Subject to Change (5 page)

My words ripped out in a scream. “Could you pay attention for one frickin’ second? I care about all my grades. I have to. Med school?” I pointed to myself, only realizing after I did it what a douche I must have looked like. Even though at this point I really didn’t give a shit. “And what the hell is that supposed to mean? I work, too, Hawk.”

He snorted. “Okay, sure. But I actually do care about this class. The whole thing — not just the grade. You’re lucky I even put your name on the project since — ”

“Could have fooled me,” I snarled back. “Maybe if you showed up on time for once I’d believe you.”

Hawk’s face fell, and his eyes grew dark. “Seriously? Some of us have to worry about shit other than classes. Don’t be such a princess.”

“Don’t you start with me. You were the one who signed up for a class this early. Set your damn alarm and come in on time.”

His gaze became hard again. “I was late. Big deal. It wasn’t my fault. Not this time anyway.”

I stared at him, waiting for him to say something more. There was no way I was accepting “it’s not my fault” as an excuse.

His stare was colder than the air eddying around is. “It’s none of your business, but it was family shit, okay? I’ll make sure nothing else disturbs your precious project that you don’t give a shit about except sort of do.” He walked over to his bike and swung one leg over.

“Our project! And your idea! You’d better damn well be planning to be awesome.”

“Please,” he said. “I may be running late, but I’m always awesome.”

I rolled my eyes, and he just stood there, smirking. I pulled out my phone and flicked my gaze to him. “Give me your phone number so this doesn’t happen again.”

He hesitated for a second and then motioned for my phone. After a few taps, he handed it back to me.

Even the way he gave me his phone number was assholish.

“God, I just…whatever. Fine.” I mumbled, taking it from him as I avoided his eyes by shoving it back in my bag. “Since I don’t know what your problem actually is and it’s none of my business, please try getting your shit together just a few minutes before the next time we decide to meet.” I spun on my heel and made it five steps before a huge, freezing raindrop splashed on my head, followed in the next two seconds by a dozen more. And then, before my brain could even process it, nearly-frozen rain was slicing through the air. My thin sweater would be soaked through in barely a minute.

And I didn’t even have an umbrella. Of course this day would get worse. Of course.

“Shit!” I dug in my bag for some paper to shield my head, even though I knew it would be useless.

Hawk revved the bike. “Get on!” he called, his voice breaking up through the noise of rain slamming the ground.

“No, I’m fine!” I shouted, waving him off. Shit. I was already soaked, and I had to be at the hospital to shadow Doctor O’Donnell in forty-five minutes. I’d have to get all the way home to change and take care of my dripping hair and melting makeup first.

In a split second, the bike had rolled up on the sidewalk beside me.

“You can’t just drive on the sidewalk, Hawk!”

“Who’s gonna stop me?”

I just stared, swiping at the rain that was covering my face, numbing it from making any expression.

“Obviously, you need to go home and change before you do anything else,” he continued. “Let me take you.”

He unstrapped the helmet from his head and put it on mine. Rain streaked down over the clear plastic face plate in wildly divergent rivulets. “Come on. You don’t want to be a late loser like me.” He rolled his eyes again. It was like blank-faced and eye-rolling were the only two expressions this guy had.

But he had a point. There was no way I could be late to Doctor O’Donnell’s office. Not after last time. I looked down at my shoes, which were well-soaked by now, and nodded. His white t-shirt was drenched with rain, too, and when he leaned forward to grasp the handlebars, I saw at least six distinct muscles in his back flexing and stretching.

Holy. Shit.

More heat crept into my cheeks, and I focused on steadying my breathing.

“Come on,” he motioned, reaching back and catching my hand. At the moment his warm skin touched mine, I was mesmerized. He had to have been some kind of a magician because I swore that, as hard as I hated this guy, in that moment, I would have agreed to stay on that bike with him for the whole afternoon — our warm bodies touching and being drenched in freezing rain — without a second thought. When he gave my arm a tug — not hard, but gentle, patient — I snapped out of it. I swung one leg over the bike almost automatically. The same thrill of my front pressing up against his back rushed through me, except intensified by the rain, by the urgency, by the anger-fueled words we’d just hurled at each other. I was intensely aware of my crotch pressed against his butt, my breasts smooshed up against his muscled back.

