The Chief of Surgery Wrote the No-Dating Rule, and I'm Breaking It in His Supply Closet novel · Chapter 2 of 24

Chapter 2: Call Room Two

Gretchen and Kurt get out of the closet, then pick the call room whose lock never catches, until a nurse says her name through the door.

The handle turned halfway and stopped.

The door was locked.

I hadn't seen Kurt do it, but the thumb-turn was under his left hand, flat against the wall.

"I'm counting gauze," he called through the door.

His voice came out calm and dry.

"At three in the morning, sir?"

"The count was off after the last case. I'd rather fix it than write it up."

There was a pause on the other side.

"Yes, sir," the guard said. "I'll leave you to it."

Footsteps went away down the hall.

My whole body sagged against the shelves.

My legs were shaking, and my top was pushed up under my arms.

Kurt stared at the closed door.

Then he looked at me, and the corner of his mouth moved.

"Counting gauze," I whispered.

"It was the first thing I saw."

"It was on the floor."

"I know where it was, Fairweather."

He took a butterscotch from his pocket, unwrapped it, and held it out.

I took it from his fingers.

His hand was steady again, and that made it worse.

"Go home," he said. "Sleep. This didn't happen."

"It really did."

"Then it doesn't happen again."

He unlocked the door, checked the hallway left and right, and nodded me out.

He did it so fast and so smoothly that I almost missed that he'd done it at all.

At seven that morning an email came from Orson Pembrey, Vice President of Hospital Operations, to every clinician in the building.

Subject: Strengthening Our Culture.

It said badge access logs would be "reviewed periodically in the spirit of transparency."

"That's us," said Benji.

He leaned over my shoulder in the fellows' lounge with a bagel in his mouth.

"That's not us," I said. "That's everyone."

"You look like you haven't slept."

"I was on call."

"You look like you were on call with somebody."

"I lost a patient last night, Benji."

His face changed, and he put a hand on my arm.

"Sorry," he said. "I'm an idiot."

"A little," I said, and felt like the worst person alive.

All day, Dr. Hartmann walked past me in the corridor and said "Doctor" with a nod.

In the OR he held out his hand for the clamp, and I put it in his palm, and neither of us blinked.

At nine that night I was in call room 2 with my shoes off, pretending to read a journal.

The call room has two bunks, a lamp and a door that has never latched since the day I started.

I heard the knock, soft, twice.

He came in, shut the door, and leaned on it with his arms crossed.

"I told you it doesn't happen again," he said.

"You did."

"And you're sitting on a bed."

"It's my bed. I'm on call."

"You knew I'd come."

"I didn't," I said. "I hoped."

He crossed the room in three steps and went down on one knee in front of the bunk.

I had never seen the Chief of Surgery on his knees.

His hands closed around my ankles and slid up the back of my calves.

"This is the stupidest thing I have ever done," he said.

"It's mine too."

"Tell me to leave."

"Leave," I said, and hooked my heel behind his shoulder and pulled him in.

He kissed me like the closet had been a warm-up.

His beard dragged down my throat, and I tipped my head back against the wall.

"The lock's broken," I said.

"I know."

"Someone could walk in."

"I know," he said, and I felt him smile against my collarbone. "You like that."

I did.

Heat rolled through me every time I thought of the door, and my whole body knew it.

He worked my pants down my hips and I lifted so he could.

His fingers found me, slick and swollen, and he swore in a low voice.

"Gretchen."

"Don't stop."

He slid two fingers in and curled them forward, and I bit my own fist to keep from shouting.

His thumb found my clit and circled it, slow, then exact.

I fell back against the pillow with my knees wide, and my hips met his hand with every stroke.

"Look at me," he said.

I looked.

His eyes were black in the lamplight, and he watched my face.

"There," he said. "That's it. Let me hear that."

I came with a strangled cry into the crook of my arm, and my thighs clamped around his wrist.

He kept going through every wave until I was boneless.

When I could see again, he was still kneeling there, breathing hard.

His fingers shone wet in the lamplight, and there was a hard line under his scrubs.

"Your turn," I said.

I hauled him up onto the bunk beside me.

He lay back with his hands over his head, like he was surrendering, and let me untie his drawstring.

He was thick and heavy in my hand and hot as a stove.

I stroked him slow, then fast, and he thrust up into my fist with a breath that shook.

"Fuck, you're good at this," he said.

"I'm good at everything."

"I've noticed."

I tightened my grip and twisted on the upstroke, and his head went back on the pillow.

His whole big body drew tight.

"Gretchen, I'm going to..."

On my belt, in the pile of clothes on the floor, my trauma pager went off.

It shrieked into the quiet.

He froze with his mouth open and his hand in my hair.

I looked at him.

He looked at me.

"Answer it," he said, hoarse, and I swear he was laughing. "Answer it, Fairweather."

A second later the call phone on the nightstand began to ring.

I snatched it up with my free hand, kept the other one exactly where it was, and put it to my ear.

"Fairweather," I said, in my calmest voice.

"Fourth floor, bay one, a man with a nail gun," said the voice. "Five minutes out."

"On my way."

I put the phone down and squeezed once, hard, and he came with a stifled shout that sounded like my name.

It spilled hot across my wrist and his stomach, and he curled toward me, shaking.

"I hate you," he said, into my neck, and he was laughing helplessly.

I'd never heard him laugh outside the OR, and never like that.

"That is the first time I've heard you laugh," I said.

"It's your fault."

"I'll take it."

I wiped my hand on a sheet, pulled my pants up, and tried to fix my hair.

It was a disaster.

He sat up, still catching his breath, and tucked a strand behind my ear.

"Go," he said. "Be brilliant."

I went to the door and pulled it open.

Dolores Hennessy, the charge nurse, stood in the hall with her arms crossed and her pink reading glasses on a chain.

"Dr. Fairweather," she said. "There you are."

She looked past me at the man sitting on the bunk, with his scrub top rumpled and his pants barely tied.

"Good evening, Dr. Hartmann," she said.

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