It felt like the hush of calm before a storm, when the first lightning bolt rends the air and sizzles everything. Two steps between us and we crashed together, a thunderous release of tension in a clash of lips and bodies and desires. Boom.

  August 2011

  Craig’s hips curved around my ass, bringing me from a deep sleep into a confused mass of arousal and fear. I froze, a corset of uncertainty squeezing my torso until I heard the evenness of his breathing and realized he was humping me in his sleep. The tightness in my belly loosened and I chastised myself for being such a pussy. I pushed back into Craig’s growing erection, testing my reactions.

  Nope, still not ready to try bottoming.

  I didn’t know what it was about the idea, but having done rectal exams and enemas on patients, I couldn’t find it in myself to desire being penetrated. Whenever I expressed guilt that Craig was always the fuckee, not the fucker, he would just grin and say it was fine, more dick for him. He loved to bottom and was shameless about it. He made it look fun, and more than once, I’d watched him and talked myself into it. But when push came to penetration, I couldn’t handle the vulnerability required to let someone, even Craig, into that most intimate of places. I’d clamped down tighter than the hospital around budget time. I couldn’t handle being that open, that trusting.

  Rolling, I pulled Craig’s leg over my hip, fitting our groins together so he could hump into my cock. It amused me that he was asleep and doing this, especially because it had been a while since we’d had sex. My schedule had been hectic and when we were together, things just hadn’t been clicking. The darkness outside was complete, and a glance at the clock told me I had an hour until my alarm went off and I had to be in for pre-rounds at five. Running my hand gently over Craig’s arm and pushing my face into his neck, I breathed in his sleep-warmed scent while his movements gained speed. He huffed in my ear, and I pulled back to see if he was awake yet. Nope.

  I decided it would be mean to let him sleep through this, so I forced him to his back and rolled on top, supporting myself above him so he could breathe, but covering him completely while he frotted against me.

  “Baby,” I murmured in his ear, sucking the lobe into my mouth. “You feel so good,” I murmured. “I’m pretty sure you want to be awake right now.”

  He groaned, smacking his lips but not losing his rhythm. His arms encircled my waist and his hands found my ass, pumping my hips for me in time with his thrusts. Reaching between us, I freed our dicks from pre-come dampened underwear and wrapped my fingers around us both.

  “Yeah,” he grunted, his voice still sounding sleep addled. We didn’t kiss, both of us too self-conscious of our breath. Instead, his face smashed into my neck, and I looked toward the headboard, breathing over the crown of his head as I cradled it in my arm.

  We fucked into my hand, and Craig let go first, whispering my name into the dark stillness of the room with a reverence that surprised me, like the single, unwavering note of a violin at the end of a beautiful composition, singing out its joy. His spend slicked my fingers and the change in friction on my sensitive skin set a fire in my balls. Craig kneaded my ass cheeks and wrapped around me, clinging until I’d added my juices to his between us. He licked my neck, knowing it always made me shiver, and I didn’t disappoint.

  “What’s that for?” he asked sleepily. “Not that I’m complaining. Went really well with this dream I was having.”

  I chuckled. “I could tell. You started humping me in your sleep and woke me up. I decided you have the best dreams, and I wanted it to be real.”

  “Wh’time’s it?”

  “Just past three. Go back to sleep.”

  “You go soon, right?”

  Nuzzling his collarbone, I rolled off him, trying not to touch the sheets with my messy hand. “Yeah, gotta shower first, but I’m leaving in about forty-five minutes.”

  “You remember we’re having dinner with my parents tonight, right?”

  I smiled and kissed his jaw. “I got it covered,” I assured him. “Carrie is taking care of my patients while I’m gone.”

  “‘Kay,” he mumbled and rolled over, leaving me to the start of my day.

  I got up and washed off the evidence of our greeting, thinking this was how every morning should start. Just under forty minutes later, I kissed Craig goodbye and was out the door, coffee in hand. The morning was typical, though Dr. Kingsley had stopped into the residents’ locker room to inform us that the attending physicians would be handing out solo surgeries to second-years, so we’d best be on top of things. A thrill zipped up my spine, and I exchanged looks with Carrie and Sabrina, who were both obviously excited.

  “I hope I get something messy and requiring a lot of stitches,” Sabrina said. “I feel like needlepoint today.”

  “Ugh, you’re such a Neanderthal,” Carrie accused, though by now she’d gotten well used to Sabrina’s bloodlust, and her tone reflected how routine it was to express disgust in something Sabrina said. “Why don’t you just take up embroidery or something and leave those of us who give a damn about the patients to do the actual patient care.”

  “A doctor is no mere puppet master. We put people back together,” Sabrina quipped, mock wounded. “I’m a healer.”

  “Their bodies do the healing. We just set the pieces to rights. Don’t take credit for that miracle,” Carrie said, pulling her hair into a ponytail.

