Page 28 of Christmas On Call
Asha had stopped thinking of mornings as beginnings. They were just intervals—measured segments of time between sleep and work, work and sleep. But this morning felt different in a way she couldn’t name. A tension in her shoulders that wouldn’t release. A tightness in her chest that had nothing to do with the smog.
She’d woken up beside Max two hours earlier, in Max’s apartment with its chaotic shelves and rescue cat and the faint smell of coffee that never quite left the air. They’d fallen asleep tangled together after a shift that had bled into the early morning hours, and Asha had allowed herself—just for those few hours—to feel safe.
Max had kissed her forehead before Asha left. “Good luck with your meeting,” she’d whispered. “Text me after?”
“I will,” Asha had promised.
Now, walking into the hospital’s administrative wing at 8:53 AM, seven minutes early for the monthly department meeting, Asha felt the familiar armor sliding back into place. Work Asha: controlled, professional, untouchable.
The conference room was already half-full. Doctor Martinez sat near the window, scrolling through his phone. Doctor Sey was reviewing notes, lips moving silently. The charge nurses clustered at one end of the table, talking in low voices about staffing ratios and someone’s upcoming wedding.
Asha took her usual seat—third from the head of the table, facing the window—and arranged her materials with deliberate precision: notebook, pen, water bottle, phone face-up in case she got paged about anyone’s morning labs.
Doctor Harrison entered at exactly 9 AM, carrying his ever-present coffee mug and a stack of printouts. “Morning, everyone. Let’s get started.”
The meeting settled into its predictable rhythm: census numbers, budget discussions, the new phototherapy equipment that kept malfunctioning. Asha contributed when appropriate, took meticulous notes, and let the familiar cadence of medical administration wash over her.
She was good at this. She’d always been good at this—the performance of competence, the careful demonstration of value. This was the life she’d built, procedure by procedure, shift by shift, perfect evaluation after perfect evaluation.
Her phone buzzed on the table.
She glanced down reflexively, expecting a page from the unit.
A text from Max:Can’t stop thinking about last night. I can’t wait to taste you again later.
Asha’s heart did something complicated—a surge of warmth immediately followed by cold panic. The heart emoji glowed on her screen like a beacon, impossible to miss.
She reached for the phone to turn it face-down, to silence it, to make it disappear.
But she wasn’t fast enough.
Doctor Harrison sat directly to her right, and from the angle of his chair, he had a perfect view of her screen. Asha watched—in what felt like slow motion—as his eyes flicked down to her phone. His expression shifted, just barely: a flicker of surprise, then something more neutral but somehow worse.
Their eyes met for a fraction of a second. She gulped.
Harrison’s face returned to its usual professional mask, but Asha saw it: recognition, understanding, the mental note being filed away.
He saw. Oh God, he saw.
Asha’s hand trembled as she grabbed the phone and turned it face-down. Her pulse thundered in her ears, drowning out whatever Harrison was saying about infection control protocols. She stared at her notebook, pen frozen over the page, unable to write, unable to think beyond the screaming panic in her head.
He saw Max’s name. He saw the heart, the words. He knows.
The rest of the meeting passed in a blur of white noise and rising dread. Asha contributed nothing, just sat rigid in her chair, trying to calculate the damage, trying to figure out if there was any way to explain it away.
We’re friends. Close friends. People send hearts to friends all the time. It doesn’t mean?—
But she knew it was useless. The text had been too intimate. And Harrison wasn’t stupid.
The meeting ended at 10:15. Asha gathered her things with fine precision and fled to the NICU, where at least she could hide behind patient care and pretend everything was normal.
It wasn’t normal. Nothing would ever be normal again.
She made it through morning rounds on autopilot, checking labs and adjusting vent settings and reassuring parents with the same calm competence she always projected. But underneath, her mind was a chaos of spiraling thoughts.
What will he do? Will he say something? Will he tell the other attendings? Does everyone know already?
At 11:47 AM, her pager went off:Dr. Harrison requests meeting. His office. 2 PM.
