Ren had an hour free before evening rounds, and when she stopped into the OR lounge, looking for Dani or Zoey or any of her residents, she found it empty except for a med student asleep in a chair in a position likely to cause permanent nerve damage. Neither Dani or Zoey were scrubbed—she’d already scanned the OR board to see what cases were still running. With a sigh, she dropped onto the couch, pulled out her phone, and checked to be sure she hadn’t missed any pages. Nothing. She knew what she would have done at a time like this a week ago. She would have checked with Axe to see if they could get a game in progress.
And why not now? Some things had changed in very important ways, but reminding herself of the logic she’d argued with Dani, fundamentally they were still who they’d always been. They knew each other now on many different levels, experienced each other intimately, but given time, they might have ended up in the same place. She smiled and imagined how that might have come about. All in all, she was glad they’d fast-forwarded. For now, though, she enjoyed playing their game. She opened Raven’s message app and texted.
Any chance you’re free for a game?
Axe texted back right away. I wish. You know that project I mentioned? I’m working on it.
Oh, points for you. How’s it going?
Slowly.
Ren hesitated. Crossing boundaries was still something new, and maybe Dani felt differently than she did. Her next question would mean one more barrier coming down between the way things had always been and the way they might become. But that would be Dani’s choice, and Dani couldn’t choose if she didn’t give her the chance.
Want company?
This time, Axe didn’t answer right away.
Ren tugged at her lip.
Yeah I’d really like that. Sorry about the game.
We can always play some other time.
For sure.
Smiling, Ren texted, Be right there.
She hurried through the hospital, across the bridge to the research building, and down the hall to the conference room. Dani was in her usual place, but the stack of charts that had sat beside her last time had dwindled to almost only a few.
“You’re making progress.”
Dani pushed back in her chair. She was in scrubs, like Ren, and her hair was ruffled from what Ren suspected were many frustrated thrusts of her hand through her sleek dark waves. She looked a little tired and awfully sexy.
“I don’t know when it happened,” Ren said, “but sometime in the last little while I’ve started thinking about sex every time I see you.”
Dani grinned. “I can do this stuff some other time.”
Ren held up a hand. “Nuh-uh. We have to learn restraint.”
“We do? Why?”
Dani sounded so honestly perplexed, Ren laughed and kissed her. “Because we both have work to do—I still haven’t made sign-out rounds yet.”
“All right. But I’m not letting you forget what you just said.”
“I won’t forget. So, tell me where you’re at with this.”
Dani sighed. “I’ve got everything extracted and organized, but I’ll be damned if I know quite what to do next.”
Ren pulled out a chair next to Dani and sat down. “Tell me your research questions again. What is it that you’re trying to show?”
Dani gave her a long look. “Okay.”
She talked for a few minutes, and Ren automatically sorted information, formulated questions, mentally organized the data. When Dani was finished, she said, “Can I see what you’ve got so far?”
“Are you sure you want to be helping on this?”
“It’s an interesting question,” Ren said. “The study hypothesis, not yours. And yes, I’m sure. If you want my opinion, that is.”
“Are you kidding?” Dani snorted. “You’re the research expert, but you know why I got into the project in the first place, right?”
“I know,” Ren said. “I’m not sure you need it to be competitive for the Franklin. It’s mostly a clinical award. And you’re a really, really good resident, Dani.”
“But not all that well-rounded,” Dani said without rancor, “and not that well known.”
“Well, neither am I. And you know what,” Ren said, her words coming as almost as much of a revelation to her as they probably would be to Dani, “I don’t really care about the Franklin. I thought I did—I thought it would say something about who I was or maybe whether or not I belonged.” She shook her head. “Now that I think about it, that sounds a little crazy. It’s not that I don’t think the award’s important, I do—at least what it stands for. And it’s not that I wouldn’t like to be recognized and be rewarded for doing well, because I would. But it won’t prove what I thought it would.”
Dani studied her for a long time without saying anything.
“What?” Ren said.
“I think I’m falling in love with you.”
Ren took a deep breath and then couldn’t find any words. She took Dani’s hand where it lay on the table, squeezed, and didn’t let go as their fingers locked. “That’s…huge.”
Dani smiled, a soft, nearly shy smile. “Yeah, it pretty much is. I’m not trying to scare you away.”
“I’m not scared,” Ren said quickly. “Just tell me, is that a good thing for you?”
