The Doctor's Secret

by Heidi Cullinan

  “I won’t let you lose your job.”

  “It’s not something you control.”

  Hong-Wei took hold of Simon’s face, cradling him gently as he looked directly into Simon’s eyes.

  “I’ll take care of you, Simon. I swear to you. No matter what happens. I’ll keep you safe, as best I can.” He stroked Simon’s tears away with his thumbs. “And despite knowing you only see them as friends, every time you smile at Owen and Jared, I’ll always keep a hot coal of jealousy roasting inside.”

  Simon really wasn’t sure if he was crying in sorrow, fear, happiness, or relief anymore. All he did know was though his phone buzzed insistently for the next fifteen minutes, he wasn’t breaking their kiss for anything.

  BY THE time Hong-Wei and Simon arrived at the house, Owen and Jared paced the floor of their living room, ready to light into Hong-Wei, but once they got a better look at Simon’s weary and still-scared expression, their fury melted away and they became doting mother hens instead.

  The four of them stayed up another hour together, discussing strategy going forward. Hong-Wei had originally harbored plans of making love to Simon, but it was clear his boyfriend was too wrung out to do much but be embraced in bed. While Simon found sleep easily, Hong-Wei was awake long after, and he wandered downstairs, thinking a glass of water might help him.

  He discovered Owen with a bottle of expensive vodka instead.

  Hong-Wei stopped in the doorway. Owen glanced up and smiled wryly.

  “Don’t worry. I’m only eyeing it fondly, wishing we had a second anesthesiologist or a nurse anesthetist so I could ask them to take call. I seriously thought about calling over to Ironwood and asking if they’d back us up with a surgeon and anesthetist if something came through so I could get wasted. Then I decided I’d stare at this label as a compromise.” Owen waved the bottle at him. “Care to join me?”

  Hong-Wei didn’t know what he wanted to do. He was fairly sure his only real option was to sit in the kitchen and listen to whatever Owen was going to say.

  Owen set the bottle down and reached for mineral water from the fridge. “This do you? Or you want something else? Simon always drinks tea.”

  “Water is fine.”

  Owen poured them each a glass. “A few years ago the union would have been all over this dating rule. Of course, thanks to all the bullshit politics going on in our state, the unions are toothless now.”

  Hong-Wei wasn’t certain how to respond, so he drank his water.

  “It’s as if I’m fourteen all over again, except this time I honestly have no idea how to stop the bullies.” He shoved his glass away from him, abruptly angry in a tight, controlled way that made Hong-Wei go still. “This is damn Andreas and his fucking prep school ideas. I want to punch his smug face in.”

  Hong-Wei understood for the first time when Owen said things like that, he wasn’t being metaphorical. He really did want to punch people out, and probably had. Clearly Hong-Wei’s role here was to calm the man down, even though it was his relationship on the line, not Owen’s. “Erin Andreas might well be the mouthpiece for the policy, but he can’t be its author. Or rather, if he came up with it, which isn’t proven, it has to be rubber-stamped. He’s the HR director. The CEO and the board are the ones making policy. Though it does seem like it’s mostly the board.”

  Owen calmed somewhat, still furious but slightly thoughtful. “You’re right. Ever since he and Nick took over, they’ve made this big show about the two of them being in charge of everything, but the truth is, the board calls all the shots. It’s unlikely those old farts suddenly let two new guys run the place.”

  “Especially since one of them is a black man and the other is the president’s son. Though it certainly looks good if they act as if it’s a brand-new hospital.”

  Hong-Wei tapped the side of his glass. Owen stared at the ceiling. After a period of thoughtful silence, Hong-Wei spoke again.

  “We should do some digging and see what we find out.”

  “Exactly what I was thinking. I’ll poke at Andreas on Monday.”

  Good Lord. “I’ll handle the digging, especially around Andreas. You only annoy the man. Besides, they’re going to be up my nose about last night anyway.”

  Owen leaned over to grab a bag of potato chips out of a cupboard, straining his muscles against his T-shirt. “They’re totally going to try to get you to be an intensivist at St. Ann’s.”

