Page 88 of Sick of You

I’d told her... well, I guess I hadn’t gone into detail about why I didn’t want to contact Everett, but I’d told her several times I didn’t.

Maybe I’d been a little too hard on her, though. She didn’t understand why that sort of support could only leave me further scarred.

I shook off thoughts of Cassie—and especially of running across the floor to find her—and refocused on... what was I doing? The utilization chart? Answering Owen’s email?

The reason this stupid chart was taking so long was that I stopped every twenty minutes to run my business. Weirdly enough, running a company was a full-time job, and even the masterful efficiency of Luke Westover made working two full-time jobs unsustainable.

I’d known this would be a huge commitment. I’d looked at it as a passion project with Luke as the manager, me giving guidance and Owen programming around our day jobs.

If the app was my passion, no wonder I was struggling to make yet another chart.

Timewise, maybe I could make this work. But realistically? I couldn’t fully invest myself in the app and hold down a full-time position at Beaufort.

I didn’t want to.

I sat back in my chair, blowing out a breath. I couldn’t not want my job. I’d worked so hard for this, to show my family I wasn’t wasting my time. Or a waste of space.

I’d spent the last seven years in public health trying to help people in an aggregate sense. Helping the community as a whole. Individuals weren’t secondary, but they were almost a means to an end, the resource we used to improve our total health.

This was my career. This was where I’d poured my passion, the thing that was supposed to make my life feel meaningful when my family refused to. And it had—I’d worked hard. I’d helped people. I’d made it through a pandemic in public health. Now the biggest impact I could have was helping people combat an epidemic of loneliness.

I rubbed my lip with my thumb. What would Cassie say? Not that she had any room to judge. But I would’ve liked to talk this through with someone—with her.

I turned to the houseplant on my desk. “What do you think Phil? And before you answer, of course I wouldn’t leave you behind.”

Phil didn’t seem impressed by my generosity.Cassie would point out your privilege.

The plant didn’t pull any punches. But yes, Cassie had pointed that out several times.

I supposed she wouldn’t be wrong. Even the possibility of pursuing this passion was a position of prodigious privilege. I’d listened to enough coworkers to learn that most people didn’t work for the love of it, like I had.

If that was why I’d started this career, there was no question what I should do. I had to.

I petted Phil’s newest leaf as a silent thank you. On my computer, I Googled how to write a resignation letter. Then I turned back to my email on my phone.Let’s talk about this in person, I wrote to Owen.Your place? Games?

And then I knew exactly how to solve the problem with building our users’ relationships.

I wished I could have fixed my own this easily.

I expected my workload to trail off toward the end of my fellowship, winding down my cases to minimize the handoff. Not in medicine. Nope, they had to wring every last drop out of you. It wasn’t enough to have an anthrax attack last week right in the hospital, either.

Certainly felt like more than ten days ago—but the pain in Davis’s eyes was fresh in my memory like I was still walking out of his isolation room.

Instead, I was in the lab on a Friday afternoon, checking an antibiotic sensitivity test for a resistant strain ofH. pylori. The computer-generated antibiogram did not look promising. Writing papers about antibiotic resistance in superbugs we’d grown was one thing; it was another entirely to know that, downstairs, we had a patient we might not be able to help.

Worst of all, this bacterium was probably acquired here. It wasn’t the first time we’d been tasked with cleaning up a mess created by Dr. Judd.

Those guideline updates couldn’t come fast enough. Davis and I had done our part. Now our document would have to go through bureaucratic channels.

“Dr. Croft?” Dr. Donaldson’s voice pulled me from my thoughts.

I glanced around. I’d made it all day without being alone with him. Another fellow bent over the nearest cabinet. Hopefully that was enough to inoculate against the conversation veering into personal territory. “Yes?”

He nodded at the monitor in front of me. “Results?”

“Oh, yes. None of these antibiotics are going to work.”

Dr. Donaldson grimaced. “I assume you tested first- and second-line.”

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