Chapter 6: Romors

There's a specific kind of silence at Cedars-Sinai before the hospital day really starts.

Like, around 7:30 a.m., before the residents have started panicking and the surgeons have started doing their rounds. Before the cafeteria line wraps around the corner. Before the fluorescent lights fully commit to being the most depressing color known to man. There's this lull where the building just exists, and you can hear a coffee machine somewhere on the third floor doing its slow, defeated whirr.

I know this because I was standing in the lobby at 7:45 a.m. on a Thursday in October, holding a small paper bag I didn't want to be holding, feeling like I had just shown up to a job interview I didn't apply for.

PT appointment. Not with Aiden. With a woman named Linda, recommended by everyone, pleasant, official, very into resistance bands. The appointment was for eight. I had arrived twenty minutes early because I am now the kind of person who is pathologically on time to things that might let her see a man she doesn't have a relationship with, technically or otherwise.

I had also, in a moment of weak character at home, put on a small amount of mascara. And a shirt that wasn't a hospital ghost sweater. And I had tucked my hair behind one ear in a way that said, hopefully, I am a serious patient who did not spend the morning thinking about a sticky note.

I had not convinced myself.

The elevator opened. I got in. The fourth floor was quiet. Two nurses I didn't recognize were at the station. They glanced at me. Glanced at each other. One of them clicked something on her computer very slowly.

"Hi," I said, in my best I am not here for a man voice. "Emma Park. Eight o'clock with Linda."

"Have a seat."

I sat. I opened my phone. Sophie had texted me five times in the last twenty minutes. The first four were variations of DID HE TALK TO YOU? The fifth was simply Emma. with the period. Which is, in Sophie, the most serious punctuation in any language.

I didn't reply. Because there was nothing to report. He had texted "I know".That was the last thing. That was the long and short of it.

But the nurses.

I was trying not to eavesdrop. I really was. I have spent a lot of my life trying not to eavesdrop on medical professionals. It's a skill most adults develop around age eleven.

Two nurses by the coffee station. The one I'd seen the day of the coffee. The other one I hadn't.

"Did she get the flowers?"

"Apparently the florist remembered the address. Sent to the house. With the Cedars-Sinai bag."

"Dr. Black?"

"No other surgeon orders birthday roses, Tanya. Yes. Dr. Black."

"Same Aiden Black who's on the cardiac service this week? Who did a six-hour surgery yesterday?"

"The very same."

"And he sent flowers to the girl from the 405?"

Tanya sighed. She had a coffee in her hand. She did not deserve the coffee she had.

"It gets worse. Apparently he, and I cannot confirm this, apparently he texted her. At night."

"Aiden?"

"At eleven forty-something."

"On a Tuesday?"

"On a Tuesday."

"He doesn't text. He doesn't even answer his own phone. His own mother texts him through me."

"My point exactly."

"Patient 402?"

"That's her."

I love being referred to by my chart. It's my favorite thing. I love that I am Patient 402 in a love story being narrated by two women with cold coffees on a Thursday morning.

I kept my eyes on my phone. Pretended not to hear. Pretended I was reading something. Pretended my heart wasn't doing eleven things at once.

My name got called at eight exactly.

Linda was nice. Linda was, in fact, the most aggressively normal human being I'd met in years. Mid-fifties. Pilates-fit. The kind of person who uses the word mindful unironically. She put me on a mat, stretched me, asked about my ribs, gave me two resistance bands, and told me that within a month I'd be hiking Runyon Canyon.

I hated Linda, actually. She was too peaceful. I was not peaceful. I had no peaceful. I had been awake since 06:00 a.m. staring at the bottle of sunscreen on my kitchen counter.

SPF 50. Don't burn. -A.

He knew.

He knew that I'd gotten a little sun on my walk yesterday. I hadn't told him. I hadn't texted him. I hadn't said a single thing about the walk, because I didn't think it was a thing. Some people get sun on their face. It's L.A. The sun in L.A. is the sun in L.A.

But apparently, somewhere, Aiden Black had noticed.

