Who'd Have Thought

by G. Benson

  “She what, like, came up and asked you to go for a drink?”

  “Well…yeah.” It sounded lame, even to Hayden’s ears.

  “Thomson. Who you really dislike for reasons including, and I quote, ‘She’s so cold I could ask her to hold my beer in summer to cool it’—” Luce ticked that off on one of their fingers before doing the same to a second “—and, ‘She has the bedside manner of a Chihuahua on crack.’” Another finger ticked off. “And, my personal favorite: ‘You could pee on her and not get a reaction.’”

  Sometimes, Hayden was overdramatic. Obviously, one of those times was, well, every time she’d spoken about Sam in the past. But the woman had rubbed her the wrong way. She still did. And it was easier to vent about Samantha Thomson than the three patients she lost in one day or the crappy health care system she was stuck in, trying to help people and often blocked by red tape.

  “Well, all of those assessments were true.” Hayden shrugged. “And still are.”

  “So.” Luce poked her in the knee “Why did you go out for a drink with her?”

  “Curiosity.”

  “Curiosity?”

  Should she run with that? “Yeah. You know. I was curious as to why she wanted a drink, what she was like.”

  “So you chose to go out with someone you don’t like, rather than with, say, me, who I assume you enjoy spending time with? Or with Owen from Renal, who you share coy little looks with in the hall?”

  “I do not share—okay. Fine. But only because he started it.”

  “So why not go out with him instead? Or Megan from that nightclub who was into you but you said spoke too loud? Or, hell, the guy who fixed your bike that you only ever used once but were glad it broke because you got his number? Or someone you walked past in the street? Why her?”

  Hayden had opened her mouth to say something, anything, when Luce kept going. “Oh my God. Is this one of those sexy things where you, like, hate each other, but it’s all filled with eye sex and heat and, really, you just want to tear her clothes off?”

  “What? No. No! I was curious. I don’t, like, secretly think she’s hot or want to—to tear her clothes off. Don’t be insane.”

  Did Hayden think Sam was hot? No. God, no. Well, she wasn’t not hot. But Hayden had never really thought about it. Mostly, Sam was annoying and rude.

  Luce almost looked disappointed. “Oh. I still don’t get it, then.” They perked up. “Wait. Did you check out her collarbones?”

  Hayden blinked. “Uh…”

  She had.

  Luce’s grin could be called evil. “You so did. You always check out a girl’s collarbones.”

  Hayden huffed. “Exactly, I always do it. As for the drink, I was curious. She asked me. I said yes.”

  “You wore your date boots.”

  “They were the only ones I had.”

  Luce flopped back against the sofa. “Fine, whatever. How was it? Awkward? Fun? Filled with flirting you didn’t realize was flirting?”

  “It was…awkward.” That eyebrow was being raised at her again. But now was when Hayden had to convince Luce of this, or at least to start. Otherwise, how would Luce believe any of this later? How would she explain wanting to go out with Sam again? Or, you know, becoming her lawfully wedded wife? Just the thought of that sentence wanted to make Hayden gag. Lawfully wedded wife. Please.

  It wasn’t that Hayden didn’t really believe in marriage, it was, well…she didn’t believe in marriage.

  “It was awkward, but nice. She was…warmer outside of work.” Not really. Well, maybe kind of. So, not a lie? There’d been the odd icy, wry comment now and then that could be called funny? Once the shock had died down. “She was funny.”

  True—ish.

  “Huh.” The eyebrow had calmed down, and now Luce was looking less interrogative. “So you’re, like, friends?”

  That was safe for now. “Yeah. I suppose.”

  “Is she gonna be nicer at work?”

  “Probably not. I think that’s how she works.” And, you know, lived.

  “Fun.” Luce straightened up, peering past Hayden. “Anyway, want to go out for a walk or something? That gallery you like is having a free exhibition. Plus, we can’t stay here. Your psycho cat is glaring at me. I think he may rip my face off.”

  Not wanting to think about the fact that Luce had pointedly said “free,” Hayden turned around. Sure enough, Frank was sitting in the doorway to her room, eyes in slits as he focused on Luce, his tail swishing.

