Page 28 of Doctor Enemy

I interrupt him to say, “Being the lead doctor doesn’t always make you right!”

Kurt makes a face, his nose wrinkling and his upper lip curling. “It doesn’t. But we both know that how well we get along when we’re working isn’t the only problem here. And since it’syourproblem and not mine, how about we stop dancing around it, and you just spit it out.”

Anger curls in the back of my chest, mixing with all of the misery and the exhaustion and the fear.

I don’t have the sense of self to prevent myself from saying, scathingly, “You’re a party boy player with more money than empathy, and we both know that you neveractuallygrew up. The number of times I’ve seen you show up for rounds late because you were out drinking the night before is fucking ridiculous. And the way that you breeze through the nurses like they’re a hot commodity is something that a frat boy in college would do, not some supposedly hot-shot surgeon!”

I get louder and louder as I say it, talking faster too. By the time the last word is out of my mouth, they’re sharp enough that they could cut stone.

Kurt just stares at me with his intense gray eyes, his expression closed off but surprisingly not angry. After a beat of silence, he asks, “You feel better now?”

My lips purse.

I do feel better.

I’ve finally said exactly what I think about Kurt… And the room is no longer brutally silent.

I don’t look at him. My cheeks feel hot. That could just be from the swelling, though.

Kurt doesn’t protest anything that I’ve said to him. He leans forward slightly so that the back of the chair digs into his chest, and he says, “You’re right.”

I turn to face him so fast that it sends hot pain surging through my neck and into my spine. The pain bottoms out in my tailbone, and the neck brace bites hard into the underside of my jaw and chin. “What?”

“You’re right. I do show up to rounds late a lot, especially in the mornings,” says Kurt. “But it’s not because I’m hungover.” A pause. “Is that really what you thought?”

“Don’t act like everyone doesn’t talk about how much time you spend out drinking,” I say, bitterly.

“I like the atmosphere of a bar. The whiskey is great. The beer—” He wiggles a hand back and forth through the air. “Usually subpar. But I’m not out there getting wasted every night. Not even most nights.”

It feels like some of the wind is taken out of my sails. It doesn’t look like he’s lying.

Kurt continues, “I’m late for my morning rounds because I dothisa lot.”

He taps a foot against the floor, clearly meaning the fact that he’s in here, sitting with me, instead of going home.

“You know, being in the hospital is hard no matter what the injury. But brain surgery is fucking terrifying. And a lot of people that end up on my table don’t know what to do with themselves that first night afterward. Just like you.”

Okay, yeah. My cheeks are definitelynothot from the swelling. Pointedly, I look away from him.

“I like to sit in with them if they’re scared, and make sure that they have everything that they need,” Kurt explains. “Even if that’s just company.”

The day that we both partnered on Sawyer Green’s case, when the teenager flatlined on us, he had shown up late. I wascertainthat he was out drinking. But… If this is true, then he wasn’t. He was just out trying to make someone else feel better.

This would be the right time to apologize, but I just can’t manage to swallow my pride that much. It’s too big of a task, considering I feel like shit, look like shit, and now appear to have been acting like an ass.

Thankfully, Kurt seems to have no interest in dragging the conversation out any longer. He leans to the side slightly and fishes a pack of cards out of the pocket of his scrubs. “So, what card games do you know?”

“What?”

“Card games. Do you know poker?”

“No?”

Kurt grins at me. “Do you want tolearnhow to play poker?”

My head feels like jelly. I’m not sure that I could learn anything right now. I suggest, a little more meekly, “How about Go Fish?”

“We can do Go Fish,” Kurt tells me, and then he shuffles the cards, and he starts to deal.

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