Dani leaned across the space between them and kissed her. “It’s a very very good, amazingly good, totally completely good thing.”
Ren laughed. “Okay, that sounds pretty definite.”
“That too.”
“I don’t know if I know what love feels like,” Ren said, wishing she’d thought of something else to say. Like how Dani’s words and the look in her eyes opened up places inside her that brimmed over with excitement and happiness. But what mattered even more was that Dani not get hurt—that she not hurt her when she didn’t mean to.
“There you go, being honest again,” Dani said.
“I’m sorry.”
“Don’t be. Don’t ever be. But I’m pretty sure you’ll know when you are. In love, I mean.”
“I know I wish we weren’t here right now, that I could be as close to you as I possibly could be, maybe even inside your skin.” Ren took a deep breath. “I want to touch all the places inside you that you touch in me.”
“Ren,” Dani said, her eyes darkening in the way that Ren knew meant desire, “that’s about the only thing you ever need to say to me to make me happy.”
“I think I’d rather show you. I have to make rounds in twenty minutes, but then I’m not on call,” Ren said. “Right now, though, maybe we should look at your data.”
“I’m not on tonight either. So will you come home with me?”
“Yes,” Ren said instantly.
Dani let out a long breath and turned the computer toward her. “Then let’s do this.”
Focusing on the numbers helped Ren clear her head of the swirl of emotions, and after she scanned the columns of data, she looked at the notes Dani had made. “I think…Can I change a couple things?”
“Go ahead,” Dani said, her gaze still fixed on Ren.
“You should watch, then,” Ren said, and Dani laughed. Smiling as Dani leaned closer, Ren reordered the columns and ran a quick statistical program. “This is just a different way of looking at the data and analyzing it. I think this might—”
“Yeah, totally,” Dani said excitedly, pointing to a column on the spreadsheet. “I don’t know why I didn’t see that before.”
“You would have, it just takes practice. And I’ve been looking at this sort of thing for years.”
Dani kissed her. “Thank you! That’s really just what I needed to—”
Both their phones went off simultaneously. Ren checked hers as Dani retrieved hers.
Code red 911
Ren jumped up, and Dani slammed her computer closed.
“ER,” Dani said as they started to run.
Mass casualty alert.
* * *
Arly jumped up as the opening band hit the crescendo of their closing number. The twenty thousand fans packed into the Wells Fargo Center screamed and stomped and waved their arms in the air, bodies spilling out into the aisles and crammed into the space in front of the stage, thirty deep. She and her friends had really super tickets, way down front, and they still had to stand on their seats to see. Janie was next to her, her arm around Arly’s waist, and Arly balanced herself with her other arm around Eduardo’s shoulders. They swayed and sang and shouted with everyone else, the sound vibrating through the floor into her bones, and Billie Eilish hadn’t even come onstage yet. But the band opening the show was awesome, and everyone was already beyond excited. Arly barely registered what reverberated like a boom of thunder and figured the quick flash of light she saw toward the back of the stage was part of the show until red lights began flashing all around the perimeter of the cavernous building and a filmy gray cloud drifted over the stage.
Nothing happened for almost a minute, and then the crowd, like a threatened animal breaking cover, began to move, a tidal wave of people surging away from the stage.
“What is it?” Janie screamed, her voice nearly lost in the rising roar of the crowd, panicked now, fear replacing adrenaline-soaked elation. “What’s happening?”
“I don’t know!” Arly searched frantically for any sign of Jackie and Raymond and Zaisha. They’d jumped out into the aisle to dance and chant with all the other people in their row just a few minutes before, and now she couldn’t see them. “We need to go.”
“How?” Eduardo yelled.
Arly searched desperately for some direction. The packed aisles were out—even as she watched in horror, people fell and others ran over them as if they weren’t even there. That way was suicide. She turned on her seat and pointed to the far right end of the stage, ten rows down and fifty seats away from where they were. “There. An exit.”
“We’ll never get there,” Janie screamed.
People were climbing over the seats, pushing each other to get away from the front of the stage where the smell of smoke was more powerful now. And everyone was coughing.
“On the seats,” Arly ordered, “go on the seats!”
“We’ll never make it.” Tears streaked Janie’s face.
“Yes, we will. Take my hand.” Arly grabbed Janie’s and reached back for Eduardo’s. “Don’t let go no matter what. Go go go.”