9:15 pm flashed at me from my phone, and for once, I intended to sleep in my own bed and not in my office chair. Stretching as I got up, I took off my long, white doctor’s coat and was in the process of hanging it up when the large, boxy phone on my desk rang. I glanced back at the clock and contemplated ignoring the damn thing since my regular office hours ended three hours ago, though the psychiatrist in me told me not to. I pulled up my iPhone's calendar—synced to my computer—as I sat back down. I wasn't on call for any emergency rooms for the night, but it wouldn't be the first time I had been called in when I wasn't supposed to be.

"Hello, Dr. Sullivan speaking."

"Dr. Sullivan? Thank God you answered. I can't get a hold of anyone else, and they don't have anyone scheduled tonight to take this," a nurse spoke hastily.

"It wouldn't be the first time someone in scheduling messed up," I muttered under my breath. "I was just on my way out. Any chance a resident can pick it up?"

“I’m afraid not. We've got an emergency on our hands. A suicide attempt. We had to pump the patient's stomach. No history of depression or any other mental illnesses in the family, though her parents recently died. She needs to be seen ASAP for possible admittance, Doctor."

Fuck. A female? I caught myself thinking and immediately shoved the negative thought back down. Now was not the time for self-doubt. Even with the gnawing reminder that lately, I’d slacked in the popular category with female patients, someone needed me.

"I'm heading down now. Patient's name?" I replied as I cradled the phone on my shoulder and grabbed a sticky note.

"Fiona Sims. Age twenty-one. See you soon, Dr. Sullivan. I'll be waiting at the front desk." Click.

I grabbed my coat and pulled it back on before heading down to the familiar hallways of the University of California San Francisco Medical Center, my old stomping ground through my residency of four years. Thankfully, it was just a hop, skip and jump away from my current office housed in the attached psychiatric hospital known as Langley Porter. It was quite an upgrade with a gold name plaque adorned on my very own door, my own private space—something I worked my ass off to get.

As I strode down the hall and into the elevator, my mind was reeling with possible treatment options based on the loose information given. At the age of twenty-nine and with years of experience dealing with maniacs who had full blown conversations with telephone poles, to the suicide survivors who attempted to jump off the infamous Golden Gate Bridge, I had seen and treated it all. Nothing bothered or surprised me anymore.

I looked down at my phone before sliding it into my coat pocket.

9:30. If I do this right, I can still be home before eleven. Or at the very least, midnight, with a well-rehearsed speech and reassuring smile usually does the trick, keeping the patient at bay until we could meet behind office closed doors to go deeper down the rabbit hole.

Double doors upon double doors opened at the wave of my doctor's tag as I walked with purpose down the stark, bright hallways, passing night-shift nurses, orderlies, and the occasional restless patient.

“Hey there, I thought being dubbed ‘Doctor of the Year’ got you out of things like this?” a resident called out as I strolled by.

“Nope. It just means they expect me to put the fires out without question,” I called back in a light manner. It never ceased to amaze how one nomination could make any unheard-of doctor an instant celebrity overnight. No matter where I went, someone catcalled or congratulated me on last year’s distinguished award, and my phone was constantly blowing up with unscheduled, on-call emergency room visits and rounds. Superman’s work is never done.

I arrived at the last double doors leading to a packed emergency waiting room. I eyed the crowd and headed for the receptionist’s desk. "Full house tonight?" I commented to the blond nurse behind the desk who was typing furiously.

"It's always like this on a full moon," she replied without looking up. Once she did, she did a double-take and blushed. "Dr. Sullivan? What are you doing down here?"

I sighed and leaned on the counter. "Picking up the slack of the psych department, I suppose. Got a patient under the name Fiona Sims in there?"

The nurse immediately grabbed the files piled high next to her keyboard. She searched through them and then went through them once more. "Hmm… I can't find her file. Are you sure that's the name?" she asked as an older nurse with short brown hair came running towards the front desk.

