Chapter 14: Her Terms

For four days I was a very professional person.

I said "Dr. Hartmann" in the hall and "Chief" in the OR.

I said "yes, sir" when he asked for a clamp and "thank you" when he handed it over.

Dolores watched me do it from the nurses' station with her pink glasses halfway down her nose.

"It's hard to watch you two," she said on the second night. "It's like two dogs sharing a bone through a fence."

"Dolores."

"I'm not saying a word. I haven't seen a thing since 1994."

The filing stamp had turned up, by the way.

It was in the program coordinator's desk drawer, dated the second Monday of September, under a stack of takeout menus.

Pembrey did not apologize.

He said he would like to "reserve his position."

On the fourth night we lost a man on the table, a roofer with a belly full of nail gun.

Kurt called it at 1:52 a.m., and his voice didn't shake.

I stripped off my gloves and went out into the corridor and walked until I found the door to stairwell B.

I stood on the landing in the blind spot with my back against the wall.

I was angry at the roofer's wife, and the nail gun, and the ceiling.

Mostly I was angry at myself.

I pressed my palms flat to the cold plaster and made myself breathe.

Now there was nothing to be afraid of, and I wanted it more than ever.

That was the thing I couldn't say in the stairwell last week.

I wasn't furious that it was safe.

I was furious that it still wasn't enough to make me stop wanting him.

The door below clanged.

I knew the steps.

He came around the turn of the stairs and stopped when he saw me.

"I'm not following you," he said. "I came to check the landing."

"You came to check on me."

"Yes."

"Come here."

"Gretchen, you said..."

"Come here, Kurt."

He came up the last four steps.