  This wasn’t news to Hong-Wei, though he was realizing now the ways he could use this interest to his advantage. He reached into the bag absently when Owen held it out to him. “It’s not practical at such a small hospital. Even if they could manage it, I wouldn’t want to practice as an intensivist. The pressure of it was too much, which was why I stopped.”

  “Even though you were apparently so good God himself wanted you as his surgeon.”

  “I am that good, but this was part of the problem. All I wanted to do was practice, but it’s not so simple. You saw how the other doctors reacted. They don’t like being questioned. The competition is too insane, and I can’t take it.”

  Owen snorted and threw chips at Hong-Wei’s head. “What a load of crap. You’re more competitive than I am.”

  “I am, but this was a whole other level. When I’m with a patient, I don’t care about anything else, and I don’t want to compete any longer. I can’t handle trying to save someone, all while dodging hoops from jealous colleagues. I almost lost a little girl once because of it. My sister had to get me a Xanax prescription and an appointment with a psychiatrist not connected to Baylor. All I could think of, though, was how many times this was going to happen again.”

  “Okay, I’ll grant you, that’s trash, and it shouldn’t have happened to you.”

  Hearing that made Hong-Wei feel a little better. He relaxed as he pressed on. “I didn’t feel like I could be the doctor my patients needed. I hated admitting that. I hated letting the people who pressured me win, hated letting my patients and my family down, but I couldn’t help it.”

  Owen frowned. “Wait. What do you mean, let your family down?”

  “My family put me through college and medical school, and high school at that, since we went to a private school. I had tutors too, to help me with my English and to make sure I had the best SAT scores possible. I lived with my sister until I came here, and though I contributed to the rent, she still paid most of the expenses and made most of our food, including a lunch for me every day. I let them down with my failure.” He shut his eyes, shame rolling over him. “What’s worse is they won’t say out loud that they blame me.”

  “Hold up. I don’t get it. How is that worse?”

  Hong-Wei knew Owen wasn’t going to understand, but he kept talking anyway, mostly because he couldn’t stop now. “Because I failed. I let them down. They should be scolding me, telling me to live up to their expectations, but they’re so quiet. They’re not even telling me to get married.”

  Owen shook his head. “I gotta admit, you’ve completely lost me here.”

  This wasn’t about explaining to Owen anymore, only about confessing for the sake of his own heavy burdens. “It’s an Asian family thing. I don’t expect you to understand.”

  Nodding, Owen tapped his fingers thoughtfully on the tabletop. “Fair enough. I’m going to keep trying, though. Are you able to tell them any of this? Because it’s clear you want them in your life.”

  “I wouldn’t know how to start. And of course I want them in my life.” Hong-Wei tipped his head back and stared at the ceiling. “My sister still contacts me regularly. Sara’s the one who told me to focus on what made me happy, who helped me move here. I decided what mattered to me most was patient care, so I looked for a small hospital far away from Houston, somewhere unlike any practice I’d ever known. I wanted to go somewhere I couldn’t imagine practicing as an intensivist again. That’s how I ended up here.” He clutched his glass, feeling almost cold. “I hadn’t meant to say so much. I’m sorry if I burdened you.” />
  “You didn’t burden me, you goof. It’s not your fault, though. I brought out the strong stuff for you. You didn’t have any choice but to talk, drinking like this.” Owen poured him more mineral water. “You have no one to compete with you here. For all the shit I give you, you laid down some world-class doctoring last night. I felt like I was back in my residency, and you’re the one fresh out of school. About fifty times during that emergency, I barely knew what to do, and intellectually I understood you were scared shitless too, but you played the whole hospital like one of your operating room symphonies. The damn board loomed over you, and you faced them, all the while dealing with a crashing patient.”

  “Simon had just rejected me too.” Hong-Wei narrowed his eyes at the bottle. “This isn’t vodka, right?”

