“We’re here,” they called out, pushing the portable machine inside.
Tears streaked down Laney’s face. Whatever I had to do to keep my promise to her, I would. She’d be okay. I’d make damn sure of it.
I’d wanted to be a doctor since the first time my sister got sick. I was ten; she was eight. I didn’t totally get what was going on, but I caught on quickly. Something was wrong with Maddy, and she might not get better.
She had, but my interest in medicine hadn’t dimmed afterward. For the longest time, I’d thought I’d go into oncology, but something held me back. While I wanted to help people, wanted to make them better, I wasn’t sure I could handle it day-to-day in that setting. Seeing the same patients through treatments that often didn’t work, building relationships with them, and watching them suffer for months, sometimes years, knowing some of them would not survive… Maybe that made me a coward, but I just couldn’t do it.
I’d settled on emergency medicine and found my place there. My work and my patients were important to me. I was still helping people, and that meant something to me.
It was a long day in the ED. We’d had two trauma calls on top of other patients coming in. I was exhausted by the time my shift ended. I cleaned up in the physicians’ bathroom, then headed to my BMW to drive home.
It was Atlanta after five, so traffic was the fucking worst, which gave me a lot of time to think about Laney and the other patients I’d seen today. She’d been admitted to the fourth floor, but nothing life-threatening, and we’d been able to rule out a spinal cord injury.
She would be okay, just like I’d told her she would. I always felt like a liar, a failure, when they weren’t.
On the way back to my condo, I made a quick stop for Chinese food. I’d recently moved into one of the newer high-rise condominiums in Midtown. It was the largest in Atlanta—elevators on both the south and north side, me being on the latter. My father hated where I lived, thought I should be in Tuxedo Park, which he considered much more suitable even though it was just minutes away. He liked to have control over everything, even if it didn’t really matter. I’d given him that as best as I could for most of my life. Now that I didn’t, our relationship was even more difficult than it had been growing up.
Whether I was getting in trouble in school or not settling down, in one way or another, I had always been and always would be a disappointment to Grant Hutchinson Jr.
I parked in my spot, then pressed my code so the elevator would take me to my unit on the twelfth floor. I unlocked the door, and the second I did, my cat, Raphael, came around the corner, giving me the evil eye.
“What’s up, dude?” I set my keys and bag of food on the white marble kitchen countertop. Raph gave me a single meow and walked away. He was a bit of a dick. He liked love and affection on his terms only and had trouble letting people in. Connection wasn’t his strong suit. We had those things in common.
I went to my room, took my clothes off, and tugged on a pair of sweats. Then I got my food and headed to my oversize, screened-in balcony. It was my favorite place in the unit—overlooking both the city skyline and the trees and other greenery below—and I had a table, chairs, couch, a TV mounted on the wall with a fireplace set below, and decorative lighting, all set up out there.
I ate while scrolling through my phone, checking my work email—filled with medical studies, invitations to speak, and conferences—and then my personal email, which was basically full of shit. I flipped on the television but kept it low, not paying much attention.
Once I finished eating, I thought about going in to get my laptop, but instead lay down, putting my feet up on the other end of the outdoor sofa, and decided to log in to a queer hookup app. I’d come out as bisexual three years before, when I was twenty-nine. I’d always known it about myself, and I’d spent a lot of time exploring my attraction to men while in college and med school. It wasn’t something I’d shared with my family at first because…well, I couldn’t say why. They weren’t homophobic. I hadn’t felt like they wouldn’t accept me, but it was yet another way I wouldn’t fit in with them. Which was fucking bullshit. I had no reason to feel like an outsider with my own blood, but I often did, which likely went back to the fact that my father was never satisfied with me.