by M. K. York
“Sounds good.”
It wasn’t until they were settled at the bar, comfortably nursing a beer each, that Neil realized this had been a tactical decision on Pete’s part. Pete waited until Neil had just taken a drink.
“So,” said Pete. “How much longer did you know about Eli than I did?”
Neil sputtered on the mouthful of beer. He wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. “You’re going to have to be more specific.”
“I don’t think I am, but sure. Eli told me he came out at that meeting. I am betting that you knew about it before then.”
Neil waved a hand vaguely. “I, uh, shouldn’t you be asking Eli? I mean, I don’t feel that comfortable talking about him behind his back. Especially about this.”
Pete set his beer bottle down and hunched forward over the bar before turning his head to fix a stern gaze on Neil. “I think you can make an exception to worrying about tattling on him. For once.”
“It’s—I’m not tattling!”
“Neil, I’m going to ask you one more time. How much longer?”
Neil paused, staring at his bottle.
“A while, I guess,” he said slowly. “It...came up.”
“Let me take a wild stab in the dark. At ACS last fall?”
Neil sighed. “Yeah.”
“I had a feeling.”
“It’s not—whatever you’re thinking, it’s not like that.”
Pete propped himself up on his elbows, looking unimpressed. “Why don’t you tell me what you think I think it’s like that it’s not really like.”
“I wasn’t mad at him for not coming out. Or for not coming out to me, I don’t know.”
“Oh, I didn’t think you were.”
“People have lots of reasons for not coming out. Good reasons. I mean, I can understand not wanting to be gossiped about. Like we’re doing. Right now.”
Pete rolled his eyes, hard. “I’ve known him for damn near twenty years. He never mentions this until now? Look, I’m an old fart but I’m not an idiot.”
Neil didn’t say anything, just fidgeted with his bottle, resisting eye contact.
“So you don’t need to say anything to me about it. Just wish either one of you bozos had told me what was going on back then. I would have... Shit, I don’t know. Maybe I would have done the same thing. But it would have been nice to be in the loop.”
“There isn’t a loop.” Neil lifted his bottle and took another long drink off it.
Pete let that one lie, and after a couple of minutes he started talking about the new hotel that was getting built near campus. Neil noticed him absentmindedly rubbing at his chest again, but he figured if Pete was going to let him off the hook on talking about Eli, he could stand to skip nagging Pete about his heartburn.
* * *
Mark, meanwhile, seemed to have completely missed any and all hubbub. He was just going through the motions; Neil would see him sometimes on rounds, listening with a stony face to the interns presenting.
One night, not on call, he woke up to his phone going off. He grabbed it off the nightstand and picked up.
“‘Lo?” he muttered.
“Neil?”
It was Mark’s voice, and he sounded—thick, and choked, like he’d been crying. Neil sat up, adrenaline suddenly pounding in his veins.
“What is it?” asked Neil, trying to keep the panic out of his voice.
“I’m—I’m on call tonight, and—shit just happened. Can you come in? I might need you to spell me.”
“Yeah. Yeah. Just let me get my shoes on, drive in. Can you wait for me?”
“Yeah,” said Mark thickly.
“Okay. Good. It’s going to be all right, buddy. It’s going to be okay.”
“Sure.” Mark hung up.
Neil flew through his apartment, stuffing his feet into his shoes as he hopped toward the stairs. He made it to the hospital in record time, straight up taking one of the most expensive parking spots just to be closer to the Surgery Department.
He found Mark in the call room, sitting on the bed with his back against the wall, eyes shut.
“Hey, man,” he said gently. “What’s up?”
Mark opened his eyes and looked over at Neil. “Oh, hey. Sorry if I scared you. It’s not that bad, I swear.”
Neil sat down next to him. “So tell me what’s up.”
“I... You know that intern, Joey, I keep having trouble with? He screws off, doesn’t write the scrips I tell him to?”
“Yeah?”
“I just lost my shit at him tonight. He had some bullshit reason why he hadn’t seen a patient and gotten some background I told him to, and I just started cussing him out in front of everybody. Patients, even. I told him he was a—a fucking waste of space sad sack who never should have gone into surgery if he wasn’t prepared to work his ass off, because God knows that’s what the next five years are going to be like. I was yelling, man, so loud. I’m going to get ripped a new asshole over this tomorrow. I can tell.”
Mark stopped and shuddered, sighing. Neil put a hand on his shoulder carefully.
“Do you have a feel for why it happened?”
Mark nodded. “I’m at the end of my fucking rope. I didn’t realize I was. I didn’t realize how bad it was getting. But I swear to God, if there hadn’t been people there, I might have hit him. That’s fucked-up.”
“Tomorrow, can we—I’ll help you—make an appointment for you to talk to somebody?”
After a long minute, Mark nodded again. He was starting to shake, Neil noted.
“Okay,” said Neil. “Good. Good. That should help. If it doesn’t, we’ll figure something else out.”
Mark sighed. “Can I...just lean on you? And have it not be weird?”
“It’s not weird at all.”