  “Cheap sparkling water from Amazon. I buy it by the case.” Owen cradled the bag of chips against his chest and eased back in his chair. “Look, I’m not going to tell you this thing with your family isn’t important, but I will tell you I think you can make something of yourself in your own way here at St. Ann’s. You just need to figure out what it is you want to do.”

  This was the same thing Jared had told him. “It can’t be as simple as that.”

  “Well, I imagine fine-tuning the definition of the kind of doctor you want to be will take some time and focus, but I think you’re on the right track, from what I’ve observed. As for the hospital, you’re not going to have any opposition here. Oh, you’ll have a few more doctors puffing up like they did last night, but not for long, because absolutely no one can hold a candle to you here, and you’re amassing quite a backup team. So after that it comes down to the administration, and they’re not going to be a problem at all. They’re going to give you whatever you want, so long as they have the funds. It was clear you didn’t have the setup you needed to do your job correctly with Zhang, but you’re already the talk of the town, as you heard tonight at the fundraiser, I’m sure. You’re the talk of the county. The word is out if you have a major medical emergency, St. Ann’s is the place to go for it, which let me tell you isn’t something people have been in the habit of saying. The board’s going to be hot to think of how they can turn that into dollar bills. You need to think about what you want in exchange.”

  The answer to that was easy. “Simon.”

  Owen stared at him as he chewed the wad of chips he’d stuffed into his mouth. “What if it doesn’t work out? What if you get tired of him?”

  “I won’t.”

  “What if he gets tired of you?”

  Hong-Wei disliked thinking about that, but it was a practical question. “Then I’d at least like to know it was because we had a decent chance to have a relationship.”

  “Fair enough. That’s a tough ask, though. I mean, I would personally love to see you be the one to upend their idiot policy, but they’ve been so draconian, I have my doubts even this can shift them.”

  “Don’t forget, either, how hard they resisted me in the ED.” Hong-Wei propped his feet on an opposite chair and sipped his water thoughtfully. “I still wonder why. Both the policy, and that.”

  “You saw them. Bunch of old men who think they run the world.”

  Hong-Wei tapped his toe against the chair. “I think I’ll invite Erin Andreas to lunch on Monday.”

  “You could ask Beckert along and kill two birds with one stone.”

  “No, I’d like to isolate them one at a time. Oh, but speaking of engagements—the four of us are going to the concert tomorrow afternoon at the college. Ram gave me tickets.”

  Owen grimaced. “No, because he’ll bother me to play violin for him again.”

  Did Owen look tense as he spoke about playing violin, or was that Hong-Wei’s imagination? “No worries. I already told him I’d fill in the position.”

  “Of course. You play violin on top of it all.”

  Hong-Wei smiled into his glass. “Since you’re not trying out, I won’t show you up. Not until the first performance anyway.”

  Owen tossed down the bag of chips. “That’s it. You and I. Outside.”

  Hong-Wei laughed. “Absolutely not. There’s no way in the world you could afford the insurance on my hands.”

  Chapter Eleven

  AFTER HONG-WEI paid a visit to Mr. Zhang, Owen and Jared tested Simon all Sunday morning, asking him to react casually to Hong-Wei as he walked into the room. When they caught him looking a bit too lovey, they called him out and coached him into a more neutral expression. They tested out their efforts at the concert, then came back to the house to critique the performance: the one between Hong-Wei and Simon, not the musicians.

  Hong-Wei noted they could make the job easier by designing casual contact signs of affection. They already had the elbow touch, and Simon added placing a hand on Hong-Wei’s forearm. Easy gestures they could make while working that simply seemed like friendly contact but which would have extra meaning for the two of them.

  More importantly, though, was the pact between Owen, Jared, Hong-Wei, and Simon to always be seen as a group. They went to great lengths to take Hong-Wei and Simon out individually, and Owen in particular hung on Hong-Wei’s arm to the point he started some red herring rumors. Sometimes all four of them went out. Sometimes they were a group of three. They always ate lunch together, either dragging Simon into the doctors’ lounge or joining him in the main cafeteria and putting on a public performance of unity. As far as Copper Point was concerned, Hong-Wei had been firmly adopted. Seeing him at the house, or any of them at his, was as common as rain.

