Yours Truly (Part of Your World #2)

I’d had a total breakdown last night when I got home.

I’d started to realize I would never really be happy again. Not the way I had been. I wasn’t ever getting my life back, and it wasn’t just the thing with Nick. Benny’s condition had broken me. It was the final straw.

Benny was like my child. I was eight years older and had practically raised him while Mom worked and went to nursing school.

I could be the strong-ass woman Mom taught me to be. I could put myself through med school and support myself and live through my horrendous divorce. But I could not watch Benny deteriorate like this and hold the line. I just couldn’t.

When I’d gone to his apartment yesterday after work to get his cat, there had been a three-day notice to vacate on his door. He wasn’t paying his rent. Then I got inside, and it went from bad to worse.

His place had been trashed. He hadn’t cleaned the litter box in weeks, the dishes in the sink had mold on them, the treadmill that he used to use religiously was covered in unwashed laundry. The cat practically dove into my arms when he saw me, like I was part of a long-awaited rescue mission and he was relieved I was finally there to save him.

Benny was clinically depressed. He’d been depressed since all this started last year, but it had gone from a functional depression, where he could still shower and take meds, to this. He just gave up when his kidneys did.

I think I needed to move him in with me. Either that or call Mom. He needed an adult-ier adult to take care of him right now. He was going to have to decide which overbearing woman he wanted in his life, because one was about to be assigned to him whether he liked it or not.

I’d gotten home last night and collapsed into bed and machine-gun sobbed into my pillow until I fell asleep—which didn’t last long because Benny’s cat woke me up. It took me a solid ten seconds of pure terror before I realized I had a cat in my bedroom and not a murderer. I couldn’t go back to sleep after that.

I needed to not be at work today. I needed to sit around my house without a bra, my hair in a weird bun, watching reruns of Schitt’s Creek. My eyes were still puffy, and I was a soft breeze away from losing it again—and I got my period. I get to bleed for a week without the sweet release of death.

I guess for the moment it was sort of good that I wasn’t training for a new job—not that I was thrilled with how that whole thing went down and why. But at least I didn’t have to be at the hospital eighty hours a week when I could barely handle the forty-eight I was currently scheduled.

It was six-thirty a.m. I was having coffee with Jessica before work today.

I didn’t used to like her very much. She was good friends with Alexis at one point. They were neighbors before Alexis moved. I always found Jessica a little too bitter, but now that I was bitter too, I appreciated her burn-the-patriarchy energy.

I got to the hospital cafeteria and grabbed a triple cappuccino. I wished there was vodka in it.

I spotted Jessica at the table she’d picked in the corner and headed over, dressed in the baggy black zip-up hoodie I wore over my scrubs. The hood was on. That coupled with the sunglasses I was wearing over my puffy, bloodshot eyes made me look like I was about to drop the hottest hip-hop album of the year.

Jessica, on the other hand, looked great. Perfect hair and bright red lipstick at six-thirty in the damn morning. She was an OB-GYN. She was forty-six, perfectly put together at all times, and I’d never seen her smile. Like, ever. She was married to some big lawyer or something, but she hated him, which didn’t surprise me because she hated everyone. It was currently my favorite thing about her.

When I dropped into the chair across from her like a human beanbag, she was looking at her phone. “And what happened to you?” she said without looking up, her tone bored.

“Why would you think something happened to me.”

She set her phone down and looked at me like a parent talking to a petulant teenager. “You’re wearing sunglasses indoors.”

“Maybe I have pinkeye.”

She waited.

I tossed my bag on the floor next to me with a thunk. “Benny’s not doing great. And my divorce is final in two weeks.”

“Good,” she said dryly. “Free at last.”

I rolled my eyes. “Free to do what? Date? Have loads of sex with hot singles? Have you seen it out there?” I leaned forward. “And believe me when I tell you that my standards are low. The bar has come waaaaay down. At this point I’d settle for a guy simply because he has a penis, more than one towel, and no flags hanging on his walls. I mean, do they actually expect us to have sex with them on a futon in their mom’s basement? Like, actually?”

“Yes,” she said flatly. “That is exactly what they expect.”

I sat back heavily in my seat. “I’m beginning to think men are not sending us their best people.”

She scoffed, which was Jessica’s version of laughing. “All they do is lie and throw off your PH balance. They are a constant reminder that we don’t choose our sexuality, because who in their right mind would choose to be attracted to men. They are completely worthless as partners. Did you know that when a wife becomes seriously ill, she is six times more likely to be abandoned by her spouse than a husband is?”

I stared at her. “Are you serious?”

