by Malone, Cara
“You look pretty amazing yourself,” Ivy said, spinning Chloe around to look at her.
She’d chosen a sapphire-blue satin dress to bring out the color of her eyes but she’d been worried as she got dressed that she was overthinking their date. It was February in Illinois, a snowstorm was brewing, and she had nothing to cover her legs except a thin pair of tights. and besides – it wasn’t like she and Ivy didn’t already know each other. They’d been involved with each other for most of the school year in one way or another and Chloe wondered whether she was making too much of their first date.
But when Ivy showed up in her little black dress, Chloe knew that it meant as much to Ivy as it did to her. Ivy held Chloe’s coat for her, then they went outside to a cab that Ivy had waiting at the bottom of the stairs. It took them across town to a restaurant at the far end of campus – a five-minute drive that would have been close to a thirty-minute walk in the cold. Chloe cuddled up to Ivy in the back seat, their thighs pressed together as she enjoyed Ivy’s warmth. While they rode, Ivy asked Chloe about her latest rotation.
“Psychiatry, right?” Ivy said.
“Yeah,” Chloe answered. “I really like it, actually. It’s a lot of observation because the residents can’t exactly teach me how to psychoanalyze someone in the span of a couple of weeks, but I find it fascinating. I’ve spent so much of my medical education focusing on diagnosing and treating physical disease, it’s been an interesting change of pace to think about mental health and its impact on people’s lives.”
It had resonated with Chloe ever since the first day of the rotation, when she’d observed a mental health evaluation in a suspected schizophrenic patient who had shown up in the ER. Over the past month, Chloe had gotten to do what she liked the most – talk to people, help them understand what was happening to them and reassure them.
She talked all the way to the restaurant, and by the time she and Ivy were settled at their table, she’d detailed all of the cases she’d seen so far and Ivy was grinning at her.
“What?” Chloe asked. “Am I talking too much?”
“No,” Ivy said, the smile not leaving her lips as she asked, “Does this mean you finally found a specialty you’re passionate about?”
Chloe smiled from her seat across from Ivy, thought about it for a second, and said, “I just may have. I’ve already found such a good mentor in Dr. Thomas, though, and I started looking into pediatric residencies. Maybe I found a subspecialty that I can sink my teeth into.”
“I think you’d make a great pediatric psychiatrist,” Ivy said, handing Chloe a menu.
“Wow,” Chloe said, realizing how much she’d been dominating the conversation. “I haven’t shut up since the cab. I’m sorry. How’s your rotation going?”
“Ugh,” Ivy said, rolling her eyes. “Boring. Let’s not talk about it and say we did. What are you going to eat?”
“I don’t know,” Chloe said, opening her menu.
The restaurant, which Chloe had barely registered until this point because of her excitement over sharing all the details of her rotation with Ivy, was a high-end Italian one with dark maroon walls and little tea candles on every table. The menu was large and full of delicious-sounding pasta dishes. In the end, she decided on shrimp scampi and Ivy ordered the mushroom ravioli. Then Chloe nudged Ivy’s leg beneath the table.
“What?” Ivy asked.
“This place is really nice. Thanks for taking me out.”
“You’re really nice,” Ivy said, and Chloe laughed.
“You’re cheesy when you try to be romantic,” Chloe said, to which Ivy crossed her arms over her chest and feigned offense.
“I’m new at this,” she said.
“I didn’t say I don’t like it,” Chloe answered. Then she changed the subject, asking, “So what did your parents say when you told them about your exam score? And your brother – was he jealous?”
“I actually didn’t tell them directly,” Ivy said. Chloe raised an eyebrow in surprise and Ivy explained how she’d been in such a hurry to meet Chloe, she’d passed the task off on her brother. Then she said, “When I left your apartment the next morning, I had a voicemail from my parents telling me that they were proud of me, so Victor must have told them without trying to steal too much of my limelight.”
Chloe reached across the table and took Ivy’s hand. “That’s good. And for the record, I’m proud of you all the time.”
“Thank you,” Ivy said, smiling broadly.
* * *
After the meal was over, Chloe and Ivy headed back outside. The wind had picked up and it was snowing a lot harder, big flakes sticking in their hair and eyelashes. Ivy was in the process of digging her phone out of her pocket to call another cab back to Chloe’s apartment when Chloe nudged her and gestured up the sidewalk. A few dozen feet away, Megan and Alex were just ducking into a bar that was one door down from the restaurant.
“Do you think they’re celebrating Megan’s exam score?” Chloe asked.
“Probably,” Ivy said. “I’m sure she passed without any trouble.”
Chloe looked at Ivy, batting her lashes in the snow, and asked, “Do you want to join them for a couple of minutes? I know you and Megan aren’t the best of friends but one drink to celebrate the fact that we’re this close to finishing medical school wouldn’t hurt.”
“Actually,” Ivy said, “I think we may have buried the hatchet after the exam.”
