“Let’s not get into this again.”
“You started it.”
Just then some nurses came by and they both went their separate ways. They’d agreed that fighting in front of the staff over every ridiculous thing was causing a drop in morale, and while Grant didn’t care about morale, so long as patients weren’t dying and people were getting well, Dennis had convinced him with some not too disputable statistics that the two were considered related.
And it wasn’t that Dennis wasn’t good enough for Alec, it was that he really wasn’t good enough for Alec. He’d started their relationship while still married to a woman, and then dragged the divorce out for over a year, torturing Alec’s heart along the way. How was Grant supposed to forgive that, just because Dennis had chosen Alec in the end, and then married him? Being best man had been one of the hardest things he’d ever done, but he’d at least managed to keep his mouth shut when the minister asked if anyone knew of any reason the couple shouldn’t be joined together.
Plus Dennis had stolen the chief of staff position from him. He’d had it in the bag, until Dennis through his name in the hat. Or so he liked to believe. Alec said he was delusional, but Grant knew he was leadership material.
Shoving those thoughts aside, Grant resolved to be nicer to Dennis the next time he saw him, for the staff’s sake, and for Alec’s. Maybe he’d even manage a semi-genuine smile. That’d make Alec happy at least. And, weirdly, Grant liked to make Alec happy. Their friendship was one of the only important relationships in his life.
The day passed quite nicely after that. Grant’s patients weren’t too weepy, and their families not too pushy, for a change. The nurses skedaddled as soon as they saw him coming, just the way he liked. And the cafeteria was serving three-cheese lasagna, which was his absolute favorite, even if they were a little skimpy on the sauce at times.
He was still rolling the flavor around in his mouth, cheerfully enjoying the heavy, fatty feeling in his tummy, when he walked around the corner to see Leo Garner standing at the nurses’ station laughing and smiling.
Just what the hell was he doing here again? Didn’t he have a life? In California? Last time Grant checked, that had been the case.
“Grant!” Leo called out, as Grant tried to pass the station with his face buried in a chart, hoping to avoid any kind of interaction.
Grant stopped, turned slowly, and said, “Dr. Anderson to you, Leo. And what an unpleasant surprise to see you here on this fine autumn day. To what do we owe the honor?”
The nurse looked down at her forms uncomfortably, and Leo laughed. “You don’t change do you, Dr. Anderson? You’re just as charming as ever.” He smiled like he was happy to see Grant. “Doesn’t it get old, though, these attempts to deflect and defend?” Leo stepped forward and tilted his head in a way that Grant was reluctant to admit was attractive.
“I have no idea what you mean.”
“It’s been six years. Bygones. Let it go.” Leo put on a mocking, faux-hippie tone, and then grinned hugely, which, in turn, made Grant’s chest feel tight, like his heart and lungs might betray him.
“Seriously, Grant,” Leo went on, touching his arm, fingers gripping his white lab coat. “You’re looking great. How’s life treating you?”
Grant’s eyes narrowed. “It’s treating me the way it always treats me. Like a busy surgeon. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I need to go be a surgeon.” Grant tapped his watch. “Time’s a wastin’.”
Leo’s gray eyes twinkled with amusement as Grant stalked quickly away.
His heart hammering and sweat popping out on his forehead, Grant hoped that whatever was bringing Leo to the hospital would end soon, so that Grant could go back to his happy little bubble of work, more work, beer, occasional hook-ups, and more work.
Leo Garner had a very unpleasant record of messing up Grant’s well-ordered life. And in that regard, Grant didn’t want to see history repeat itself.
Chapter Three
“I heard Leo Garner is back in town,” Alec said over the rim of his wine glass, his kohl-lined eyes all knowing and wide.
Grant still wasn’t sure how his best friend in Blountville had turned out to be the town’s most flamboyant queer, but the fact remained the he was.
Still, Alec was worth all the double-takes and outright stares when they went out on the town together. His honesty, loyalty, and determination to be Grant’s friend, even when Grant wasn’t very nice to him, was priceless. Plus, he was pretty, and sweet, and deserved only good things for having endured growing up so incredibly, obviously gay in conservative Blountville, North Carolina.
