Page 3 of Obeying

"You're late," he says.

"I have other patients, Walter."

"Sure. The ones who don't give you any trouble." He shuffles forward. "Boring."

"Eyes up. Look where you're going, not at your feet."

"You're just like my daughter,” he grumbles, but follows.

"Yes, you've mentioned that."

"Always telling me what to do."

"Someone has to."

"That's exactly what she'd say too." He takes another step. "She'd also tell me to stop yapping and start moving."

"She sounds smart."

"And bossy. Like somebody else I'm looking at."

He huffs out a little laugh and keeps going, and I stay at his elbow, there if he needs me, gone if he doesn't. He gets all the way to the window at the end of the hall before he has to stop, and when he turns around, he looks so pleased with himself that something in me goes soft and aches at the same time.

This. This is the best part of my day, and it isn't even mine to do.

I'm writing his progress in the chart when the overhead pager goes off, and my body answers before I do.

Trauma activation. Incoming. Multiple injuries, ETA short.

I'm moving. Everyone is moving. The hallway narrows to one direction, and I go with it, and for the length of that walk, I'm not the woman who checks doorways: I'm just a pair of hands that know what they're for.

The bay is loud. The floor attending is calling shots and doing it well, but it's a lot: two patients off one vehicle, and the worst of them is losing color fast. Someone overhead is paging the head of trauma. The patient in front of me has a belly as hard as a board and a pressure that won't stay up, and I'm in it now, calling numbers as they drop, hanging fluids, working fast. Rigid abdomen. Seatbelt sign across the chest. Heart rate climbing because the body is trying to compensate for blood that's going somewhere it shouldn't. I know what this is.

The doors bang open, and every head in the bay turns. Someone comes through fast, already gowned, already gloved, mask up.

He takes it in one pass. I watch him do it. His eyes go over the patient, the monitor, my hands, the numbers I'm calling, and I can see the moment he arrives at the same answer I have. Then he starts giving orders, and the room falls into line.

"Hang another unit. I want the OR aware now, not in five minutes. You, pressure on that." A half-beat passes. His eyes land on me. "You, keep doing exactly what you're doing."

I don't have time to think about it. We find a rhythm, the two of us and the team around us, and it is something I forgot my body still knew how to do. I anticipate the instrument before he calls for it, and it's already in my hand, moving toward his. He shifts, and I've shifted. There's a seamlessness to it that I haven't felt in years, this clean wordless thing where the noise falls away, and there's nothing but the work and the next right move. He is fast. He is precise. He's better than anyone I've worked beside in a long time.

And for a few minutes, I forget to make myself small, because I'm too busy being entirely involved in something.

The pressure climbs, then holds. The color comes back to the patient's face by a shade. The OR team takes over for transfer, and the bay exhales—that collective drop in the shoulders that comes after the worst part passes. The man across from me peels his gloves and pulls down his mask.

I freeze. I know that face.

I knew it before he was anyone's department head. I knew it across a lecture hall and over a library table at two in the morning with our notes bleeding into each other's. I spent years training myself not to walk back into it.

Dr. Vance is already crossing to him, the relief plain on her face. "Amazing work, as always, Doctor. God, it's good to have you back. The place falls apart without you."

"It clearly doesn't," he says, glancing at the stabilized patient. "You did fine."

"Flattery. From you. I'll mark the calendar." She turns to round us up, the residents who jumped in. "Everyone, while I have you. Introductions are overdue." She tips her head toward him. "This is Dr. Logan Maxwell, our chief of trauma. You're on his service now. He's your attending."

Logan.

His gaze moves over the group, unhurried, that same composure I remember sitting on him like it was tailored. It passes across me without catching. Or it catches for half a second and lets go. I can't tell, and I hate that I can't tell. I hate that some part of me is still watching him close enough to wonder. The mask is still on me. He doesn't know.