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“You work
too much.”

“I'm a
doctor,” he said gently. “That's my life.”

He
smiled. I was hoping that he would reach out, pull me into his arms, and hold
me, but none of that happened. I was too scared to make the jump myself.

“I'm
sorry,” I said. “I'm really very embarrassed.”

“Don't be
embarrassed.”

The next
episode began to auto-play, and I muted the TV.

“You
never answered me,” I told him. “I know I shouldn't get so self-absorbed, and
automatically assume that I did something wrong, or said something wrong,
but...” I stopped myself, the first twinge of a very-deserved hangover headache
setting in. “I couldn't help but wonder what was going on. I was waiting
for
 
you.”

“I know.”

“I still
think about what happened,” I said. But I wasn't looking at him. My head was
buried in a throw pillow, my legs yanked up against my chest. Like an island,
he sat at the edge of the couch, as far away from me as possible – and I could
feel the distance, palpable and cool. “At your office.”

“I do,
too.”

I was
feeling put-together enough that I could have sat up and rested my head against
his shoulder. I would have loved a kiss, even just a peck on the cheek. But as
I rolled over, catching a full look at Dr. Greene, he looked so sad and torn
and – dare I say it, like the care-taking adult he currently was – that I
didn't dare. It felt out of place. It felt improper. It felt, in the same way
it
should
have felt when he was fucking me in his office: inappropriate.

For maybe
the first time, I really felt the wedge that was our age difference. Our
status. Our place in life, and the pedestals that held us dangling like two
perpendicular lines; close, but never able to touch.

Only we
had. We had touched.

He looked
at me, and it was then I realized this was the first time he had actually
looked at me all night. The first time our eyes locked since he picked up in
his expensive car, in his expensive clothes, unintentionally taunting me with
the extravagances of the life he lived. Which, in the chaotic aftermath of the
girlish mess he had found himself stepping into, was a lifetime away from what
his life must have looked like.

“You
regret it now, don't you?” I asked him. “I can feel it, you know. I can feel
you regretting me. And you should, you know. You should regret it. But here's
the thing: I don't.”

I wanted
to stay awake, but not even a particularly gripping episode of HG or the
presence of Dr. Greene was able to keep my eyes open. I fell asleep on the
couch, with Dr. Greene still sitting near, but not near enough.

And when
I woke up, as I could have only expected, he was gone.

One the
table were three things: Advil, a glass of orange juice, and note:

Take
this, keep up with electrolytes, and rest.

But
nothing else. No deep professions of love, or lust, or even an explanation as
to why he was so distant. Just a simple instruction.

I called
Aimee to let her know I was home safe, and less hungover than I thought I would
be. And while lazing around the apartment, shooting an email out to the UCF
library in hopes that I could find a job and, hopefully, stay in this apartment
for a little bit longer, my mother called.

I picked
up on the first ring.

“Mom,” I
said. “Please tell me that Arizona needs some of our summer rain.”

“Oh, God,
honey, it's terrible. But it's a dry heat. Nothing central air can't fix.”

I loved
my mother so much. She was wonderful, loving, and I could only imagine how she
would react if she'd known what the last few weeks of my life had looked life.
There was no way I could tell her.

But she
sensed it, as only she would.

“What's
wrong, Mia?” she asked. “You seem a little glum.”

“Oh,” I
answered. “Everything's okay, really. I'm just dealing with a few things that
are way over my head.”

Sitting
in the exam room, with my eyes glued to that huge, fist-shaped heart that sat
atop the computer desk, I tried to convince myself that what had happened the
night before last – my getting absolutely wasted, and Dr. Greene picking up the
pieces – was simply tied to my own habit of over-obsessing. And when he walked
in, he'd smile warmly, call me honey, his little fox, and touch my hand. Maybe
I'd catch that slight raise in his tone, like he was getting ready to say
something funny, or feel the slight tremor in his hand when he reached out to
check my pulse.

Instead,
when he walked in, his smile was tight. He walked rigidly, making whatever
contact he had to make – shaking my hand, checking my pulse – quick and formal.
It felt like the room's temperature had suddenly shot down into the negatives,
and I was completely exposed.

“So,” he
said. There was an attempted cheeriness in his voice, but I, of course, could
see right through the bullshit. “All of your tests are normal, Mia. I think
it's just anxiety. If the symptoms persist, I suggest talking to a therapist.”

“Fuck
you,” I wanted to say. And yeah, I was partly angry right then. I wanted an
explanation. In fact, I knew I deserved one. I deserved something.

I tried
to take that small, fleeting glimmer of something – fatigue, depression – that
I caught in his eyes as a sign. I forced myself to recall how forlorn and torn
he looked, sitting at the edge of my couch, and how gentle his hands were when
he washed the raccoon-makeup from my eyes and tied my hair back.

