This was the second morning in a row that I woke up to Neil ruining my day. Yesterday he turned off the power in the house, and today he was in my kitchen.
He was sitting at the table, sipping an espresso, wearing his gray pants and white golf polo.
I wanted to scream.
“Good morning,” he said, smiling at me. “I made the quiche you like.” He nodded to the bar, where a slice of my favorite spinach and broccoli quiche sat with a glass of fresh-squeezed orange juice on a tray. There was a ramekin of mixed berries on the plate and a tiny vase with a single flower in it.
I loved that quiche. He made it on special occasions like my birthday. He was doing the thing.
The thing he always did. He was trying to make nice and act like nothing had happened. Like his bad behavior was a cut movie scene that never took place. Like I was going to suddenly forget that he’d turned the power off to the house yesterday, or that he was living here against my will after subjecting me to years of emotional and mental abuse and I was just going to sit and have a casual and pleasant breakfast with him. In fact, he was probably banking on it.
Only I wasn’t the same woman now.
I used to be so worn down from his mood swings and so desperate for any bit of kindness from him that I’d just give in. I’d just let it go, let him get away with it. I’d thank him for the flowers or act excited about the expensive vacation he’d booked instead of actually saying he was sorry. I’d eat the quiche.
Fuck the quiche.
I ignored him and went to the fridge to get my protein shake.
He was gone a lot. He was the chief of surgery, so he worked eighty- hour weeks plus on-call shifts. There were very few mornings I’d have to deal with this—but I would deal with it. Because I would be damned if Neil got my house.
He probably thought this little “I’m living here” stunt was going to make me fold like I always did when he bullied me.
But I was done being bullied. Done.
I’d had a long talk with my therapist about this situation. Neil wasn’t a violent person—he was just a jerk. I had absolutely no fear for my safety with him being here, and if I had, I’d have given up the house, no matter how badly I wanted it. My therapist had been more concerned about whether I could handle the mental and emotional toll it would take to see it through.
And the answer was yes.
I don’t think I could handle the toll it would take if I didn’t.
Letting him get away with this felt like allowing myself to be victimized all over again.
He wanted me displaced and the home that I deserved and earned to be taken from me as some sick punishment for daring to not take him back. I would never give him the satisfaction.
Something in me had shifted in the last few weeks. It was like the more distance I got from this relationship, the stronger I became, and standing up to him was getting easier and easier. I was perfectly willing to put up with his presence and hold my ground in exchange for the chance to finally show him I could.
My attorney said we’d have to go to mediation for the house. When that didn’t work, because it wouldn’t, we’d end up in front of a judge. The house would have to be assessed, and I had to pull together financial records. Three to six months. I just needed to deal with this for three to six months and then it would be over either way. He’d get the house, or I would. But at least when it was done, I wouldn’t have let him win, once again, without a fight.
I could feel Neil stare at my back from the breakfast nook. I needed to get a fridge for my room.
I heard him getting up. “Ali…”
“Don’t,” I snapped, shooting him a look.
He was leaning on his palms on the table. “If you refuse to speak to me, this is going to be a very long couple of months.”
“It’s going to be a long couple of months anyway. If you don’t like it,
move,” I said, giving him his line back from the other day.
The doorbell rang, and I used it as my excuse to walk out of the kitchen. When I opened the front door, it was Mom and Dad.
I blinked at them. “I didn’t know you were coming over,” I said as they came in.
My parents were in their seventies, but they had the stamina of fifty- year-olds. They’d both worked like machines right up to their retirement in March. Dad only retired because his eyes weren’t as good as they had been,
and it made surgery difficult. Mom had arthritis. Otherwise they probably would have worked until they dropped dead.
Dad was in a blue polo and white pants, his gray hair slicked back handsomely. Mom’s outfit matched like they’d color coordinated, her gray hair swept into a white visor.
Dad kissed me on the cheek. “Golfing with Neil. Is he ready?”
“You’re…” I shook my head. “Dad, Neil and I broke up,” I said, following them into the living room.
Mom took the recliner and Dad sat on the sofa. “And?”
I crossed my arms. “And it’s not appropriate for you to golf with my ex.” “Alexis, Neil and I were friends and colleagues long before he dated
you,” Dad said.
I licked my lips. “Dad. He cheated on me—”
He put up a hand. “I’m not going to get involved in your lovers’ spat. Couples fight. You’ll work it out—or you won’t. But I won’t get in the middle of it either way.”
I blinked at him. “Well, it might interest you to know that he’s living here against my wishes.”