  The most troublesome part was when Simon and Hong-Wei wanted time alone. On the rare occasions Owen worked and Hong-Wei and Simon didn’t, Jared simply found himself something else to do out of the house. What they truly craved, however, was to be able to go to Hong-Wei’s place and be left in peace, which took some serious orchestration. The solution they came up with was for Hong-Wei to begin borrowing Owen’s car liberally—continuing the rumor he was dating him, not Simon—and Simon would get into the back seat and lie down until Hong-Wei parked in the garage underneath his condo and closed the door.

  “What would we do if your garage wasn’t attached to your house?” Simon asked one night as Hong-Wei opened the door for him and helped him out of the car.

  “I’d move,” Hong-Wei replied, and Simon couldn’t tell if he was joking.

  Outside of their dating being an undercover operation, Simon felt a lot calmer about the situation than he initially had. He didn’t like it, and he still felt uneasy about the massive boulder sitting in the way of any real future they could ever hope to have, but he did his best to live in the moment and trust Hong-Wei when he promised, daily, everything would work out okay in the end.

  “I haven’t had a chance to get Erin Andreas alone yet,” he said one morning as they sat eating breakfast together at his condo, “but the glad-handing from the board has given me enough to do I’m almost relieved we’ve had to wait. They have some interesting ideas of what this hospital should be like, and some fascinating alternate takes on reality.”

  Simon paused with his bite of omelet halfway to his mouth. “What do you mean?”

  “To start, they think they have some kind of leverage over me because I accepted a sign-on bonus. Bonuses can be paid back. I’m not their indentured servant for five years, and they don’t have a stranglehold on my license. I’ve barely touched the money they gave me—something I did on purpose—and what I’m missing I could borrow from my sister or get from another hospital’s sign-on bonus if I chose to go.”

  Simon’s heart went to his throat. “You aren’t considering leaving, are you?”

  “Of course not. The point is they think they can control people, even when they actually can’t. I need to talk to Rebecca again about how legal this dating policy truly is and where the loopholes might be. At the same time, I feel like I’m peeling away the edge of a rotten wall. I don’t know if we can solve our problem without exposing the entire putrid structure, which will
have some interesting consequences.”

  The whole thing made Simon feel slightly ill. He pushed his plate away.

  Hong-Wei captured his hand and kissed it. “Don’t worry.”

  Simon did his best to mask his feelings in public, to use their signals to show his love and be content with meeting and loving in secret. But as time wore on, his patience did too. He began to see couples everywhere he looked, people touching, holding hands, laughing, and he longed to do that too with Hong-Wei. He wanted to be picked up and taken on a date, to go grocery shopping together, to go to a movie together.

  He wanted so many things. What he didn’t want, however, was the situation he was in: forced to hide his relationship while falling deeper in love with Hong-Wei every day.

  The day Simon and Jared were to go with Hong-Wei to pick up his car in Duluth, Simon could barely contain his excitement during his shift. Though originally Hong-Wei had planned to have it delivered, he’d decided to go pick it up himself to get away with Simon for the day, far from prying eyes. They were leaving as soon as Simon got off work, rushing to the dealership before it closed, and then Simon and Hong-Wei would have the entire evening out of town together. Hong-Wei wouldn’t have call either, since they’d found coverage. Simon felt like he was about to be released from prison as he finally ended his shift, which was why when Susan Cardwell, the director of nursing, asked him to stop by her office before he left, he had to mask his displeasure.

  Please don’t do or say anything to stop me from getting out of here on time.

  Susan smiled at him as he entered, inviting him to sit. “Simon. Thanks for stopping. Go ahead and close the door.”

  Closing the door was never code for anything good. “Is everything okay?”

  “I wanted to talk to you about a few things briefly, is all.” Her smile had that quiet, strained quality of someone about to discuss something uncomfortable. “You’ve become quite close with Dr. Wu, I’ve noticed.”