  “He’s just saying hello.”

  Frank growled.

  “Yeah, murderously.” Luce scoffed. “I don’t think he’s ever forgiven me for feeding him when you went to see your family last year. He blamed me for it.”

  “True. And the exhibition sounds good.”

  Hayden’s heart was thundering in her chest. Lies and half-truths and starting to really step toward getting married were making all of this far too real. She stood and scooped up Frank as she walked into her room to change and closed the door behind her. She plopped him on the bed, where he sat gazing at her.

  “You should be nice to Luce. They have food when I’m not around.”

  He turned around and faced the other way, lying down.

  “Good chats, Frank.”

  ~ ~ ~

  After three days off, Hayden slogged her way through her first day back, which was filled with four patients complaining of chest pain—one of whom just had bad heartburn—two broken bones, a patient who had overdosed, another who had been freaking out on meth, three colds that should have gone to their local doctor—if they had insurance that covered that—and one motorcycle crash.

  Somehow, though, she was pinging off the wall when the day was over at around seven in the evening. She’d managed to get everything ready for handover at a decent time and had been the first to slip into the small room with cluttered desks that doctors and nurses alike used to escape the bustle of the ER to do their documentation.

  Signing off on the last of her paperwork with a flourish, Hayden bounced on her heels. She hummed under her breath the tune to “Let’s Get Down to Business” from Mulan, which she had no excuse for watching on her own in her mid-twenties except that it was an awesome film. Frank had certainly liked it.

  “Hello.”

  Her head snapped up. Halfway-in and halfway-out of the room, Sam stood with her hands buried in her lab coat pockets. She had very faint circles under her eyes. Was she tired? Not that Hayden really cared.

  “Hey.” Hayden capped her pen and kept it in her hand, twirling it around her fingers. “How are you?”

  “I’m fine.” Sam’s jaw twitched once. “And you?”

  Like an afterthought. Or like she was listening to a reminder in her head? Hayden had told her to try harder.

  “I’m fine. Long day.”

  “Oh.” She clearly had no idea how to carry a conversation. “Are you busy?”

  Hayden looked around the empty room. “No. Just finished, actually.”

  “Would you like to get a coffee?”

  “Uh—yeah.”

  “Okay. I need to change. I’ll meet you at the entrance.”

  “Uh—yeah.”

  “Do you have any other responses?”

  Well, that was kind of rude. But there was something about the way Sam’s lips twitched, barely noticeable, that made Hayden pause the roll of her eyes she’d been about to give. “Uh—yeah?”

  “Funny.”

  “I’m hilarious, Sam.”

  “I’ll see you in ten minutes.”

  “Okay.”

  But she’d already turned and walked away. Just in time for Luce to walk in, sidestepping Sam with a polite nod.

  “Are you going out with her again?” Luce asked.

  “Uh—yeah?”

  “Interesting.”

  Hayden snapped the folder in front of her shut and slipped it away. “It’s really not.”

  “Oh, I beg to differ.”

  “You asked out
Coffee Girl yet?” Hayden smirked.

  “Don’t change the subject.”

  “Don’t avoid the question.”

  Luce grabbed the pen Hayden had started twirling around her fingers again and took the folder they needed. “I’m not avoiding.”

  “Sure.”

  “I’m just… Dating’s hard.”

  Well, that was definitely the truth. Hayden sighed, her hip against the desk, and watched Luce open the folder to start making notes.

  “Yeah, it is.”

  Their voice held something, though, and it made Hayden more careful. Luce was purposefully not looking at her, their eyes on the paper, but their pen barely moving. “You know, the whole ‘are they interested, are they not? Do they like coffee too, should I kiss them? What flaws are they keeping masterfully hidden? Will they respect my pronouns and understand what non-binary is without making me feel like it’s the strangest thing in the world?’ That kind of thing. Dating.”

  Ah. So that was it. Luce’s eyes were still fixed on the paper, and Hayden’s heart went out to her friend. She knew that Luce had identified as non-binary for several years before they met. And usually they were as confident as people came.