“It’s his house as much as it’s yours. And frankly, you should give it to him. You’re the one who wants to end the relationship, and with the shifts he works, it’s better for him to be close to the hospital. Unless you’re planning on taking on a higher workload, I don’t know how you can argue that you’re more entitled to it.”
I stood staring at him in shock.
Mom gave me one of those silent “resistance is futile, let it go” looks. I pressed my lips into a line.
Dad shook his head. “I just don’t understand why you won’t consider counseling. Relationships take work, Alexis. You don’t leave the moment
things become difficult.”
Mom put her hand on his knee. “Cecil, I think we should let them sort things out on their own time, don’t you? They’re both so busy with work
—”
“Which reminds me,” Dad said, cutting her off, “I’ve been informed that Dr. Gibson is retiring in a few months, which means that chief of emergency medicine is going to be available. You’ll run for this. We’ve both already made our recommendations to the board. Your mother and I have tolerated your lack of ambition for long enough. If all you wanted was to be a glorified paramedic, you should have saved us three hundred thousand dollars on med school.”
I felt my heart rate pick up.
I licked my lips. “Just because I’m not a surgeon doesn’t mean what I do isn’t important,” I said carefully.
But it was pointless. Because to my dad that’s exactly what it meant.
Both my parents were surgeons. Dad had wanted me to go into neurosurgery. He would have preferred Derek had followed one of their specialties instead of plastics, but my brother proved early on that his field came with enough fame to placate Dad. But I didn’t have that.
What I had was Neil.
Neil had leveled me up. Dad didn’t like my field, but he dropped his neurosurgery campaign because Derek was there to carry the torch and I landed the chief of surgery. To him, dating Neil was an accomplishment in and of itself. But on my own I wasn’t enough. Especially now.
It occurred to me that Neil would have made a much better Montgomery than I ever did. In fact, right now, I think Dad saw him as a son more than he saw me as a daughter.
In that moment I wished it was the truth—that Neil was Dad’s son and I was just Neil’s ex-girlfriend, some random, unimportant woman who could break up with him and go on with her life. It would have been so easy for the universe to arrange it that way.
But the universe doesn’t care.
Neil breezed in, and I fought down the tears that were welling. There was no way he hadn’t heard us from the other room.
“Cecil! Jennifer!” Neil said, beaming. “Ready to hit the holes?” He swung an invisible club.
I watched Dad light up. He pushed up on his knees and shook Neil’s hand. Then he turned to me. “Alexis, we need to discuss your speech for the hospital’s quasquicentennial. Meet us for lunch at the clubhouse at twelve- thirty.”
I gawked at him. “Wha—no! I’m not having lunch with him!” Dad pinned me with a glare. “Young lady—”
Neil put a hand on his shoulder. “Ali has a full day today, C. We’ll catch up with her another time,” he said.
I watched Dad immediately give up the crusade. If Neil was fine with it, Dad was fine with it.
The idea of Neil bailing me out of this situation only pissed me off more. Dad gave me one more disapproving glance. Then he made for the door. Mom stopped and hugged me. “You know how he is,” she whispered.
“He loves you very much and just wants to see you achieve what he knows you’re capable of. I love you, sweetie.” She kissed my cheek, patted my back, and left.
Neil waited behind, and when my parents were too far to hear, he leaned in, his voice low. “He’s under a lot of stress, Ali. Your brother married some
trashy pop star and moved out of the country. And he’s taking our separation pretty hard. Go easy on him.”
I blinked at him. “Dad told you about her? He signed an NDA.”
“Of course he told me.” He paused, giving me a look I couldn’t decipher. “Can we talk later? Please?”
I pressed my lips into a line, my breath shaky.
He waited, but I didn’t answer. I couldn’t. Because if I had to speak, I was going to scream.
“I’ll see you tonight,” he said, obviously taking my silence for a yes. And he left.
The second the door was closed, I lost it. Rage and indignation and hysteria bubbled out of me, and I breathed into my hands.
I hated this. I hated everything.
I hated that Derek left me. I hated that Dad had zero integrity. I hated that I was such a disappointment, that I’d never wanted to be a surgeon, that I found the idea of standing in an operating room for hours on end boring and tedious. I resented the entire culmination of my existence and everything that had led me here. I hated Dr. Charles Montgomery, the very first in my family line to work at Royaume Northwestern. I hated every Montgomery who played into the legacy, strengthening it so that I couldn’t break it, because for all the good it did, all the lives I knew it saved, right now I wished to God it didn’t exist.