She took out a compact and checked her teeth. “And the older the woman, the higher the rate of abandonment. I hear there’s a saying up in oncology. When the wife gets sick, the husband gets a new wife.” She clicked the mirror closed and gave me a pursed-lip can-you-believe-this-shit look.

I blinked at her in horror. “That is disgusting.”

“Yes, it is.” She agreed. “But remember, you can’t spell disappointment without men,” she sang.

I laughed a little too manically before putting my forehead into my hand. “That’s it,” I mumbled. “I’m giving up. I should just accept that I’m never having sex again. I’m canceling my bikini-wax appointments. Just gonna let the forest reclaim the land, succumb to my inner swamp witch.”

I squeezed my eyes shut from behind my glasses. “I feel like if I died, it would take me a solid twenty-four hours to realize I’m in hell.”

Then I groaned, remembering. “And then there’s this asshole I’m working with, this new guy I can’t stand—”

“Oh? Who?” she asked, looking back at her phone, only sounding mildly interested.

“Dr. Maddox.” I made a face.

She paused and looked up at me over her screen. “Jacob Maddox?”

I rubbed my forehead tiredly. “Yeah. You know him?”

“Wonderful man,” she said matter-of-factly.

I froze and blinked at her. “I’m sorry—what?”

Her beeper started going off. “I know his mother,” she said, looking at her pager. “I’ve known the whole family for years. I have an emergency C-section, I need to run.” She got up.

“Wait. Are you sure we’re talking about the same Jacob?” I said, watching her grab her bag. “Brown reddish hair? Sort of yea high—”

“He was head of emergency medicine at Memorial West. He’s an excellent human being.”

I stared at her. An excellent—“Nobody likes him!”

She flung her bag over her shoulder. “Well, they’re wrong. Drinks later?”

“I can’t. But—”

“Text me when you’re free.”

She grabbed her coffee and I watched her walk off, high heels clicking. She dropped the cup into a trash can, turned a corner, and disappeared.

I sat there blinking after her from behind my glasses.

What the hell was that about?

She didn’t say anything nice about anyone, let alone men. An excellent human being? Gross.

Whatever.

I was too exhausted to even think on this. I had to broach the Mom/move-in subject with Benny today. Then if he said yes, I had to actually move him in, which I doubted he’d be able to help with in his state. I didn’t have time to ponder the benevolence of what’s-his-face.

I finished my coffee alone and then went to the locker room to get rid of the hoodie and glasses and change my tampon. I felt surly and extra grouchy, so when I got to the ER and saw Gloria standing by a patient room with Hector, peeking through a crack in the curtain, I came up behind them like a cranky old woman getting ready to chase people off her lawn. “What are you doing?” I grumbled.

“Shhhhhh,” Gloria whispered. “We’re watching.”

“Watching what?” I said, straining to look around them through the sliding glass door.

“Dr. Maddox,” she whispered.

I groaned. “Oh God, what has he done now?”

I hadn’t seen him for a few days since the supply closet Go Fuck Yourself. I think he was avoiding me.

Good.

Hector didn’t look away from the window. “This little girl came in with a dog bite and he’s sewing up her doll.”

I wrinkled my forehead. “He’s what?”

“Yeah. I was just in there. I guess the dog tore her doll and she was all freaking out and crying, and Dr. Maddox goes in there and starts talking all soft to her like, ‘Mija, let’s take care of your baby, okay?’ And then he gets his suture kit and starts working on the doll, while his resident started the kid’s stitches, so she wouldn’t notice it. Dios mío, I have never seen anything so sweet.” He turned to Gloria. “Do you think he’s single?”

“Yeah,” she said. “I also think he’s straight.”

Hector shook his head. “No. No way. I seen him at the Cockpit.”

“Where?” she asked.

He leaned to look around her into the room. “A gay bar in uptown. It was definitely him. I never forget a jawline like that.”

“Just because he was at a gay bar doesn’t mean he’s gay,” she said. “I heard he used to date some doctor at Memorial West. A woman,” she added. She nodded at me. “Come look.” She stepped aside so I could peer into the crack in the curtain.

I could see Dr. Maddox, the patient’s mom, a second-year resident, and Jocelyn in the room. Dr. Maddox had his back to us, sitting next to the gurney. His scrubs were hiked up and he was wearing colorful socks again, though I couldn’t make out the design from here.

He had the doll on a table, and he was stitching her up. The little girl couldn’t have been more than four or five. She wasn’t crying, she was distracted. He seemed to be telling her a story as he worked because she giggled. Even Jocelyn smiled, and she was one of his earliest and most dedicated haters.

“Well, I’ll be damned,” I muttered. “He’s not Satan after all.”

“What are you guys doing?”

