BAILEY

What a colossal waste of my time. I cringe thinking of how carefully I measured out those ingredients yesterday. I hovered near our ancient stove, face inches from the glass, sweat beading down my forehead from how much heat that sucker was putting off, just to ensure the loaf didn’t burn.

Baking was my way of trying to gain control of the situation. I’d already memorized the procedural steps for today’s surgery and I was still a ball of anxiety. As proof: my alarm clock went off at 5:15 AM this morning. Then, my ancient clock radio started blaring pop music, and seconds later, my sister’s fist started pounding against my door.

“HEY! Did you set my alarm?! The sun isn’t even up, you psycho. Let me sleep! I’m an adolescent! My brain is still growing!”

I had no choice. I needed to be sure I didn’t oversleep again so I took every necessary precaution, including waking up my sister. My clothes were already laid out on the floor as if I’d been raptured right out of them the night before. My shoes were untied and ready to go. My toothbrush was pre-loaded. I was outside, shivering at my bus stop fifteen minutes after waking up.

I was going to make a stellar second impression, and I was confident of this right up until I arrived outside of Dr. Russell’s office and found it empty. The hallway was quiet. I grew nervous. I stared down at my Tupperware, wondering if maybe it wasn’t such a good idea after all. What if he’s allergic to nuts?

Oh right, I didn’t use any nuts.

I was seconds away from bolting when I heard his deep, unwelcoming voice down the hall.

“Are you waiting for me?”

I glanced up and nearly swallowed my tongue. My gut clenched as I blinked a comical number of times, trying to comprehend how a robot could be so beautiful. He was wearing a navy suit that set off his dark, thick hair. His camel coat was tossed over his forearm. His hard jaw was locked tight as he assessed me suspiciously upon his approach.

I suddenly felt silly and adolescent standing there waiting for him. I cursed my outfit, wishing I’d already changed into my scrubs. My tennis shoes were scuffed. His brown oxfords looked as if they’d been shined mere seconds before. My jacket had been purchased at a thrift store. His looked bespoke.

He kept walking until he was standing right in front of me, and my neck craned back and back some more until that blue gaze knocked the air right out of my lungs. Oof.

I haven’t been around many men like Dr. Russell in my life. Standing close to him in a quiet hallway was thrilling in the same way a death-defying rollercoaster is thrilling…maybe one that hasn’t been inspected in a while, made of rickety wood and squeaky iron bars. I was fairly sure I wouldn’t survive the ride, but something made me want to step right up anyway.

He was studying me, too, and I wish I could have known what was going on in that microprocessor of his.

“Are you waiting for something?” I asked.

“You’re blocking my door. I can’t unlock it.”

Mortification drenched me from head to toe. I wanted to toss the bread at him and sprint down the hall. I forced myself to try to save face as I followed him into his office, but that was a stupid idea. Oh, you’re already feeling nervous? Step into the lion’s den. The first thing I noticed was that the room smelled like him. I hadn’t realized he had a distinct scent until that moment—crisp and woodsy. I had a weird, sudden urge to rub myself across his leather couch in the hopes that it’d linger on me after I left.

Scent aside, his office was a total mess, which I found oddly charming. There were no old food containers lying around, no trash overflowing the bin. Rather, it was messy in the way a well-loved kitchen is messy. Medical devices strewn about. Files stacked on his desk. His bookshelves were stuffed to the brim with medical texts, the overflow piled on the floor nearby. If I had a photographic memory, I would have memorized every spine.

At least I had fun encroaching on his space because the rest of the experience sucked mucho. Let’s just say it wasn’t my best showing (I told him I was trying to bribe him!) and then he made matters worse by turning down said bribe on all fronts. No bread, no friendship, no nothing. Apparently, my banana bread wasn’t as tempting as I’d hoped it’d be. I really thought Dr. Russell would go for it. What sane gluten-eating American turns down homemade baked goods?

I toss the banana bread onto the counter in the break room and resist the urge to stab it with a knife.

“Oh! Did someone make banana bread?” Shelly asks from the doorway. She turns and shouts down the hall. “Hey, Larry, there’s banana bread in here!”

Within minutes, coworkers are crowded around me like vultures. I watch them eat my bread, soaking in every emphatic moan and groan.

“Bailey, this is something else,” Larry says with a little shimmy of his shoulders.

Their praise is nice, but it’s not what I wanted. Dr. Russell should be licking his chops right now but instead he turned the tables around on me.

I don’t need to like you.

Who says that to someone?!

A psychopath, that’s who. Everyone wants to be liked. Including him.

I know it.

