Page 5 of Irresistibly Risky

“Fuck!” I yell and then race back for the bathroom. This can’t be happening. I plow through the ladies’ room door, only I already know before I enter what I’m going to find. She’s gone. The room is empty, and my mystery woman ran off on me.

Not that I can blame her.

I can’t even chase after her, because what would I say? Worst performance of my life, and it had to happen tonight. With her.

My hands scrub up my face and through my hair as I fall against the wall, staring at the space where I just undoubtedly gave her the lousiest sex of her life. Only it gets worse.

Lying on the floor is the condom, still in its wrapper. Because I never opened it and put it on. Double fuck.

2

A year and a half later

“Alexa, stop,” I call out to the device we have in the corner of the OR, and immediately Taylor Swift shuts off.

Half the room groans in protest. “Ah, come on. That was the best part,” one of the nurses complains.

I grin behind my mask. “No, it wasn’t. This is. We’re done. You can close,” I tell Jequai, the resident beside me, all business, though my heart hasn’t stopped hammering like a jackrabbit’s since I stepped foot in this OR with my first patient this morning. Three surgeries later, it still hasn’t slowed. The rush never gets old, but it’s also my first surgical day as an attending with this practice, so nerves are to be expected. “But I want those stitches to be tight with perfect approximation. The last thing we need is for this patient to return with any sort of abscess or wound infection. We’ll glue the top layer.”

Jequai does this blinky owl-eyed thing to me and then does the same to the surgical field before us. “Really? You’re sure? Dr. Limpdick never lets us do that.”

I choke into my mask. “Who?”

The intern across from the resident clears his throat, as do two nurses.

“What am I missing?” I question, searching the eyes of everyone in here since that’s all I can see over their masks. I’m too new to know if this is some sort of initiation or gag.

“Dr. Limbick.”

I snort out a laugh, my eyebrows at my hairline. “Does he know you call him Limpdick?” I hold up my gloved hand. “And wait, how did you get Limpdick of all names?” Then I think better of it and hold up my hand a second time. “Never mind, I get it now. Evidently, I’m a little slow on the uptake. Let’s get back to the patient and away from Limbick’s limp dick—a mental image I could have gone my entire life without, so thanks for that.”

“I know right?” Jequai laughs. “I keep picturing it old and saggy—”

“Enough,” I cut in sharply. “For real, I can’t take anymore. Do you feel comfortable closing without me?”

“Yes,” Jequai promises earnestly. “We study in lab all the time. He just never lets us touch a patient and feeds us lines about how this hospital is number three in the country, and our sports medicine program is number one, and we’re here to learn.”

I scowl at that. “You’re also here to do. See one, do one, teach one. I’m letting you do one Jequai. Next time you’ll teach one to Ross over there.”

Jequai bobs his head at the intern across from us. “See? I knew she was cool when she let us both scrub in and stand patient-side. And then put on music.”

Jesus. What are the attendings doing here?

Maybe I’m in the wrong, but when I was a resident in Miami and then doing a fellowship in the UK, it was entirely hands-on with no holding back. How else do you learn? That said…

“I’m not cool. I might be the least cool person you’ve ever met. I’m boring and annoyingly type-A, and my idea of a good time is sleeping.”

“But you won a gold medal. I heard Limpdick bragging to a patient about how you were barely even fifteen when you won it for figure skating. That was you, right?”

“Yes. That was me.”

“That’s cool.”

I smirk beneath my mask at his awed tone. “Okay, I agree, that was cool, but I’m far from cool now. Back to the patient. Show me your stuff and prove to me that you deserve to be the resident on my team.”

Jequai gets to work on suturing and gluing our patient closed. And he does a damn fine job of it. By the time we scrub out, it’s late, and after I speak to the family of the patient and crack my back about fifty different times in fifty different ways, I’m more than ready for this day to be over.

I wasn’t lying about the sleeping. It’s become my favorite sport, and I’ve learned to get it wherever and whenever I can. Probably because I haven’t stopped moving since I was three. But the last year and a half of my life has been trial by fire.

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