Fractured Love

by Ella James

  I absorb every detail in a blink: how soft her freckled skin looks, how smooth and soft her lips appear, how shiny her blonde hair gleams. She looks well, I realize slowly, over several heartbeats.

  That thought flips some switch in me; it settles me—so I’m able to give her the best smile I can muster. It’s tight, professional, reserved: a smile I’m trained to give. But it’s a smile and not a roar, which has to count for something.

  Her mouth opens before her throat is ready, hanging there for just a second before her voice rings in my ears. “Landon.”

  My name is velvet on her tongue.

  If seeing her face struck a match, hearing her voice sets me ablaze. I feel my pulse and respiration pick up.

  “How are you?” Her eyes widen, sharp and sudden, as if she’s just realized I’m me. They dash up and down my body, not just once, but twice. “You— you look well. And…you’re a doctor.” She laughs. It’s not a real laugh, but some sort of fill-in, covering for her while her face bends into shock. “I can’t believe we’re both doctors.”

  I see her right hand flutter, and her startled face makes it apparent that she wants to cover her mouth. She looks alarmed—that she referenced our shared past—but then she straightens her shoulders and schools her face. The look she gives me is all surgeon. Confident and caring, warm and distant.

  Even as I nod and flash another polite smile, I’m searching Evie’s blue eyes for the girl I loved. I tell myself she’s not the same, just as I’m not. Evie is a stranger now—no matter how familiar she feels.

  “We are,” I reply, to her comment about us being doctors. My voice sounds more curt than I intend.

  In the wake of it, I can see her close a door I didn’t even know was open. Something changes in her eyes, and she’s on lockdown. She holds out her hand and says, “It’s really good to see you, Landon.”

  I stand there in my clean, unblemished coat, and shake Evie’s cool hand.

  “It’s nice to see you, too,” I tell her.

  The charade begins.

  Evie

  Tuesday, June 13, 2017

  Less than twenty-four hours after I see Landon Jones for the first time in ten years, I arrive at Alpine University Hospital for my first day as a neurosurgery resident.

  It’s 4:00 a.m. The air is dewy damp but crisp, as only Colorado air can be in June. The sky is still an inky black, with thin clouds drifting past the glassy walls of the sprawling hospital complex.

  My hair is in a ponytail, and I’m wearing sleek gray pants, a pink blouse, sneakers, and a small purse strapped diagonally under my coat. The purse holds a bottle of water, several protein bars, and hydrating lip gloss. Plus Advil. Dad told me I’ll need it for my feet.

  I know from the steady stream of information to my phone’s AUH employee app that the chief resident working right now is Dr. Russell Kraft, a 32-year-old with thinning blond hair, brown eyes, and a soft Canadian accent. I don’t know him as well as I know Dorothy—my mentor, Dr. Eilert—but I know she says he’s good-natured. “Nicer than I am,” she told me when we met for brunch a few weeks back.

  I feel less nervous than I thought I would as I walk in through the yawning lobby, down an obscure hall off the room’s right side, and up the staircase I prefer to the crowded elevators. Neurosurgery is on floor three.

  I get into the unit with my ID tag, and as I step through the doors, I feel my first cold shot of nerves. Landon’s standing by the nurse’s desk, wearing his own white coat and holding a tablet as he talks to a short, curly-haired nurse in royal blue scrubs.

  As my shoes smack the wax-shined floor, he turns and I stop breathing, even as I keep moving and give a smile. He doesn’t smile back, just blinks, and I’m thrown back through time, into another morning as he walks into my homeroom and I first see those sharp eyes.

  By the time I reach him, he’s got his façade in place. He gives me a curt smile and resumes looking at his tablet, while the curly-haired nurse introduces herself as Cindy and hands me my own tablet.

  “I’ve seen you when you were in school here,” she says, referencing the few times I stepped foot on this floor as an AU med student. “You’ve encountered one of these before, I’m thinking.”