I don’t see Dr. Russell again until he walks into the operating room. He confers with the anesthesiologist, checks in with the device rep, and then heads straight for me. I’m already holding up his gown, waiting for him, sterile gloves and mask in place. Every strand of my hair is tucked beneath my pink scrub cap—the one I didn’t have time to grab on Monday.

He notices it and shakes his head as he steps into the gown.

“What?” I ask.

“Nothing.”

I don’t think he’s a fan of pink. He better pray he doesn’t have a princess-loving daughter someday.

I reach in to tie the gown at his back. Just like the last time, it feels slightly more intimate than it should. It’s the proximity. I’m inches away from his butt, and though I’m not proud of myself, I do glance down. It’s great. Firm.

It’s just him and me today—no secondary surgeon making me cry—so I stand across from him at the operating table. I can’t decide which position is better. On Monday, I was keenly aware of his every move, careful not to accidently bump into him as I worked. Now, I have a better view of the parts of him that could easily soften a heart: his startling blue eyes, tall frame, and black hair just barely visible beneath his navy scrub cap. His olive skin tone looks nice even under the harsh glare of these fluorescent lights. I think to myself that he could be such a heartbreaker at the exact moment he snaps an order at the device rep. Oh right, that isn’t a Casanova standing across from me; it’s Dr. Beep Boop Robot. I’m not even sure there’s a heart beating beneath those scrubs.

His gaze shoots up to me. Apparently, I’m not observing him as surreptitiously as I thought. “Are you paying attention to the surgery?” he asks, annoyed.

“Yes.”

It’s technically not a lie. Sure, I was kind of ogling him, but it was in the context of the surgery itself. I’m still getting used to the fact that I get to observe someone like him from this proximity. It’s a heady experience.

“Tell me what instrument I’ll need next.”

I smirk under my mask. “The prism lumbar curette, 13.75 inches.”

He’s too practiced to reveal any note of surprise, but I swear I just gained a tiny modicum of his respect. I want to run around the room with my hand outstretched, collecting high fives. Instead, I check to confirm the retractor is still placed correctly, remembering his speech in his office. Just show up on time and do a good job. It’s more important to gain his respect than his affection, and if that’s the case, at least I know where I stand.

Except there’s still one thing gnawing at me.

I hand him the curette and then speak gently. “I have to know—why’d you give me a second chance after I was late on Monday? I seem to remember you saying very sternly that I would only get one shot at this.”

For a moment, he’s quiet as he continues working. The sounds of surgery surround us: the rhythmic beeps from the pulse oximeter, the dull hum of the Bair Hugger blowing warm air on the patient’s legs, the conversations taking place around us.

“You’re reading too much into it,” he says, pausing. “I need a slightly larger curette. Is there one in the kit?”

I find one and swap it with the one he’s holding.

“Am I? Reading too much into it?”

“You came highly recommended,” he continues, satisfied with the new tool. “I didn’t have any other options. Now if you’re done with the chitchat, I need to focus.”

It’s a tactic; he doesn’t need to focus any more than he already is. Dr. Lopez chatted his way through every procedure he ever did, and I know Dr. Russell is a better surgeon than most. He could probably operate with his eyes closed, so if he says he needs to focus, in reality, he just doesn’t want to finish the conversation.

Fine.

I spend the rest of the surgery thinking over what I learned in his office earlier. If Dr. Russell would rather respect someone than like them, it’s obvious he would prefer the same for himself, as if he were a king choosing to be feared rather than loved. There’s something sad about that. It’s got to be a lonely existence to walk around terrifying everyone, not to mention, a part of me wonders if it’s a defense mechanism.

I know it shouldn’t matter. I should leave well enough alone. He was very clear with me in his office…but I can’t seem to drop it. I want to know more. Maybe before I wouldn’t have cared, but he turned down my banana bread, dammit. He said he didn’t want to be my friend! I need answers.

I decide the best person to ask is Patricia. She’s worked for him for years. She has to know more about him than anyone else in the hospital. I find her sitting at her desk at lunch. There’s a mug of tea, a small Caesar salad, and a fresh edition of Creative Knitting spread out in front of her. She doesn’t even bother looking up from the pages as we skate through the usual small talk: hi, how are you, how’s your day going. Finally, I get to the heart of the conversation.

“So you’re pretty close with Dr. Russell, huh?” I ask, lifting my leg to sit on the edge of her desk.

She clears her throat in distaste and I immediately move. Okay, we aren’t there yet. Noted.

“I mean, you’ve been with him since he started here, right?”

She snorts. “I’m the only one who could put up with him.”

“So you admit he’s difficult to work for?”

“Damn near impossible.”

