Total pages in book: 149
Estimated words: 146548 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 733(@200wpm)___ 586(@250wpm)___ 488(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 146548 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 733(@200wpm)___ 586(@250wpm)___ 488(@300wpm)
Resting my boot soles on the leather, I dial a number and put the phone to my ear. Staring up at the car’s interior roof.
The line rings once before I hear his voice.
“I was just thinking about you,” Maximoff says.
It pummels me, and my hand cements to my mouth, raw emotion surging. I can’t speak yet. My eyes burn, and I know this is where I would say: of course you were, wolf scout. You’re obsessed with me.
“Farrow?” Concern hardens his voice. “You okay?”
I shut my eyes and drop my hand to my chest. “It’s sucking the life out of me,” I breathe out. And I tell him everything about what’s been happening.
All of it.
I knew one day I would, but I thought it’d be at the end of three years. And then I’d confess, but now it’s come sooner. Because I’m done.
I’m done.
Maximoff responds with more strength of heart than anyone could ever believe. Ever know or see. “I fucking love you,” he tells me, “and you should step back. Don’t finish your residency. You don’t need it, Farrow.”
I’d been worried that he’d apologize, stuck on a turntable blaming himself for this, and thank fucking God he’s not. Thank God.
I shift my phone to my other hand. “Maximoff…” I knew I’d end this here, and I was about to ask his feelings on that. Hell, I didn’t even need to ask. He just told me. But this choice comes with a greater cost than he might realize.
See, I’m still able to be a concierge doctor. I passed my Step 3 exam, so I’m now licensed and can prescribe medication. But… “I won’t be board-certified,” I tell him. “It means that if any of your family has to be rushed to an ER, I can’t practice medicine inside Philadelphia General.” I can’t help.
That hospital requires doctors to be in a residency program or board-certified. I will be neither.
“It’ll annoy you,” Maximoff tells me, “especially when you have to hand that task off. But Farrow, my family having serious medical emergencies like that—it might happen only a few times in your lifetime. It’s not worth three years of being beaten down and feeling empty.”
I open my eyes. The parking garage is quiet, and the Audi windows are tinted. No cameramen have found me yet. “I never imagined not being board-certified,” I admit and comb a hand through my hair while I lie down. I keep my palm on my head. “It feels like halfway.”
I don’t usually go halfway.
I go all-in.
A bed squeaks on his end of the line. He must be sitting down. “Maybe if you only loved medicine, it’d be halfway,” Maximoff says, “but I think you’re going all the way and you don’t even fucking realize it, man.”
My eyes sear, staring unblinkingly at the interior roof. I start to smile at the thought. Medicine isn’t the only thing that fulfills me. Protecting him, loving him, just being there—it’s what I live for.
I look far away. “Are you implying that I love you, wolf scout?”
“Yeah,” he says confidently. “I am.”
I smile more. “You’re not wrong.”
Flashes start glaring through the car windows. The click, click, click too familiar, and paparazzi shout my name. But I stay on my back for another minute.
“There’s a downside,” I tell him. “People will have a lot of opinions about me practicing without being board-certified.” Even if this isn’t a measure of my worth or skill as a doctor, it definitely will be to the public.
“Fuck those people,” Maximoff says.
I instantly breathe stronger. And I sit up. Phone to my ear, camera lenses pressed to the windows, I’m ready to change course. And I’m spinning his world in a new direction, but at least this one puts us together again.
29
FARROW KEENE
You want to be cremated or buried, Redford? – Oscar
He thinks he’s being witty since I’m a good twenty minutes from a lunch “date” with my boyfriend’s dad and two uncles. And sure, Maximoff will be at the restaurant too. But wolf scout is not the one Oscar thinks will grill me and kill me.
I was going to ask you the same thing since I keep shocking you to “death.” I send the text. At Joana’s confirmation—which I attended with Maximoff, no obligations in my way—Oscar admitted that he didn’t believe I’d drop out of my residency a second time. And not a lot ever surprises Oliveira.
“We’re all glad you didn’t go after the board certification,” Oscar told me. “You went full Sheryl Crow ‘If It Makes You Happy’ on us.”
I rolled my eyes and ended up smiling. It was an old inside joke about when the shit you love makes you sad. “Oliveira, reaching into archaic history.”
Oscar grinned. “I’m serving up some teenage Redford realness.” Silence fell hard after that. Both of us looking at each other and feeling the void of Donnelly at the Catholic church. Whenever Oscar says “realness” to anything, Donnelly cuts in with, because you’re the realest motherfucker I’ve ever seen.