I had to snap out of it or lust for this guy whose head I wanted to tear off would make me fall off the bike.

He flipped up the visor of his helmet and half-turned his head toward me. “Scoot forward.”

When he spoke, shivers rattled through my spine. Probably because it was cold. The rain was freezing, so I shivered. Totally normal.

Then, after one second of me not obeying, he grabbed my arm and pulled me forward, then placed my hand on his stomach.

“Hold on tight,” he said against my ear again. More shivers.

Holy. Hell.

He pulled out onto North Broad Street, and as we cruised through University City, my fingers dug into his abs. I didn’t move them and tried not to feel up what was underneath the thin, short-sleeved shirt he wore, but dear Lord in heaven, it was impossible. My unintentional first-sight suspicions about Hawk were right. Not only was he solid muscle, but those muscles were so clearly defined I probably could have drawn them by touch.

The thoughts hit me before I could stop them — how badly I wanted to scoot the shirt up and run my hands over the ridges of abs just underneath. And when I thought that, pictured his face in my head and where his hands would be traveling on me at the same time, I heated up so much that the cold rain didn’t affect me a single bit.

We couldn’t have been on that bike for more than eight minutes, but it was the hottest eight minutes I’d had in years.

Yeah, that was really sad.

When he pulled up in front of the house and the bike stopped vibrating, I tried to move my legs — and couldn’t. They were too shaky for me to even comprehend stepping down and swinging the opposite leg over. Was it the anger or the rain, the fear I’d be late or simply the closeness to Hawk?

What was this guy doing to me? Clearly, I hated him and wanted to jump him at the same time. Which totally made sense.

Even though I didn’t want my hands to leave Hawk’s stomach, I also didn’t want to add any more complexity to this thing than there already was. So I sat up straight, slowly pulling my hands back. I steadied myself with one hand on the seat behind me and hooked the fingers of the other inside the bottom of the helmet, desperate to have something non-weird to do with them.

“You okay?” he asked, looking back, eyebrows raised.

“Yeah, I just…bike legs, maybe. I feel a little shaky.”

Hawk snorted. “Most people don’t have that problem.” He dismounted the bike, kicked out the kickstand, and helped me off.

“I’m not most people.”

Hawk gave a rough, short laugh. “No, you sure aren’t.”

“What the hell is that supposed to mean?” I demanded. I had a few minutes until I absolutely had to be inside, and the rain had slowed to a trickle. I was not letting this guy get the last word in this argument, which was strange. Josephine Daly, the one who wore cardigans and flats to class and never said a mean word to anyone, would have let this conversation die long ago.

His eyes softened with a slight smile as he reached up to remove the helmet. “Well, this makes absolutely no sense. I’m pretty sure you’re an entitled little prep, and I shouldn’t like you,” he said, his fingertips brushing under my jaw and then down my neck. “But I kind of do.”

Without warning, without any indication he was going to do it besides a hard look into my eyes, he stepped forward and kissed me. His warm lips were unexpectedly soft, covering mine cautiously, and making an oasis of burning heat in the middle of the freezing rain.

I gasped the slightest bit at my heart dropping into my stomach, at the world starting to spin around me. I should have stepped back, slapped him, and threw the helmet at his feet. That’s what Josephine would have done.

But Hawk wasn’t kissing Josephine — he was kissing Joey. So instead, I pressed in. Not only that, I grabbed both sides of his face, raking my fingertips through his hair. Water poured over both of us, but when my lips parted and our tongues tangled together for two, five, ten seconds, I didn’t give a shit.