“But that has to be an act. He’s not actually that mean in real life, is he?”

How can he be? Who has the energy to tackle world domination every single day of their life?

“I’ll just say this…” She flips a page of her magazine and points down. “The harder the shell, the softer the heart.”

Wow. Patricia. Who knew she had such a way with words? It sounds like something that should be printed on an inspirational poster or something. Then I glance down and see she has, in fact, stolen the phrase right off an embroidered pillow in her magazine.

Whatever.

“So you think he’s a softie deep down?”

She glances up at me over the brim of her glasses. “He’s gotta be, don’t you think? To do what he does for these kids day in and day out? Not to mention the stuff he’s got going on with that grant.”

“What grant?”

She shakes her head. “You’ll have to ask him about it. I don’t know all the details.”

Then she pointedly returns her attention to her magazine and goes right back to reading, so I thank her and make myself scarce.

I can’t stop thinking about her assessment as I eat lunch. It’s true: Dr. Russell usually operates on three children a week, which means he’s already impacted hundreds of lives in his short career.

He can’t be all bad.

He can’t be the villain everyone thinks he is.

There’s a text from Cooper waiting for me when I check my phone in the locker room after work.

He sent it hours ago when I was still in surgery. I feel bad for making him wait so long for a reply.

Since my fingers would fall off if I attempted to explain the entire portfolio of emotions I feel for Dr. Russell, I condense it.

He and I text back and forth into the evening. It feels good that he seems to be pursuing me, but I’m not really all there yet. I have no idea how long he’ll be in Cincinnati, not to mention, I’m not sure I’m even in a good place to be dating someone right now. I explain this to Josie after she sees my phone light up with his name while we’re folding laundry and demands to know every detail of our relationship.

“I’m confused—how could you be any more available? You’ve had zero dates lately. ZERO.”

I nod. “Yeah, I know that. It’s just…” I let my sentence linger because I’m not sure how to explain. Cooper is really cute and nice and wants to get to know me. But, my heart doesn’t flutter when I think about him. I don’t turn into a ball of nervous energy when I see an incoming text with his name on it. “I don’t know.” I push up off the couch. “I need to start making dinner.”

“But Cooper is still waiting for a reply!”

Ugh, this whole texting-with-a-hot-guy thing isn’t all it’s cracked up to be.

“Can you reply for me? Just don’t make me sound too eager,” I say as I start grabbing ingredients from the refrigerator for taco night.

“So I shouldn’t send half a dozen kissy-face emojis?” She smiles and tilts her head to the side like an adorable puppy when I glare at her over my shoulder. “Kidding.”

They go back and forth texting while I chop up onions. Cooper asks about my plans for the night and I tell her to be vague. He doesn’t need to know how embarrassingly nonexistent my social life is.

“I told him you were going to ‘hit the town with your girls and do body shots.’ What are body shots again?”

“Josie!”

She ignores me. “Aw, poor guy. He says he’s eating room service alone in his hotel room.”

Someone else cooking and cleaning? Sounds pretty great to me.

A few minutes later, my phone chimes with an incoming email and Josie asks, “Who’s Dr. Russell?”

My stomach falls out of my butt and I drop the block of cheese I was halfway through shredding. “WHAT?!”

Her eyes widen in shock. “Oh my god! It’s him! The hot guy from the website!”

I have never moved so fast in my life. I’m up and over the kitchen island and yanking that phone out of Josie’s hand before she has time to blink.

“Jesus,” she cries. “You nearly tore my finger off!”

My heart drums hard against my ribcage as I unlock my phone and open the email app. My fingers are covered in cheese, making my phone screen blurry, but I don’t care. He emailed me! Why? I could vomit or scream. My emotions have gone off the rails.

He’s never contacted me outside of work. This could be a small step in the right direction. My finger is shaky as I tap to open his email, and I know Josie sees it.

Then I actually read the dang thing and I’m a sad, deflating balloon. It’s just a last-minute time change for the surgery we have on Friday. He didn’t even address me personally. Three other people on our surgical team were CCed.

“What does it say?” Josie asks, grabbing a bag of cold peas out of the freezer to apply to her finger. “And why is the hot doctor emailing you?!”

“Oh…um…” I look down. “I kind of work for him now.” The bag of peas hits my chest and I stumble back like I’ve been shot. “Ow!”

“You work for him?!” she asks incredulously. “Since when?”

She picks up the peas and is about to throw them at me again when I try to wrestle them out of her hand. The bag splits and tiny green spheres spray out around us like confetti.

The two of us freeze. Her head cocks to the side as she waits for me to cave.

“Since this week,” I finally offer, sounding nonchalant. “It’s new. It might not work out.”

