Chapter 11: Orientation

"Two years," I said.

"Give or take."

"You never said a word."

"You had a ring on." He brushed my hair back off my face. "I don't pour for a man and then go after his girl. My dad would've come back to haunt me."

"Your dad liked me."

"My dad would've haunted me and then congratulated you."

I laughed against his chest.

Up on the lawn, Jodie's voice came through a microphone, very loud.

"Where's my maid of honor? Bouquet time! Archer, get up here!"

"She's going to aim it at me," I said.

"She's going to throw it at your head."

She did.

I caught it with my face and one hand, and the whole wedding cheered.

Fitz picked my hair clip up off the dock and put it in his pocket.

He didn't give it back.

For two weeks, we didn't talk about the dock.

We talked around it.

He brought me coffee on Wednesday and his hand stayed on my back a second longer than it used to.

I took his blood pressure for no reason.

It was high.

He said it was the coffee.

On July first, I walked into Riverside General in a white coat with my name stitched on the chest.

Maura Archer, MD. Emergency Medicine.

I touched the letters three times in the elevator.

Intern orientation was in an old auditorium on the second floor with a water stain shaped like Ohio on the ceiling.

Eighty interns in new white coats sat in the rows with free tote bags.

Surgery, medicine, pediatrics, emergency, all of us together for one day before they split us up and buried us.

I sat on the aisle.

Three rows ahead of me, in a coat so crisp it looked ironed, Judson Cantrell was holding court.

He had a ring of new interns around him already.

He was telling a story about a trauma case in his third year.

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