The Chief of Surgery Wrote the No-Dating Rule, and I'm Breaking It in His Supply Closet novel · Chapter 1 of 24
Chapter 1: Room 4-112
At 3 a.m. Gretchen goes into the supply closet to scream into a towel and finds the stern Chief of Surgery already inside, shaking; one kiss later the night guard says his badge is in there.
At three in the morning I went into the supply closet to scream into a stack of towels.
I had just lost a patient on the table, a man in his sixties with a belly full of blood.
His daughter was still in the waiting room.
I had done everything right, and it hadn't mattered.
Room 4-112 is a long, narrow closet on the trauma floor of Saint Brigid's.
It has shelves of gauze and saline, a door that locks from inside, and no windows.
Everyone knows it's where you go to fall apart for a minute.
I pulled the door shut behind me, and I didn't turn on the light.
Then I heard someone breathe.
"Fairweather," said a low voice from the dark.
I knew that voice.
It belonged to Dr. Kurt Hartmann, Chief of Surgery, six feet four, and a man I had never once heard raise his voice.
I flipped the switch with my elbow.
He stood at the far end with both hands braced on a shelf and his head down.
His navy scrub top was dark with sweat between the shoulders.
There was a smear of blood on his sleeve that wasn't his.
"Sorry," I said. "I didn't know anyone was in here."
"Nobody is," he said. "Go back out."
His voice shook on the last word.
The Chief of Surgery wrote the rule that says people like me don't get near people like him.
Policy 9 is the first slide at orientation: no relationships across the training line, and the trainee is fired and reported to the state board.
He had written it himself.
He was the most careful man in the building, and he stood in a closet shaking.
"The little girl in bay two," I said.
He nodded once, still not looking at me.
"Eight years old," he said. "I held her heart in my hand for four minutes."
"I heard," I said. "The whole floor heard."
He laughed, a short, awful sound, and shut his eyes.
I put the towels down.
"You don't have to be fine in front of me," I said.
"Fairweather."
"I mean it."
"Go before I do something that ends your career," he said, very quietly.
He still hadn't turned around.
I should have gone.
I have never in thirty-three years done a single thing I wasn't supposed to do.
I was a Lutheran pastor's daughter with a perfect attendance pin, and I'd color-coded my own residency applications.
I walked down the length of the closet and put my hand flat in the middle of his back.
He went completely still.
Under my palm the muscle was hot and hard and trembling.
"Gretchen," he said, and it was the first time he'd ever used my first name.
"Say it again."
He turned around.
He was so close that the shelves pressed on my shoulder blades, and he looked down at me with wet, furious eyes.
"You don't know what you're doing," he said.
"No," I said. "I really don't."
I took his face in both hands and kissed him.
For one second he held perfectly still, and I thought, that's it, I've lost my job.
Then he made a sound deep in his chest and picked me up off the floor.
He set me on the edge of the lowest shelf and pushed between my knees.
A box of gauze fell off and burst open on the tile.
His mouth was hungry and tasted of butterscotch and cold coffee.
His beard scraped my chin and I didn't care.
I grabbed his scrub top in both fists and pulled him in until there was no air between us.
"Fuck," he muttered against my lips. "Fuck, Gretchen."
His hands slid under the hem of my top and spread across my bare ribs, huge and hot.
I arched into them and heard myself make a noise I'd never made at work.
"Quiet," he said, and kissed me again so I wouldn't.
I wrapped my legs around his hips.
He was hard, so hard I could feel the whole length of him through two thin layers of cotton.
I rolled my hips against him on purpose.
He groaned and shoved back, a slow grind that dragged the seam of my pants right over my clit.
I gasped into his mouth.
"Again," I said.
He did it again, harder, and his hand came up and cupped the back of my head so it wouldn't knock the shelf.
That small kindness nearly undid me.
I tore at the drawstring of his pants, and he caught my wrist.
"Not here," he said, breathing like he'd run up four flights.
"You're shaking."
"Because I want to, and I shouldn't."
"Then let me help you shouldn't," I said.
He laughed against my neck, a real laugh, rough and surprised.
Then he pressed his forehead to mine and moved against me, short and hard.
I felt the orgasm start low in my belly.
"Kurt," I whispered, and I was so close that I could see stars.
Outside the door something beeped.
It was the badge reader.
We both froze.
His whole body went rigid against mine, and the box of gauze lay open at our feet.
The handle began to turn.
"Dr. Hartmann?" said a man's voice. "Your badge swiped in here, sir. Are you all right?"
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