We both drop to our knees to start collecting peas.

She narrows her eyes in disbelief. “What is he emailing you about?”

“Boring work stuff.”

“Oh.” She’s sad about that too. “You acted like it was something else.” Her eyes jump back to mine. “Did you want it to be something else?”

“I don’t know.” I stand to toss a handful of peas into the trash so she can’t see my face. “I guess.”

“Like something personal?”

My phone pings again with an incoming text from Cooper and I jump on the opportunity to redirect Josie. While she responds to him, I continue cleaning and face the fact that there is a major difference between how I feel when I get a text from Cooper and how I felt when I thought Dr. Russell might have been emailing me about something other than work.

My excitement was through the roof. I mean, Jesus, I nearly broke my sister’s finger. I sprayed frozen vegetables across my kitchen.

I know I only care this much because of the way things are between him and me. Our working relationship feels like a volcano liable to explode at any minute. It’s like he can hardly stand me. Not only that, he’s put up a wall between us, which only makes me want to get to know him even more. It’s silly. He’s just my boss. I never cared if Dr. Lopez emailed me, but then that was a different situation entirely.

Dr. Lopez liked me. He was nice to me. He talked to me during surgery and asked me about my life.

I can’t imagine a day in which Dr. Russell tries to dabble in idle small talk. In fact, the very idea is ludicrous.

“Cooper really seems into you,” Josie notes from the ground as she sweeps up the last of the peas, her voice taking on a hopeful tone. She’s trying to lighten my mood, and it makes me angry that my mood even needs to be lightened. What business do I have worrying about Dr. Russell? It makes no sense. The last time I checked, I couldn’t really stand him, and now suddenly I’m upset he hasn’t noticed me and turned down my offer of friendship.

It doesn’t make sense. I don’t want to be his friend!

The only logical explanation is that I just want him to like me. That’s all. I want to take a pickaxe to his defenses and chip away slowly until one day he looks up and realizes, Huh, that Bailey, she’s not half bad.

It sounds like a good enough plan, so I vow to put my nose to the grindstone and get to work.

For the next two weeks, I am a model employee. I am early, I am focused, I am respectful and polite and eager to learn. Dr. Russell and I have six more cases together in which I assist him flawlessly. The nurses notice, the anesthesiologist compliments me, and the device reps confide in me that Dr. Russell has never had such seamless surgeries.

I am preparing a spot in my locker where my Employee of the Month certificate will hang. I practice in front of the mirror, trying to look the exact right combination of shocked and appreciative, but in the end, it’s laughable. I bend over backward to try to earn Dr. Russell’s respect, and everyone notices—except for Dr. Russell.

If anything, his attitude toward me has only worsened.

He’s snippy with me for no reason, angry if I make even the slightest mistake. For instance, if I take too long arranging an instrument on the device tray, or if I don’t answer him quickly enough when he asks a question, or if I have the audacity to ask for a bathroom break during an eight-hour procedure. Most surgeons would allow their assistants to take a break or even—God forbid—swap out with someone new. I thought I was making a point by sticking by him, but I guess not.

I never see him outside of the OR. He’s gone by the time I scrub out. I try to catch him in the hallways, but if he’s not in surgery, he’s locked away in his office. Patricia warns me not to bother him.

“I’ve never seen him like this. Something must be going on outside of work,” she tells me on Wednesday. “If I were you, I’d steer clear.”

I don’t take her advice.

I can’t steer clear of him. We stand across from each other at an operating table for hours on end and I’ve done nothing to warrant this sort of attitude on his part.

My work has been flawless. I’ve been a model employee. He is allowed to be quiet and professional. He’s allowed to not want to be my friend, but he is not allowed to be rude!

So, I brush past her desk and knock on his office door, cross my arms, and wait for him to let me in.

He doesn’t.

I press my ear to the door and listen for a phone conversation. There isn’t one.

“Dr. Russell, could I have a word please?”

I ensure my tone is even and calm, but still, I hear an annoyed groan followed by the creaking of a chair, footsteps, and then the door is yanked open.

He stares down at me with cool, calculating eyes. His scrubs have been replaced with a sharp gray suit. His hair is perfectly tousled. I ignore these details and focus on the important part: how much I despise him.

“What do you need?” he asks.

Right. What a lovely tone to take with your hardworking new employee.

I resist the urge to cower, and instead, I lift my chin and meet his gaze head-on. My hands are on my hips in what I hope is a power pose.

“I’d like to speak with you about my job performance.”

His brows furrow. “Job performance?”

“Yes. Is there something more you’d like from me? An even earlier start time? An even faster response time? A larger bladder?”