Finally, I broke away to stare at him, gasping, dizzy, lost in the insane moment that just passed. My whole body shivered, wishing it could go back and relive the most amazing kiss I’d ever had a thousand times. Hawk’s breaths were heavy and water dripped from his hair, but he just stood there, never breaking eye contact.

The smile growing on his face must have matched mine.

We stood there for two heartbeats longer. Then he said, “See you later, Josephine.”

He pulled the helmet down over his head, was on the bike in a flash, and brought it roaring to life with the flick of his fingers at the ignition.

My hand flew to my cheek. “Oh my God — the project! When?”

“You’re the one who has my number. It’s your move. ” The smile remained, his eyebrows flicked up, and then he was gone.

So much for not making things complicated.

Chapter 7

I let
the door thud shut behind me, leaning against it with my palms flush against the wood, trying to regain my sense of balance.

Holy. Shit.

Hawk had kissed me, and I had liked it.

No, I’d frickin’ loved it.

Some combination of the cold and the shock — and sheer perfection — of that kiss had set me on delicious edge, and I stayed there for long minutes, pressed to the wall, waiting for my breaths to even out.

I could have sworn Cat had some kind of best friend radar on me. Whenever we were in the same vicinity, it was like she knew and knew when I needed to see her. She came loping down the stairs a few seconds after I shut the door, giggling when she saw me. “Got caught in the rain, huh?”

But when I looked up at her, her face fell.

“Oh, honey. What’s wrong?”

“Nothing,” I said, sounding like my voice was completely detached from my body. “I mean… I don’t know. I mean….whoa.”

Cat gave a nervous laugh. “Okay, you’re gonna have to tell me more than that.”

My voice shook. “That guy in my business class?”

“Your project partner?”

I nodded.

“Oh, Jesus. What’d he do?”

“He kissed me.” My fingers flew to my mouth. It seemed like it was all a dream until I said the words out loud and felt the spot where his lips had touched mine.

Then I realized that the whole front of my body had touched all of the back of his and remembered how my fingers had rubbed over those abs…

“You’re blushing like crazy!” Cat squealed. “Do you like him?”

That jolted me right out of whatever soaking-wet, just-been-kissed stupor I’d been in. “No! No, I frickin’ hate him!”

Cat lowered her chin and raised her eyebrows to stare at me doubtfully. “Not to piss you off, Jo, but you don’t look like you hate him. You look like you can’t wait to get your hands back on him.”

I sighed, then shook my head and let the movement transfer to my shoulders. I was like a dog trying to shake the water off me, but I was trying to shake the memory of Hawk off, too. Although, I knew it wouldn’t work. My lips still tingled; my heart still thrummed; and my skin was still unable to forget the feeling of his warm, solid chest pressed against me while the freezing rain pelted us both.

My eyes caught on the clock on the far wall of the living room. “Dammit, I have to change.”

“Want me to make you some coffee?”

“Would you mind?” I asked sheepishly.

She laughed. “Just call me your own personal barista.” She grabbed my backpack and lowered it to the ground. “I’ll make sure everything in here is okay. You go change, and I’ll hand you a cup on your way back out.”

I stood on my tiptoes and kissed her on the cheek, then dashed up the stairs.

My hair looked like a rat’s nest, and my face looked even worse. I stared at my reflection in the mirror, pulling my bottom eyelids down and examining my bloodshot eyes. What was this guy doing to me?

I touched my fingers to my lips, remembering the feel of exhilarated desperation, of dying for more of him. Really being with him would not be good for me, I just knew it. He was the opposite of everything a girl like me wanted in a guy. I needed someone who could take care of me, who could keep me on track, who could be almost as focused on my goals as I was.

Now, I needed to focus.

Because hot kiss with Hawk or not, I still had to go back to Children’s to shadow Doctor O’Donnell today. Dread twisted in my gut.

A quick, hot shower did wonders for my hair, but a shiver still ran through my whole body — the same one that I felt the first time I touched Hawk.

I couldn’t believe I had a crush on a guy named Hawk. I couldn’t believe I had French kissed a guy named Hawk in the rain outside my sorority house.

