The song is Paris by the Chainsmokers. I don't think you'll get it til the very end of the chapter, which I don't want to spoil...but when you get to the end, listen to the song and you will realize...it's an anthem...
Ashlynn
It's been a week since I've been home. It's after dinner and Cam is shirtless, leaning against the bathroom vanity, speaking into his phone when I bring the microwave baby bottle sterilizer into the bathroom. He gives the device, which looks like a covered cake carrier, a quizzical look and me a smile, but he holds up a finger.
"No. I'm absolutely ready. I really appreciate this. Yes, absolutely no problem. I'll report to Jenkins in Pathology day after tomorrow. Great. No, no, as I said last month, I'm so thankful for the opportunity, and I promise you, I'll make sure I'm capable of giving a hundred percent before I return to work after each round. Thanks again, Dr. Hollister."
His grin widens as he lays his phone down and puts his hands in his dark, shiny hair, looking at me with victory gleaming in his eyes. Impulsively, he darts forward and pulls me into a hug. "Laney! Celebrate with me, please," he says, as he sways me from side to side. "Because that is the best news I have heard in a while." He laughs, a triumphant crow. It reminds me of the way he used to laugh at a Friday night party after he threw for a big win.
My arms come up to pat his back briefly, but then I move them to his chest to separate us. Hugging Cam while he's shirtless and feeling cocky is not going to help our situation. But I am glad to see his energy fired up.
"What are we celebrating?" I ask, spraying down the counter with a bleach spray and wiping diligently.
"So many good things." He's pacing behind me, excited as he talks. "The fact that my infectious disease attending passed me on my last clinical rotation despite the fact that I was a few days short. The fact that my advisor is willing to let me audit my final rotationâpathologyâwhen I'm feeling well enough to go, because I've gotten excellent reviews in all of my difficult rotations, and let's face it...how much do I need to know about autopsies that I didn't learn in gross anatomy already? Do you realize what that means?"
My smile is wide and genuine. "You're still graduating on time. In six weeks you'll be a real, honest-to-god doctor."
"No fucking shit!" he crows. I laugh. I'm so happy for him. He wasn't sure how the medical school was going to handle his leave for treatment, and it's really been worrying him.
He sets me on my feet again. "Ah but there's more. We're also celebrating a freakin' miracle when it comes to my residency. One of the incoming residents at Emory declined the program, so they have a space that they are willing to let me fill on a three-quarters time basis. They are cool with accommodating my weeks off for chemo. And the resident director of my match program in Nashville has agreed to let me transfer in later this year, when my chemo is finished. That part will suckâbeing behind the curve of the other residents, but I'm lucky they are willing to keep me...it's a great surgical program."
This time I hug him. "I'm so happy for you, Cam! That's amazing. I know you've been so worried."
He has his hands on his head again. "It's all going to be okay! I can't fucking believe it!" Suddenly he grabs my head and plants an emphatic smack on my forehead, folding me in another hug.
He's so happy, and I'm so happy for him, I don't pull away this time. Instead, I draw up on my toes and whisper in his ear. "You're going to be an amazing doctor. I think everything happens for a reason. Me being sick, you being sick...that's part of you now. Part of what will make you the best kind of doctorâone with empathy."
His excited hug relaxes, and he looks down at me thoughtfully. "You always see the bright-side, don't you?"
"Well there was a time that I couldn't, but in general, yeah. Positive thinking helps you get where you want to be."
He nods, his thoughtful expression spreading into a devilish, twitching grin. "I'll remember that." He looks very pointedly at my lips.
I shove him off. "Stop. I'm serious."
He staggers backwards. "You just shoved a cancer patient."
"You don't look much like a cancer patient," I gesture at his very nice physique.
He sighs, and runs a hand through his thick, glossy hair. "Give it a month or two."
"If you lose it, it will grow back," I say automatically and find myself laughing. Why am I always comforting vain men with hair issues?
"I don't really mind losing my hair except...you know...from a work standpoint. I don't want to be the intern with cancer, you know?"
"Well, it could work to your advantage." I'm washing my hands thoroughly in the sink.
Cam pulls the bandage off the awkward spot to the back side of his underarm, and uses the mirror to inspect his surgical site, where five dark stitches pucker his skin. "How's that?"
"I can hear your attending now. Jesus, the intern with cancer has all his scut done, kicked ass presenting at rounds, and knows three times as many procedures, what the hell is wrong with the rest of you?"
He smiles at me in the mirror. "Thanks for the vote of confidence." He looks at the sterilizer. "What the hell is that?"
"A microwave steam sterilizer for baby bottles." I flip off the lid. "I bought it at Target to sterilize the instruments." I gesture to the scissors and the tweezers.
"That's genius," he looks at me. "I was just going to suggest we flame them but it's really steam that sterilizes..."
"I know." I roll my eyes at him. He acts like I didn't take the same microbiology courses in college that he did.