Of course
he cared. He was just refusing to show it.

“So this
is it?” I asked.

He leaned
in, still managing to keep himself at a distance.

“I can
schedule you a follow-up appointment for next year, if you'd like,” he
suggested. “We can further discuss or review anything you might be dealing with
then.”

“What if
I have an emergency?” I prompted. “What then?”

There it
was: the tightening of his jaw, the slight clench of his hands. He wasn't
angry. He was just as upset as I was.

“I'd be
happy to refer you to another colleague of mine,” he faltered. “He's very good.
You'll find him more than competent.”

“Why
don't you tell me what you're really thinking,” I demanded. “You said yourself
that you weren't afraid.”

He
nodded. He twisted his hands. He looked down towards the floor and parted his
lips, as if wanting to answer me, to give me something, anything. But he said
no words.

“Please
understand,” he begged gently. “Please know that I do care.”

“But?”

He
covered his face. God, was he about to cry?

“I can't
do this anymore, Mia,” he said sternly. “I've made a terrible mistake. You have
every right to be upset. I hope you can forgive me.”

I hope
you can forgive me
.

As he
stood, and we briefly clasped hands, and I watched him turn and leave and walk
out of my life forever, I almost broke down. I almost threw the heavy, plastic
heart at him – a metaphor.

Save it,
I told myself. Don't crack. Be understanding. Be the adult you've been training
yourself to become for the past four years.

I'll admit,
when the nurse came to release me, I thought about telling her. I thought about
throwing him under the freight-train, bound to the tracks, and watching the
mess splatter. I thought about, for the sake of my own hurt feelings, telling
her everything: the pet-names, the kiss, the discreet office sex.

But when
she smiled at me, and cocked her head to the side, asking:

“Is
everything alright, hun?”

I just
nodded, numbly.

“Yes,” I
said. “I'm fine.

I wasn't
going to ruin his life. I couldn't. It takes two, after all. He kissed me, but
I kissed him back. I wrapped my legs around his waist, I drew him in deeper.
And even if he was the adult, and should have known better, I still wanted it.
It was the coldest, most bitter, undeniable truth.

I waited
until I got into the elevator, until the doors were closed, and then, granting
myself the thirty-some seconds as the elevator lurched towards its gradual
descent, I wept. I wiped my face, wiped my nose, shuddered heavily.

God, the
pain. It was like my bones, my marrow, were lit on fire.

And then,
as the doors opened, I collected myself. I forced myself back into reality,
whether this was a place I wanted to be or not.

He was a
doctor. I was a patient.

He was a
man, and I was a girl.

What more
could I have expected?

Chapter 10

ALEX

The
following week was nothing short of hellish. At the hospital, one of my
patients suffered a bout of cardiac arrest after an adverse reaction to an
Interferon injection. I spent hours on the paperwork, talking to his family,
reassuring his wife that her husband would live, and his daughters that their
father would be fine. I tried my damnest to figure out a more adequate
treatment plan while working alongside his Gastrointerologist, who was treating
him for acute liver disease.

And the
kicker? The man refused to stop drinking.

“There's
little we can do for this guy,” I'd said. His GI nodded in agreement. There was
little we could do for him. But for the time being, for the sake of his family,
being alive was enough.

In the
mix, Cait called me on the daily to inform me of all the little things she was
picking up for the baby, and each time she said
baby
, I felt a jolt in
my stomach, like having touched a bare wire. But I didn't want to upset her, so
I did my best to suppress the fact that I was still walking around feeling
perpetually nauseated at the thought of my impending fatherhood, and how I
wasn't ready, and how – God – I didn't want this with her.

I did the
only thing I could do: go into the bathroom, splash some water on my face, and
move the fuck on. This was my situation, and I had to deal with it like a man.

In the
cafeteria, staring into my cup of coffee, Weisman hit me on the shoulder.

“What the
hell, Al?” he said. “You look like shit.”

“Thanks
for that,” I smirked weakly. “I feel like shit.”

“What's
eating you?” he asked. “Because you obviously aren't eating. You look
completely malnourished, you know.”

I tore
open a sugar packet, watched the grains fall into my coffee, and repeated the
process until Dr. Weisman eventually looked alarmed.

“Jesus,”
he said. “What's wrong?”

“If I
talk about it, it's just going to become even more real than it presently is.”

“That
bad?” he asked. “You didn't get slapped with a law-suit, did you?”

“A
law-suit would be almost preferable,” I said. “And no. Leagues worse, Nick.
Leagues worse.”

I paused,
took a sip of my too-sweet coffee, and swallowed.

