Page 5 of Texting Dr. Stalker

Funny how the pain could fade but never truly went away whenever I remembered I was the last remaining member of my entire family tree. I wrote:Could you let my friend, Lily, know? Her number is 555-0987.

“Of course.” He pulled out his phone. “I’ll do it right now.”

“Eh, Dr North? We need you rather urgently, if you’re free?” A different nurse appeared, a frantic look in her eyes.

His fingers flew over the screen, inputting the number into his contacts before slipping the phone into his scrub’s pocket. “Sure.” Glancing at me, he added, “My apologies. I’ll call Lily when I have a spare moment.”

He didn’t give me a chance to write a reply.

With a lingering look, he vanished with the nurse and left me in a sea of hospital beds.

* 2 *

Zander

Neighbourly Duties

I BECAME A DOCTOR BECAUSE I FELT hopeless as a kid when my dad passed away from cancer. My mom followed him not long after from a hit-and-run when she was leaving work.

I’d been eleven when my two sisters and I moved in with my grandparents. Thanks to them and their unconditional love and acceptance of our losses, I managed to retain my hope in helping people rather than turning to the dark side and getting revenge.

I watched all the superhero movies. I commiserated with the villains as well as the good guys. I read every book I could about men with magic over life and death, yet I could never bring my parents back or stop death.

The closest thing I could get to that sort of power was to wear scrubs and wield a scalpel. And I achieved that goal with a sheer-minded dedication that came at the cost of everything else.

I didn’t care that my profession of choice was gruelling on my sleep, love life, and existence in general. I didn’t care that medicine and my patients consumed my every waking thought. I’d gone into this career not for money, but to serve, and I’d vowed the Hippocratic Oath with every drop of sincerity I possessed.

Yet now?

Now, I’d give anything totakea life instead of save one.

Milton Rild.

The bastard who’d almost killed her.

Not that she was mine to avenge—we’d only ever shared helloes and how are yous—but she was my responsibility in a roundabout way. Her well-being and happiness had been tasked to the six-year-old version of me by Sailor’s grandmother on the day of Sailor’s birth.

I didn’t get to meet her for a few years as her parents never visited, but I had photos shoved in my face and suffered through many a tea-date where my grandmother Mary gossiped with Sailor’s grandmother, Melody, about how we’d grow up and fall madly in love and finally join our two houses together.

Needless to say, I wasn’t a fan of my unofficially betrothed baby bride who was six years my junior. The first time I met Sailor, she’d been four, and it’d been the first visit Melody’s son made. The grumpy bastard brought his equally grumpy wife and painfully shy daughter, and the visit had gone as well as expected.

I knew that’d hurt Melody’s and Rory’s feelings—that their son didn’t want to spend any time with them, let alone share their only child. And I’d taken one look at Sailor Rose and dismissed the annoying request of looking out for her, then flatly refused to marry her—at any age. By the time I was thirteen and she was seven, she came for another visit and scampered behind the shed when I’d shouted hello through the fence.

After that, I didn’t see her often. Every couple of years, at the most.

I’d seen her growing up in skips of time. Snippets of skinned knees and braces. Ugly dresses and different hairstyles. With six years between us, she was just the skinny little girl next door.

But that was before she moved back to look after Melody.

Before she started dating that asshole a year ago.

Before I’d taken my responsibility for her a little more seriously now that our grandmothers were gone and their wishes were all that were left.

It was also before my annoyance toward her turned into somethingelse.Something I didn’t want to name and would flatly deny if anyone asked me. Something that had always been there, slowly building as the years passed by, getting harder and harder to ignore, especially on those lonely nights when I spied her through the window.

But then he’d tried to kill her.

He’d tried to hurt the girl who was supposed to be mine, even if I was too busy, too stubborn, and too exhausted to claim her as my own.

---