  “If you’re going to start talking about God’s creations, I’m going to puke in your shoes,” Sabrina warned, looping her stethoscope around her neck. “Okay, I’m off. Interns t
o torture and patients to check on. Good luck.”

  We watched her leave, and Carrie turned to me. “She would be almost pleasant if she weren’t so into dissecting people.”

  I shrugged. “Aren’t we all just short of sociopaths with our love of scalpels?”

  “No!” Carrie protested, laughing. “We’re trying to save lives, not take them or play with them or experiment on them. She just thinks people’s guts are her sandbox.”

  “Ah, that must be it.” I grinned and waved goodbye to her as I went to find my own interns and get rounds going.

  The morning passed fairly uneventfully, keeping a couple of post-op patients comfortable and monitoring their vitals for signs of complications. Two of my patients were ready to be discharged and two more still had a couple of lab results due before we could schedule their surgeries. One was for a routine gallbladder resection and the other was a valve repair in his heart. I wouldn’t have said it out loud, but I hoped the attendings didn’t decide to give me the heart surgery as a solo. I much preferred general surgery, or even trauma, and a heart surgery, no matter how many valve replacements we did, was heart surgery. Way above my paygrade, unless I was assisting someone more experienced.

  I’d gone to the pit just after lunchtime to scope out new cases and see if they could possibly be surgical when Craig hurried up to me and yanked me into an empty trauma bay, jerking the curtain closed. It took me a minute to reconcile that it was Craig at my work. My boyfriend. Standing in front of me. Normally, one compartment of my life didn’t contain pieces of the other.

  “Hey, what are you doing here?” I finally managed.

  His face was nothing short of panicked. “She’ll be here shortly, and Dane, I need you to do your thing and be the best at doing it, okay?” He was rambling, speaking almost so fast I couldn’t understand him, gripping my hands so tight my instinct to calm him kicked in. “They’re coming in an ambulance in a second, and my cab driver was kamikaze getting me here, so I know I beat the paramedics, but Dane, I need you to take care of her. I’ve never asked you for anything when it comes to your job, but I’m asking you this, please.”

  “Who’s coming in an ambulance?” I was confused. “What’s going on? Who do I need to take care of?”

  “Mom,” he said, breathless and gripping my forearms so tight, his face panicked. I pulled out of his hands and smoothed his hair from his face while he talked, making soothing noises to calm him. “I was having lunch with my parents when she made this funny grunt. Her arms went stiff and her wrists bent strangely, and she just started shaking. She fell out of her chair and was, I don’t know, convulsing or something, and the maître d’ called for help, and the paramedics showed up and they’re bringing her here. She had a seizure. Dane, I don’t know what happened or why, but I need you to fix her. Make Mom better, please,” he pleaded.

  “Baby, you have to calm down,” I said, keeping my voice low. “You can’t freak out while we look her over, because if you do, security will make you wait outside. If you’re going to be by her side, you have to stay out of the way. Don’t say anything, and don’t panic.” He nodded and I couldn’t help it. I kissed him fiercely on the lips. “I’ll figure it out, okay?”

  I was just pulling back the curtain and telling Craig to stay where he was when both ends of the ER erupted. At one end of the ER, Sabrina sauntered in and asked me if anything interesting was happening, and at the other end, the doors whooshed open and the paramedics came in rolling Isabelle on a gurney, her head strapped down with pads on either side of her face. Craig’s father was hot on their heels, and Craig rushed to his side.

  Sabrina gave me an incredulous look, recognizing Craig and the obvious worry of a family member bringing in a sick loved one. Thankfully, she said nothing, just jumped in to help, snapping on gloves and tying a paper gown over her scrubs to protect her from any bodily fluids.

  The paramedics began to report that Isabelle had one grand mal seizure at a restaurant and had been stabilized in the field, but on the ride to the hospital, she’d suffered another one. They barked out the vital statistics as well as having administered Diazepam in the ambulance for the second seizure, all while a trauma team moved her to a table in one of the trauma bays. She’d been put on a backboard because of falling at the restaurant, but a quick exam showed no sign of spinal injury, so we got her out of the stabilizing collar and off the backboard. The paramedics, having delivered the patient and all the pertinent information, wheeled their now-empty bed back out, leaving Craig and Lawrence Dahl looking on while we assessed Isabelle. She appeared to be stable, if postictal, which meant that despite being awake, she wasn’t yet aware of her surroundings or her condition. Her eyes rolled around in their sockets, and she wasn’t the most responsive, though she recognized my voice when I shouted out vitals.

  We established that her airway wasn’t blocked, she had a good pulse, and her confusion was normal given the circumstances. Unfortunately, we hadn’t finished our exam when she started seizing again.

  The paramedics had gotten a good IV in her arm on the transport to the hospital, so I was able to push Lorazepam without trying to hold her down and get a needle in her arm. Almost immediately, the seizure stopped.

  “Has this happened before?” I asked Craig.