How? How do you notice that about someone who is not your patient anymore, who you haven't seen in a few days, who shows up to a PT appointment three rooms away from your office? How do you know enough to send sunscreen?

I didn't have an answer. Linda smiled at me. I smiled at Linda. We did more resistance band work. My ribs were cranky. The scar above my eyebrow was cranky. My brain was the crankiest.

"Your form is excellent," Linda said brightly, like she was talking to a child who had spelled cat correctly for the first time. "Now let's do some light cardio."

"Oh god."

"Stationary bike. Three minutes. Easy."

Linda talked me through a stationary bike routine like it was a guided meditation. I pedaled at the speed of a grandmother. I counted the ceiling tiles. I wondered if it was possible to die from staring at a doorway too hard.

I was not staring at the doorway.

I was not.

Then I was.

Because at the end of the hallway, just past PT, walking with that fast calm stride that only surgeons have, was Dr. Aiden Black.

Tall. White coat. Navy scrubs under it. A face that looked like it hadn't slept since Sunday. He had a chart in his hand and was talking to a resident, low and quick, and they were moving toward the elevator.

He was in full surgeon mode.

He didn't look up.

He didn't glance at PT.

He walked past the door like it wasn't a door. Like I wasn't behind it. Like Patient 402 didn't exist.

For one stupid second I thought he'd look. Like in those movies where the main character always turns at exactly the right moment. The look. The glance. The slow turn. The flinch. The oh hello again.

Aiden Black did not look. He walked past and got in the elevator.

I pedaled a little faster. My ribs objected. The resident said something I couldn't hear. The doors closed.

Linda smiled at me gently. "Doing great, Emma."

"Yeah," I said to the bike. "Doing great."

PT finished. I packed up. I was supposed to go straight home. I had a Lyft waiting. The Lyft was probably annoyed.

I walked back into the PT room because I'd left my phone on the chair.

On the chair.

Next to the chair.

There was a small paper bag. White. Compact. The kind of bag a hospital gift shop puts around a single item. I hadn't noticed it earlier. I was certain Linda hadn't put it there. I'd walked past that chair three times during PT.

I opened it.

Inside was a single bottle of sunscreen. SPF 50. Unscented. The exact same brand the nurses had told me to use on my scar.

There was a sticky note on the front. Yellow. Blocky handwriting. Tilted slightly to the right.

SPF 50. Don't burn. -A

I stared at it for what felt like a long time but was probably four seconds. My heart did something that isn't medically advisable. My hands were shaking slightly. I was holding a bottle of sunscreen and a sticky note and I was completely, catastrophically sure of two things:

Number one: nobody at this hospital knows I got a little sunburn yesterday.

Number two: nobody at this hospital saw me leave the building on Tuesday smiling at my phone for eleven minutes.

But Aiden did.

Somewhere, somehow, Aiden had noticed.

I sat down on the chair. The PT room was empty. The resistance bands were coiled. Linda was chatting to someone at the front desk. The hallway outside was quiet.

I texted Sophie. One message. No question mark. No explanation.

He was watching me.

The reply came back in three seconds.

EMMA.

EMMA.

WHAT?

WHAT DO YOU MEAN HE WAS WATCHING YOU.

WHAT DOES THAT MEAN. TALK TO ME.

I put the phone down. I picked up the sunscreen. I picked up the sticky note. I sat on the chair for a very long time, holding them, and I didn't text her back.

Because what would I say?

What would you say, when a man walks past your door without looking, and then quietly, without telling you, makes sure you have the right sunscreen?

I read the note one more time.

SPF 50. Don't burn. -A.

My chest did the thing again. The thing it had done the first day, when he had said don't die on me. The thing it kept doing, every time, because Aiden Black kept thinking about me.

I put the note in my pocket. Took the sunscreen. Picked up my phone.

I would not reply to Sophie yet. I would take a Lyft home. I would sit on my couch. I would read I know one more time.

And I would figure out exactly what to do about the man who was watching me like I was a small, very specific problem he hadn't decided how to solve.

To be continued...