After Rejection, Divorced Luna Becomes a Famous Doctor novel · Chapter 3 of 32

Chapter 3: Day One

Turned away from her old fellowship because the Kenleys fund it, Luna watches Emerson start a carnivore diet on TV, and he calls asking where she kept his migraine pills.

I typed my answer to Veronica's lawyer in the back booth with Ciara asleep across from me.

Received. I won't be there. Don't send a car.

I read it twice and pressed send.

Fergus set a fresh ginger ale in front of me.

He didn't ask what the text said.

He looked at my face, then at my hand on my stomach, and went back to the grill.

At seven in the morning I walked into University in the same clothes.

The genetics floor smelled exactly the way it had three years ago.

Hand sanitizer, burnt coffee, the printer that jammed every Tuesday.

A resident I'd trained with passed me in the hall and did a double take.

"Luna? We thought you moved to Switzerland."

"I married a man in Rittenhouse."

"Same thing," she said, and kept walking.

The program director's door was open.

She was the same white-haired woman who'd hired me, with the same reading glasses on a cord.

She stood up when she saw me.

That was a good sign.

Then she closed the door.

That was not.

"Dr. Mayhew." She sat back down slowly. "I heard you might call."

"I'd like my fellowship back," I said. "I'll restart second year. I'll take nights. I'll take every clinic nobody wants."

"You were the best metabolic fellow I had in ten years."

"Then let me finish."

She took off her glasses.

"Do you know who funds this floor?"

I knew.

I had stood next to Veronica at the gala where she announced it.

"The Kenley Foundation," the director said. "Four million a year. The lab, two fellow salaries, the family support fund. A call came yesterday afternoon."

"Yesterday."

"Mrs. Kenley's office said that if we brought you back, the Foundation would need to review its commitments."

Yesterday afternoon.

I'd still been in the kitchen on Delancey Street.

Veronica had made that call before I'd even signed.

"I'm sorry," the director said, and she looked like she meant it. "I have eleven families whose care depends on that money."

"I understand."

I did.

That was the worst part.

I thanked her and walked out with my back straight.

I made it to the lobby before my knees went.

There was a bench under a big TV, and I sat on it.

A morning show was on with the sound low.

Then the screen changed to a kitchen I knew.

My kitchen.

My copper pans on the rack behind them.

My blue tile backsplash.

KENLEY x DR. TRINA: THE CARNIVORE RESET, DAY ONE.

Trina Galvin stood at my stove in cream athleisure, long blond hair over one shoulder, teeth so white they flared on camera.

"Twelve oh one, everybody!" she said. "The fast is over. Let's eat like our ancestors!"

Emerson sat at the marble island in a gray T-shirt.

Someone had styled his hair.

She put a ribeye in front of him that covered the whole plate.

"Twenty ounces," Trina announced. "No bread. No sugar. No lies."

Emerson grinned at the camera.

He cut the first piece and ate it.

The comment counter in the corner of the screen went wild.

A man next to me on the bench said, "That guy's gonna feel great."

I stood up.

I walked to the hospital pharmacy across the lobby and stared at the shelves without seeing them.

Then I walked out into the cold.

I knew what that steak would do.

It wouldn't be dramatic tonight.

It would be a headache.

Then the headache would keep coming back, a little worse each time, a little closer to the next meal.

Then his thinking would go soft at the edges, and he would laugh about it, because he always laughed about it.

Then one day it wouldn't be funny.

I took the bus back to South Philly because I didn't know where else to go.

Fergus was asleep in a chair in the kitchen.

The day waitress gave me coffee I couldn't drink and a look I didn't mind.

At six that evening Ciara came home from school.

She walked in with her backpack bouncing and stopped dead at my booth.

"I didn't throw up," she said. "Not even once."

"Did you eat the fruit cup?"

"I gave it to a boy who eats paste." She slid into the booth across from me and uncapped a marker. "Are you staying for dinner?"

"I don't know yet."

"You should stay. Uncle Fergus makes eggs for dinner on Wednesdays. He says it's a crime and he does it anyway."

Fergus came out of the kitchen tying his apron.

"It's my crime," he said. "Doc. You came back."

"I didn't have anywhere better."

"That's the nicest thing anyone's said about this place."

I stayed for eggs.

I stayed after that, in the back booth, while the diner filled up and emptied out.

At eleven forty my phone lit up on the table.

EMERSON.

In three years of marriage he had never once called me.

He'd texted. He'd had his assistant text. He'd left notes on the counter.

He had never called.

I let it ring twice.

Then I picked up.

"Luna." His voice was thick and irritated. "Where do you keep the migraine pills?"

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