  Coming out to their parents, a father who was a third-generation child of Japanese immigrants and a mother who was second, had taken Luce years. Their parents’ acceptance had helped their confidence a lot, but sometimes little insecurities sneaked out.

  And now this. Coming out constantly could be exhausting, and it was a constant for Hayden. You never came out once, like people seemed to believe. It was every time you met someone, for any sexuality that wasn’t straight. For Hayden, it was stopping people from calling her a lesbian when she was dating a woman, or straight when dating a man, or getting it completely wrong if the person wasn’t either.

  But for gender? Hayden couldn’t even imagine how constant that must be for Luce.

  “Well,” Hayden said, hoping she was handling this okay, “if she doesn’t respect your pronouns, I’ll make sure to order the most complicated coffee order known to humankind every single day for a year.”

  The corner of Luce’s lip quirked up. “Yeah?”

  “Totally. And the other thing? If she doesn’t understand it, well…her loss. Because you’re freaking awesome.”

  Hayden wrapped her arms around Luce in a tight hug and shook them a little until they laughed.

  “Yeah, yeah, okay,” Luce said, their cheeks splitting with a grin. “Fine. Go on your date.”

  Hayden walked toward the door. “It’s not a date.”

  “Sure.”

  ~ ~ ~

  “Order something.”

  “Really, no, it’s fine.” Hayden said it as authentically as she could. All right, she was starving, but she wasn’t going to be someone’s kept pet. It was degrading. She was better than that. Better than that, yet her stomach was rumbling.

  “Hayden.” Every time her name fell from Sam’s lips, it seemed like an accident, as if they should both be left blinking at each other in surprise. “We’re doing this for appearances’ sake, and if we’ve made a dinner date—” was it Hayden’s imagination, or had she hesitated over the word ‘date’? “—and only I eat, that will look entirely strange.”

  The place smelled like heaven. Sam had led the way to a steakhouse a twenty-minute walk from the hospital. It wasn’t a classy restaurant, but an honest-to-goodness steak house, complete with (what Hayden hoped was fake) horns on the wall and cow-print seats.

  Hayden loved meat. She had zero issues eating it. If she was richer, she’d love to make better choices and choose meat that had come from animals which had trundled freely through green pastures and fed only on pesticide-free grass and got up to whatever happy mischief cows got up to before meeting their end to fill her plate. But sadly, her funds didn’t stretch that far. Yet, regardless of this love, she still didn’t really understand why people would want to sit in a restaurant adorned with anything and everything to remind them that the thing they were eating was once running around with feelings and moo-type thoughts.

  But shit, it smelled good.

  “That’s true. But who’s going to see us?”

  Sam shrugged, a gesture that Hayden had never seen her do. It looked far too casual on her. “Most likely? Nobody. But still, possibly someone. Order something.”

  Hayden grumbled but reached for a menu. She decided upon the cheapest main dish. When she looked up from the plastic menu—which, yes, was covered in happy cow faces (seriously?)—Sam was holding her wine glass and staring at her. She was wearing a white shirt again, something made of material that probably cost more than Hayden’s sofa, though she had no idea how much the sofa had cost, actually, as it came with the furnished apartment. The shirt had no buttons and was loose, yet not. Hayden had to admit she looked nice. And that was weird. And her green eyes were boring into her.

  “What?” Hayden asked.

  “Does anyone else know you have money issues?”

  Hayden ran the edge of her nail along the plastic edge of the menu. Being under so much scrutiny was uncomfortable, especially from someone she saw as her superior. Well, that wasn’t true. Hayden didn’t see any of the doctors like that. And most other surgeons didn’t act like it. To her, everyone in the hospital was a team. But it was clear Sam saw herself as superior, and that made Hayden feel like the junior. “I don’t—I don’t have money issues.”

  Sam took a sip of her wine.

  Hayden bit at her lip. With a sigh, she gave in. “No. Other people don’t know. I think my friend does. But we don’t talk about it. Is it that obvious?”

  “Probably not. But you agreed to this very readily, based on the money.” She cocked her head. “Unless you’ve been holding a secret burning love for me for years.”

