Page 71 of Near Miss

“Greer?” He sounds weary, and maybe a bit congested. “I’m sorry, I forgot to go get my meds this week. I kept meaning to go after my meetings. I ran out yesterday but I’m just not feeling ... Could you go to the pharmacy for me? Your sister is out of town.”

She is. She left yesterday for a conference in Vancouver.

Two whole days of someone who relies on immunosuppressants going without them.

I squeeze my eyes shut; there’s a pang in my right side, and I wonder if that’s my liver telling me the other part of it that lives in him has started to attack him.

“I can’t—” I pinch the bridge of my nose. The back of my throat sets itself on fire with unshed tears. “How many times have I asked you to let me know if you’re running low? You can’t just stop taking your meds. Even if it’s just a day. Your body could start—” I inhale, and it hurts. I press my hand to the right side of my ribs. “I can’t leave. I need to—there’s a harvest and—okay, you know what? I’ll call a friend. I’ll get him to bring them over. Just stay put.”

I don’t wait for the exasperation or the apology—I’m never sure which is going to come—before I hang up and make another call.

Beckett picks up on the first ring. I can hear his smile through the phone. “Hey, Dr. Roberts. To what do I owe the pleasure?”

“You haven’t left for Philadelphia yet, right?” My voice cracks horribly, and I think I can feel one of my ribs go with it.

I imagine him shaking his head, one wave of chocolate hair falling over his forehead and emerald eyes sharpening with concern. “No. We don’t leave until Friday. I just got home from practice. What’s wrong?”

“I need a favour, and it needs to be right now. My sister is out of town. My dad isn’t feeling well and he’s out of his meds. Heneedsto take them every day. I can’t go to the pharmacy because I have about fifteen minutes to scrub in for a liver harvest before it’s no longer viable. Can you—if I text you everything—go get them and drop them off?” I press harder against my rib cage. “Please?”

“Just text me everything you need me to do, and you can consider it done. Okay?” He pauses, and I can imagine him in front of me, peering down at me, breathing with me until I’m ready to answer.

“Okay. Wear a mask, please? He sounds like he’s coming down with something. He’s immunocompromised, and he’s never met you before,” I whisper. “Thank you.”

I can hear the smile in his voice again, and the sound his keys make when he picks them up from his kitchen island. “Sure. You don’t have to thank me. Go save lives, Dr. Roberts.”

He hangs up before I can tell him that it might not exactly be a life he’s saving, but it’s a piece of me.

I stand, take my hypocrisy with me, and go operate.

The plants spilling from the garden onto the sidewalk leading up to my father’s house have shrunk since I was last here, curling inwards more and more as October starts and the air cools off.

Some have already started shedding their leaves, and they crunch under my shoes as I walk up to the door.

I kick them off like I always do when I come straight here from the hospital.

I took the time to shower and change today, my arms still red and raw from the scrub brush I took to my skin, trying to get every little speck of everything clinging to my skin off, so I could be clean, safe, and not this thing that might pose a danger when I came here.

Logically, I’m aware I’m being paranoid. But I think I know too much and I’m about as close to it as you can be.

I knock before opening the door and dropping my coat and bag on the floor. “Dad?”

There’s this little kernel of anxiety that’s been burrowing in my chest all day. It defies logic and all the things I know, and it whispers to me that it’s already started—he missed his meds andhe’s rejecting the liver after all these years and all of it was for nothing.

But its sharp, stabbing edges soften when my dad answers from the living room, “He won’t take the mask off, Greer.”

“What? Who?” I ask the question, even though I don’t have to.

Beckett glances at me from where he sits when I round the corner into the living room, kicked back in an ancient leather chair, face half hidden under a blue surgical mask, but I can see the edge of his dimple drawing a line in his stubbled cheek.

I raise my hand, this tiny gesture that I hope conveys all the big, impossible things stretching and pushing against all my lines and rules that I feel for him right now.

Inhaling, I close my eyes briefly before turning to my dad, brows sharpening. “Well, he’s never met you and you’ve been without your immunosuppressants for two days, so you’ll have to forgive the extra precaution.”

My dad barely spares me a glance from the couch, fiddling with the remote. “I’m not in isolation.”

Beckett raises his hands, and I can tell he’s smiling by the way the corners of his eyes crinkle ever so slightly. “I’m just following the doctor’s orders. She can get pretty mean, you know.”

My dad makes a noise of acknowledgement, and I give Beckett a pointed look as I press the back of my hand to my father’s forehead.

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