With that, Carter flies out of the room only to return two minutes later, gowned and gloved up, he gets into position and immediately takes over, working at lightspeed. I step back, ready to go scrub in when Carter stops me.
“I’ve got this. You can either watch or go check on your intern.”
I blink rapidly at him, trying to make sense of what he just said. “You don’t want my help?”
“That’s what I just said.”
Heat crawls up my face. What the fuck is going on? This goes way beyond punishment. This is exactly what I was afraid of. Every bit of it. We had sex and now we’re this. Angry and avoiding each other and fucking with my career.
There are four other people—including the patient who is not fully sedated—in this room, so I can’t exactly start the fight I’m itching to start in here. Not only that, everyone is now staring at me. He just completely humiliated me in front of everyone.
Without another word, I spin on my heels and march out of the room, fuming.
I snap off my bloody gloves, throwing them into the biohazard waste bin and slamming the lid shut. Then I start vigorously washing my hands at the scrub sink, banging around and stomping onto the pedal.
Once I’m all cleaned off, I wait. Only, I don’t want to wait here and face everyone else who already saw our little performance, so I sign out all my patients before heading toward his office, knowing that his shift ends in ten minutes, and he’ll come here next.
“Grace?” Dylan comes running up beside me. “Holy shit, that was intense. Why aren’t you in the OR?”
“Dr. Fritz kicked me out.”
“Wow. Okay. You’ll have to fill me in, but I’m guessing Janet’s career is over. She didn’t just slip. She ripped at that woman’s damn placenta without injecting Pitocin straight into it or anything and then when the poor patient started bleeding out, Janet got woozy and collapsed, breaking her fall with her hand. I’d feel bad about it if she wasn’t such a backstabbing cunt. Whatever magic she’s been using on Dr. Fritz is working. Her name has been everywhere on that board and yours nowhere. It’s such bullshit. Anyway, I finished off all the labs. Is there anything else… girl, what’s wrong? You look like someone just bitch slapped your mama and now you’re out for blood.”
He’s right about that last part. “Go home, Dylan. We’re done for the day but be ready to scrub in tomorrow for surgery. After today we’re going to officially be off scut.”
“Oh shit,” he gasps when he realizes the direction I’m headed, walking briskly beside me, trying to keep up. “You’re about to kill a Fritz, aren’t you?”
“That’s the plan.”
“I’m going to run away now for fear of my career, but if you need help hiding the body after he’s already dead, I’m your man so just text.”
I’d smirk at that if I wasn’t so fired up. “Will do.”
Dylan scurries off just as I reach Carter’s door testing the handle. Locked. I inwardly roll my eyes. Like he has anything in here that anyone would want to steal. So arrogant.
I spin around, pressing my back into the wall beside the door, crossing my feet at the ankles and my arms over my chest. I hate standing here waiting for him. I’m playing into him. Giving him what he’s after. But he just upped the ante in that OR and I can’t let that stand.
But as the minutes tick by, I start to grow restless. I could just ambush him at home, but something that’s this important, something that’s work-related, feels like it needs to be hashed out here. Not there.
And for real, I seriously need to start searching for a new place to live.
Just as I’m about to say screw it and leave, he strolls in my direction. He’s showered. The bastard showered and changed his clothes.
“I was wondering if you’d still be here waiting for me,” he drawls.
And wow, he seriously has no idea what’s coming for him. I don’t appreciate being made to feel trivial. Like my time and my words and my feelings aren’t important. Like my work isn’t valued.
“In fact, I’m shocked it’s taken you this long to seek me out.”
“You arrogant motherfuck—”
“I’d watch your mouth, Dr. Hammond,” he cuts me off sharply. “You’re speaking to your attending in the halls of the hospital you work in.”
I push off the wall, standing up tall, fury leaking from every pore. “Dr. Fritz, with all due respect, you’re a real asshole of a boss. And the crap you’ve pulled this week is not only uncalled for, it’s unprofessional. As much as I’ve valued the experience and training you’ve provided me in this last year, you should know that tomorrow morning first thing I will be going to my residency adviser to request a transfer to another attending.”
“Good,” he says, calm. Cool. But beneath that façade, his eyes are burning embers on the brink of igniting.
“Good,” I parrot in utter disbelief.
“Was I unclear? I said good. As much as I will miss being your primary attending and instructing you in the OR, I am not sorry to lose you as someone I teach and evaluate.”
I’m stunned. And hurt. So hurt my body reacts physically to the assault of his words.
I open my mouth, wanting to spew a thousand nasty things at him, but the sting of his brutal rejection cuts me out at the knees. In my entire professional career, I’ve never been reduced to tears—and let me tell you, doctors eat their young without remorse. It’s life and death and coddling and holding your feelings in their palm is not something that happens. It’s The Hunger Games meets medicine when you’re an intern and young resident.
But Carter looking at me this way—utterly apathetically—telling me these things—without a hint of remorse or regret—it absolutely guts me. And I have no one to blame but myself.
“Sleeping with you was the worst mistake I’ve ever made.”
With that, I plow past him, slamming my shoulder into his arm as hard as I can so I don’t sob.
I can’t go home tonight. I can never go back there again. What do I do now? I have nothing. Everything around me is tearing apart at the seams, inch by inch, my life is unraveling. I don’t even know if my residency adviser can switch me. I was pulling that out of my ass, hoping Carter would crack and soften and I’m so stupid.
Carter Fritz doesn’t crack or soften.
He’s a—
A scream wrenches from my mouth as I’m suddenly lifted off my feet, swung wildly through the air, and dropped unceremoniously with a hard oomph onto Carter’s shoulder. Right here in the middle of the damn hallway in the middle of the goddamn hospital.
“What the hell do you think you’re doing?” I cry out, slapping at his back since that’s all I’ve got to work with. Who the hell throws their resident over their shoulder fireman style in the middle of an argument?
He doesn’t answer. He just unlocks the door to his office and storms me inside, flipping on the lights as he goes, and shutting the door behind us with a swift shove of his foot. Papers go flying across the room as he clears his desk of them, slamming me down on my ass with an unforgiving thud.
“You total asshole!” I fume. “I cannot believe—”