“Cait is
pregnant,” I said. “So, that's what's going on in my life right now.”

Dr.
Weisman whistled.

“Damn,
Alex,” he said. And there was actually a sort of almost-empathy to his tone.
“And she's sure it's yours?”

“That's
what she says,” I told him. “Anyway, I've made it obvious that there's going to
be a paternity test. Especially given the whole having been screwing some other
dude before she even left me.”

He shook
his head, tapped a finger against his can of Sunkist, and sighed.

“I'm just
surprised you guys were even going at it,” he admitted. “Why? I mean, can I
even ask?”

I
shrugged. “Because I had an itch I needed to scratch, and she was there. We were
both just unbandaged wounds at that point, Nick. I don't know what to say.
 
Obviously I'm regretting it now.”

Weisman
gave a pained smile.

“Kids are
great,” he strained to say. “You might just find it's what you've been missing.
God knows you've looked like a ghost these past few weeks. Kids, Al, they liven
things up.”

Says the
man who risked completely disemboweling his family for the sake of fucking a
co-ed. I was a prick, but I wasn't a married prick.

“Yeah,” I
just said. It was all I could say. “I guess we'll see. Either way, it's coming
whether I'm ready or not.”

Tossing
my undrinkable coffee into the garbage bin, I took a look at my phone: one
missed call. Cait. As expected.

I dove
into the bathroom. Not even because I had to take a piss, or because I needed a
cold splash of water, but because I needed a moment alone. As I stood over the
sink, I took a good look at the reflection I saw in the mirror: a man, nearing
his mid-thirties, who had successfully managed to destroy a young girl's trust
in medical authority – and rightfully so – because I had literally fucked that
up for her. A grown man who was having a baby with his ex-fianc
é
e, because he stupidly
chose to fuck her without protection.

Well, not
exactly. The condom broke, and she swore her shot was still good, and I kept
going, because I just needed a fucking release from the same person who drove
me to needing one to begin with. What a circular mind fuck.

And what
I couldn't say, above all, was how impossibly hard it was to have walked away from
Mia. The look on her face, as she gazed up at me, wondering how I could be
treating her so coldly. It made me think of my own choice of words, when I was
sitting across from Cait back at the coffee shop:

How do
you do something like this to someone
?

I deserved
to lose my license. I deserved to be ostracized, to be viewed as a predatory
monster, to be forced to have everything ripped away at the root. But she had
spared me. In what I could see were the obvious brink of tears, she walked away
without taking a dagger to my back.

And God,
I missed her so much. When she had left that day, I had holed myself up in my
office, and for a solid hour – I didn't cry, or feel any anger, or even feel a
sense of regret – I just sat there, staring at the wall, feeling numb.

I needed
her. I needed her in my arms again. But that was over; the spark of a match,
doused in gasoline, and burnt to such a point that there was no identifying the
remains.

Rubbing
my eyes, I tore myself away from the man in the mirror and went back to work. I
checked on Mr. Moulton, who was back and suffering from congenial heart failure
because he had never heeded my advice to watch his diet. I signed off on some
lab-work, a few prescriptions, and I bought the ladies in Triage a box of
Krispy Kreme donuts.

“You're
amazing, Dr. Greene,” they cooed. And yeah, to the hospital, I was. I was the
kind doctor, the nice doctor, the well-meaning doctor who wore his heart on his
sleeve. If they could give accolades for Doctor Boss of the Year, I'd have
plaques lining the walls of my office.

But it
was all a farce – because none of them really knew what I was capable of.

“I'm not
sure whether we really need a bassinet or not,” Cait said.

Standing
outside the window of a local baby boutique, I clutched my phone in my hands,
listening as Cait droned on about all of the other things she wasn't certain
were absolutely pertinent, like self-rocking rocking chairs, or bassinets, or
artisanal cloth diapers with fancy prints on the fabric.

“But I
thought it was really cute,” she added. “Could you take a look for me, anyway,
and let me know if the numbers work?”

“Yep,” I
told her. “Anyway, aren't laundry baskets and bassinets kind of the same
thing?”

“Alex,”
she said sternly, and I cracked a grin.

“Sorry,
sorry,” I insisted. “Anyway, yes, I'll look. Don't worry. It would be helpful
if you'd decide to know whether it was a boy or a girl.”

“I told
you, I want it to be a surprise.”

Because
this wasn't enough of one. While Cait was off attempting to find a job, and
still technically leeching off the dole that was my salary, I took a small part
in navigating around the overwhelming world that was baby furniture shopping.

So I
shrugged off my lab-coat, tossed it in the Porsche, and spent my small break
in-between the hospital and the office skimming over cribs and bassinets and
rocking chairs.