Focus, Joey. You have to focus now.

It was true. I couldn’t go to Doctor O’Donnell’s office if I was off my game in any way. I took another deep breath and clenched my fists at my sides. Remember your goals, Josephine. Remember med school.

Remember Dad.

Yeah. Dad. I certainly wouldn’t want Dad to know I was spending my time in school making out with a loser motorbike-riding bartender who was always late and gave lame-ass excuses.

I pulled my hair back into a bun. The fastest option, what with the rain still pounding on the windows. I managed to find a pair of dressy black pants, gray suede heels that looked polished but I knew were comfortable, and a tailored white button-down shirt.

Just like that, I was back to being Josephine, Doctor Daly’s daughter. The person who I was meant to be. Now that I was dressed the part, I couldn’t quite figure out why there was a twisting, gnawing pit in my stomach.

After Cat handed me coffee and a protein bar, I passed off the feeling as hunger, but walking into Doctor O’Donnell’s office, it came surging back again. The same condescending half-smile was on her face, and she barely looked at me when the desk receptionist showed me into her office.

“I’m glad you’re back, Miss Daly.”

I wanted to say, “You are?” But instead I returned her tight smile and said, “Thank you,” making sure that my eyes met hers. I knew I needed to strike the right balance of brave and submissive if I was going to survive this for the rest of the semester.

“I’ve been thinking about your first day with me ever since you left,” she said, still shuffling through papers.

“You have?” My heart jumped. Maybe she felt badly about the way she had spoken to me. Maybe she wanted to change things, to let me speak to patients, reassure them. To do the stuff I had done with Theresa at the Rowland House.

The stuff I was actually good at.

“I want you to come with me on my pediatric oncology rounds today, Josephine. I think we had a bit of a misunderstanding about…how I do things here. Frankly. And I think that if you come with me, you’ll see where I’m coming from.”

The gears in my brain whirred. This was exactly what I was supposed to want to be doing. Be excited, Joey. This is what you’re here for.

But if I was supposed to be so excited, why was there a strange heat creeping up the back of my neck, and why was I suddenly so short of breath?

I forced a smile, counted my breaths, forcing them to be slow, and waited while she gathered up her papers. By the time we were headed out of her office, I felt like I could breathe again, if only a little.

Doctor O’Donnell made no conversation on the way up to the floor. I remembered how my mom, sister, brothers and I would walk up to the oncology ward to visit Dad every morning and every afternoon, before and after school. Those solemn walks framed my whole life for a year and a half. And now, with the look of this hospital so similar, I was beginning to realize they’d frame the rest of my life, too.

A girl with long, shining black hair shot through with purple streaks and a messenger bag stuffed full got on next to us. Doctor O’Donnell pressed the button for the sixth floor, then looked at the girl expectantly.

“Oh, that’s where I am, too,” she said with a soft smile. I glanced down at her bag. I could barely see the corner of a hardback picture book and the curled paper end of one of those birthday party noisemakers peeking out of the corner.

Clearly, she wasn’t a doctor. She must have been some kid’s big sister, coming to cheer them up. No one brought picture books and toys to the adult oncology ward. I smiled back at her as we stepped off the elevator.

Walking out into the hallway, I realized why the oncology ward should always be on a higher floor — sunlight. It flooded the halls and made the sterile environment seem just a bit warmer, even with the smell of the hospital cleaners and sight of the IV poles waiting at the nurses’ station flooding my senses.

Even though the murals and sunlight made it different, this floor had enough in common with dad’s oncology unit that I started fighting for air again. In through my nose, out through my mouth. I repeated it over and over until I could control the dizziness.

Our first stop was halfway down the first hallway. Doctor O’Donnell’s hand paused on the door handle as she turned to me.

“Remember,” she said. “You’re here to observe only.”

I nodded, willing the lump forming in my throat to stay back. I hadn’t even heard about this kid’s situation yet, and I was already starting to lose my shit. And I wanted to be a doctor. Get it together, Joey.