But mostly I hated Neil. If he hadn’t turned into such a horrible human being, I might be happy right now. I might have married him, and he would have taken my name and he could have been The One so I didn’t have to. And then everyone would have had what they wanted. Because right now the only way everyone could have what they want was for me to decide to be miserable.
I felt instantly claustrophobic, like the walls of this house were shrink- wrapping around me. I couldn’t breathe.
A primal urge to run pulsed through my body. I bolted for the garage door, and I knew exactly where I was going.
I wanted to see Daniel.
I wanted his muddy dog to jump on me and I wanted to play with a baby goat and I wanted to be in a place with warm, soft furniture and let someone easy and good hold me in a town that asked me for nothing.
I put on the mud boots that I’d left at the garage door and I got in my car without even grabbing my overnight bag.
I listened to Lola’s fourth album the whole way there, cranked up to deafening. She must have been in the same head space as me when she made it because it was very “You Oughta Know” by Alanis Morissette— which was perfect, because it matched my fury.
I didn’t call Daniel to let him know I was coming.
For one, I was a sniveling mess for most of the drive, and I didn’t want to dump on him the second he picked up the phone. I needed to gather myself before I talked to him—or anyone.
But two? I wanted to just show up. I wanted to see if he was alone, see how he responded to me popping in unannounced.
It was irrational and childish. I had no claim on him at all. But he’d said he wasn’t seeing anyone else, and I wanted to catch him in a lie. I almost wanted Daniel to let me down. I had to see if he was who he said he was, if he was honest. If I got there and he had some other woman at his place, at least I’d know who he was now instead of later like I had with Neil.
When I pulled into the driveway, Daniel was in the garden. I watched his head pop up and the grin spread across his face, and my mood instantly lifted. I got out of my car, and Hunter bounded over with Chloe running
behind him in her pink pajamas. I caught the dog, laughing. He let out his signature rooooooo! while Daniel closed the space between us.
“You’re here.” He smiled over his dog. “I am.”
He didn’t skip a beat. He gathered me into him and leaned down and kissed me, and it was like a part of my brain shut off. The part that was stressed and worried and angry.
He pulled away an inch and whispered against my lips. “You should call me before you come though.”
All the parts switched back on.
I took a step back, dropping my hands from his chest. “Oh. Right. I’m sorry. I shouldn’t just show up like this.”
He smiled. “I love that you showed up like this. But at least give me a heads-up so I can shower.” He gestured to his dirty clothes. “And so I can have food ready for you.”
The relief must have shown on my face, because his brows drew down. “Why did you think I wanted you to call first?”
I didn’t answer.
Realization moved across his expression. “Did you…did you think I was going to have a girl here or something? I told you I wasn’t talking to anyone else.”
I hugged my arms around myself. “That’s none of my business—” “I’m not seeing other people,” he said.
The corner of my lip twitched.
Then his amused expression fell. “Are you seeing other people?” I shook my head. “No.”
He grinned. “Good.” He leaned in to kiss me again, and I pulled my face back.
“If you wanted to see other people, that would be okay.” His smile fell. “Why would I want that?”
I tucked my hair behind my ear. “You know, we never really talked about this, Daniel. Maybe we should set rules.”
He studied my expression. “Okay.” “So what rules do you want?” I asked. “You really want to know?”
“Yes.”
“I want to be your boyfriend.”
It punched me right in the heart, and my stomach did a somersault. But my brain shot it down.
He wants to be my boyfriend? Why? I’m too old. Too old for him anyway. I live too far away, our lives are too different.
What did he want with me?
It was almost naïvely sweet. Like when a kid says they want to be an astronaut or a ballerina when they grow up. And then of course you get older and you end up doing something else that actually makes sense.
Maybe he just meant that he didn’t want us sleeping with other people?
That he wanted to be exclusive? That I could understand.
I realized, almost in that moment, that I really didn’t want him to see other people either. Even the thought of him hugging someone else launched me into an internal fit of jealousy so sudden it shocked me.
If I’d shown up here and he’d been with another woman, it would have devastated me. I didn’t even realize it until just now. Looking at his open face, feeling his warm arms around me, something inside of me screamed MINE.
But it wasn’t fair to make him mine. Because I could never be his.
A boyfriend came with expectations. He’d want to meet my family, be with me for holidays, my birthday, his birthday. He’d want to come to my house, know my friends. And I couldn’t do any of those things. Ever. It felt unfair to let him decide not to date anyone else when this would never go anywhere.
“Daniel, I don’t want a boyfriend right now,” I said. “I don’t have room in my life for that.”
