Daring the Doctor

I can’t answer that.

I can’t.

I reach down and fumble with the doorknob, escaping into the hallway by the skin of my teeth, Dean’s eyes burning into my spine until I turn at the end of the hospital corridor and break into the run, tears tracking down my cheeks.

Seven

Dean

I don’t know what to do with myself. Don’t know how to keep myself from following Charlotte, so I go to the rooftop and swim. My arms pound through the water, creating a current with the urgent momentum of my body. I swim so long that my muscles begin to scream, my throat raw from breathing so heavily. But nothing, nothing, can rid me of the panic. Or the memory of the betrayal registering on her face. Her loss of faith in me.

And she had every right.

She had every fucking right to leave me—that’s the hardest pill to swallow.

I’m not going to allow her to go, but her actions were justified. I can see that now with some space and the stark clarity that comes from having one’s heart ripped out of his chest. One of the many million reasons I’m in love with Charlotte is her astuteness. Her intellect. Yet somehow I thought I would get away with humoring her. Letting her play what I considered hard to get until she finally caved and let me support her. How utterly foolish of me.

I’ve become the exact kind of doctor I swore I would never be.

I do have a god complex, don’t I?

All through medical school and my entry into the surgical field, I silently scoffed at the arrogance of my colleagues. Their superiority was only surpassed by my father and his contemporaries. Their egos were massive. They could never admit to making mistakes. I told myself I would never be like them. That I would see each case individually, that I would maintain my humility. All along, I thought I had. But I was wrong.

I thought I knew what was best for Charlotte. Even more than she did.

I’m going to keep her. I can’t even think straight during my days unless there is a plan to see her, touch her, hear her voice at night. That being said, if I want her to be happy with me, I…I think I have to change. I have to be a man who is comfortable with his stubborn girlfriend doing things her own way. Even if that means she cleans houses at night to save money—which frankly, might kill me. It’s a noble profession, but it will drive me absolutely insane to see her exhausted. Scraping by when I can so easily remedy the situation.

Nonetheless, that’s what Charlotte wants.

I pretended to accept her conditions for a relationship and that arrogant mistake has left me bereft. Without her. Desolate. So now it’s time to put my money where my mouth it. There’s no choice. There’s no other way to keep the person who puts breath in my lungs, purpose in my step. The girl who makes me burn hot twenty-four hours a day.

Goddammit, how can I miss her to the point of pain already?

My ribs are on the verge of caving in.

I stop at the edge of the pool and cross my arms on the ledge, my sides heaving from exertion. It has been two hours since she walked out of my office and my head is pounding. I feel seasick. Like my heart has been tossed into a fucking woodchipper. Has it been long enough for her to realize I made a mistake, but that I’m not going anywhere? Probably not. She’s probably still pissed as hell, but I can’t take this anymore. My fate hangs in the balance and it’s not in my nature to sit back and let events unfold. To be passive.

But I’m not showing up empty-handed.

That’s right. I’m doubling down.

She breaks up with me? I’ll propose marriage.

Because where this girl is concerned, there is very little logic involved. How I love her can’t be reasoned with or explained succinctly. It’s an unbroken stallion that rips across an open field, no hope of being caught. I just have to pray like hell she feels an ounce of this undiluted obsession. I just have to hope she’ll give me another chance to live up to her expectations. I won’t fail her again. I refuse. But can I make her believe that?

Charlotte

I walk through the front door of my apartment, my legs weighing two tons each. As soon as I close it behind me, I slump back against it and slide to the ground, staring ahead dully.

All the way home, I’ve been a ghost. A transparent, slow moving entity just haunting Chicago’s public transit system. Every few seconds, I have to reach up and touch my throat to make sure the hole I feel there isn’t real. Nor is the one in my chest. I only feel riddled with bullet wounds, they’re not visible. This pain. I can’t handle it. People can’t really survive with this much hurt occupying their veins, can they?