Alec leaned closer, shrinking the distance between them on Grant’s comfortable leather sofa. The spaghetti Alec had whipped up like a magic man when he first arrived was now balanced on their knees in large, half-full bowls. “Leo Garner,” Alec repeated with a raised brow. “Back. In. Town.”
“And?” Grant said, putting as much disdain into the word as possible. He shoved a bunch of spaghetti into his mouth, slurping up the noodles, hoping that being gross would distract Alec from this line of questioning.
“Well, aren’t you even curious about why?” Alec asked. His lashes blinked long and slow, revealing the glitter eye shadow he insisted on wearing basically everywhere.
Grant rolled his eyes.
As a matter of fact, after seeing Leo at the hospital again on Saturday, he had indeed been very curious about why. So he’d checked the patient rosters looking for one of Leo’s relatives, assuming that someone in the extended clan must be pretty sick for Leo to have come all the way from Los Angeles to visit them.
But what he’d found was something else entirely.
In fact, what he’d uncovered had now relentlessly occupied his thoughts for days. Beer didn’t fix it, the hand job from the hook up from some bar a few towns over didn’t fix it, and the two surgeries he’d been lead on since he’d found out the truth hadn’t driven it from his mind.
The facts were: Leo had undergone a heart replacement three years earlier in Los Angeles due to massive damage from myocarditis, and he now suffered from transplant-related kidney failure. Dialysis. Three times a week. Indefinitely. And Leo couldn’t be added to the transplant list due to the prior heart transplant making him a bad risk. Grant had looked that up as well. It was a rough situation.
Why he was in Blountville instead of Los Angeles to deal with it was beyond Grant’s understanding, though. That was a mystery he had as yet to unravel. Alec probably knew the answer to it because he was a notorious gossip who knew everything about everyone. But if he asked Alec, then Grant would have to admit to caring one way or another about Leo Garner. And he wasn’t about to do that.
Grant cleared his throat. “I don’t know why you think I’d be curious about him.”
“He’s sick,” Alec said, keeping his tone gentle and watching Grant’s reaction closely.
Grant forced his face into a stony blankness, and then decided even that might be too revealing, so he stuck out his lower lip and tried to play it off. “Too bad, so sad.”
“Don’t be a jerk,” Alec said, putting his wine glass down and shifting his unfinished spaghetti to the coffee table. “I know you care about him.”
“Cared about him,” Grant clarified. “Past tense.”
“Right,” Alec said, raising a brow. “And that would explain why your face twitches every time someone says his name, and why his annual Christmas visits are near the top your rather long list of why you hate the season.”
Grant gaped at him.
Alec shook a finger at him. “Yes, I saw that list, idiot. You tacked it up over your toilet last year. I suppose it was to remind yourself every time you took a leak? Though really I can’t see how you’d forget to be a Grinch. You’re practically a professional at it.”
“That was private.”
“I take pisses here, you realize. And I can read, you know.”
“Congratulations, you made it past first grade.” Grant shoved mor
e food in, hoping they could move past this topic, but blanking on any other to distract Alec with, and secretly curious as hell about why Leo wasn’t in Los Angeles for treatment. Lord knows the options for hospitals and treatment were far superior to Blountsville’s tiny little regional facility, especially with the money of his super-rich, super-famous actor-boyfriend to back him up.
Alec sighed. “Grant, he’s quite sick. I think you should, you know, admit that you care, and see if you can help him.”
“I’m a cardiothoracic surgeon. He’s in renal failure. It’s not possible for me to help him.”
Alec smirked. “You already knew all of this, didn’t you? Oh, I get it. You don’t care but you spent hours researching and investigating what’s going on with him, I bet.” Alec sipped his wine with a gleeful grin. “I see how it is.”