Mark relaxed then, putting the heavy weight of his head on Neil’s shoulder. They sat like that in silence for a long time.
Mark’s pager went off a while later, and Neil plucked it out of his hands. “Get some sleep. I got this.”
Mark sighed again. “I’ll try.”
“Trying is good enough.”
So Neil hustled out to deal with things, and if people thought it was weird that he’d appeared halfway through Mark’s call night to take over, nobody said anything.
It was a bitch and a half to make it through the next day, but as soon as clinics started opening, Mark let him call around to make an appointment, and he found one with pretty good reviews that could see Mark that afternoon.
“You’re post-call,” said Neil. “You’ve got the day off. Can you make it in? Should I call Kristi to take you?”
Mark shook his head, staring at the directions Neil had printed off for him.
“Thanks, man. I can make it there.”
Neil worked the rest of the day in the fugue state of sleeplessness he’d unfortunately gotten used to, but thank God the next night wasn’t a call night, either, so he got to go home and sleep. He texted Mark: how was the appointment?
Good, said Mark. Didn’t get reamed as bad as I figured either
That was good. Neil honestly wasn’t surprised; people lost their shit on underlings all the time. Mark had just never been the kind of guy to do that, and if turning into that guy was what he needed to see that he’d gotten into a bad state, well. He couldn’t say it was a good thing.
But it wasn’t the worst thing that could happen. There were memorial websites to residents in the past that attested to that.
* * *
April Fool’s passed with the usual brief uptick in terrible life decisions coming in the door.
Neil had barely seen Eli since the meeting—just in passing, really. He figured he knew why. If Eli wanted to avoid gossip and speculation, it wouldn’t make
a lot of sense to spend more time with Neil.
It still stung a little. And his actual absence, of course, was a raw wound. One night, Neil couldn’t help himself.
He had the day off. He’d had a couple of drinks with Kristi. Whiskey on the rocks at their favorite bar, Kristi insisting on getting the meat and cheese platter to go with it, “Because you know we’re going to feel like shit tomorrow.” They’d told each other horror stories about their attendings and then laughed until they almost cried. Kristi had confided in him, careful not to meet his eyes, that she’d been wondering lately if maybe she and Mark could have started something, but with Mark in therapy this was obviously a bad time. He’d had to agree with her, even though the way she stared fixedly at her glass made him ache.
He hadn’t told her anything about Eli. That silence was a habit by now.
He’d gone home, and accidentally-on-purpose put on an album that reminded him, irresistibly, of Eli. It wasn’t sad, just sweet, bright, full of lines about wanting things. Hope.
So it wasn’t a surprise, really, that he found himself pushing the call button.
Eli picked up three rings in, long enough that Neil had started to wonder whether he was going to get sent to voice mail. “Hello?”
“Hey.” Neil could hear the whiskey in his own voice, making it a little harsh.
There was a moment of silence on the other end of the line. “How are you?”
Neil sighed through his teeth. “Peachy. How are you?”
“Hmm.” It sounded like Eli was doing something; there were rattling noises on the other end. “Things have been...strange lately.”
“Anybody giving you shit?” It was hard to imagine anyone giving Eli shit—everyone loved him, or at least thought they did. They didn’t know him. They liked the cheerful shell.
“No, not really.” Something clanged in the background. “Although—oh, God, you’ll laugh at this.”
“I better.”
“You remember when Roger—Roger Liddell—tried to set you up with his nephew?”
“Tell me he didn’t.”
“My hand to God, he did.” Eli was laughing, even if it sounded like he was verging on hysteria. “He gave me Kevin’s phone number.”
“If you call that—”
“I didn’t! I won’t. Obviously.” Eli exhaled hard. “Obviously,” he repeated, sounding tired and sad.
Neil sprawled backward across his bed, slowly grinding the heel of his free hand into his eyeball. “See, this is what I don’t get.”
“What?” Eli sounded wary.
“You’re—you’re not happy, are you? The way you are?”
There was a very long silence, and Neil started to wonder if he’d crossed a line, but it was late and he was still half-drunk and more than half-frustrated.
Eli finally said, “I don’t know how to answer that.”
“Alone. The way you are is alone. And you don’t have to be. So why are you?”
“It’s better like this.”
“The hell it is.”
“Fine. No. I’m not happy. How would I be happy?” Eli was scathing. “I make do. And I go to sleep at night knowing I’m not compromising your career. Or my ethics.”
“How well are you sleeping?”
Something crashed on Eli’s end of the phone. “Why did you call?”
“Why do you think?” Neil couldn’t stop an annoyed gust of breath. “I miss you.”
Eli didn’t seem to have much to say to that.
“You don’t—I don’t even see you, anymore.” Neil found his eyes stinging. He blinked hard, staring up at his ceiling through the darkened room. “What happens if I do take a job somewhere else? If I leave? Just—never see you again?”
“You’d visit. You’d visit Pete—and me—”
“People mean to visit, but then they don’t. You know that. How many people are you still seeing? Visiting?”
“You can’t—rearrange things for me,” said Eli, but with less conviction, less force.
