Page 12 of Silver Fox's Intern Dilemma

"Okay, we're gonna do English now. That's what I do too. My teacher, Mrs. Kaup, calls it reading, but the book cover saysEnglish. That's what my mom said." Leah spoke in such a matter-of-fact way, sounding like a grownup, that I couldn't help but chuckle.

Sophia gave me a surprised but cheeky look, playing along. "Alright, Mrs. Thornton, you're my teacher tonight. I have to know all my vocabulary words. Can you read these cards?"

Leah held one up and scrunched her nose at it. "In-ci-sion," she announced proudly, and I was surprised she could sound it out. I knew the difficulty of all of the medical terms Sophia would be brushing up on were well beyond Leah's reading level or her comprehension. Hearing her use phonetics well was impressive.

"Well done," I told her. "Now you give me the card and when Sophia says the answer, I'll tell her if she's right."

Leah handed me the card and Sophia rattled off the definition. I had to help Leah sound out several of the termswhen she started to get frustrated by it. Sophia cheered her on too, encouraging her, especially when Leah got to the word "resect." Leah turned the card over and read Sophia's definition— well, most of it.

"Remove part or all of an or-gan, tiss-ue, or st… Str…" She scowled. "I can't read this word."

"Structure." Sophia tousled Leah's hair. "Hey, well done. That's a very big word for a first grader. You did really good."

Leah beamed with pride and then looked up at the TV. "Daddy, did we study enough? Can we watch a superhero movie now?" Her nose scrunched up again, and I sighed.

I looked at Sophia, who was collecting her cards, and she shrugged a shoulder and gave me an understanding look. We hadn't gotten through even half of her terms, and the real work I wanted to do with her had been pushed to the back burner. We should have been going through virtual surgeries with the simulation software on my laptop.

"It's okay," Sophia said. She tapped her cards into a neat stack and stood up. "I can just get going. We can do this next week when you're not so busy. You should have time with Leah."

"Are you sure?" I asked, standing alongside her.

Leah was scrambling for the remote. I knew she knew how to navigate to the streaming app and pick a movie, so I focused on Sophia for the moment. I felt bad that I was the one who requested this opportunity to pour knowledge into her and she was being nudged to the side because of my personal life. On the other hand, my daughter was everything to me, and I couldn’t just ignore my time with her. Not only would that make me a horrible parent, but Dana would flip out and I would feel guilty. I got so little time with Leah as it was.

"I'm sure. But thank you.” Sophia turned and walked to the door, and I followed her. After such a tense week, I had actually wanted to speak with her about that kiss and how we couldmove past it and be professional. I was having a hard time, but I knew if we just spoke to each other like professionals, we could establish clear boundaries and eventually, we'd move past it.

Sophia opened the door and I turned over my shoulder and said, "I'll be right there, Leah." Then I slipped into the hallway next to my intern and leaned on the wall.

"I'm sorry, Dr. Chen."

"Please, when we're off duty, just call me Sophia." She tucked her stack of cards into her pocket and pulled her scrub cap off. Her hair, which I thought was tied into a ponytail, fell in loose waves, framing her face. She was so pretty I had to say something.

"Your hair looks nice like that. I wish I could see it more often." The compliment could have been just a passing comment between coworkers, but against the backdrop of that kiss and my strong attraction, I knew it was inappropriate.

"Uh, thanks," she said, sounding uncomfortable.

"I didn't mean… I meant… Gosh, I'm bad at this." I felt foolish again for the third time tonight. "I'm sorry. It just came out. I have a hard time keeping my mouth shut." It appeared to me that if I didn't put actual physical space between me and this woman in front of me, I was going to be the one to flub up again.

"It's okay. I understand." She chewed her bottom lip and smiled. "I should go. I don't want to end up kissing you again." The blush on her face when she said that sent a zing of arousal straight to my core. I grinned and chuckled.

"Why would that happen?" I asked her, and I probably shouldn't have. But I was curious to know what she was thinking. Honesty was the only way we'd get past this weird chemistry. We had to be honest with each other and ourselves. Pretending we weren't attracted to each other was only making us more flustered. If we could just acknowledge the attractionand admit that we had to contain it for the greater good, we could move past it.

"Well, because you're only the hottest doctor on staff and every time I'm around you, I think about doing it." Sophia's shoulder bobbed and her eyes shifted away from me, but I saw the smirk.

"Yes, well I think we both feel the same way." I sucked in a breath of relief and tried to muster the courage to have this honest conversation, but before I could, a nurse called my name.

I turned over my shoulder to see her rushing up. "Dr. Thornton, there's an emergency. Car crash victim. Internal bleeding. He's not stable. Two units of O-neg hung and he's on fluids, but we have to stop the bleed or he'll die."

My brain clicked over to autopilot and I nodded. "Get Tina. I need her to sit with my daughter." Then I looked at Sophia and said, "Want to assist? I could use your keen eye on this one."

"Of course. Let's go." Sophia took off toward the surgical unit, and I took five minutes to explain to Leah what was going on.

This wasn't how I saw my night or that conversation going, but an on-call doctor has to respond quickly. The conversation would just have to wait.

11

SOPHIA

Forty minutes into this surgery and my gloves were soaked with blood. It was the first time in surgery that I'd felt like I wasn't myself. We had gone over every organ, every inch of intestines and colon, and finally found the bleed on the back side of the man's liver. His cracked rib had perforated it and the bleeding just wouldn’t stop. It was my eye that spotted it as I handled the suction and Jack maneuvered the scope.

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