He Ranked Her First, I Chose Myself novel · Chapter 1 of 24
Chapter 1: Locked at Midnight
On rank night Maura hears Judson tell his friends he moved his list for Tatum and that she'll switch hers to follow him; she stitches a regular in the bar's back room, watches his list shrink, goes home and certifies hers without changing a line, then tells him so and sets down the ring.
Every rank list in the country would lock at midnight.
At seven o'clock, I heard my fiancé brag that he'd changed his.
Not for me.
For Tatum Kirby.
I was in the side hallway at Mahaffey's with my clinic bag on my shoulder.
The party room door never latched, and it was open about four inches.
Judson was in there with six of his friends and a pitcher of beer.
"Denver's my number one now," he said. "Same program as Tatum."
Somebody whistled.
"What about Maura?"
Judson laughed, the easy laugh he used on attendings.
"Maura has my login. She'll see it and switch hers to Denver. She always does."
"Man, that's cold."
"It's efficient," Judson said. "I get Maura in my kitchen and Tatum in my program."
The whole table laughed.
I stood in that hallway and didn't make a sound.
Four years of medical school.
Two years of planning.
One shared spreadsheet of hospitals, color-coded, fought over at two in the morning with cold lo mein between us.
Orthopedics for him, the big university hospital first.
Emergency medicine for me, Riverside General first.
Both of us in Philadelphia.
That was the whole point of the spreadsheet.
Behind me, a door swung open.
"You're blocking my pickled eggs," said Fitz Mahaffey.
He was carrying a crate of glasses with a bar towel over his shoulder.
He looked at my face, then at the party room door.
He didn't ask.
"Your guy's already in the back," he said. "He's bleeding on my good napkins."
"Thanks, Fitz."
I walked past the party room and didn't look in.
The back room used to be a storeroom.
Now it had a steel table, a sink, a lamp clamped to a shelf, and my hand-lettered sign.
WEDNESDAY CLINIC, 7 TO WHENEVER.
The welder was sitting on the table with a bar napkin wrapped around his left palm.
"Box cutter," he said. "Don't yell at me."
"I'm not yelling."
"You've got your yelling face on."
I unwrapped the napkin.
The cut was deep and clean, right across the meat of his thumb.
"Stitches," I said.
"Across the street costs four hundred bucks."
"Here costs a story about your granddaughter."
He grinned and started talking.
I did blood pressures for two hours after that.
I explained a refill to a woman who'd been taking her pills twice a day instead of once.
I splinted a finger.
Through the wall I could hear the party room getting louder.
At eleven-fifteen the welder came back, because his cut had opened up again when he lifted a keg he wasn't supposed to lift.
He signed the clipboard with his good hand.
I numbed him and started over.
At eleven-forty, the chanting started.
"All in! All in! All in!"
I put his hand on the gauze.
"Press hard," I said.
Then I took my phone out and opened Judson's account.
His list used to have fourteen programs on it.
I watched it refresh.
Eleven.
Seven.
Three.
All three were programs Tatum had interviewed at.
Through the wall, six men cheered.
The welder looked at my phone, then at my face.
"You okay, doc?"
"I'm not a doctor yet."
"You're okay, though?"
I put the phone face down on the steel table.
"Hold still," I said, and finished his stitches.
I tied off the last one at eleven-forty-seven.
I packed my bag.
On my way out, the party room door had swung wide open.
Judson was standing on a chair with his laptop held over his head.
Tatum was beside him, filming him with her phone and laughing.
Neither of them saw me.
Fitz did.
He was behind the bar, drying the same glass he'd been drying for a while.
"Want me to walk you home?" he said.
"It's two blocks."
"I know how far it is."
"I'm fine."
He set the glass down.
"Okay," he said. "Text Jodie when you're in."
I walked home in the cold.
The kitchen was dark.
I didn't turn on the light.
I sat at the table with my coat still on and opened my laptop.
My list came up.
Riverside General, emergency medicine. Number one.
Then the other twelve, every one of them in Philadelphia.
I had built that list around his.
For two years I'd moved my programs up and down so that wherever he landed, I'd land close.
Every single line on it was still exactly where I'd put it.
I looked at the clock in the corner of the screen.
Eleven fifty-six.
I could have searched for Denver.
I could have made it look like his.
Instead, I scrolled to the bottom of my own list and pressed the button that locked it.
Certified. Eleven fifty-eight.
Then I texted Jodie.
"Home."
She wrote back almost immediately.
"Why are you up? Did you two have the big sexy rank night?"
I put the phone in my pocket and didn't answer.
At twelve-forty, a key turned in the front door.
Judson came in smelling like beer and somebody else's vanilla perfume.
He was smiling.
He kissed the top of my head on his way to the fridge.
"Hey, babe. Big night."
He pulled out a bottle of water and leaned against the counter.
"So you saw it," he said. "Denver's going to be amazing. You switched yours, right?"
I took off my ring.
It was his grandmother's, a small oval diamond that always caught on my gloves.
I stood up, walked to the counter and set it down next to his water.
"I didn't change a single line," I said.
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