I thought I saw a flicker of disappointment cross his face, but he gave me a smile. “That’s okay. We don’t need titles. We can just agree that we’re exclusive and not doing anything else but this right now. I don’t have time for much more anyway.”
I nodded. “Okay.” He smiled. “Okay.”
I should have been happy that I was getting what I wanted—monogamy without any of the strings. But I somehow felt disappointed anyway.
He leaned in and kissed me, and all my thoughts on this evaporated.
He had my face in his rough hands, and I could taste something fruity on his tongue. He wanted to shower, but I was glad he didn’t. He smelled like Daniel. Like a combination of the fresh earth he’d been digging in and the cedar of his workshop and clean sweat.
He started to pull away, but then seemed to decide he wasn’t done, and he kissed me again.
Ugh, this boy. I wanted to climb into him, merge with his body.
Daniel transported me. Everything about being here and being with him was a break from reality. He was closing open tabs on a laptop in my brain one at a time until he was the only thing on the screen. I felt Neil, my dad, and Royaume Northwestern fade into oblivion at the edges of my mind, and then disappear with a blip.
It was amazing that someone so wrong for me had this ability. Despite the incompatibility of our lives, he had this effect on me. I wondered distantly if we’d known each other in a former life and we’d found each other again. If that’s why he was so familiar…
Only this time I’d been born too soon and into a different level of a caste system that he couldn’t scale. It made me a little sad.
This relationship would never expand. It would never take a deep breath and pull in those around us. It wouldn’t fill its lungs with my people and my life.
It would just be this. Only this. And it wouldn’t last.
He broke away smiling. “I’m going to go get cleaned up. Then we’ll go get something to eat. Do you want to give Chloe her bottle while I’m in the shower?”
I nodded against his mouth, breathless.
When he was ready, he didn’t drive us to Jane’s like I thought he would.
He drove us to the little family-owned grocery store.
I realized on the drive that I was actually okay with the idea of eating at Jane’s with Daniel, with everyone in the town there to see. Partly because it was my own fault that I didn’t let him make other plans. But the other part was that even though I knew technically Daniel was just a guy I was having s*x with, it had evolved into something less scandalous over the last few weeks. I guess it felt more like we were dating than just hooking up.
With a jingle, he opened the door of the grocery store for me. He waved at Brian, who was checking someone out, and then he turned to me. “Okay. You didn’t give me any time to plan anything for your visit, so we’re going to get creative. We’re going to play a game.”
I arched an eyebrow. “A game?”
“Yup. A very serious game. The rules are binding.” “Binding, huh?”
“Binding. Rule number one.” He paused for dramatic effect. “Never get involved in a land war in Asia.”
“Daniel!”
He was laughing. “I’m kidding!” He ticked off on his fingers. “No substitutions, no backing out, and you have to try everything we get. Those are the rules. Do you agree to the terms?”
I narrowed my eyes. “I don’t know…I think I need more information.” He crossed his arms. “I can’t tell you more about it unless you agree.” I smiled. He looked so cute with his fake serious face. “Okay. I agree.”
He rubbed his hands together. “All right, this is how it works. We take turns wandering down each row with our arms out like this.” He made a T, with his fingers pointing to either side of the aisle. “The person watching says ‘stop’ and the one with their arms out has to grab whatever they’re pointing to. Whatever we end up with is what’s for dinner.”
I laughed. “Are you serious?”
“Dead serious. And you can’t complain about it. It is what it is. We get three free-choice items at the end to try to pull the meal together. We can use stuff from home if we need to, as long as we’re using everything we got from the game.”
I smiled. “Okay. Let’s do it.”
“All right. First we start with the entertainment.”
He grabbed a cart and took me to the aisle at the back of the store where they had magazines and art supplies. There was a bin of DVDs for $2.99.
“Are you ready?” he asked, standing next to the bin. “I’ll go first.” “Ready.”
He plunged his hand into the movies and started digging around. I let it go for about thirty seconds until I called it. “Stop!”
He pulled out the movie he had his hand on and looked at it. “Ever After.
Drew Barrymore.” “Yeeeess! It’s so good!”
He dropped it into the cart with a smile. “Your turn.” We went to the snack aisle, and I put my arms out.
He waited for a second. “Go!” I started walking.
“Stop!” he called when I was in the middle.
I looked at my options on either side. “Honey mustard pretzels,” I announced, wrinkling my nose as I grabbed the bag. “And peanut butter crackers. Not bad.”
We did the meat aisle and ended up with chicken thighs. In the produce section we got leeks and a bag of red potatoes. In the dairy aisle we got heavy whipping cream. For dessert we ended up with red, white, and blue bomb pops from the freezer case. Daniel grabbed chicken stock, celery, and a baguette as our three free items.
