Yours Truly (Part of Your World, #2)(7)

I realized then that I was intruding on something and was about to make my exit, but a nurse came up behind me with a huge dialysis machine, forcing me fully into the room. I stepped aside and stood next to the wall as she wheeled it to the bed.

“It hurts…” Benny said quietly.

“I know,” the woman said, a little softer now. “I’m getting you on some antibiotics and pain meds.” She put a hand on his head. “In a few minutes you’ll be sixteen again, passed out on J?ger in a cornfield.”

I snorted from my corner, and she twisted and noticed me standing there. “Uh, can I help you?”

My God, she was beautiful. She was so beautiful it disarmed me. For a second I forgot what I was even doing there.

Long brown hair tied into a messy bun. Wide brown eyes, full lashes.

Then my anxiety lurched—some violent combination of a throwback to tenth grade, me nervous talking to a pretty girl, coupled with the stress of meeting a new coworker in a hostile work environment while I was in a room I shouldn’t be in. I froze.

This didn’t normally happen while I was on the job. My anxiety was well managed at work. I was assured and confident in my interactions with my peers and subordinates. I was an excellent physician. But she had me flustered just by looking at me—the way she was looking at me, annoyed and impatient. I felt my social skills drop off like a heart-attack victim flatlining.

I cleared my throat. “Uh, you bumped into me back there,” I said awkwardly.

She blinked at me like I was telling her the most unimportant thing in the world. “Okay. Sorry?”

“You, uh, shouldn’t run in the hallways.”

She stared at me.

My mouth started to get dry. “It’s just, I used to be head of emergency medicine at Memorial West and I know how easy it is for accidents to—”

Her eyes flashed. “Yeah, I’m aware of your résumé, Dr. Maddox. Thanks for the hot tip. Now, if you don’t mind, I’d like to be alone with my patient?”

She cut daggers through me. Benny was staring. Even the nurse was glaring at me.

I stood there for another second. Then I backed out of the room. Hot embarrassment seared up my neck. What had I been thinking going in there like that? Jesus Christ, Jacob.

I went back to my side of the ER, running the whole awkward encounter through my head over and over, obsessing about what I should have said or should have done.

So stupid.

I shouldn’t have broached it when she was with a patient. That was the first thing. Maybe I should have led with the fact that she actually broke my phone, so she knew I wasn’t just there to give her a hard time about the running.

Maybe I should have just let it go.

Letting it go would have been better. Because then there would have been no encounter at all. I should have just said “Wrong room” and left.

God, I was a jerk. I was effortlessly succeeding in making myself the most hated person at Royaume Northwestern.

I knew from years of therapy that I was ruminating. That the encounter had probably been nothing to her, but to me it felt like the most embarrassing thing that had ever happened. A decade from now I’d be lying in bed and my eyes would fly open and I’d remember the incredulous way she’d looked at me—me, the guy who had the audacity to walk into her ER room and talk to her about running toward a critical patient, one she obviously knew and cared about.

I cringed through the second half of the day. My anxiety felt like electricity. A low, humming current under my skin, a survival instinct triggered and gnawing at me, telling me to flee. I couldn’t escape it, and I couldn’t calm it down.

Usually my anxiety meds leveled me out. But there was only so much meds could do. I had to manage stress, use the coping skills I’d learned in therapy. Most importantly, I had to live a lifestyle conducive to wellness. That’s what I thought I was doing coming here, getting myself out of the unhealthy situation at Memorial West with Amy and Jeremiah, making a choice that was best for my mental health.

But now this.

I knew I was being quiet and taciturn and this wasn’t helping to endear me to the already-cold nurses on my shift, but I was so in my head I couldn’t stop myself. I’d managed to trade seeing Amy and Jeremiah every single day for a whole team of people who hated my guts instead.

I’d always had a hard time making new friends. I got nervous in unfamiliar social settings, so I would say the wrong thing or become withdrawn, so it took time for people to warm up to me. Maybe I just needed time here too. But something told me this place was different. They were too cliqued up. It felt like high school all over again. I was the outsider and I’d keep being the outsider, especially if I kept messing things up the way I’d been doing. And I didn’t even know how to stop.

I had another hour of my shift, but I needed a break. My mental battery was empty again. I didn’t want to run into that woman in the doctors’ lounge, so I headed back to the supply closet.

Only when I got there, it wasn’t empty…





Chapter 3

Briana



I got Benny situated and managed not to cry the whole time. Then, once he was comfortable, I made a beeline for my sob closet.

I liked to cry in the supply closet by Gibson’s office. Quiet, low traffic. I had a toilet-paper box I liked to sit on, and the stuff on the shelves acted as sound insulation so nobody could hear me completely losing my mind.