Page 19 of Obeying

I always had a feeling Kristen Portland might kill me one day. I just assumed it'd be a pen to the heart, or maybe a well-aimed textbook to the skull. Not a pepper spray on a sidewalk outside the hospital at nine o'clock.

I'm bent over the sink in the staff bathroom, flushing my eyes with water for the third time, fairly certain I'm going blind. The burning has faded from unbearable to deeply unpleasant, which I guess counts as progress. The one time I take my glasses off. The one time. I wear them every single day, fourteen-hour shifts, back-to-back surgeries. But tonight I take them off for five minutes because my shift is over and my eyes are tired, and that's the exact moment Kristen Portland decides to commit a war crime on my face.

She's standing behind me. She hasn't stopped apologizing since she sprayed me, which was approximately four minutes ago, and at this rate, she's going to hit triple digits before I can see straight again.

"I'm so sorry, Dr. Maxwell. I really didn't mean to. I thought you were…I didn't know it was you. I'm so, so sorry."

"You've said that."

"Because I mean it. Are you okay? Can you see?"

"Unclear. Ask me again in an hour."

I straighten up and turn around. Her face tells me I look terrible. My eyes are red, swollen, and watering like I've just watched a twelve-hour marathon of sad movies. She presses her lips together. Too late. The laugh escapes before she can catch it. She immediately slaps her hand over her mouth.

"Sorry. I'm sorry. It's not funny."

"Of course not. At least try harder."

"I am. It's not funny. I'm not laughing."

She is. She's trying so hard not to, and she's failing completely. Her shoulders are shaking and she's biting the inside of her cheek. She looks completely different from the woman I found in that elevator a few hours ago—relaxed, actually here, in this moment, not somewhere else. If getting pepper-sprayed is what it took to make her laugh like this, then maybe it was worth it.

Maybe. I look at myself in the mirror.

A very small maybe.

"I'll make it up to you," she says, pulling herself together. "I'll buy you dinner. Anywhere you want."

"If your plan was to ask me out, Portland, you didn't have to pepper-spray me first. A simple question would've worked."

Her laugh cuts off. She goes chin up, crosses her arms, and narrows her eyes at me. It amazes me how her mood can shift so fast, but I'd rather take this than the one I saw earlier.

"That's not what I…I'm being serious. Let me make it up to you."

"Fine. Tonight. Before my corneas dissolve."

"Tonight?"

"You just assaulted me with a chemical weapon, Portland. I think dinner tonight is reasonable."

She opens her mouth, closes it, then shakes her head like I'm being ridiculous. "Fine. I know a place."

She leads me to a Mexican restaurant a few blocks from the hospital. It's small, a little cramped, with mismatched chairs and string lights along the ceiling and a chalkboard menu that someone clearly rewrites every day by hand. Not the kind of place I'd pick, but exactly the kind of place she would.

"I come here after long shifts sometimes," she says as we sit down. "The food is good, it's never crowded, and they don't rush you."

"Important criteria."

"When you've been on your feet for fourteen hours, yes."

She orders like she hasn't eaten real food in a week. Tacos, rice, a side of guacamole, and then she adds queso at the last second, like she just remembered she's allowed to enjoy things. I order something simple, and she looks at my plate when it arrives and says, "That's it?"

"I'm a simple man."

"You're a boring man. A danger to fun."

"Says the woman who just committed a crime against me."