It was so fun—and simple. It’s exactly the kind of thing Daniel was good
at.
He was so different from Neil. It was refreshing. Neil always went all
out for our dates. But it was more for him, not me. Front-row tickets, exclusive restaurants—whatever looked best for his social media posts. After a while I got desensitized to it. It all lost its luster. Especially because he spent most of the dates looking at his phone or talking about himself.
God. How had I not seen it?
But then I knew how I didn’t see it. Because I’d been raised by a man who valued prestige more than he valued things like integrity and honesty.
This was normal to me.
My brother was such a better person than the example he’d been shown. Derek broke out of the cage we’d come up in. I wondered if Lola had done it, if she’d been the one to show him a different way.
I mean, he’d taken that volunteer work in part because it would look nice on his résumé. But in the end, he’d stayed because he knew he could do good.
This was counterintuitive to everything we’d been taught. This work wouldn’t make Derek rich or advance his career. It wouldn’t help Royaume or impress our father. In fact, it would do the opposite.
I had a welling sense of delayed pride over him. I don’t think I’d truly processed what it meant that he stayed to do what he was doing. I’d been so blindsided by how it would affect my life that I hadn’t considered the shift that had taken place inside of my brother.
And then I knew something else too. I knew why he hadn’t brought Lola back with him. He didn’t bring his wife home because there would be no point.
Dad would never accept her. Never. Just like he wouldn’t accept someone like Daniel. So Derek didn’t even bother. He’d protected his wife from the rejection and gave up his life instead.
It was such a beautiful and selfless thing—even if in doing it, he’d condemned me.
But I didn’t fault him for it. I was happy that one of us got out. He’d given up his seat on the throne to marry a commoner. At least that’s how my dad obviously saw it. Gave up all his riches.
But all that glitters is not gold…
We checked out and went back to the garage with our haul.
I slid onto a stool by the kitchenette, and Hunter plopped next to me. “So what are you going to make me?”
“We are going to make it,” Daniel said, unbagging groceries. “We? I can’t cook.”
“Well, I’m going to show you,” he said, placing things on the counter. “Doing it together is part of the activity.”
I looked at him dubiously. He smiled. “Come here.”
I got off the stool to stand next to him by the counter. “We’re making soup,” he said.
“Soup?” I nodded at the pile. “Out of this stuff?” “Soup is easy. You can make soup out of anything.”
He went to the tiny cabinet he used as a pantry and pulled out flour and an onion. He got some garlic and a stick of butter from the fridge and lined everything up on the counter.
A dragonfly was in the garage. It landed on the rim of a pot on the tiny stove. Those things were everywhere here.
I watched Daniel pull out a cutting board and a knife. “You peel the potatoes and I’ll chop the onion,” he said.
But I didn’t move, because I didn’t know how to start. He noticed me balking. “What?”
I licked my lips. “I don’t know how to peel potatoes,” I said. “I’ve never done it before.”
He blinked at me. “You’ve never peeled a potato?” “No. We had a chef…I didn’t have to.”
Neil loved to point it out when I didn’t know how to do something that most people considered basic. But those weren’t the kind of skills I was raised to believe were important. My parents prepared me for a very
specific kind of life. I was trilingual. I had an MD from Stanford and a PhD from Berkeley. But I never learned how to do laundry. I didn’t clean my own home. Before Daniel showed me, I didn’t even know how.
I realized that this was one of the things Neil used to maintain control over me. Only he could take care of the house. How would I survive without him? I couldn’t even cook.
I could order food from Grubhub or make a microwave dinner if I needed one. I could make a sandwich or a salad. But it was like Neil wanted me to have the illusion that I needed him, that I couldn’t be alone. I had to be taken care of. I couldn’t manage a house. I’d never eat that quiche again unless he made it for me.
I peered up at Daniel waiting for him to shame me for my lack of kitchen skills, like Neil always did. But he just shrugged. “Okay, let me show you.”
I felt my face soften.
“How did you learn to cook?” I asked.
He smiled. “You have to know how to cook here. We can’t always afford to go out to eat. Okay,” he said, standing shoulder to shoulder with me after I washed my hands. “You’re going to peel the potatoes, like this. When you’re done peeling, you cube them. Like this.” He took the knife and showed me. “We’re cubing them so they cook faster. Since we’re making soup we’re taking the skins off, but I like to leave them on for mashed potatoes…”
As we went, he explained everything this way. Not just how to do it, but why. I liked this. It was the same way I trained my residents.
