Chapter 4: Both

I don't know how long we both stayed crouched.

Long enough for the fluorescent light above us to flicker into a slightly different shade of bureaucratic white. Long enough for my ribs to remind me that crouching was, in fact, a thing I wasn't cleared for. Long enough for the sticky note to sit on the floor between us like a small, polite bomb.

He moved first.

He picked up the note. Slowly. Like he was giving me exactly enough time to look at it again, or to look at him, or to do neither of both. Then he folded it once and slid it into the front pocket of his white coat. The pocket that said Cedars-Sinai, Department of Surgery. The pocket where a man's wallet and a folded piece of paper and a small cracked piece of his dignity all sat together.

He stood. I stood. We were very close. He didn't step back.

"I'll see you out," he said.

"Okay."

He didn't say sorry. He didn't say forget you saw that. He didn't say anything at all. He just gestured at the door and I walked through it because my body has only one setting in these situations, which is follow the man and overthink later.

The hallway was quiet in the way hospitals are quiet when something is happening that everyone is politely ignoring. Two nurses at the station looked up when we came out. Looked back down. Looked back up. Then at each other. The universal L.A. hospital sign language for we are going to talk about this in the break room in about thirty seconds.

Aiden kept walking. I kept walking. Our footsteps made different sounds against the linoleum. Mine was the soft tap of sneakers that were not made for this. His was the quiet thud of shoes that probably cost more than my rent. We didn't talk. The silence was loud enough to have a weather forecast.

He stopped in front of the elevator. Pressed the button for me. Didn't look at me.

"Dr. Black"

"Ms. Park."

"The note."

"Don't."

He looked at me then. Not at my chart. Not at my file. Not at any part of me that was clinical. He looked at me, and for the first time since I'd met him, his expression was doing something I couldn't file. Annoyed? Embarrassed? Tired in a way that wasn't about his shift?

The elevator doors opened.

"Thank you for the appointment," I said, because that was the only thing a person could say when their brain was already halfway home drafting a seven-page text to Sophie.

"You're welcome."

The doors closed.

He stood there in the hallway. I watched through the gap as it shrank. He didn't move.

I think he ran his hand through his hair once, but I can't be sure, because the doors shut.

The lobby was bright and loud compared to the fourth floor. Tourists arguing about where the gift shop was. A guy in a Dodgers cap yelling into his phone about a flight. A small child screaming his opinion about a lollipop.

I stepped outside.

The L.A. sun hit me like an oven door opening. Ninety-two degrees. The kind of clean, dry warmth that makes you remember why everyone in this city is so weirdly tan. I squinted. The parking garage was fifty feet away. The walk felt long because I was moving slow, partly because of my ribs and partly because my entire brain was buffering.

I had almost made it to the crosswalk when I heard his voice.

"Ms. Park."

I turned.

He was standing in the doorway of the building. Still in scrubs. Still in his white coat. Still holding the door open for someone behind him, except there was no one behind him. Just air. Just him, holding the door open, looking at me like he hadn't meant to call out but had anyway.

I walked back. He didn't move. He just looked at me for a second too long.

"What are you doing for your birthday?"

"My birthday?"

"Yes, tomorrow."

It was tomorrow. It was literally tomorrow. October fourth. I had forgotten. I had completely forgotten my own birthday because I had been busy almost dying and then being professionally unbothered by a tall man with good bone structure.

My mouth went dry. My brain sent me a text that just said DO NOT SAY ANYTHING STUPID.

"Nothing," I said.

He blinked. "Nothing?"

"Nothing. Lying around. Watching something. Eating ice cream. Standard almost-thirty stuff."

He didn't say anything for a second.

Then he looked away. Looked back. His jaw did the thing.

"Don't," he said.

"I'm sorry"

"Don't do nothing."

And he turned. And walked back inside. And the glass door closed behind him. Just like that. Like he hadn't just broken every professional rule there was, and I wasn't standing on a Los Angeles sidewalk trying to remember what year it was.

I got home.

My apartment in Koreatown was on the second floor of a building with a creaky stairwell and a neighbor who played cello at odd hours. I dropped my bag on the floor, my keys on the counter, and myself onto the couch.

I didn't move for ten minutes.

Then I picked up my phone and called Sophie.

"TELL ME EVERYTHING."

"He..."

"DON'T YOU DARE SKIP A DETAIL. Was he there? Was he hot? Did you faint?"

"He was there."

"And?"

"And he called me Emma when he thought I wasn't listening."

"What."

"And he remembered my coffee order."

"What."

"And... Sophie, sit down, there's more he held up an exam room for me, and there's apparently a sticky note in his handwriting in my file that says"

"WHAT?"

"Check on her birthday."

Silence.

"Emma."

"Yeah."

"Emma Park."

"Yeah."

"That man is down bad."

"I KNOW."

"What did you do?"

"I asked about his tan line."

"OH MY GOD."

"I asked if he was divorced, Sophie."

"EMMA PARK YOU ABSOLUTE"

"He said yes. Then he walked me out. Then he asked what I was doing for my birthday. Then he said 'don't do nothing.' Then he went back inside."

"Emma. I'm going to ask you a question and I need you to take a breath before you answer."

"What."

"Do you have the coffee cup?"

I stared across the apartment.

The coffee cup from last week was on my kitchen counter. Still in its little paper sleeve. Foam heart and all. I had absolutely been planning to keep it forever and absolutely not been planning to tell anyone about that.

"It's on the counter."

"And you're going to throw it away?"

"No."

"Good. Don't."

"Don't what?"

"Throw it away. Replay the entire thing. Tell me word for word exactly what he said."

I replayed it. Word for word. He had said don't do nothing like it physically hurt him to imagine me alone on my birthday. I had said nothing so I wouldn't tell him the truth, which was probably texting Sophie and crying about my ex while eating Trader Joe's salted caramel in bed.

I told Sophie.

"He's not a doctor," she said.

"He's a doctor."

"Real doctors don't say don't do nothing to a patient on a sidewalk, Emma."

"He's an exception."

"He's a man who is down bad and pretending to be a doctor."

I started laughing. I shouldn't have. My ribs screamed. I didn't care. I laughed until I cried and then I cried because laughing hurt, and Sophie was laughing too through the phone, and somewhere in the middle of it she said happy almost-birthday and we talked until she got sleepy and hung up.

I cleaned my face. Brushed my teeth. Got into bed. Stared at the ceiling.

It was 11:46 p.m.

My phone buzzed.

Unknown number. Los Angeles area code. I almost didn't open it.

This is Dr. Black. Don't drive for 2 more weeks.

I read it.

I read it again.

I read it a third time because the first two times my vision kept blurring.

A man who does not text his patients had texted his patient. A man who called me Ms. Park in public and Emma in private had signed with his first initial. A man who had a wedding ring tan line and a sore shoulder and a sticky note had thought about me at eleven forty-seven p.m. on a Tuesday.

I opened the text.

I stared at it for eleven more minutes.

Then I started typing.

To be continued...