Yours Truly (Part of Your World, #2)(2)

“Unless you have a date, I’m coming to see you,” she said.

“Ha. Right.” I sat on a gurney and put my forehead into my hand.

Since Nick, I had been through some of the worst online dating in the history of the internet. The amount of garbage I sifted through on Tinder over the last year was so bleak, Nick looked like Prince Charming by comparison.

“Still no luck?” she asked.

“Last month I went on a date with a guy who had a court-ordered Breathalyzer installed in his car because he’d had that many DUIs. He asked me to breathe into it so his car would start. There was the one who showed up to our coffee date with a swastika tattoo on his neck. The last date I went on, the guy’s wife, which I didn’t know he had, showed up to the Benihana and asked if this was what he was doing with the money he said he needed for the kids’ school supplies. He told me he didn’t have kids.”

She must have blanched into the phone. “Oh, gross.”

“You have no idea how lucky you are that you found Daniel. Seriously. Make a sacrifice to the dating gods for that one.” I looked at my watch. “I gotta go, I’m on shift. I’ll call you after work.”

“Okay. But really call me, though,” she said.

“I will really call you.”

We hung up. I sat for a moment just staring at the wall. There was a pain-assessment chart hanging there. Little cartoon faces in various expressions over coinciding levels of pain. A green smiley face over the number zero. A red crying face over the number ten.

I fixed my eyes on the ten.

I’d managed not to think too much about the nineteenth. I was hoping if I didn’t focus on the date, maybe I’d luck out and be a few days past it before I realized it had come and gone. It’s not like much would change when the divorce was finalized. Nick and I had been split for a year. This was just making it paperwork official.

But still.

Maybe Alexis was right and I shouldn’t be alone for it. In case it crept up and boob-punched me.

The last hour of work was uneventful. I took the only patient who came in—nobody died. But to be fair, it was just our regular, Nunchuck Guy, with another concussion, so the odds were in my favor.

I was getting ready to clock out when Jocelyn came back around.

“Hey, Gibson wants to talk to you before you leave.” Her eyes were sparkling. “This is it!” she sang. “He’s giving you the position.”

Gibson was the current chief of emergency medicine for Royaume Northwestern. He was retiring this month. Technically he’d retired almost a year ago. Alexis had gotten his job and he’d left. Then a month later she quit to move to her new husband’s tiny town in the middle of nowhere and open her own clinic, so Gibson came back.

“There’s no way the board has voted yet, so I doubt it,” I said. “But I appreciate the confidence.”

But then I thought about it, and maybe he was giving me the position.

Not one person other than me had raised their hand for it. Nobody else was running. Did they even need to vote? What else would Gibson want to talk to me about if it wasn’t this?

I made my way down the hall toward Gibson’s office, a little excited. I mean, taking on the new job was going to be a ton of work. Six days a week, eighty hours or more. But I was ready. My whole life was Royaume Northwestern Hospital. Might as well work to my full potential.

I knocked on his door frame. “Hey. You wanted to see me?”

Gibson looked up and smiled warmly. “Come in.”

He sat behind his desk, his gray hair neatly combed back. He reminded me of a sweet old grandpa. I liked him. Everyone did. He’d been in the position forever.

“Close the door,” he said, finishing something he was signing.

I slipped into the chair in front of him.

He finished his paperwork and moved it aside and gave me a full, toothy smile. “How are you, Briana?”

“Good,” I said brightly.

“And your brother, Benny?”

I bobbed my head. “As well as can be expected.”

“Well, I’m glad to hear that. Such an unfortunate circumstance. But he’s got some great doctors.”

I nodded. “Royaume Northwestern is the best. Speaking of which, I’m excited to get started—not that I’m looking forward to you leaving,” I added.

He chuckled.

“Is there going to be a vote?” I asked. “Nobody else is running.”

He threaded his fingers over his stomach. “Well, that’s what I wanted to talk to you about. I wanted to tell you personally. I’ve decided to delay my retirement for a few more months.”

“Oh.” I tried to disguise my disappointment. “Okay. I thought you and Jodi were moving to some villa in Costa Rica.”

He laughed good-naturedly. “We are. But the jungle can wait. I’d like to give everyone some time to get to know Dr. Maddox before we put forward a vote. It only seems fair.”

I blinked at him. “I’m sorry. Who?”

He nodded in the direction of the ER. “Dr. Jacob Maddox. He started today. He was chief of emergency medicine over at Memorial West for the last few years. Great guy. Quite qualified.”

I was rendered mute for a solid ten seconds. “You’re holding off the vote? For him?”