He was so patient—and standing as close to me as possible. It was really obvious and very, very distracting.
His fresh scent teased my nose, and I found myself leaning into it while I was supposed to be working.
He must have noticed, because he turned to look down at me and our faces were suddenly very close together—and then something happened inside of me that hadn’t happened in a very long time.
I got butterflies.
“What?” he asked, smiling.
I swallowed hard and just blinked at him. He nudged me. “What?”
I shrugged. “I don’t know. I just find you distracting is all.” I looked back at my cutting board, feeling a little shaken. Like something big had just happened that was completely out of my control.
I didn’t get butterflies. I was too old for butterflies. Shouldn’t I be completely beyond the age of crushes and puppy-dog love at this point?
I felt him smile, even though I wasn’t looking at him. “Are you going to be able to focus on this task at hand, Doctor?” he teased, nuzzling his nose into my hair. “Because I’m going to need your undivided attention, and it seems like you’re a little preoccupied,” he whispered.
Butterflies again.
Oh, my God, no. I wasn’t going to be able to focus.
I angled my head up and let him give me a kiss, feeling a little insecure about this new development.
He was so charming. And handsome. Devastatingly handsome. He was the kind of man who took my breath away—and it was because he was good. Kind and thoughtful and patient. Generous. And so easy. Nothing complex about him at all.
Neil was like a Russian nesting doll whose good qualities got smaller the more you uncovered him. But Daniel was the opposite. The more I knew, the better he became.
I liked that he took care of Popeye. And I understood why the town had declared him their mayor—not because he was a Grant, but because I had a feeling the Grants were a certain type of people. Diplomatic and well liked. And I knew this not because he told me, but because of the way other people treated him.
Liz spoke highly of him the day I met him. Brian spent two hours of his night sitting in a projection room at a closed drive-in just so Daniel could take me to a movie. Doreen called him because she knew he would go check on Pops. Then he drove Pops to the doctor all the way in Rochester after his fall, and installed that bar in his shower.
If you looked at the way the people around Neil treated him, you might come to the same conclusions, that he was well liked. Neil had a prominent seat at everyone’s table. But the difference was, nobody relied on Neil like they did with Daniel. Any relationship that Neil had was based on a shallow connection of status signaling. Nobody ever needed anything from him other than the grace of his presence and his fake bravado.
If Neil was at your party, it meant you were important. You were someone he wanted to be seen rubbing shoulders with. But if you ever had to rely on him, he’d let you down.
If Daniel was at your party, it meant you were a good person. It meant you were someone who had earned his affection. And I was starting to realize that his affection equaled a level of devotion that I don’t think I’d ever known outside of maybe Bri and Derek. And it seemed to encompass a whole town. Like this cloak of loyalty was big enough for everyone.
And then I realized, almost with awe, that I must have somehow earned his affection too. He must like me, and not just in a s*x way, or why else would he spend so much time on the phone talking to me and want me to be his girlfriend?
Huh.
I started chewing on the side of my lip as I peeled my potatoes.
I remember feeling so important when the chief of surgery took a liking to me. I think I was so dazzled by that and Neil’s false charm that I didn’t see the red flags waving in my face. I brushed it off when he was rude to our servers or his nurses didn’t like him.
With Daniel it was the opposite. I was so dead set on being certain I couldn’t be impressed with him, that it was almost startling to discover that I was.
His phone rang in his pocket, and he set his knife down to answer it.
“Seriously?” I gave him an arched eyebrow. “Your ringer is on? You call people and your ringer is up?” I teased.
He laughed. “How else will I know if someone’s calling me? Isn’t that what a ringer’s for?”
He pulled his phone out. “It’s Liz.” He answered. “Hey, what’s—” He stood there listening. His brows drew down. “She’s here. Okay. Okay, hold on.” He put the call on speaker.
“Alexis?” Liz said.
I looked at Daniel, confused. “Hi, Liz—”
“Okay, so Hannah’s having her baby and they wanted to take her to the Mayo Clinic, but it started to go really fast and they couldn’t get her in the car and—”
Screaming and then shattering glass.
“Can you guys come?” she asked, sounding panicked. I nodded at Daniel, and we started running for the door.
Liz was panting. “We’re on a video call with a labor nurse from the hospital. Doug’s here trying to help, but Hannah won’t let him touch her
and the ambulance won’t be here for forty more minutes and I don’t think she’s got forty minutes.”
“Is she crowning?” I asked. “Can you see the head?” We were already jumping into Daniel’s truck.
“I…I don’t know. There’s a lot of fluid. Blood and stuff. I think her water broke.”
