Page 3 of Wolfgang

Eric kept his tone light. “I’m not up to anything, Mom. Just a mix-up. What’s going on?”

“I can’t call you and see how you are?”

How was this conversation going so wrong so fast? Why was it always like this? “You can. Of course you can. It’s just— It’s Friday. You and Dad don’t have plans?”

“You don’t want to talk.” He could actuallyhearthe pout through the phone.

“I do!” He really didn’t. A headache was already forming between his brows, growing stronger with every second he remained on the line. But he kept his voice as carefree as he could. She could sense irritation like a shark sensing blood in the water. “How are you, Mom?”

“I could be better.”

Of course she could. And Eric listened as she told him all the many ways she could be better. If his father weren’t such a flirt (“But that’s just how you men are, isn’t? Certainly didn’t skip a generation, now did it?”). If her health were better (“Not that you ever ask”). If her so-called friends weren’t such duds (“Can hardly hold a conversation. Reminds me of you as a teenager. Head full of air”).

He made the appropriate noises. He laughed when he felt she expected it. And just when he was considering upping his shower beer to a shower whiskey, she brought it back to his least favorite subject.

“How’s work?”

“It’s good,” Eric lied, like he always did. “Really good. The other day, I had this patient—”

She cut him off. “Have they asked you to stay as an attending yet?”

The headache was now a stabbing sensation, like a knife had gotten stuck behind one of his eyeballs. “It doesn’t really work that way.”

“If only you hadn’t taken those gap years.” By gap years, she meant the years between undergrad and med school he’d been working as a grunt in a research lab specializing in lung cancer treatment.A waste of good training years, she’d told him. “Nancy’s son, he was barely a year into his fellowship when the hospital told him they weredyingto keep him.”

“Tom’s in a totally different specialty, Mom,” Eric pointed out, unable to keep the chipper edge to his voice anymore.

For once, she didn’t seem to notice. “Well, it’s not like you’re a neurosurgeon. You’re a—what do they call it?—a hospitalist?”

“Intensivist, Mom. I cover the ICU. The most critical patients.”

“Certainly notoperatingon anyone.”

“No,” Eric sighed, well and truly defeated by the conversation. “Certainly not that.”

There was a muffled voice on the other end, and his mother’s tone switched immediately to one of carelessness. “Oh, that’s your father. I have to go. You’ll call me this weekend? And don’t forget to up the monthly deposit. We want to redo the guest bathroom.”

“Sure, Mom.”

Eric hung up the phone, infinitely more drained than he’d been at the end of his twelve-hour. That was some gift she had. Fucking energy vampire.

His eyes landed again on the mysterious rose, intensely red against the white of the marble kitchen counter. With a bitter laugh, he swept it into the trash. He’d been right before; probably someone selling door-to-door had dropped it. It wasn’t meant for him.

Because why the fuck would it be meant for him?

It was only when the harsh spray of the shower had him hissing, his pointer finger stinging hotly, that Eric realized he’d cut himself on the thorns after all.

Chugging his third coffee of the day—taking advantage of the one whole minute of silence where his work phone wasn’t ringing like crazy—Eric reminded himself he only had three more hours left of his shift.

That was only…one hundred and eighty minutes to go.

And look, now it was 4:01. Only one hundred and seventy-nineminutes to go. He was practically done already.

His phone’s ringer cut through the blessed silence then, because of course it did.

“Monroe,” Eric answered, somehow managing to speak midswallow.

“Sup, man. It’s Brent with emergency.” The emergency docs always spoke like they were chill climbing bros. Which was accurate, actually. Half of them were exactly that. “We’ve got one for you.”

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