Dr. Bad Boy

by Ainsley Booth

  “I’ll walk you to your car, then.”

  “No.” I close my eyes and take a deep breath. “Thank you. But you need to still go shopping and I’m done, so I’ll just go…” I try to point toward my car, but in fact it is back through the market, and this is fucking ridiculous. “You know what? Come on. I’ll walk that way with you.”

  He laughs at me under his breath, but falls into step as I turn around and head through the market for what feels like the hundredth time.

  It's weird doing this with someone else. I started a weekly trip to the market in Toronto, as my marriage fell apart. Part of a search for a new sense of who I am. I found pieces of myself in this new routine, and I continued it when I moved to Ottawa.

  As if he can read my mind, Max looks sideways at me. "You're here alone?"

  "Always."

  He lifts his eyebrows at that.

  "My ex hated the market," I offer, then curse myself for the unnecessary share.

  "Ex?"

  In for a penny… "Ex-husband." I stare straight ahead. "I got divorced in July."

  He stops and looks at me. I'm tempted to keep walking. Leave that fact for him to chew on, but I can't do it. I stop, too, and slowly turn to look at him.

  "How long were you married?" he asks quietly, his jaw tight under his beard, his eyes hard.

  "Two-and-a-half years." It almost hurts to hold Max's gaze, but I don't look away. New Violet isn't ashamed of anything.

  "I'm sorry."

  I nod. "Thanks. I'm not. It's best that it's over."

  "He's not here?"

  He means Ottawa, and I shake my head. "Toronto."

  "Good." He rocks on his heels, and I think for a second he might reach out and touch me, but instead he just gestures down the row toward the baker. "Come on. Keep me company while I get some muffins."

  A flower vendor on the far side of the baker has sold out of her stuff, so she’s tearing down her stall, which makes passing a little difficult. Max stops to get his muffins and the girl gives him a big smile. I move closer, and her attention flicks back and forth between us.

  “What?” Max asks me, and she assumes we’re together.

  “You guys wanted more muffins, eh?”

  What is it with her and me and conversations I don’t want to have? I nod politely.

  “You already got muffins, honey?” Max asks, and the teasing humour in his voice is such an abrupt change, my mouth practically drops open.

  I frown at him. My nod to her was just the answer that required the least amount of explanation.

  I am not pretending that we are a couple. I look at the blocked aisle and sigh. “I need to get going,” I mutter under my breath.

  He reaches out and brushes his knuckle against my cheek, so lightly I’m not sure he’s actually touched me except my skin feels singed and raw. “Maybe you’re just hungry.”

  “You know what? We’re almost done here.” The girl carefully adds her last two muffins to Max’s box. “Something for your drive home.”

  I’m still staring at him, because touching me is definitely way over the line I drew a week ago.

  He is not feeding me a muffin.

  I don’t care if it’s rude. I step back, then scoot as quickly as I can around the flower vendor’s pile of stuff. What kind of idiot doesn’t tear down to the back of a space? Ridiculous.

  I’m speed walking, and Max still needed to pay, but somehow he still catches me as I reach my car.

  “Hey,” he says, his voice rough and out of breath as he gets in front of me, dumping his hockey bag on the ground at the same moment as he braces his hand on my car door—effectively stopping me from getting in said car and driving away from him. “I’m sorry.”

  “It’s fine.”

  “It’s not.” He lowers his voice. “It just happened, you know? Sometimes I'm incorrigible. I wasn’t trying to start something.”

  I roll my eyes. “Sure.”

  “If I was going to start something, I’d invite you to come and watch us play next week.” He smirks. “I’d like it if you cheered me on.”

  “Market’s not here next Saturday.” I shrug like it's a shame, but it's not. It's a good thing, and probably the only thing that is keeping me from taking him up on the offer.

  “I’m sure we could find you another excuse. Would you like to meet the prime minister? Ellie’s coming to watch next week. I could introduce you, she could vouch for me that I’m not a monster.”