  “No,” he answered immediately. “She’s never had anything like this happen before. Right, Dad?”

  Lawrence Dahl was a serious man, tall and barrel chested, and one of the gentlest people I’d ever known. He was normally soft-spoken, but his worry for his wife had him speaking loudly over the commotion around us.

  “No. Bella’s been complaining of headaches for a few days, but she just thought she needed glasses. She hasn’t done anything like this.”

  I nodded, and Sabrina and I looked at each other. “Take her to CT and I’ll page Dearborn to meet you there.”

  “You on this?” she asked, raising her eyebrow.

  My lips thinned into a tight line. “Of course. Now please get her going.”

  “Okay,” she agreed reluctantly and wheeled Isabelle from the ER. I strode to the nurse’s station to page the chief neurologist and then turned to my boyfriend and his dad.

  “C’mon,” I said, putting a hand on Craig’s arm. “I’ll show you to a comfortable waiting room while we’re doing Isabelle’s tests. I need to ask you some questions about her so we can make sure we get some answers.”

  “Dane,” Craig said, grabbing onto me again, his eyes filling with tears. “She’s going to be okay, right?”

  Holding his desperate gaze, I did what I’d been trained to do. “We’re going to do everything we can to help her, but right now I need to ask you and Lawrence some questions so we can get a clearer understanding of what’s going on with her.”

  Craig’s face crumpled and he put his forehead to my chest. I’d stripped off the gloves when we’d left the trauma area, but my hands on his heaving shoulders left fingers of powder on his navy shirt.

  “Stop, babe,” I murmured, grateful no one else was in this out-of-the-way waiting room. “I promise you there’ll be time to be worried and upset and freaked out, but the first hour is critical for getting her treated, okay? I need you to focus.” Pulling his face up, I framed his cheeks with my palms and stared into his eyes. “I need you to be strong for your mom, okay? I can’t be her doctor figuring out the problem and be your comforting boyfriend at the same time. Now, I can take myself off her case and sit here and hold your hand if that’s what you want, but then I don’t get the answers any faster than you do. Tell me what you need from me and I’ll do it.”

  Lawrence laid a commanding hand on both my shoulder and Craig’s. “Son, Dane can be more help if he’s on her case. You and me, we can lean on each other, so take a deep breath. Bella will get better faster if we can answer Dane’s questions, right?” He looked to me for support.

  “Your dad is right.” Craig still said nothing, his eyes closing as two tears dripped down his face. “Craig?”

&
nbsp; He looked at me. “Kiss me,” he demanded. “Then I can be calm. Just one, and then you can go back to being her doctor.”

  Feeling strange at the blurred lines between work and home life, I did as he asked, pouring my strength and love into it, heedless of his dad looking on. It wasn’t hungry or heated, but there was passion and adoration infusing our lips together. No matter our petty issues, which had seemed more numerous lately, we were connected on a deeper level. I believed it, and so did Craig.

  I broke the kiss, then Lawrence led his son to a chair and I had to excuse myself for a moment to get a patient history form and clipboard. It was a good thing, because it allowed me to step back into my surgeon shoes.

  Other than some blurred vision and headaches with stabbing pain behind one of Isabelle’s eyes, she hadn’t complained to Lawrence of anything in recent weeks, and nothing else seemed out of the ordinary. Sabrina had Isabelle admitted and came to lead us to her room, where I waited for Dr. Dearborn to come in for the neuro consult.

  Half an hour later, Dr. Kingsley asked to speak to me in the hall.

  “You doing okay, Perry?”

  “Yeah,” I nodded, folding my arms over my torso and looking through the glass wall as Craig sat beside his mom and held her hand. She’d come slowly back to herself and was putting on a brave face, but she was clearly scared and very fatigued.

  “Well, for obvious reasons, you cannot be on this case.”

  I started to protest, a shock of cold twining around my spine and spreading from the small of my back to all my nerves. How much did she know?

  She was having none of it, shushing me with a hand gesture. “I will not have you on your boyfriend’s mother’s case,” she chastised as though I were an errant kid who should know better than to argue. “Now, if you need to take time off to be with them, speak up and I’ll get someone to cover for you. But if you need the distraction, I can do that, too. Which will it be?” I stared at her, agape. Now her irritation really did tick up. “Dane Perry, I am not a hideous, bigoted jackass. They’re family,” she said, gesturing to Craig and his parents. “I don’t care if you go home to Big Bird at night. Your personal life is your business and I’m not here to judge. I wouldn’t judge a gay patient whose family I don’t work with, so I’m not about to start with someone I do.” Then she leaned closer. “If you want the truth, my sister is working very hard to get the Marriage Equality Act through the New York State Assembly right now, so hopefully one day soon she can marry her partner of thirteen years. And if you’re worried, I can assure you from discussions with the chief, any trouble you run into with others will be unlikely in this hospital, and if you have any, all you need to do is tell me and I’ll take care of it. Now make a decision.”