“Okay, we’re on our way. Listen, I need you to boil some water and get me all the clean towels you can find. I need disposable gloves, scissors, and snack bag clamps. The ones that close your chip bag? Get a cup and fill it with rubbing alcohol and drop the clamps in there and have it waiting for me.”
“Okay. Okay, yeah.”
“I’m going to stay on the phone with you until we get there,” I said calmly. “Don’t panic.”
Daniel was already on the street headed north. “Three minutes,” he said.
When we pulled up in front of the house, it looked like half the town was there on the lawn. I could hear screaming and shouting from inside.
We ran through the living room and into the bedroom to chaos.
There were half a dozen people in the room. Liz was standing by the nightstand holding a phone to her ear and another one on video call. Doug was by the door, and a very pregnant Hannah was sitting up in the bed, sweaty and flushed.
Doug looked exasperated. “Hannah, just let me look!”
She shot him a glare. “Doug, I will hold this baby in until literally anyone who is not you shows up to deliver it. You are not seeing my vagina today. That is not how this ends!”
“I’m a medic, Hannah!”
“You don’t deliver babies in the army!”
“I’ve delivered goats!”
“GET THE FUCK OUT!” She grabbed an alarm clock and hurled it across the room. Doug pivoted just in time, and it hit the wall next to him with a crash, raining shrapnel into an already mounting pile of broken objects.
Hannah clutched the blankets and screamed in pain. Liz saw me. “The doctor’s here!”
Doug looked over at me, relieved. “Thank fucking God.” He smacked a box of disposable gloves into my hands. He glanced back to the patient. “Seeing your hoo-ha is not my idea of a good time either, Hannah!” He turned back to me. “I’m outta here. Call me if you need help,” he mumbled, edging past me.
I washed my hands and forearms in the adjacent bathroom and then made my way to the bed, putting on gloves. “Hannah, I’m Dr. Alexis. Do you know how far apart your contractions are?”
She shook her head, her eyes squeezed shut.
I turned to Daniel. “I’m going to need everyone who isn’t one of the parents to leave the room.”
A worried-looking young woman sitting at the edge of the bed raised her hand. “I’m Hannah’s wife.”
“What’s your name?” I asked. “Emelia.”
“Emelia, you stay. Liz, did you get me those things I asked for?”
She nodded and pointed to the towels. “The water is boiling. Doug already started it before you asked.”
“Okay, I need you to boil the scissors for me for five minutes. Bring them to me as soon as they’re done. Be careful, they’ll be hot. Put them on a clean plate to cool.”
She nodded quickly, handed the phone on the video call to Emelia, and left the room. When I heard the door click, I lifted the sheet. “I’m going to check your cervix, okay?”
Hannah opened one eye and nodded through a contraction with tight lips.
I waited until it passed before I started my examination. “Any complications with the pregnancy?” I asked.
Emelia shook her head. “No.”
“Gestational diabetes? High blood pressure?”
“No. She’s healthy. The baby is healthy,” Emelia said, her eyes wide. Hannah was ten centimeters and fully effaced.
“All right, Hannah? We’re not going to have time for the ambulance,” I said. “We’re going to push on the next contraction.”
But Hannah shook her head. “No. No no no no, this isn’t how it’s supposed to go. I have a birth plan. I have a…I’m supposed to have an epidural!”
“I know,” I said calmly. “But what’s important right now is getting the baby out safely. And since we don’t have any way to monitor the baby, we can’t wait. The baby could be in distress, and we need to get them out here with us so I can check on them, okay?”
She looked terrified, but she nodded.
“Where would you like Emelia, Hannah? Holding your hand? Or watching the birth?”
Hannah was crying. “I want her to watch.”
I nodded. “Okay. Emelia, you can come stand here with me.”
Emelia came around, still holding the phone on the video call with the triage nurse.
“Do you two know what you’re having?” I asked conversationally. Hannah shook her head.
I began tucking towels under her. “What names have you picked out?” Emelia’s voice shook. “Um, Kaleb if it’s a boy, and Lily if it’s a girl.” “Good names.” I smiled. “You ready to meet Kaleb or Lily?”
Hannah nodded.
I saw her body tense with another contraction. “Okay, ready? Here we go. Big breath in and hold it, and we’re pushing for ten seconds. One, two, three—good job—four, five, making good progress…seven, eight, nine. Gooood.”
Hannah gasped with the pain.
“I know it hurts,” I said. “But just think, now you’ll know what it feels like for a man with a cold.” Jessica’s favorite delivery line.
They laughed, and the tension lifted a little.