We jumped at the voice. Zander was coming toward us from the double doors.

“Hey. Nothing,” I said, putting my back to the glass. “Just watching a procedure.”

Gloria and Hector took this as their moment to exit and left.

“What’s up?” I asked.

“I came down to tell you, I’m releasing Benny today. He looks good. Ready to go.”

I immediately perked up. “Great!”

“So who are you watching?” He peered around me into the room. “Oh, Jacob.” He grinned when he saw what he was doing. “That son of a bitch, look at him in there. I always did like his bedside manner.”

I cocked my head. “You know him?”

He nodded. “Yeah. We were roommates for years. One of my best friends. Great guy.”

I made a face.

He eyed me. “What?”

“No, it’s just I keep hearing that today, but nobody here likes him much.”

He drew his brows down. “Jacob?”

“Yeah. He’s kind of a dick.”

Zander barked out a laugh so loud it surprised me. “Jacob is not a dick. That guy’s the nicest dude you’ll ever meet, trust me. He’d give you the shirt off his back.”

“Jacob,” I deadpanned, crossing my arms. “He’s totally rude.”

“If he’s coming off that way, he’s probably just nervous. He’s an introvert, kind of shy.” He looked at his watch. “Look, I gotta run.” He started jogging backward. “Hey, be nice to him, yeah? He’s one of the good ones.” He turned and jogged the rest of the way to the double doors.

I gawked after him. One of the good ones?

I’d known Zander for years. I not only respected him as a doctor, but I also trusted his judgment in general. I didn’t think he’d say that about anyone unless he believed it was true. I mean it wasn’t true, Jacob was definitely an ass. And he was in cahoots with Gibson for the chief position, which I was still pissed about. But I did believe that Zander believed Jacob was a nice guy.

And Jessica also believed Jacob was a nice guy…

Gibson must like him too.

Huh.

I looked back through the glass. Jacob was finishing the doll. He wiggled it in front of the little girl and then bopped her gently on the nose with it before handing it to her. She clutched it and beamed.

I felt my face soften.

I mean, he had brought me that warm washcloth that day in the supply closet. He could have just taken off, especially after I snapped at him in Benny’s room. And I never really apologized for running into him that day either. Now he was over here saving dolls from certain death…I guess he wasn’t all bad.

I chewed on my lip.

If Jacob was shy, losing all his patients on his first day and then pissing off the entire nursing staff wouldn’t help matters. No one really gave him a shot after that. If he really was “one of the good ones,” like Zander said, that kind of made me feel bad, like it was his first week at a new school and I was one of the mean girls.

Maybe I was one of the mean girls.

I was so crabby lately I was probably shorter with him than I would have been if my life wasn’t a dumpster fire.

Benny was an introvert too. He had a really hard time in school…

Through the sliver in the curtain, I saw Jacob get up and I started for the nurses’ station, but I only got a few feet before I let out a groan and turned back around.

A moment later, when the door to Jacob’s room slid open, I was waiting outside. I stepped in front of him with my arms crossed. “Hey,” I said flatly.

He froze with his hand on the door. “Hello,” he said, looking like a deer in headlights.

“Bring them desserts.”

He blinked at me. “What?”

“You should have brought the nurses donuts on your first day. You showed up empty-handed, that was your first mistake. Cupcakes might save you, but not the cheap stuff. Nadia Cakes, two dozen, get a keto one for Gloria, at least four gluten-free ones, and one vegan. Hector doesn’t do animal by-products. Bonus points if you get a doggie cupcake for Angelica’s new puppy.”

He stared at me, and I turned and walked away.

There. I was nice to him like Zander had asked. I gave him the tools to dig himself out of his nosedive with his team. Whether he chose to take my advice was on him. My conscience was clear. I was no longer a mean girl.

“Hey,” he called after me.

I let out a long breath and turned back around. “What?”

He stood there with this earnest, hat-in-hand, puppy-dog look that made it hard to keep my flat expression. I registered again, almost to my own annoyance, that he was cute.

He had this super-sexy, strong-quiet-type thing about him. Deep, gentle brown eyes, a square jaw with just enough scruff to look a little rugged but still put together. He was maybe five-nine, five-ten, to my five-four. Mid-thirties, in shape. His hands were plunged into the pockets of his black scrubs and he had veins running down his toned arms. I loved well-hydrated veins.

I shook it off. Was he hot? Yes. Fine. Doesn’t matter. Super annoying, though.

“Yeah?” I said impatiently.

“What about you?” he asked. “What kind of cupcake do you like?”

“Red velvet, and I don’t want one,” I said, turning back around.

I didn’t want anything from him.