“Really?” Chloe asked, stunned. “What finally did it?”
“I realized that most of the reason I hated Megan was because she had you,” Ivy said. Chloe wrinkled her nose in confusion and Ivy added, “She got to live with you, see you every day, and if I’m not misreading the situation, I think you were even in love with her at one point.”
“No,” Chloe disagreed adamantly. “I had a little crush, but it was mostly just proximity. It never meant anything.”
“Well, whatever it was, she always took you for granted, when all I wanted was the courage to get closer to you,” Ivy said. “So I took it out on her.”
“But you got the girl,” Chloe said, hooking her arm in Ivy’s and giving her a kiss. Her lips were already becoming cold from the wind. “So do you want to get a drink with them?”
“Sure,” Ivy said. “It’s got to be warmer in there than it is out here, anyway.”
She slipped her phone back into her pocket and Chloe led her into the bar. It was loud and crowded with medical students all celebrating their exam scores. Chloe saw Riggs and Donoghue at the bar – she couldn’t miss them because of their booming voices and the bravado with which they were offering shots to any girl who came within fifteen feet of them. They’d clearly been here celebrating for a while, and Chloe steered Ivy away from them as she noticed Megan and Alex sitting on stools at the other end of the bar.
She waved and called out Megan’s name, and she waved Chloe and Ivy over. After a minute of slowly making their way through the crowd, they met Megan and Alex at the bar. Chloe hugged them each and Ivy extended her hand to Megan, asking, “So I assume you passed?”
“Yeah,” Megan shouted over the noise of the bar. “You?”
“I did,” Ivy said. “Congratulations.”
“Thanks,” Megan answered, and then she introduced Ivy to Alex.
“Do you two mind if we join you for a drink?” Chloe asked. “We don’t want to intrude if you’re on a date.”
“It’s fine,” Alex said. “We’re happy to have a little extra help celebrating. Are you on a date, too?”
Chloe was already grinning from ear to ear and she only beamed more when Ivy said, “Yeah, our first.”
“I told you that you could un-screw it up,” Megan said to Ivy, and for once when she looked at her, there was no ferocity or competition in her eyes. She looked genuinely pleased to hear that Ivy and Chloe were on a date, although it was probably more for Chloe’s sake than Ivy’s.
“Oh,” Chloe said, “so you had something to do with this?”
She said it with a wink and Ivy rolled her eyes, then asked, “What are we drinking?”
“Champagne!” Chloe said, motioning a bartender over to them. She ordered a bottle of Prosecco, the best the bartender could do, and they waited as he set four champagne flutes on the bar for them, then opened the bottle and poured.
Once they had their drinks in hand, the four of them agreed that it was much too loud at the bar, so they looked around for a free table. They found one with a little bit of difficulty, then as they sat down, Megan put her arm around Alex, Ivy did the same with Chloe, and Chloe said, “We can’t drink bubbly without a toast.”
“What should we drink to?” Alex asked.
They all held their flutes up and Ivy said, “To passing the medical licensing exam.”
Chloe added, “And finding true love.”
Megan said, “To the next step in all our lives.”
And Alex concluded, “To us.”
They all tipped their flutes in toward the center of the small table and the clinking of glass was just audible over the bar’s noise. They all drank and then Ivy leaned into Chloe to seal the toast with a kiss.
She asked about the Prosecco, “What do you think?”
Ivy shrugged and said, “In case you forgot, my whole life was studying up until a few months ago. I’m not exactly a connoisseur.”
“Well, if you give me flowers every day then I’ll make sure you try all the things you’ve been missing out on,” Chloe said.
Then they both turned back to Megan and Alex. They had wedding plans to share and residency programs to discuss, and the four of them passed a great night together in a quiet corner of the bar, celebrating how far they’d all come.
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A Note from Cara
Thanks for reading A Cut Above – I hope you enjoyed it!
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Thanks again for reading and I hope to hear from you soon!
With love,
Cara
Also by Cara Malone
Krys Stevens is the best trauma doctor at Lakeside Hospital. She runs the ER like a finely choreographed dance and she has a small group of coworkers she calls friends. What more could an ambitious young doctor want? One day, a patient arrives in the ER intubated with a ballpoint pen inserted by attractive, resourceful combat medic Darcy, who changes everything.
Read on for a preview chapter from this book.
Sneak Peek: Love Trauma
Graduation day was a warm May afternoon and for about an hour, Krys Stevens was able to ignore the pager clipped to her hip.
That was pretty rare for her. She’d been working in the emergency department of Lakeside Hospital for almost five years and she could count on one hand the number of times she requested a day off. She always jumped to answer every page and took any extra shifts she could because there was nowhere in the world she’d rather be than in the ER, saving lives.
But today the hospital would have to get by without Krys Stevens because she was here to watch her friends become doctors.