She pushed with three more contractions before the baby’s head came out.
The cord was wrapped around its neck.
“Hannah, I need you to try not to push and just pant for a few breaths,” I said steadily.
My fingers worked to unloop it, but it was double wound and wrapped too tight. I couldn’t reduce it.
The double loop around the neck had shortened the cord. I couldn’t see what was going on inside or how much slack we had, but if it was short enough, when the baby came out the cord would pull tight like a noose cutting off the oxygen supply to the baby. I might not be able to get it off in time or clamp and cut it safely before delivery, especially without my medical instruments.
I needed to use a somersault maneuver to deliver the baby. I would have to push the baby’s head toward Hannah’s thigh instead of pulling the baby straight down. It would let the shoulders and the rest of the body be born in
a somersault and keep the neck near the birth canal so that the cord wouldn’t be stretched and further tightened.
All of this moved through my brain in a split second of calm. Years of experience and training and instinct took over. I had no monitors or nurses. I didn’t even have heel rests. But I knew what to do.
I made confident eye contact with Hannah. “We’re pushing one last time and we’re going to make it a good one.”
I started my countdown. My fingers angled the baby’s shoulders expertly, and then in a rush of fluid and blood, I pivoted the baby into a perfect somersault delivery.
It was a girl. And my instincts had been right. The cord had just enough slack for the somersault. Not enough if I’d let her come straight out—and if I hadn’t been here, that’s how she would have come. Especially if Hannah wouldn’t let Doug help her.
The cord would have pulled taut, and they might not have gotten it off in time. The baby could have had brain damage. Cerebral palsy, epilepsy, intellectual or developmental disabilities. She might have died.
But she didn’t because I was here.
This is why I did what I did.
In moments like this I knew I was doing what I was meant to do. Moments like this made me know that no matter what Dad said, there was honor in my specialty—even if there wasn’t glory.
I quickly unwrapped the cord from the neck and placed the baby on Hannah’s belly and started rubbing the baby’s back. She cried. A good, strong cry.
I smiled. “Meet Lily.”
The ambulance showed up fifteen minutes later. I got the medics up to speed and handed off the patient. When I came out of the room, the whole town was no longer on the lawn—they were in the living room. Daniel stood when he saw me, and everyone looked at me expectantly.
I smiled and put my hands up. “It’s a girl.”
The whole house erupted into cheering. I got hugs from about three dozen people before Daniel saved me.
He hustled me into a corner and slipped his arms around my waist, beaming down at me. “So you don’t know how to peel potatoes, but you can deliver a baby?”
“What, like it’s hard?”
He laughed and kissed me. And I didn’t care that he did it in front of everyone either.
Hannah came out on a stretcher with a beaming Emelia next to her, and as soon as they were gone, the weirdest thing happened. The houseguests didn’t leave. They mobilized. They poured into the bedroom and started stripping the bed, there was someone emptying the dishwasher, someone turned on a vacuum. The smell of Windex and Pine-Sol drifted up around us. The front door was still open, and I could see half a dozen people outside pulling weeds and mowing the lawn. Person after person streamed in with foil-covered casserole dishes, and someone was stationed in the kitchen, receiving them and putting them into the freezer.
“What are they doing?” I asked, looking around at the activity.
“They’re doing what we do,” Daniel said. “We take care of each other.”
Something about it made me feel a little emotional. This was more than just a handful of their closest friends. This was a whole town. The whole town was here.
This wasn’t just a community. This was a family.
Popeye shuffled up to us, holding a toolbox. Even he was helping. “Hi. How you feeling?” I asked.
He looked at me with one eye squeezed shut. “Nifty coincidence you’re here, wouldn’t ya say?”
He didn’t wait for me to answer. He gave Daniel a knowing nod and then hobbled off toward the garage, mumbling to himself.
“What was that about?” I asked, looking up at Daniel. “Eh, he’s got this theory about the town.”
“What theory?”
He looked a little amused. “He says the town has a way of protecting itself. That it gets what it needs. He thinks you were here today because Hannah needed you.”
I wrinkled my forehead thinking about it. “Huh. I wasn’t actually planning on being here today.”
“Oh, yeah? What changed your mind?”
My parents were playing golf with my ex?
“The weather was nice,” I said instead. I tilted my head. “Hey, do you know how to make a quiche?”
He peered down at me. “Quiche? Yeah.” “Will you show me?”
He shrugged. “Sure. We can make one tonight and have it for breakfast.” I smiled. “I think I’m going to want you to show me a lot of things,
Daniel. There’s a lot I need to learn.”