Grant stood up, grimacing. He collected Alec’s plate from the coffee table and headed toward the kitchen. His open-plan apartment was sparsely decorated with furniture he’d collected since graduating from med school, and Alec was always on him about leveling it up. He didn’t see a reason for that, though. Who would it be for? He didn’t bring men home to fuck and he didn’t exactly need to impress himself, now did he?
Dinner with Alec was something he’d looked forward to all week. He missed his best friend now that Alec was so busy making a life with Dennis. Grant had been happy to think they’d spend a few hours alone together tonight. But now, Grant thought maybe he’d just tell him to go home. This line of discussion was ruining his appetite and his fun.
“Oh, come on, Grant!” Alec exclaimed following behind him with his wine firmly clutched in one hand. “Don’t you even want to know the rest?”
“No,” he said, taking Alec’s wine glass from him and draining it himself in one large gulp. He slammed the empty glass down on the kitchen counter. “I don’t.”
“Leo’s done with Curtis. Totally and completely done. I have it on very good authority,” Alec said, crossing his arms over his chest and staring at him with happy, shining eyes. “Don’t you get it? This is your chance, Grant!”
“My chance? For what?”
“Happiness!”
“Are you insane? How on earth is this anyone’s chance for happiness? He’s incredibly sick, he’s an emotional screw up, and—”
“And you’re a prize?”
“Thanks, Alec. I was going to say, he’s sick and on the rebound. So, frankly, I don’t have any desire to be his trampoline again, even if I wanted to, which I don’t, because I am quite happy on my own, thank you very much. I enjoy my job, my solitude, and I enjoy not dealing with indecisive, dramatic, heart-breaking queens.”
Alec groaned and threw his head back. “Yes, fine. Tell yourself all of these pretty lies about how your true love is surgery, like you’ve got a scalpel fetish, and I’ll say liar, liar pants on fire.”
“Mature.”
“Truth,” Alec answered, grabbing another wine glass from Grant’s cupboard and filling it from the open wine bottle on the counter.
Grant rinsed the dishes off in the sink, before turning around to shake a fork in Alec’s direction. “And don’t think I don’t see just what you did here.”
“What?”
“Coming over here like we’re going to hang out just to two of us when you really just wanted to poke me with this past weakness I briefly indulged in, pushing my buttons.”
“Did it push your buttons?” Alec sounded happy about that.
“Plus, you left Mina with Dennis, even though you knew I’d rather see that cute munchkin face of hers than have this ridiculous conversation about Leo Garner.”
“Mina is Dennis’s daughter! He deserves alone time with her, too.” Alec seemed on the edge of laughing, his mouth trembling at the edges with suppressed glee. “Look, all I’m saying is that you loved Leo and—”
“I did not!” Grant flushed hot and he didn’t know if it was with anger or humiliation. “I should have guessed when you showed up alone that you had something up your sleeve, but little could I have imagined this particular come-to-Jesus spiel about love, or whatever the hell this is. But, if I’d known, I would have shoved you back out the door the minute you came in.”
“Good thing that I waited until after dinner then.”
“It’s not too late.”
Alec raised his glass. “I’ve had far too much wine for you to kick me out with a good conscious now.”
Grant turned around, dropping the dishtowel on the counter. “Leo Garner isn’t the end-all and be-all of men for me, understand? There are plenty of gay men in this state, Alec. Hell in this town, even.”
Alec hooted at that ridiculous exaggeration.
“Why are you trying to force the recently returned, emotional cluster-fuck, probably-dying Leo Garner on me?”
“Force is a strong word, but as for the why? It’s because I saw what he did to you,” Alec said, tenderly. “I saw how he affected you. He changed you, Grant. He made you better.”
“No! He made me worse.” Leo had made Grant care and that had made him vulnerable in a way he’d never experienced before. It’d been the worst experience of his life. “And if you saw so much, then maybe you also saw how he chose his ex-boyfriend and took off across the country with him. I’m not going to play second choice six years later for what amounts to a pretty piece of ass.”
“Call it what you will.” Alec raised his brow and took a sip of wine. “I’ll call it what it is.”
“And just what is that?”
“Love. True Love.”