She found a seat near the bottom of the bleachers of Northwestern’s stadium, where she might be able to catch the attention of Megan, Ivy and Chloe as they walked across the stage set up in the center of the football field. There were thousands of other people there, proud parents and friends, but Krys wanted the girls to know she’d come to support them. They were an eclectic bunch, worming their way into her life by force at times, but she had grown to love them by now.
Krys was in her seat and ready for the ceremony to start by eleven-fifteen, and she had about forty-five minutes to kill. Fortunately for her, she’d planned to get some work done while she waited. She had a rolled-up medical journal tucked under her arm along with the graduation program she’d been handed at the stadium entrance, but first she had a few emails to catch up on.
That was one thing about the ER that she’d never gotten used to – no matter how efficiently she triaged and treated her patients, the paperwork never stopped piling up. The possibility of coming out to support her friends and then getting some work done while everyone else crossed the stage was appealing in more ways than one.
She was just tapping out a reply on her phone to Russell, her boss at the free clinic where she moonlighted, when she heard someone shout, “Krys! Hey, Krys Stevens!”
She looked up – it might be like finding a needle in a haystack to locate the source of her name in a crowd of thousands. But then a couple of hands went up and she saw some familiar faces. There was Alex – Megan’s fiancée – and Dr. Thomas from the pediatrics department standing up and waving to her from a few rows over.
Krys waved back and Alex cupped her hands around her mouth to shout, “Come sit with us!”
Krys looked longingly down at her medical journal – The Annals of Emergency Medicine, which she’d been intending to read for weeks now – and then tucked it under her arm and picked her way across the rows of bleachers to them.
“Hi,” she said as she slid into a seat at the end of the row.
“We thought you’d be working, or else we would have invited you to come with us,” Dr. Thomas said. She was wearing a flowing floral dress and she looked exactly the same as she did in the hospital, minus the white coat and stethoscope.
Alex, on the other hand, looked like a whole new woman without her navy paramedic’s uniform. Krys saw her on a daily basis in the ER and she hardly recognized the girl with the carefully curled hair and the feminine-cut blouse sitting in front of her. Then again, Krys didn’t look much like herself today, either. She’d foregone her usual utilitarian ponytail, for one thing, and she felt out of sorts without her hospital scrubs.
“I’m glad you came,” Alex said. “It’ll mean a lot to the girls. Have you met Megan’s parents?”
She gestured further down the bleachers to a woman who was unmistakably Megan’s mom, complete with fiery red hair and delicate freckles across the bridge of her nose. Beside her sat a man with a warm smile and his arm around his wife’s shoulders. Krys reached down the row to them, shaking their hands over Alex and Lily’s laps.
“Are Ivy and Chloe’s parents here?” she asked.
“Yeah, but they drove separately and we haven’t been able to locate them,” Alex said. “It’s okay – we’ll catch up with them at the reception afterward. Are you sticking around for that?”
She was talking about the cocktail hour that the university was putting on after the graduation was over. Krys was planning to attend it and make an immediate beeline for Ivy, Chloe and Megan so she could congratulate them, then get back into the action for a night shift at the free clinic. Instead of admitting all this, though, she said, “Yeah, for a little while.”
“Good,” Alex said. “You need to get away from the hospital more often.”
Krys rolled her eyes good-naturedly, and when Alex turned her attention back to her future in-laws, she wondered if it would be rude to go back to her emails. Plus there was an intriguing article about cystic fibrosis that she’d been meaning to read…
“Did you bring a med
ical journal to a graduation ceremony?” Dr. Thomas asked, as if she were reading Krys’s mind. Then she swiped the journal out of Krys’s lap to confirm her suspicions. “Seriously?”
“We’re here to support Chloe Barnes, Megan Callahan, and Ivy Chan,” Krys pointed out. “What are you planning to do while everyone from D through Z walks across the stage, Dr. Thomas?”
“Be supportive,” she said with an amused grin. “And we’re not in the hospital – call me Lily.”
“Only if you give back the journal,” Krys said. The prospect of wasting two whole hours that she could be using for professional development made her want to break out in hives. Dr. Thomas – err, Lily – handed back the journal and Krys flipped it open, finding the article she wanted. Then she passed it back to Lily. “Have you read this? It’s about treating respiratory distress in the ER – I figured it might be useful for the next time Malik comes in.”
A shadow fell briefly over Lily’s face, and then she smiled.
“Let me check it out,” she said. She and Krys had both spent a lot of time with their young CF patient, and he was everyone’s favorite patient when he came in for his breathing treatments. Lily gave Krys a side-eye, then closed the journal and slipped it into her purse, saying, “after the ceremony. You’re here to support your friends, so be present in the moment, hon.”
The idea made Krys feel itchy, but Lily had a point.
After a few minutes, the crowd settled down and the first few bars of Pomp and Circumstance could be heard over the speakers. As the music grew louder, everyone stood and the graduates began filing onto the field, taking seats in the white folding chairs that were set up in front of the stage.