  My cheeks heat up. “I don’t think you’re a monster.”

  “Just off-limits.”

  “Yes.”

  A low hum sounds from inside his jacket. He groans and pulls out a pager, glancing at the screen for a second before glancing back up at me. “That really doesn’t work for me.”

  Well, too bad, so sad. “Them’s the breaks.” I slide my hand over his, ignoring the cold slice of electricity that zaps up my arm at the contact. “Excuse me. I really must be going.”

  “Okay.” He steps back and shoves his hands in his pockets. He’s frowning again. Like he’s thinking hard.

  I recognize that face.

  He had that same expression when I tried to push him away in the boardroom.

  “Max…” I huff out a frustrated breath, because the words I know I should say just don’t feel right rolling off my tongue. I settle for the closest truth. “This is dangerous. We can’t pretend there aren’t rules.”

  He nods. “Yeah.”

  “So you need to forget what we did. I need to forget what we did.”

  Another nod, and his frown gets deeper. He looks down at the ground, then off into the distance. More thinking. Then he swivels his head back to centre and exhales roughly. “We'll figure something out.”

  I swallow hard. That’s what I’m afraid of.

  8

  Max

  The page I got while talking to Violet was from one of the residents at the hospital, so I head straight there from the arena. I’m on-call, and this morning during daily rounds we’d decided to keep a concussion patient in for the weekend. His parents are still making noises that they’d like to take him home early, and my resident wants me to step in to the conversation.

  I’d return later tonight anyway, but I make it clear to any resident I work with that I want to be looped in on absolutely anything out of the ordinary.

  Part of that is my teaching obligation—hard to evaluate residents if I don’t see them doing all facets of the job.

  But most of my motivation there is selfish. I’m a different person when I walk through the hospital doors. Calmer, more giving.

  I like myself more when I’m wearing the stethoscope, even when I’m having tough conversations.

  After that unsettling interaction with Violet—and yet another reminder that I can’t control myself around her—I could use the retreat to the one place where I am unflinchingly professional.

  I leave my hockey bag in the back of my SUV and head straight to the paeds in-patient floor. I roll my sleeves up to my elbows and scrub in the room behind the nursing station, then check the white board.

  Two patients are out for testing, but other than that, nothing has changed since this morning. I check in with my residents, then the junior trainee and I walk down to the private room at the end of the hall where Ethan Bolton is recovering from his tumble down a flight of stairs at school—complete with a concussion.

  I knock on the door, then poke my head in with a friendly smile. “Hello again.”

  It doesn’t take long to realize that the Boltons are nearing the end of their rope emotionally. Both parents are here today because their daughters are spending the day with friends in the city, but they’re farmers who live an hour outside Ottawa.

  And it’s harvest time. If it hadn’t rained yesterday, Mr. Bolton wouldn’t be here today.

  “I appreciate how difficult this is for your family. We’d talked about Monday being discharge day, and I’d like to stick with that, but I’m not ignoring the challe
nges of needing to come in to the city. A lot of families decide to stagger their visits—”

  “I’m not leaving my son in a hospital for days on end,” Mr. Bolton grinds out with a fierceness I appreciate.

  “Not days. One day, though. Tomorrow, for example.” I give Ethan a half-grin. “I’m not doing anything. I’ll come by. And we’ve got patient support staff that are excellent.”

  The murderous look on his face tells me that’s a non-starter.

  “It’s not just the strain on the family,” Mrs. Bolton says, trying to temper her own frown at the same time as she smooths over the sudden tension in the room. “Ethan’s lonely. He even misses his sisters.”

  “And my Lego,” Ethan adds solemnly.

  I nod. “And your television and sketchbooks and video games, too. I get it. Which is why we want to keep you here another day or two. This is really important, because that stuff is irresistible.”

  He frowns. “But I feel better.”

  “Good. That’s what we want to see.”

  “So why can’t I go home?”

