Trapped by Them novel · Chapter 1 of 24
Chapter 1: The Teaching Case
Larissa lies on an exam table for her father's best friend and his interns, until the masked intern's voice is the stepbrother she has not heard in two years, and the doctor does not deny he arranged it.
Two interns stood against the wall with their arms folded, and I was the lesson.
The paper on the exam table crackled every time I breathed.
The gown stopped halfway down my thighs, and I kept tugging it lower.
"Larissa, look at me," Dr. Lachlan Moffat said.
I looked.
He was forty, calm and broad through the shoulders, and he had been my father's best friend for as long as I could remember.
I used to call him Uncle Lachlan.
I had stopped two years ago, at my father's wedding, because by then the word felt like a lie.
"You're doing fine," he said. "Nobody in this room knows you. To them you're a chart."
"Okay," I said.
My voice came out smaller than I wanted.
I was twenty-four and I had never let anyone examine me.
I had pain, low and constant for six months, and no insurance on my library salary.
The teaching clinic was free if I let his interns watch.
Lachlan had offered to do it himself, and that was the only reason I had said yes.
The shorter intern stepped up beside the table.
She had kind eyes over her mask and a name tag that read Janelle.
"I did this same exam in here last spring," she said. "He's the one every one of us asks for. You'll barely notice."
She tucked a blanket over my knees and squeezed my hand once.
Then she went back to her tablet and typed something, smiling at me the whole time.
I liked her immediately.
The other intern stayed by the door.
He was tall, with a cap pulled low and a mask up to his eyes, and he had not said a word since I came in.
He kept clicking a pen. Once, twice, a pause, once more.
I knew someone who clicked a pen that way, and I put the thought away.
Lachlan's phone buzzed on the counter.
He glanced at it, and I saw the screen light up: T: Is she there yet?
He turned it face down without answering.
"Dr. Moffat?" Janelle said. "Should we start with the history?"
"Intern two," Lachlan said. "State the indication."
The tall one cleared his throat.
"Twenty-four-year-old female. Chronic pelvic pain for six months. No prior pelvic exam."
I stopped breathing.
It was only a handful of words, and I had last heard that voice two years ago in a hotel hallway.
It had said: Larissa, wait.
I had not waited, and it had not come after me.
I looked at the pen in his hand.
Then I looked at Lachlan, and Lachlan was looking at the floor.
So I sat up.
The paper tore under me.
I pulled the gown tight in both fists and said, "Take the mask off."
"Larissa," Lachlan said, "lie back, and we can talk after."
"Not you." I kept my eyes on the door. "Him."
For a moment nothing moved.
Then the tall intern pulled the cap off and the mask down.
It was Tobias McCallister, my stepbrother.
He was twenty-seven now, his hair was shorter, and he had a shadow of stubble.
His eyes went straight to my face and stayed there.
"Hi, Larissa," he said.
The only date I had ever been on was with him.
We had met on a dating app, two strangers, and had a long dinner and a longer walk.
Three weeks later my father married his mother, and the man who had almost kissed me on a bridge became my stepbrother.
He had left a week after the wedding for a residency in Chicago.
I had not heard from him since.
"You said you were in Chicago," I said.
"I transferred in March." His jaw worked. "I didn't know you were on the list until Friday."
"Did you know he'd be here?" I asked Lachlan.
Lachlan said, "No. I had no idea."
"Then say it again," Tobias said quietly. "Tell her what you texted me on Friday."
Janelle lowered her tablet.
"I think I'll wait outside," she said, very gently, and she touched my shoulder on the way out.
The door clicked shut behind her.
Lachlan's phone buzzed again, face down on the counter.
"Larissa," Lachlan said.
He did not say it was a lie.
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