  “Yep.” I look down at the tablet’s screen and turn it on, and find myself already logged in. She points to it. “Everybody’s got a different colored case. Jones here is green. Yours is red. Kim is yellow. You’ll be seeing lots of Kim because she’s inpatient this round, and not as much of Prinz, Mr. Blue, because he’s NCCU and will spend most of his days over there.” She waves in the direction of the neurosurgery critical care unit, telling me things that I already know. “But you three, you’ll be crossing paths a lot. It’s Dr. Kraft for you this morning. He’s around here somewhere. Also Bettie and Stern.”

  I recognize those names as older residents: a third year and a second year, if I’m correct.

  “We’ve had a busy night, so I’ll just let you get on to your lists. You can do that in the donut room. That’s what we call your space up here on the floor. There’s almost always donuts. Do you need a tour? You know where the cots are, where everything else is?”

  I laugh—“I do”—and, in my periphery, I see Landon nod.

  After the brief re-introduction, in which Cindy tells me she’s the charge nurse, I head to the donut room, which is basically the doctors’ locker room. As I’m going through the door, I feel Landon on my heels.

  Thank God, Kara Bettie is already in there, actually eating a donut. She and I say a quick hello, and I sit at one of two round tables as Landon comes in. I don’t look up, but I can hear her voice rise as she greets him animatedly, and in a tone I’d recognize anywhere.

  Woman interested in man.

  About the time she heads out the door, something buzzes, and still without looking at Landon, I get up and follow the sound to a basket on the other table. In the basket are six pagers. Two of them bear stickers with my name on them. In fact, one of mine is buzzing.

  I murmur to myself as Landon takes his from the basket, “That was fast.”

  He doesn’t reply—and I can’t look up at him. I look at my pager, and I fumble through my memory for the mental database I have of phone numbers and codes.

  If I’m correct about the message I just got, someone wants me in an operating room? That can’t be right, though. Not on the first day, and definitely not before I work my way through my list and help the other residents round on our unit’s patients.

  “What does it say?” Landon’s voice sends an electric charge through me; I have to look at him now, and I do, which makes me zing again.

  I hold it out to him and watch him laugh. “You’re wanted in the OR, Evie. That’s some luck.” I blink, and he says, “You better run or I’ll go do it for you.”

  As I hustle there, I feel the echo of his rich, low voice swim through my limbs.

  You can’t, I tell myself, and I push it aside.

  When I get to the OR, Dr. Kraft is scrubbing in. “You’ve been in on an external ventricular drain before,” he says, and I can’t tell if it’s a question, so I nod.

  “Bettie was on with Dr. Saul and me, but she got called to ER. Six-car pile-up incoming. Saul and I are down two hands, I figured why not make your day?”

  Dr. Kraft is awesome. Dr. Saul is awesome. This woman’s EVD is awesome. It’s a simple procedure, but still, I am elated. I spend the hours afterward catching up on the paperwork I missed before and during rounds, keeping track of the neurosurgery patients currently admitted to floor three, answering pages from ER doctors, and helping my primary attending for the day: a friendly woman named Dr. Juan.

  I pass Landon twice in the hallways, once on my way into the bathroom—he was exiting the men’s room—and again in the ER. At no time do I have to spend more than half a second in his presence, which is wonderful.

  I scrub in once more around 4:30 p.m. on a six-year-old’s tethered spinal cord release.

  By 5 o’clock, I r
ealize that I haven’t eaten anything all day. I inhale two of my protein bars, step into and out of about six patient rooms for various tasks, and then return to the donut room at 7 to begin signing all my patients out to my night floater: a fourth-year resident, Dr. Tara Fairbanks.

  In reality, I’m not finished passing her the torch until almost 10 p.m. I swing by the room of a teenager recovering from an aneurism, giving her a fidget spinner Dr. Juan wants her to play with, before I trudge to the stairwell, feeling elated and exhausted.

  I survived my first day. Landon was here…and I survived.

  I hear other footsteps in the stairwell, but my mind is elsewhere. I’m replaying the day, trying to absorb the fact that I’m really a neurosurgery resident. After all these years. The realization hits me full-force as I stride into the first-floor lobby. I’m a resident. I’m a resident. I did it.

  I’m so emotional in that moment, I stop by a bench and blink a few times; I run a finger underneath my damp eyes.