  I glance at his backpack on the floor. A stylized Captain Phasma picture decorates the front. “Because you won’t feel better once you’re at home and you’re trying to build a TIE-fighter. You’d concentrate so hard on getting the laser cannons just right that you wouldn’t notice your head starting to hurt.”

  Just like the Sponge Bob squeaker, my Star Wars knowledge wins over kids where my medical knowledge has no sway. Ethan nods. “Oh.”

  “Remember we talked about cognitive rest? And how you get out of homework for a little while?” He nods, but I can tell he’s still thinking about Star Wars. And I don’t want him thinking too much, using his brain too much, so I’m nipping this in the bud. “Tell you what. We’ve got some episodes of the Clone Wars around here. We can watch half of one tonight and the rest tomorrow. If that goes okay, then we’ll see what we can do about busting you out of here, okay?”

  My resident’s pager goes off, and he excuses himself, but I stay another few minutes, answering questions about headaches and warning signs of overdoing it. I explain sub threshold activity levels in as many different ways as the family needs—usually a different way for each member, and that’s true today, too.

  I don’t leave that room until the worry lines have faded and the silence stretches long enough to accommodate tentative smiles again.

  “I’ll see you later, Ethan,” I say as I excuse myself.

  There’s a work room behind the nursing station, and since I don’t have my laptop on me, I log in to the computer there. Every patient encounter now has to be logged electronically, which is a pain in the fucking ass.

  I do it anyway, quickly and efficiently, because within these walls I’m a professional.

  “Dr. Donovan, sorry to interrupt.” I glance up. One of the nurses is standing in the doorway. “There’s a call for a paeds consult down in the ER. Gibson’s not answering the pager fast enough, apparently.”

  I roll my eyes. The other junior resident on service today is an excellent doctor who’s probably just stuck in the line at the cafeteria. I set aside the files I was reviewing and follow her back to the front desk as she tells me what she knows.

  “Kid came in with suspected appendicitis, but the surgery resident has shunted it back to us. They’re saying it’s a likely admit.”

  I reach for the phone at the same time as I check out the white board behind me. It’s full. We don’t have another bed, but we have one patient who could move to the surgical floor. And we have auxiliary rooms we can open up on an as-needed basis, but it stretches the nursing care. “This is the paediatric consultant on call, who am I speaking with?”

  “Sam Ellery, Surgery.”

  “Sam. Max Donovan. Tell me why this case isn’t appendicitis.”

  He goes through enough of a report that I know he’s done his job.

  “Here’s the thing, Sam. We’re jammed this weekend. So if this kid is going to end up having surgery anyway, let’s make sure there’s good resource management from the start. You feel me?”

  “Loud and clear.” I hear rustling in the background as Sam flips through a file. “This is the third ER visit for abdominal pain in the last six months. Something else is going on.”

  Well, fuck. That definitely puts the ball in our court. “I’ll be right down.”

  The junior resident, Gibson, walks in just in time to hear that. She gives me a curious look. “ER?”

  “Yeah.”

  “You want me to take it?”

  “Nah, I’ll go down. Everything’s quiet here. But we might need another bed tonight. Get your head together with Susan and figure out the best way to manage that.”

  “Will do.”

  I take the stairs down, grateful for the moment of quiet before I walk into the ER. I introduce myself to the head nurse. I’m still meeting everyone here, and she’s someone I’ve only seen once before. She takes a quick glance at my ID badge, then points me to a bed way in the back, adjacent to the adult side of Emerg.

  The entire hospital is crammed to the gills.

  I stop outside the curtained off bed space, letting my footsteps and shadow announce my presence for a moment before I tug the curtain aside.

  “Hello, I’m Dr. Donovan. I understand you’re not feeling well.” I address the patient, a nine-year-old girl named Emma, but make sure I give mom and dad some eye contact, too.

  They look worried.

  Emma’s in obvious pain.

  I take a deep breath and dive in.