Grant scoffed. “Alec, you are insane. This is not The English Patient. I am not pining. I don’t pine. I’ve absolutely moved on, and I’m sure that Leo has too.”
Alec laughed lightly. “You’ve never even seen that movie, have you?”
“I thought it was a book.”
“It is, but, whatever, Grant. You’re right, this isn’t The English Patient.”
“Well, I’m glad you’re seeing logic for once and—”
“Because that story ended painfully. This one will end in the triumph of the human heart! Just you wait and see!”
Grant picked up his phone and pressed the unfortunately familiar name.
“Are you calling Leo?” Alec asked eagerly, as though Grant was actually the easily influenced fool he believed him to be.
“Come get your husband,” Grant said when Dennis picked up. “He’s drunk.” He disconnected the call, taking Alec by the arm, removing the glass of wine from his hand, and dragging him toward the door.
“You wouldn’t!” Alec said. “It’s only 40 degrees outside and I didn’t bring a coat!”
“Here,” Grant said, thrusting one of his toward him. “I’ll throw in a cap, even.” He pulled a green knit beanie over Alec’s perfectly spritzed hair, leaving him looking surprised and a mess.
“Grant,” he said, struggling a little as Grant pulled open the front door of his apartment and shoved him out onto the open-air walk-up. “Grant!”
“A few minutes in the brisk night air will do you good. Sober you right up,” Grant said, slamming the door in Alec’s face.
“Don’t think I’ll forget this Grant!” Alec yelled through the door. “Don’t think that I don’t know what this means! It means I’m right! It means you’re a goner! L-O-V-E! Love! I’m telling you!”
Grant leaned his forehead against the door and exhaled sharply.
“Triumph!” Alec yelled. “Of the human heart!”
Grant banged his head against the door in protest, and then slid in a heap to the floor. Alec sang the “kissing in a tree” song and other childish anthems of love.
Grant buried his face in his knees, breathing in and out slowly as the minutes dragged on. He knew when Dennis arrived because Alec yelled, “Darling! Guess who’s a total asshole when he’s in love?”
One thing was for sure: Grant needed to get a better best friend.
Chapter Four
As luck would have it—if Grant bel
ieved in luck, which given how his life had gone since basically birth, he didn’t—Leo was at the hospital the next day, walking through the halls with a nurse, looking tired and ill.
Grant stared after him until the nurse led Leo between double doors into the dialysis room. An urge to follow rose up in him and he shoved it aside. Leo Garner didn’t need him. He had plenty of friends and family in Blountville. Besides, he was probably busy making new friends right this second between the nurses and the other dialysis patients. It was, after all, three to four long hours, three days a week to purge his blood of toxins. It took a lot of time out of a person’s schedule to have a failing body. And Leo was probably knee deep in ‘making the best of it’. That seemed like something he’d try to do.
Grant shook his head.
As the doors swung shut behind Leo and the nurse, the weird breathless feeling passed. Grant decided that it was entirely reasonable to chalk it up to gas from the chili he’d eaten from the cafeteria for lunch. Truly, it was delicious, but the beans could make anyone a walking gas leak. Frowning, he blamed Alec for planting a seed that would allow him to think for even a moment that the feeling could be due to anything else.
He went back to his patient chart, trying to figure out what the words were saying, but instead he started thinking about this one guy back in medical school, a Dr. Wallace, who’d been a kidney guy, one of the best. He wondered if the idiot Dr. Jameson, the fool in charge of the renal unit at Appalachian Medical, would be willing to consult with Wallace on Leo’s case.
Grant had just made an about face, prepared to go speak to Jameson himself, or possibly sneak another look at Leo’s chart, when Carrie Jones, the best nurse around in Grant’s opinion, nearly slammed into him, holding the hand of a little girl with messy, long brown hair, and hazel eyes.
“Sorry, Dr. Anderson,” Carrie said, pushing at stray bit of her curly blond hair behind her ear.
“Just watch where you’re going,” Grant said, irritably, taking his frustrations out on the wrong person, as he was far too prone to do.
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