  You did it, Evie. You did the impossible.

  And, God, so few will ever understand just how impossible it was. My sense of satisfaction, of unadulterated pride, is bigger than the building as I step outside—and find it’s raining.

  Hmmm. Well, there’s a covered breezeway, plus a tunnel over the road to the far-flung employee parking lots. I find my car keys in my small purse, reminding myself as my fingers close around them to bring my briefcase tomorrow. There were papers that I could have taken home tonight, and maybe should have, but I didn’t have a bag to put them in, so I’ll have to access them remotely from my laptop.

  One brisk walk across the street and two stairwells later, I’m behind the wheel of my maroon Subaru Outback, exiting the parking deck and heading toward my apartment. It’s not far from here: less than a mile, in Denver’s Cherry Creek neighborhood.

  I’m at the first red light on my trek, at the corner of the sprawling hospital campus and the children’s hospital next door, when I see him through my frenzied wipers—some poor guy getting splashed by passing cars as he strides down the sidewalk. One blink and my body lights up: Landon.

  Shit. That’s Landon right there, walking down the street in drenched business attire, clutching a dripping leather suitcase.

  My light turns green, and I have just a second to decide.

  I pull over. One smooth move, and not a second thought.

  I roll my window down and lean toward it, cupping my mouth before I yell, “LANDON!”

  The monsoon drowns out my voice. I drive a few feet closer to him and try again. “LANDON!”

  I’m not sure if he notices the idling car or me yelling—but Landon glances over his shoulder. I wait for him to recognize me, but he doesn’t. Not until he takes two long steps back, lifting a hand up to his eyes.

  I watch his face morph in surprise as he leans down partway into my passenger’s side window.

  “Evie? Is that you?” His voice rises above the clapping rain.

  “Get in!” The storm has picked up even as I’ve idled here. It’s raining cats and dogs, and the car behind me has shimmied up right on my tail.

  I see the tension in features, in the temporary stillness of his sculpted chest and shoulders. Then his mouth relaxes and he reaches for the door handle. I blink, and Landon’s in. He’s in my car and oh my gosh, he’s really drenched.

  I can’t help laughing as I pull off from the curb. “You look like you went for a swim.”

  He wipes a hand over his forehead, where water drips down from his hair in rivulets that glow green as I pass under another light. “I kind of did.” His voice is lower, but the same.

  “Hey, you know, there’s a blanket in the backseat.”

  He glances behind him, but looks back at the road. “Thanks, but I’m okay.”

  I reach down to the console between our seats and flip a switch to turn on his seat’s heater right about the time it starts to hail. “These summer storms are crazy,” I say as we pass through another intersection.

  “Where are you taking me?” His brows are arched. His rumbling voice sounds skeptical.

  I laugh as I press the brakes. “Where do you live?”

  He smirks. “You passed the turn.”

  It’s so surreal to be here with him. For an aching moment, I feel as if we’re floating down the flooded street. As if the rain encapsulating my car is soapy water at a drive-thru car wash, and it’s 2007.

  I struggle to find my voice. “I did?”

  “You did.”

  I get into the left lane, making a U-turn when I can. The roaring rain is all we have between us. That and eons. “So, a left up here?” I make a guess as I approach the area’s main drag.

  “Yeah. It’s down two blocks.” He crosses his arms, clasping his big hands over his triceps.

  “Here—” I turn the dial to make the heat hotter. “You must be freezing.”

  “Nah. I’m used to cold.”

  I think of Landon jogging in a Johns Hopkins T-shirt: a sight my sister thought she saw near our parents’ house at Thanksgiving in 2015. After Em thought she had seen him, I got out and drove around in search of a car with Maryland plates. When I couldn’t find one, I went down to his old room and sobbed. Remembering this while he sits next to me makes my face and neck flush with self-conscious heat.

  “Oh yeah. You went to Hopkins.” Not for undergrad. He went to UNC for that…but Hopkins after.

  Landon nods.

  “And then you moved to another cold, snowy locale.”

  “Colorado’s not that cold.”