At one
point, an overly done-up woman that couldn't have been much younger than me,
and was way too perky, hopped over.

“Are you
looking for something specific?”

“Bassinets,”
I told her. “At least, that was my instruction. She wanted me to make some
pricing notes.”

“Do you
have a price range you'd like to stay between?”

“Not
particularly,” I confessed. “But I'll be honest, I have no idea what I'm
doing.”

“A
first-time father, I gather?” When I nodded, she smiled. “Well, that's
wonderful. You and your wife must be thrilled.”

I glanced
around at an array of baby mobiles. One of them featured all of the planets,
which appealed to the teenage science-nerd that still dwelled somewhere inside
of me.

“I'm not
married,” I told her. “I'm just the father.”

Cue
awkward stance: crossed arms, the shift from one foot to the other. The quick
glance downwards.

“Well,”
she said, still holding to the starched smile. “I'll leave you to it, then.”

Thank
God. I spent a short while longer taking a look at everything, occasionally
snapping a photo when I saw something that Cait might like, and all said, I
chalked it up to a successful excursion.

Before
leaving, I decided to take a look at the selection of stuffed animals. While I
still wasn't completely on board with the situation at hand, I figured
something small might be a nice gesture of goodwill towards Cait, even if I
wasn't her biggest fan at the present moment. I didn't want to be a blatant
dick, what with her carrying my child.

I picked
up a small teddy bear, which I thought was cute enough. It couldn't be anything
specifically pink or blue, and was yellow gender neutral? Who decides these
things, anyway?

In the
end, I settled on a little yellow duckling, the kind with the feathers that are
actually super soft faux fur.

And as I
thought I was finished, and my eyes cut one last look around the array of
dolls, I spotted something: a small sock-fox. Like those sock monkey dolls,
except in fox form.

I picked
it up, thinking of Mia. My little fox.

To buy it
was the question. To purchase the fox doll that reminded me of a girl I never
planned to see again. My mental health was steadily declining, and this was
proof.

Don't
do it
, I told myself.
Be saner than that
.

Fast
forward, thirty seconds: I walk out of the store with a receipt in one hand, a
bag in the other, and the taste of bile in my mouth.

At the
apartment, later that night, I stretched out on the couch, with the stupid
stuffed fox sitting on the coffee table, mocking me.

“I hate
you,” I told it, because it could obviously hear me, and because I had
officially reached the point of talking to inanimate objects. “You've ruined my
life.”

I took a
sip of my beverage: Sailor Jerry's and classic Coke, then leaned back into the
couch. The fox still gazed back at me, sinking a little.

I thought
about Mia, and I thought about how badly I missed her, and how much I wanted
her.

And even
if the thought should have made me sick, I thought about fucking her, hard.

My throat
tightened; my skin became acutely aware of every nerve, and my cock stiffened.
I closed my eyes, and remembered how it felt to be inside of her: bliss. Her
sweet noises. Her soft moans. The way she dug her hands into my lab-coat.

I
wondered what fucking her would be like if we were somewhere else, and not in
my office. And the thought of actually being alone with her, able to strip her
down slowly, tossing each article of clothing aside with reckless abandon, made
me weak.

I slid my
hand beneath my boxers – which was all I was wearing. Boxers, a plain white
undershirt, and nothing else. I skimmed my thumb over the tip, then squeezed
myself, groaning lightly.

Mia, on
her back, mine, and only mine. The way she said my name, and how terribly wrong
and so terribly right it felt when she called me Dr. Greene.

I was
writhing at this point. I slid my grip up and down, desperate, and came within
seconds. The mess was everywhere, but I gave no fucks.

All
shallow breath, I cleaned myself up, downed the rest of my drink, and tried to
compose myself. The thoughts were still racing. I could have gone again.

Without
notice, my phone buzzed. I set the glass down, slid over to the coffee table,
and paid no mind to the fox that was still leering at me.

Dammit,
Cait
, I thought.
Not now
. Not while I was alone with my thoughts,
the only place I could be alone with Mia.

When
would this end? How could I forget her? The wound had already become
infectious, and soon, I'd be septic.

I opened
the text.

It was
Mia.

My heart
stopped.

I'm so
sorry
, it read.
Please come get me
.

And then,
a moment later:

I need
you
.

Every
working gear inside me stopped and whirred, stalling under the impossible
thought.

I could
have her. I could have her now.

I could
throw away everything I'd said to her in my office. I could apologize. Beg, if
needed.

I could
make something work.

Maybe.
Maybe it was possible.

The
little Devil that was my lack of conscience sat whispering in my ear. My heart
sang like the first chords of a rock ballad.

I need
you.

I picked
up my phone, hastily wrote her a response, and after a second's pause, hit
send.