Chapter 7 : The Warning

There's a plant next to the admin office door at Cedars-Sinai.

It's a big one. A big green ficus with shiny leaves the size of small pizzas, the kind of ornamental plant that exists in hospitals specifically so doctors can have nervous breakdowns next to it and no one sees them. I know this because I was crouched behind it at two fourteen in the afternoon on a Friday, holding a folder of PT paperwork in my hand like a burglar, learning things I did not want to know.

Let me back up.

Two days had passed since the sunscreen. Two whole days. I had spent both of them doing absolutely nothing productive. I had watered my plants. I had eaten a sandwich. I answered three of Sophie's fifteen follow-up texts and ignored the rest. I had stared at the bottle of sunscreen on my counter so many times that the SPF 50 logo was probably going to be burned into my retinas for the rest of my life.

This morning , I told myself: I am going to pick up the PT paperwork at Cedars. I am going to walk in. I am going to walk out. I am not going to look for anyone. I am not going to the fourth floor. I am not going to text Sophie. I am going to be a normal person who is just picking up a piece of paper.

That lasted about seven minutes.

The receptionist at the lobby desk had heard me say "PT paperwork" and had waved me down a side hallway I had not been down before. "Office is just down there, hon," she said. "Door on the left."

I had walked into the wrong room.

It was not the admin office I was meant to be in. It was the head of surgery's office, which was at the end of the hallway, but the door on the left was a small private conference room, and inside, two people were talking in tones that are not meant for hallways.

I should have left.

I am writing this, so everyone reading this understands that I should have left. That a normal, decent person would have backed out, closed the door, and pretended she'd never heard anything.

I didn't.

I heard a voice first. A woman's voice, clipped and senior. Dr. Monroe. Head of Surgery. I'd seen her name on the directory board. She'd been quoted in the L.A. Times once about something important. She had an air about her.

The other voice was Aiden's.

I knew his voice the way you know a song you've heard too many times. Even when it's low. Even through a door.

"Aiden, we had complaints."

"About what?"

"About fraternization. Outside contact with a patient. Texting. Personal deliveries. I'm told there was a phone message routed through the front desk yesterday about a sun. What was it? " I heard paper. "A sunscreen. Left at a PT appointment. For a patient."

I stopped breathing.

"I am your senior colleague, Aiden. I am not your enemy. But you are walking a line."

"I understand."

"Do you? You are a surgical attending. You have a reputation. You have a rank. Especially after " She stopped. There was a beat. Heavy. You could hear someone outside in the hallway. Someone typing. The elevator is going down. "Especially after your wife."

The silence that followed was the loudest thing I had ever heard in my entire life.

Aiden's voice, when it came, was so calm that it barely sounded like him.

"Understood."

"Aiden"

"I said understood, Dr. Monroe. It won't happen again."

"No contact outside of clinical settings. No follow-ups. No flowers. No texts. The complaints were specific. Names were named."

"I hear you."

"I hope so. For her sake, too. A patient's perception of impropriety can "

"I hear you."

Another silence. Long enough that I almost moved. Almost.

"Thank you for telling me."

"You're a good surgeon, Aiden. Don't ruin it."

Footsteps. A chair. A door opening on the other side of the room. Footsteps leaving.

He was still in there. I could hear him. Not moving. Not typing. Not anything. Just standing, or sitting, or existing in that particular way that men exist when they've been told by their boss that the only woman they've thought about in years is a problem.

I made a decision in that moment that I would later describe to Sophie as "physically standing up out of pure panic."

I didn't go into the office. I went back to the lobby. I told the receptionist I'd forgotten my ID and had to come back. She smiled and said, "Sure, anytime." I left through the side exit instead of the front. I kept my head down.

The Lyft ride home was twenty-three minutes long.

I spent it staring out the window with my folder of untouched PT paperwork on my lap and my phone face down in my bag.

I got home at three in the afternoon.

I did not move from my couch for two hours.

At five, I made a cup of tea and let it go cold.

At seven, I ordered Thai food and ate exactly three bites.

At nine, I texted Sophie just: I messed up.

She called within forty-five seconds.

"WHAT."

"I went into the wrong room at Cedars."

"Emma. Tell me everything."

I told her. The plant. The voices. The complaint. Dr. Monroe. Especially after your wife. The texts. The flowers. The sunscreen. No contact outside of clinical settings. She was quiet for a long time. Then she said softly: "Emma. He is in trouble because of you."

"I know."

"You didn't do anything, love. The texts came from him. The flowers came from him. The sunscreen came from him."

"I should not have replied. I should not have given him my number. I should not have smiled at him in the PT room."

"He smiled back."

"He did not smile back, Sophie, he twitched."

"It was a smile. He was just being discreet about it because he had to be."

"He's been warned. He has a wife. Had. He had a wife, apparently, who is going unnamed, and Dr. Monroe said it like Aiden needed to be reminded. He was sitting in that office after that conversation, and his voice was — Sophie, his voice was so *flat.* He sounded like someone had taken him apart and put him back together wrong."

Sophie went quiet for a second. Then: "Do you want to text him?"

"Yes."

"Do you think you should?"

"No."

"That's your answer, then."

"It's not my answer. My answer is that I'm going to text him anyway because I am a human disaster, and I don't know how to be a person about this."

"Do it."

I waited until eleven p.m. to text him. I told myself it was for his sake. I told myself it was to give the day some space. I told myself a lot of things. None of them were why I was doing it.

Are you okay?

Eleven p.m. became midnight. Midnight became one. One became two. I lay in my bed in my Koreatown apartment with the windows cracked and the cello neighbour mercifully silent, watching the text that wasn't being answered.

Koreatown at two a.m. is its own kind of quiet. The dumpling houses are closed. The karaoke bars across the street have powered down. The street sweeper went by an hour ago. There's the soft hum of the building. The fridge is doing its fridge thing. Just me, in the dark, on my side of the wall, waiting.

Two thirteen.

The phone vibrated.

I'm fine. Don't wait up. -A

I read it twenty times.

I read it twenty-one times.

Twenty-two.

Don't wait up.

He knew I was awake. He knew I'd stayed up. He knew I was checking. He had checked in on me in his surgical voice, the same voice that had said don't die on me and don't do nothing, and for a second, lying there in the dark, I thought the ceiling was going to crack.

I put the phone down.

I picked it up.

I typed out ten different replies. I deleted them all. I put the phone down again.

I am a problem, I thought. A small, loud, embarrassing problem, in the life of a man who is a good surgeon whose boss says, "Don't ruin it," like a warning shot.

I thought about a wedding ring I had never seen. A woman's name, Dr. Monroe didn't say. Something painful enough that his entire career was being held next to it like a frame around it.

I thought about SPF 50.

I thought about "I know."

I thought about a man who had walked past my door an hour ago without looking, and then quietly, without telling me, made sure I had the right sunscreen.

He had not stopped thinking about me.

He was not allowed to think about me.

By seven a.m. I had decided.

I was not going to be the reason he lost his job. I was not going to be the girl in the file with the sticky note. I was not going to let him ruin himself because a hospital hallway in Los Angeles had a plant he could hide behind.

I sat on my couch with my laptop on my knees. I opened the browser. I typed slowly. I found a clinic in Silverlake with good reviews.

I called.

"Hi," I said. "I'd like to transfer my care."

To be continued...