  Twenty minutes later, Emma’s on her way upstairs. I find the nearest computer station and log in to the system to record my orders for my newest patient. We’ll get her started on medication and order a battery of tests, but it’s going to be a few days before we have a clear understanding of what we’re dealing with. Gastro conditions are notoriously difficult to treat.

  My stomach growls at me as I stand up. A quick glance at my watch tells me it’s dinner time, and as usual, I’m unprepared. The weekend offerings at the cafeteria are useless, unless I want pizza, and I eat enough of that shit with Gavin. Add Lachlan into the mix and it’s a miracle I haven’t put on a freshman-fifteen since moving to Ottawa.

  I’ve got muffins in the car, not that those are better.

  What I need to do is set up a food delivery service. Chicken and vegetables, fish and vegetables, vegetables and vegetables. It’ll be incredibly boring and perfectly healthy.

  Of course now I just want pizza.

  I’ll worry about being perfectly healthy tomorrow.

  I head through the adult side of Emerg, since the cafeteria access is on that side, and I’m nearly out the door when I hear a woman gasp. “Ow. No, I’m fine.”

  My body stops, suddenly hyper aware of the bed in the corner.

  From behind the curtain I hear, “Well I’m not fine, Matthew, but I got here on my own.”

  Violet.

  In this building, I’m a professional. Suddenly I’m not so sure about that. I’m only in this space because of my role as a physician.

  It would be a terrible breach of privacy for me to approach her, especially given our last few encounters.

  On the other hand, she’s hurt.

  And who the fuck is Matthew?

  Just then a nurse moves past me, toward Violet’s bed, and pulls the curtain back.

  I stare at her. She’s in the same clothes as earlier, jeans and a soft sweater. Her hand is wrapped in a blood-soaked tea towel.

  The nurse asks her something, but Violet doesn’t answer because she’s seen me, and now we’re staring at each other.

  She wants to ignore me. If I give her a chance, she’ll pull her shit together and do just that, or die trying, but that’s bullshit. Her face is drawn, her colouring off, and her breathing is definitely irregular. She’s not handling the pain well.

  I cross the room in a few long strides.

  “What happened?” I don’t care if I sound brusque.


  “Cut myself—ah!—chopping vegetables.” Her eyes tense up again as she glances to where the nurse is unwrapping her hand. The wound looks deep, but her fingers all have even colouring.

  The nurse asks her to wiggle her fingers. Good movement, but it makes her bleed again and she whimpers at the sight.

  I must have made a face, because she makes one back and rolls her eyes at me for good measure. “I’m fine.”

  “Clearly.” I round the bed, on the far side of where she’s being attended to. “Close your eyes.”

  “Why?”

  I lift my hands and lower my voice. “So I can help you, nothing more.”

  She hesitates.

  “Or I can ask you who Matthew is and why you won’t let him be here for you.”

  That gets a smile out of her, and she closes her eyes. “Again, that’s none of your business.”

  So he’s the guy who called her while we were eating dinner in her office. “Boyfriend?”

  She hesitates. “No.”

  “Is he—”

  The nurse doesn’t care that I’m curious as fuck. She’s finished cleaning the wound and starts talking over me. “Okay, that looks pretty good. The resident will be here shortly to do the sutures, unless you’d like to, Dr. Donovan?”

  I shake my head. “I’m out of practice on hands that large.”

  Violet gapes at me as the nurse laughs. “Are you calling me Shrek?”

  “Hardly,” I murmur, bringing my mouth to her ear. “My patients are usually three feet tall and they need to hang on to a stuffed animal or a parent’s hand when they get stitched up.”

  “Right. Of course.” She hesitates again, and her voice softens. “I heard you earlier. With a patient. I was sitting in the waiting room and you were just inside the door.”

  “Ah.” I make a mental note to remind the ER clerk that door should stay shut, but that’s not Violet’s problem.

  “You were very good.”

  “I try.”

  “And you’re being…very good now.”

  “Are you trying to compliment my bedside manner?”

  “Maybe. Don’t read too much into it.”