  I snort. “Says you. It’s pretty cold. Which I actually love. I love the cold. And snow—yes, please. People talk about summer here being the bee’s knees, but I like fall and winter. I think it’s better when the weather fluctuates when you’re inside all day, living life through windows.”

  He regards me for a moment with his eagle eyes. “You feel like you live your life through windows?”

  My heart pounds. “Not really. Kind of, though. I mean, it’s like a bubble, work is. You can be there twenty-four hours and it feels like five…or four hundred. Sometimes I look outside and see the Front Range, and I’m surprised it’s even there.” I laugh. “Happens mostly when I haven’t slept for days.”

  The corners of his lips turn up just slightly: one of his old, familiar, measured smiles. “Did you enjoy rotations?”

  “Surgery, yes. Psychiatry and pediatrics, not so much.”

  His smile widens. “Don’t want to save the children, Evie?”

  Hearing his voice say those words…it makes me falter. “No—” I start. My tone is normal, and I’m going to play it off—God knows, I’m a good faker by now—but my foot falters on the brake as we approach a red light, and the car slides. Not by much, but just enough to make your stomach flip.

  I can feel the burn of Landon’s gaze as I laugh self-consciously and move my hands to ten and two.

  “No,” I carry on, “I want to save them in that I want them to be saved. But they’re so difficult as patients. Like, not only do they fail to tell you the important things, they tell you things that weren’t even true. Case in point: I had a kid come in with a nasty sinus infection, and some really weird-looking stuff on the scans. Asked him what it was, he told me tiny ants had crawled into his nose when he was sleeping. Then he said his brother put cupcake sprinkles in his nose. Like, what is that? So random. Finally I found out he had snorted glitter. Like, a ton of glitter. I could see the little particles on the scan and anyway…yeah. It’s just harder. They’re really cute. I like to babysit them, for colds and daily things like that, maybe they can see a different doctor.”

  Landon tilts his head. “And neuro kids?”

  “Oh,” I wave, “I’ll take them. Tethered cords and Chiari Malformation, tumors…that stuff is my jam.”

  “So it’s not the sad shit you dislike,” he says. “It’s the tedium of diagnosing pediatrics. I’m going to guess you’re not a fan of geriatrics either.”

&nb
sp; “No, I like the old folks fine. So long as they’re coherent, which they almost always are. More so than most people, in fact. I wouldn’t specialize in Alzheimer’s, though. I don’t think I have the stamina for it.”

  He’s quiet at that, and I’m surprised to find that I feel something coming from him. I can’t help but hyper-focus on my comment. Memory and stamina: does he think I’m bad at both? Why wouldn’t he? I forgot him. That’s what he thinks, of course.

  My heart aches so fiercely, my chest hurts as I glance over at him.

  “Hey, Ev…”

  I swallow, frightened by the softness of his tone, and what he called me.

  “Yeah?” I murmur.

  He points behind him. “I’m back that way.”

  “Oh my God!” It’s been forever since we turned onto this road. I’ve gone way past two blocks. “I’m sorry. I…wasn’t thinking.”

  His smile is small but gentle. “Understandable. How was your first day?”

  I pause to regroup as I make another U-turn. “So tiring. And wonderful. And tiring.”

  “I hear that.”

  “How was yours?”

  “Good. And tiring.”

  And he sounds tired. His subdued tone brings a deluge of memories. I can’t help but wonder how he sleeps now. What his bedroom looks like. What he’ll do when he gets home.

  He may have a girlfriend waiting at his place.

  I swallow. “Denver is a nice place. I hope you like it.”

  “Won’t be forgetting the Front Range quite yet.” He smiles. I laugh. “It’s that street,” he says, nodding at the next light. “Take a right.”

  The light turns green, and I don’t even have to slow.

  “It’s this second complex.” He points. “Grandview.”

  I turn slowly by the big sign, behind which are three towers.

  He says, “Thanks for doing this,” as I start through the parking lot. “I would have been fine, but this was nice.”

  My head spins slowly as he adds, “I’m in the rearmost building.”

  I pin my gaze to the slick asphalt, taking a deep, strained breath so I don’t freak out—or pass out.