“I don’t see why.” Neil was so exhausted it came out flat, no anger or blame. “I’m so close to finishing this. What excuses are you going to come up with when I do?”
“What do you mean?”
“It’s not just—You have these reasons, sure, they sound good, they look good on paper. But that’s not the whole story. Is it?”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.” Eli sounded harassed.
“You’re used to being alone. And this way you don’t have to—to take any risks, do you? You don’t have to be anything to anybody. Just miserable.”
Eli was quiet for a very long time. Neil held on to the phone, listening to Eli breathe.
“I don’t know.” A slamming noise. “Look, Neil, I’m making dinner. I wasn’t planning on having a conversation like this tonight.”
“Because your plan is to avoid me until I leave?”
“No. I—no. I just can’t—I can’t do this with you.”
“Because I’m wrong, or because I’m right? Christ, I’m so pissed at you.”
“I know. Believe me, I know.”
“Do you?” Neil gritted his teeth. “I don’t think I could stand it, if I knew you were as mad at me as I am at you. But I miss you. I wanted to talk to you.”
“You’re talking,” Eli said crisply. “I don’t know that I’m contributing that much.”
Neil heaved a huge sigh. “It’s still good to hear your voice.”
“Good?”
“In a bad way.”
“You’ve been drinking.” It wasn’t a question.
“Of course I have. Why the fuck wouldn’t I?”
“Stop twisting the knife.” Eli sounded like he was fighting the urge to raise his voice. “Stop doing this to both of us.”
“I’m not the one doing this!” Neil squeezed his eyes shut tight. “I’m—sorry. I shouldn’t yell.”
“This isn’t a good idea. I think I should go.”
“No. Eli. Please.”
Another long silence. Then Eli said, “All right. If we can talk about something else.”
“Fine. How’s work?” asked Neil, a little bitterly.
“Good, actually.” There were more background noises. Sounded like a teakettle coming to a boil. “I’ve got a continuing-education thing I’m going to later this week, and one of my patients who was having a bad time is starting to look a lot better. I think we’ve finally got his meds dialed in.”
As Eli continued, sounding more and more relaxed as he talked about work, Neil kept his eyes shut and just listened to his voice.
At length, when they’d talked for the better part of an hour, Eli said, “I’m going to have to get dinner out of the oven.”
“Tell me something.”
“What?”
“Do you miss me?” Neil hated asking it, felt horribly laid bare. But he hated not knowing more.
Eli was quiet for long enough that Neil was starting to get angry all over again.
“So much.” Eli’s voice was barely audible.
“Okay. Good night.”
“Good night.” Eli sounded somehow bewildered. Neil pulled the phone away from his ear and hung up before he could think better of it, and then he draped his arm over his face, tucking his face into the crook of his elbow.
He slept badly.
Chapter Twenty-Three
The day it happened caught him completely off guard. He’d had a kind of nasty lap chole that morning that they’d had to convert to open, so he was already tired and on edge. He was on his third pair of scrubs after a patient had knocked a cup of orange juice all over him, and he was trying to finish up a consult in the ER.
He got paged from a number he thought mi
ght be Oncology. He frowned, reaching to return the call, just as an almighty furor rose up in the ER. He came out from the cubicle area and stood stock-still.
A gurney was going by, hustling, and Pete was on it.
“Pete!” He barely registered that he was yelling until he was running alongside the gurney. “Pete.”
Pete looked like hell. He was gray faced and completely soaked in sweat, white coat nowhere in sight, button-up shirt opened all the way down the front, undershirt cut open.
“Out of the way, Neil,” said the ER attending, shortly but not unkindly. “MI. Could be a STEMI. We need an ECG and then he’s going to the cath lab.”
“Jesus Christ! Pete!” They didn’t stop him from following into the exam room where they started an ECG. Somebody was already giving Pete aspirin, putting in an IV. Pete was breathing laboriously. He barely seemed aware of everything that was happening around him.
“Neil,” said Eli, behind him.
He turned around. “What the fuck happened?” He couldn’t keep his voice from breaking on the question.
Eli was white as a ghost, shaking his head. “I was going to meet him for lunch. I went to his office and he was down. I don’t know for how long.”
“Jesus fucking Christ.” Neil turned back to watch the team swarming over Pete. “What the fuck.”
“ECG’s abnormal,” yelled the attending from the side of the bed. “Elias? Take a look.”
Eli hurried over to read the strip the attending was shoving at him. “God, yeah. It’s definitely a STEMI.”
“Okay. Start the tPA and let’s get him into the cath lab, guys. Somebody called them? Told them we were coming?”
“Yeah,” said a junior resident Neil didn’t know.
“Okay. Then we’re on the move. Come on, people, let’s get him over there.”
Neil made to follow them, but Eli stopped him with an arm across his body. “Neil.” Eli was still paler than Neil had ever seen him. “There’s—I think there’s another emergency coming in. They need you.”
Neil glanced back down at his pager. “Fuck,” he said feelingly.
“Yeah. Yeah. But, look, I’ll go with him, I’ll tell you, okay? I’ll tell you what—how it goes.”