He doesn’t find my sarcasm amusing.

“Your work is fine.” He steps back and starts to close his door, but I block it with my foot.

“If my work is fine, why are you being so rude to me? Have you not forgiven me for being late on the first day? Because I think my work since then has shown how seriously I’m taking this opportunity.”

He looks down at my foot and then back up at me, patronizing expression firmly in place.

“Bailey, do you enjoy filing paperwork with HR? Because if you don’t move, they’re going to have a lot of questions for the both of us—namely, why I felt compelled to close your foot in my office door.”

“Oh good,” I say, throwing my hands up in defeat. “Now you’re threatening bodily harm.”

I swear there’s almost amusement shining in his gaze before he toes my foot out of the path of his door with his fancy oxford then shuts it in my face.

“What a show of professionalism, Dr. Russell,” I shout to the closed door.

As I walk away, as furious as ever, Patricia shakes her head. “I warned you.”

Things only escalate on Friday.

Dr. Russell seems more short-tempered than usual. His blue eyes are icy and hard, glaring at me from across the operating table. I have no idea what his problem is, but I’m determined to push through, to brush off his antagonizing energy and do the job he’s paying me to do—but it’s not that easy.

“Bailey, if you’re determined to take forever with the curette, I’ll hire someone else to hand it to me.”

I bite my tongue and resist the urge to sling the instrument at his face.

“I wanted to make sure it was the right size,” I say, handing it off carefully and returning my attention to my cauterization forceps.

“Well your effort was in vain. This isn’t the right one.”

YES IT IS, YOU EGOMANIACAL JERK.

“Would you like a different one?” I ask, my voice so gentle it nearly verges on being passive-aggressive.

“Yes, Bailey,” he drawls out slowly, like he’s worried I can’t comprehend simple words. “I’d like the correct one.”

The operating room is absolutely still. Sure, everyone makes a show of pretending to work, but in reality, their ears are trained on us, waiting to see just how much of his bullshit I’m willing to take.

No doubt they’re anticipating an imminent blowup, but I harness what can only be described as the patience of a saint, take a deep, yoga-worthy breath, and reply sweetly, “Of course. Let me get that for you right away.”

I think I have it. I’ve beat him at his own game by keeping my cool, right up until I turn and my elbow collides with the sterile instrument tray that was resting precariously beside me. In a flash, it crashes to the ground and metal pings in every direction. Implants scatter. Pedical screws disappear beneath the operating table.

My mouth hangs agape behind my mask.

One of the nurses gasps.

The anesthesiologist peeks out from behind his curtain and his eyes widen in shock.

Dr. Russell turns quickly to the device rep. “Do we have another sterile set?”

I swear the man’s chin quivers as he shakes his head. “Not a complete one.”

My eyes pinch closed and I brace myself for the impact. Biting words from Dr. Russell are about to rain down on me like an enemy siege. I will not make it out alive.

“Pick everything up and get it in the autoclave. Now.”

His voice is cool and precise, like the blade of a knife sinking into my gut. I yank off my gloves, fall to my knees, and start crawling around the operating room floor as quickly as possible.

Dr. Russell barks at Kendra to help him cover the patient.

This is bad. This is cry-and-plead-for-forgiveness bad.

Accidents like this happened once or twice during one of Dr. Lopez’s surgeries, but I was never the cause, and we always had a backup instrument set prepared just in case.

I really want to give in to the urge to cry, but it would only make things worse.

There is no way I will survive this. He’ll give me the axe as soon as this surgery is finished. This has to be a new record. Kirt—the sobbing giant—lasted at least a couple months. I’ve lasted a paltry few weeks.

I’m shaking as I hurry to collect all the equipment on the ground. Dr. Russell growls at the techs to help. There are half a dozen of us crawling around the operating room, and I swear if a single tear falls from my eyes I will never forgive myself. Everyone is waiting for me to crumble, but I refuse to let it happen.

I keep it together through a feat of superhuman strength. I compartmentalize my feelings and stay focused. I count the instruments and confirm with the device rep that we’ve collected everything. The autoclave only takes 45 minutes. We’re hardly delayed. The surgery finishes with flawless results, and I’m still completely numb as Dr. Russell tells me to close, pulls off his gloves and gown, and leaves the room.

I watch him go, heaving a sigh as soon as the swinging door shuts behind him.

I can’t believe how unlucky I’ve been. I’ve tried my hardest and worked my butt off, but in the end, the universe and Dr. Russell seem to be in cahoots against me.

“Bailey?” Kendra asks gently. “Are you okay to close?”

I nod. Of course.

It might be the last thing I ever do at New England Medical Center.