My Surgeon Boyfriend Treated Everyone but Me

My boyfriend was the best orthopedic surgeon in Chicago, and he was the last person to find out my leg was broken. Seven days. Surgery. Seven days on an IV. He never came once.

Not because he wouldn't. Because he didn't know. I hadn't told him. He was busy. Busy taking care of another woman's back.

On the afternoon of day seven, I was playing cards with the other patients on the floor when he called. "Where are you?" "On a work trip.

I've told you three times now." I kept counting my hand. Then his voice came through the phone, closer than it should have been. "Josephine. Look up." I looked up.

Elias stood in the doorway of my room, his face dark enough to rain. He crossed to the bed. "Why didn't you tell me you broke your leg?

Why didn't you come to Lakeshore for the surgery? Why did you lie and say you were traveling?" The best orthopedic surgeon in Chicago, grilling me like a jilted husband.

My mouth tipped up before I could stop it. "Dr. Thorne is a busy man." He'd told me more than once. He was busy. I shouldn't bring him every little thing.

I shouldn't cling. "It's nothing serious. I took care of it myself. No trouble to you." Chapter 1 The other patients scattered. A card drifted off the table and onto the floor.

He picked it up and set it on the bed without any expression at all. "Josephine.

You're still angry." Something tired crossed his face, the look of a man sick of explaining himself. "I didn't stand you up on purpose that night.

How long are you going to hold this over me?" Seven days ago was our twoyear anniversary. I'd booked the restaurant two weeks out. We sat down.

I hadn't even opened the menu when his phone rang, and he was gone in under a minute. All he left me was, "A patient needs me." The server kept looking over.

I sat there with the menu still closed in front of me, then said I wasn't eating and told them to keep the deposit. Not long after, an entertainment alert lit up my phone.

Seraphine at a redcarpet event. In the corner of the frame, half an arm. A dress shirt, sleeve rolled to the forearm.

The watch on that wrist was the one I'd picked out for him that morning. I stared at the photo, missed a step, and went down the concrete stairs at the L station. Ambulance. ER.

Surgery to clean out an open fracture and pin it back together. Then a room upstairs and an IV line running antibiotics into my arm.

By the time all of it was finished it was eleven at night, and Elias called. "I'm home.

Where are you?" I propped up my bad leg and stared at a chipped spot on the bed rail. "You went to see Seraphine today." He paused. "Seraphine threw her back out at the event.

Old injury. I couldn't not go." Last time, a bug startled her and she wrenched her back, and he drove straight there out of surgery.

The time before, the movie had barely started when Seraphine texted that standing all night at an event had her back aching. He said, "I'll take you next time," and left.

Every single time, he couldn't not go. I shut my eyes and breathed in. For a long stretch I said nothing. When I stayed quiet, he offered it like a compromise. "Okay.

Stop making a thing out of this. I'll take a day off for you later, all right? Where are you? I'll come get you." I couldn't see his face. I could picture it. Brows pulled tight.

Tired. Done with me. I laughed at myself, quietly. "I begged you for two straight weeks before you'd take one day off.

How long do I have to beg next time?" His voice cooled. "Josephine—" I cut him off, and my voice didn't move at all. "Something came up. I'm traveling for work.

You don't need to take any time off for me." Then, for the first time in two years, I hung up on him.

Now, in the room, he was still watching me. "If my college friend hadn't happened to see you here, were you going to keep this from me the whole time?" "Josephine, could you please just act like an adult and stop causing me trouble." I went still.

There was a stretch when nightmares kept me up, and I asked him to stay on the phone until I fell asleep. He said I was trouble. Trouble. Two years of that one word.

I'd been keeping a running tab on him in my head the whole time. Today was the first day I wanted to open the book and show him the total.

Chapter 2 It was my birthday and I wanted a cake he'd made himself. He said I asked for a lot. That it was too much trouble. I ran a fever and wanted him with me.

He said he was an orthopedic surgeon, not an internist, that sitting next to me wouldn't fix anything, and that I shouldn't make myself his problem.

So I learned to take melatonin on my own. I booked the anniversary dinner myself. I got myself to the doctor. The surgery this time, the hospital stay. I signed my own forms.

I filled out my own paperwork. And he was still saying I was too much trouble. Last month Seraphine called him at two in the morning with a stomachache.

He rubbed the space between his eyes exactly once, then sat up and reached for his coat. I stood in the doorway. "You're an orthopedic surgeon.

What good is a stomachache to you?" "She's not like you," Elias said. "It's bad enough that she can't get herself there. I'm driving her." "What does that mean, she's not like me?

When I need you it's trouble, and when she needs you it's just how things are?" He looked at me like I'd said something in another language. "Her parents had her late and never told her no.

She really isn't good at handling this kind of thing. Josephine, do you have to argue about this right now?" Nothing came out of me. His phone went off again.

Seraphine's voice spilled out of the speaker. "Eli, where are you? It hurts so much." "Almost there." He moved me out of his way and walked out. He didn't look back.

I hit the shoe rack going down. The pain went through my ankle and folded me in half. In the hospital room, I let my head drop and breathed out slowly.

Then I asked, because there was nothing else left to ask. "Bad timing, Dr. Thorne. They're discharging me today.

Would it be too much trouble to borrow your car?" His mouth flattened. He started to say something and swallowed it. In the passenger seat, something dug into my hip.

A tube of lip tint.

Elias blinked at it. "That's from when I drove Seraphine to an interview—" I set it on the center console and cut him off. "Then give it back to her." He stopped.