"Dr. Sullivan!" She reached me and handed me the file. "In room 40—follow me," she explained, out of breath, as she led me down the hallway where most of the rooms had a curtain drawn. I could hear some crying, some yelling in pain, and their visitors trying to reassure them. Maybe the front desk nurse was right about the full moon. We stopped at the end of the hall. The nurse told me to wait before she opened the curtains enough to let herself in.

"Hi, Fiona. I have Dr. Sullivan with me. He is the psychiatrist on call tonight and will be evaluating you to see if you should be admitted. Dr. Sullivan?"

That was my cue. I cleared my throat and pushed through the curtain, my usual spiel already queued up in my head. "Good evening, I'm Dr. Sullivan, it's a pleasure to—"

My words died right in my throat, my gaze settling on the woman on the stretcher bed. She didn’t even look at me, her attention on a girl sitting across from her. My eyes traced the lovely expanse of her neck, the air around her drawing me in. She’s so beautiful. She peeked up when silence filled the room and it only got worse for me when I saw icy blue eyes directed at me. Her eyes are captivating.

"Cat got your tongue, Doc?' the blonde in the chair asked, snapping my attention back into the room and out of those mesmerizing eyes.

"Right." I cleared my throat and started again. “I’m Dr. Sullivan, one of the head psychiatrists of Langley Porter. It’s a pleasure to meet you, Ms. Fiona Sims.”

She continued to glare at me, so I continued, flipping open the manila file in my hands. “Let’s get to what we know so far. It looks like you were found on the bathroom floor by your best friend with a half bottle of sleeping pills this evening, the intention of committing suicide assumed by the fact that after the gastric suction done on your stomach, the other half of the sleeping pills were found.” I closed the file and met her cold gaze. She snapped her head back to her friend.

“You’re point? I admitted to the crime, so can I go home now?” She spat her words at me and I knew her questions were for me to answer, not the blonde. I learned early on in my career to expect the hostility before the surrender.

“Well, as much as we would all like to go home, I’m afraid it’s not that easy. You see, Ms. Sims, the act of an attempted suicide is taken as seriously as a successful one. If you are all right with it, I’d like to further investigate as to why such a young woman like yourself wanted to take your life instead of seeking help. But in order for further treatment, we need consent from you to do so,” I explained before I realized I was doing it again.

Being mechanical with no empathic tone in my words, like a robot programmed to repeat the same explanation to every new patient. The very reason why my boss, Mr. Dean, was keeping an eye on me after a quite a few of female cases were coming to him and demanding a transfer to another doctor. A doctor who could “understand women better.” Apparently, talking at them instead of talking with them wasn’t doing anyone any favors. I simply had a hard time relating when I had a patient tell me she couldn’t stay faithful to her partner, or when another one told me she felt like she was failing her husband because she couldn’t conceive. With my robotic, medical terms, I came off as more of a pompous ass than a caring shrink, even after years of practice. I was losing my touch, and the nomination of “Doctor of the Year” didn’t help like I thought it would.

I cleared my throat before she responded. “Let me try that again.” I took a step closer to the bed and tossed the file onto the nearby table. “Look, I don’t know why or what would have triggered you to try such a permanent solution to your problems, but speaking from an outside perspective, you probably have so much more to live for than you realize. If you decide to give me the time of the day, I’d love to evaluate you myself and help you get over whatever hump you’re stuck at the bottom of currently. If you don’t even try to give me a chance…well, then we are both back at the bottom with nowhere to go.”

She didn’t even have to respond. Her body language said it all for her—slumped shoulders, curved back, and her head hung low. The telltale signs of defeat. With one word of consent, the pen would be ready, signing her life into my hands for the next week or so.

“Can he go now?” Her voice was barely audible, but I heard her loud and clear.

Her friend simply sighed and narrowed her eyes at me. Before, I would have gladly taken my exit to go in search of a colleague to deal with the mess I couldn’t. It would have been easy to wipe my hands clean and walk away when I had the reasoning of not being on call to back me up. Yet I wasn’t going anywhere or pawning this case off on anyone else. Not after the moment I had set my eyes upon such an intriguing creature as beautiful as the one glaring at me from the hospital bed.

There goes being home by eleven, I thought as I sat down on the swiveling stool, actually looking forward to the long night ahead.