  Hayden barked a laugh. That had not been what she’d expected Sam to say. Sam was actually smiling. Lines appeared around her eyes, deepening, softening her entire face. So those were from positive facial expressions. Interesting. “No. It was definitely the money. No offence.”

  “None taken.”

  “I tend to not like people to know how broke I am.”

  The waiter appeared, and they both placed their orders. He was even wearing a cowboy hat that looked like it had been ordered in bulk from the Internet. It was plastic.

  This did not seem like Sam’s type of place. Had she chosen it especially because Hayden had noticed how expensive the first place had been?

  “Can I ask you something?” Sam asked when he’d gone with a “Thankee, gals,” in the worst attempt at a southern accent Hayden had ever heard.

  “You just did.”

  Sam shook her head and looked skyward like Hayden’s mother used to do, as if asking for strength. “The first question is a usual part of conversation, or so I’m led to believe.”

  “Fine, yes. Ask away.”

  “Why are you a nurse and have such money issues? Correct me if I’m wrong, but you were a medical student.”

  Hayden’s mouth went dry. “What?”

  “Am I mistaken?”

  Hayden’s heart was in her throat.

  “It was premed. And how did you know that?”

  She’d been lucky to find a program that let her shadow a doctor in her first, and only, year of premed.

  “I recognize your face. I have since you first started in the ER. You were shadowing a colleague in my old hospital.”

  Hayden opened her mouth to say something. Then closed it again. Did Sam have a photographic memory?

  “I—” she cleared her throat. Her voice was croaky, so she had a sip of water. It felt as if someone had exposed her biggest secret. Which, in a way, Sam had. Or had opened the door that led to something hugely private in her life. A few more steps and Sam would fall right into it all. And if there was anyone she didn’t want that happening with, it was Samantha Thomson. “I don’t remember you.”

  “I only helped a little with med students at that time. My hair was lo
nger, and brown, not my natural color.”

  That deep red was natural? People would kill for that.

  “Oh.”

  And Hayden was being as eloquent as ever. But this was leaving her breathless. Her hands were even clammy. No one knew about this, not in her current life.

  “I mean, if you were on your way to study medicine, I assume you had the money for college. And you would be earning a lot more at this point. Or you would be soon. You’re still young. Twenty-six?”

  “Seven.”

  Like it mattered. Hayden’s mouth was still dry. She sipped her water again.

  “I think I’ve upset you,” Sam said.

  “No. I, uh, didn’t know you knew about that.”

  “So?”

  “I—I’m a nurse. It’s a good job.”

  “Yes. But you could be more than just a nurse, and earning a wage that—”

  “Just a nurse?”

  And that clammy feeling was gone, replaced with heat in her chest. Just a nurse. God, doctors, and especially surgeons, with their holier-than-thou attitudes.

  Okay. Not fair. This whole just-a-nurse thing wasn’t an attitude that doctors expressed often these days.

  Yet here was Sam, pitying her because she was just a nurse. And with no idea what had led to why.

  “I—”

  “I love my job, Thomson.”

  Sam’s brow furrowed.

  “Nursing is vicious and hard and important,” Hayden continued. “I had to study my ass off, still, to become just a nurse.”

  “Of course. It’s only, you could have…done more.” Sam didn’t seem to have anything else to say after that, and Hayden didn’t care if she did, because she sure had more to say.

  Done more? Like nursing was less?

  “I hold people as they die. I put my hands on their chest and help bring them back to life. I’m the first and last line between incompetent doctors who make big errors sometimes, and I have to know a shitload to recognize when that’s happening. Nurses have to tell within a second-long window when a patient is deteriorating and intervene while we wait for doctors to get there.” Her voice wasn’t rising, yet it sure wasn’t lowering. But she was pissed. How dare Sam? “I miss toilet breaks and lunch breaks, I clean up people who can’t do it for themselves, and I hold their loved ones as they sob when there’s nothing else we could have done. And you think I could have done more? I may not have become a doctor, and I may have been devastated when that didn’t happen. But I wouldn’t trade my job for anything.”