He looked at me for two full seconds. I turned to the window and didn't say anything else. Neither of us spoke the whole drive.

Once we were inside he said, out of nowhere, "Come to Lakeshore in a couple of days. I want to look at it myself." I hopped past him on the crutch. "No thanks.

Saint Anne's is fine." He caught my arm. The line between his brows dug deep.

He stared at me a moment. "I'll take the time off, okay?" "For what?" I said. "What would you even do?" His face stayed cold, but something restless ran under it. "Isn't this what you wanted?" "You don't say a word the whole drive because you want me around.

You want an apology. Fine. I'll take the time off. I'll make it up to you.

Are we good now?" Everything that had been packing into my chest since he walked into that hospital room swelled until there was no room left to breathe.

I pulled my arm out of his hand. Long breath in. Long breath out. "Elias, maybe we should—" Break up. That was the rest of it. A ringtone cut me off.

He ended the call and turned back to me. "There's an emergency surgery. We'll finish this when I get back." He took the time off anyway.

The next morning he was at the stove, making soup from scratch. Early light lay across his back and slid with every turn of the spoon. Something in me turned over.

Then the doorbell rang. Elias set the spoon down and went to answer it.

Seraphine bent, pulled a pair of house slippers out of the outermost slot on the shoe rack, and stepped into them. Those slippers had a permanent place in this apartment.

They sat closer to the door than mine did. "I heard poor Jo got hurt. I came to visit." Her hands never hesitated. Not for a second.

Chapter 3 Before I could say anything, she breathed in through her nose. "That smells incredible.

It's been forever since I had Eli's soup." "Is there a bowl for me?" Elias ladled out three. "Go sit down." I waited until Seraphine sat, then worked my way over to the table one crutchstep at a time.

A layer of cilantro floated on top. I don't eat cilantro. Three bowls. The same cilantro in every one.

Seraphine laughed. "Eli, you remembered cilantro's my favorite." She was looking at me while she said it. My hand stopped on the back of the chair.

That film of green on the surface of the soup turned my stomach. I headed for the bathroom instead. "Not hungry.

You two eat." Elias glanced up, said nothing, and passed Seraphine a lime wedge. I looked away and shut the bathroom door.

Turning around, my crutch caught the shelf, and the whole thing went down, and me with it. Elias came through the door and got me up.

He looked at the raw red spreading across my knee and went quiet. "Josephine. If you don't want Seraphine staying for dinner, you can just say so.

You don't have to hurt yourself." Everything in me stopped. A few months back, on a rainy night, I'd gone to Lakeshore with stomach pain to find him.

I'd barely sat down when Seraphine's assistant walked in. "Dr. Thorne, Sera's back is killing her. She wants to know when you're coming." Elias looked at me once and stood up.

I grabbed his sleeve. "Elias. Can you not hear me? My stomach hurts." He was quiet a second.

Then, low: "Are you faking?" I stared at him. "What?" "Are you actually sick, or do you just not want me seeing Seraphine?" "You can dislike her all you want.

She's still my patient." He peeled my fingers off his sleeve. "Josephine. Don't be difficult." The door opened. The door closed.

I sat in that chair with one hand on my stomach and one over my eyes, and it hurt enough that breathing got complicated. I went to Saint Anne's that night. Acute appendicitis.

Lying on the operating table, a heavy, quiet tiredness came over me. The kind that makes a person want to set everything down.

That tiredness was back now. "Forget it," I said. "Let's just break—" Someone knocked at the door.

It was the friend I'd made at Saint Anne's, Iris, holding up a handheld console. "You promised. I'm here to play." My shoulders came down.

I laughed, and the two of us went into the bedroom. The next afternoon Elias said he was taking me to my followup. I said sure without thinking about it.

Another silent drive, and something heavier in the air than last time. The car stopped in front of Lakeshore Memorial.

I frowned. "Wrong place." "No." He had my crutch in one hand and my elbow in the other, easing me out. "New scans.

I want to see them myself." I followed him upstairs without a word. He put the order in the system, and I went into radiology. When I came out, he was gone. A nurse told me, "Dr.

Thorne took a call and left in a hurry. He said he'd be back for you." The sky went dark with no warning at all, and then the rain came down hard.

I thought about it, then texted him. Me: [Bad weather for driving. Just go home when you're done. I'll grab a car.] He didn't answer.

I took a car home alone, wiped the damp off my fingertips, and pressed my thumb to the lock. Click. The door opened.

Seraphine stood in the living room in Elias's dress shirt, a towel over her hair, her cheeks pink from the steam. Elias was handing her the hair dryer.

Chapter 4 Both of them turned at once. I dug my fingers into the crutch. For a second there was nothing in my head at all. Elias flinched.

Something close to panic crossed his face, and he took a step toward me. I backed up fast and nearly went down. After that he didn't dare move. "Someone tailed her car.

There were people camped outside her building. She had nowhere to go, so I brought her here." "She got soaked.

Nothing happened." Seraphine came out from behind the couch like something had frightened her, long legs bare, the shirt hem cutting across them. "Eli was only worried about me.

Jo, honey, don't get the wrong idea." When she said don't get the wrong idea, the corners of her mouth went up. I was shaking. Hands, jaw, all of it. It wouldn't stop.

I turned to go. Elias ran out and caught my arm. "Jo! I swear, we didn't—" "Elias!

Enough!" I shoved him off, and my voice came apart in the middle of it. "We—" The rest of it sat in my throat. "Let's break up