I sigh, gesturing for him to turn his incision toward me. Cam is going against medical advice and removing his stitches early. Or rather, he's insisting I remove them early, since he can't really reach them. I think the site could use a few more days healing but he says it's fine and the stitches are irritating...that they pull at the sensitive skin of his underarm and he can't try to sleep one more night with them waking him up every time he moves. Doctors really do make the worst patients, I think, because they refuse to accept their condition without doctoring themselves.
"Are we doing this?" I ask.
His smile fades slightly as he watches me dry my hands, snap on some latex gloves, and add some hand sanitizer. "You would have made a great doctor, Ashlynn. Better than me," he says quietly. "I want you to know, I know that."
I use the tweezers to tease up the first stitch and snip it down the middle. "We both know, I would never have gone to med school, even if I'd never had emergency brain surgery or a drug addiction."
"We talked about it so many times, though," he murmurs. "We had a plan. We'd get married halfway through my med school program, when you graduated college. You would apply to med school at all the places where I interviewed for residency programs. You would have gotten into all of them. Your grades were always fantastic and you would have killed all your interviews. You would have finished med school at the same time my surgical residency was winding down. Then I would have taken a job where ever you matched for residency."
"The plan would have fallen through. I would have changed my mind," I say lightly, on the third stitch now.
"Why's that?" Cam is watching me in the mirror.
"Being a doctor sounded like a good idea, because I like to take care of people, but that was mostly your dream," I smile at him. "I just...went along."
"What was your dream, then?"
I shrug, tweezing the last bit of nylon suture from his skin and dropping it in the wastebasket. I rub a gloved finger over the fragile looking scar, hoping it won't pop open.
"Babies?" he says softly. "That was part of the plan too, right?"
I blush. "Was it? I don't recall us talking a whole lot about babies."
He laughs "Okay, no. I was mostly thinking about how not to make them with you, back in the day. But really...what was there to talk about? I always helped you with all the kids you used to babysit for. We had fun with them. We'd smile over their heads at each other and make out after we put them to bed. I thought we were practicing for future family times."
I nod. "Yeah, I suppose I just assumed kids were in my future."
He gets quiet. "It's something I've been thinking about a lot lately." He pauses for a long time and I turn from the mirror, because I don't like staring at us. Finally he laughs like he's embarrassed and turns away from his reflection, too. "One of the first things my oncologist said to me was, your prognosis is so good, you need to be thinking about your life ten years from now, not six months from now. Then he handed me a referral for an infertility specialist."
I look at him confused, not understanding the point."Because the chemo may make me infertile. So I had samples frozen, just in case." He crosses his arms, looks down at his feet, then he meets my eyes. "I definitely want to be able to offer the right woman a family one day, if that's what she wants."
What he said should not have made me scold Cam and tell him he was pushing the boundaries again. It should not have made me bolt from the room to avoid shedding tears in front of him. It should not have made me scramble silently down the kitchen stairs so that my parents wouldn't notice. It should not have made me ransack my dad's car for the pack of cigarettes I know he keeps there. It should not have made me seek the shadowy back deck of the vacant house next door and fire one up, hands shaking.
But considering that what Cam said sent my already heightened nerves into overdrive, it's not surprising that I scream and drop the lighter when its flare reveals that I'm not alone on the deck.
A lean, dark figure is sitting on an large, upturned patio planter.
"Well, here we are again," Trace says, the eternal edge sharpening his tone as he rises and toes out the cigarette that rolled his way. "Where's your promise ring?" he says sarcastically. "Turn it down this time?"
"What the fuck, Trace?" I find myself slapping his arm hard.
He plucks the pack of cigarettes from my hand, and shoves them in his back pocket.
"What the fuck is right. You aren't returning my calls, and when I come to check on you I find you out here smoking? He's fucking with your head, isn't he? I knew he would."
"Yes, he's fucking with my head but that is not the real problem," I hiss. "The problem is...he makes me want...this..." I sling my hand up to the empty monstrosity of suburban perfection. "He makes me want to live in the suburbs and bake cookies and make babies, but not with him. With Leed. And that's the problem. Leed doesn't want to live in the suburbs. Leed doesn't eat cookies. And Leed definitely does not want to make more babies."
"Oh Christ," Trace says unhappily. "I just came to put the fear of god into Cam Martin. We're really gonna do this thing? Where you overthink and rant and I pretend to give a shit and give you advice?"
I hit him again, on his shoulder. "Goddamm, you can be such an asshole sometimes, Trace!!!"
"Okay, okay. Fine," he takes me by the shoulders. "I'm sorry. This place makes me edgy. I give a shit. I really do, Hon." He pulls the cigarettes from his pocket, lights two at the same time with a dramatic flick of the zippo, hands me one, and sits back down on the planter. "Let's hear it then."
Wow, I can't wait to hear Trace's take on Ash-Leed-Cam. Let's do the next chapter from his perspective, shall we?