Doctor O’Donnell gave me a tight smile. “We’re on rounds, so I won’t be talking much either. That’s for my med students.”

Something in me got a little excited — I hadn’t known we’d be on rounds. This would be a preview of med school. And of me in med school.

Three people in white coats already waited in the patient’s room. Two guys and a girl who could have been me if her hair was a little lighter and a little curlier. The bed in the room was gigantic — or maybe it only seemed that way because of the size of the little girl lying in it. She couldn’t have been older than four or five, and her big, brown, watery eyes stared up at me, like maybe I could tell her something happy, somehow take her mind off the two IV ports that seemed comically large sticking out of her arm and hand. Her father sat next to her on the bed, his hand resting on her shoulder so lightly it looked like he was afraid of breaking her.

I nodded my head and gave him a sympathetic smile when I caught his eye, but his lip just sort of trembled when he looked back at me.

I knew that look. It was the look of fear. I had seen it on my mom and siblings the first couple weeks Dad was in the hospital, before we could see that the chemo was starting to work. I knew, from then, that nothing really helped, but a little bit of humanity from caregivers went a long way.

Too bad he wasn’t going to get any of that from Doctor O’Donnell. She didn’t even make eye contact with him, looking instead to her group of students.

“Go ahead, Miss Phillips. Tell us about the patient.”

The girl in the white coat nodded, cleared her throat, and looked down at her chart. “The patient — her name is Kya — ” She snuck a glance up at Doctor O’Donnell before continuing, and I couldn’t help but smile. “ — presented three days ago with complaints of eye pain. Her mother had also noticed instances of crossed eyes and a cat’s eye appearance in a family snapshot. The diagnosis was retinoblastoma, which seems to be contained within the eye with no sign of vitreous seeds. An echoencephalogram is scheduled for two o’clock and should give us further insight into the spread of any disease.”

“Thank you. And Mr. Stein, your recommendations?”

One of the guys, tall and gangly with hair badly in need of a trim, cleared his throat. “Dependent of further testing, of course.” His eyes flashed up to hers. “But depending on how far the malignancy is spread, she’ll need eye surgery at the very least. Possibly radiation or even chemotherapy for the long-term. Removal of the eye is a distinct possibility.”

The girl’s father made a strange choking noise, and Mr. Stein looked down at him apologetically, not daring to talk to him. Doctor O’Donnell glanced down at him briefly but then nodded to the students.

“Thank you. I’ll see you in the next room.” They filed out, and she motioned me after them. Just before I turned to leave, she looked at the father again. “The nurses will be along to answer your questions. We’ll know more after testing.”

And that was it. No smiles, no words of comfort, no soft hand on the child’s head.

We stopped in eight more rooms just like that, except each was a different degree of horrible. An aggressive brain tumor discovered in stage three. Bone cancer discovered when a girl fell during gymnastics and couldn’t get up. Melanoma in a three-year-old. Four cases of leukemia. I wished I hadn’t spent time beforehand learning the difference between the acute lymphoblastic type and the acute myeloid type because then my brain wouldn’t have been working through which of the kids had the greatest chance of survival.

The last room we walked into had the same huge bed with plastic-handled sides holding another little kid, too small to have to be in the hospital at all.

Just like the rest of them.

The girl was furiously manhandling a video game remote and sitting up straight, staring at the TV on the wall next to us intently. I don’t think I could have handled another listless, dying child.

And then, I noticed that beside her was Theresa, the woman I’d sat with at Rowland House.

Before I could stop myself, I broke into a grin and said, “Hi!”

She smiled back wearily at the exact same instant that Doctor O’Donnell shot me a look and the three med students stared at me with wide eyes.

“I…uh… I met Ms.…”

“Theresa. You all can call me Theresa.”

“…at Rowland House. After you asked me to drop off those files a couple days ago.”

Doctor O’Donnell’s eyebrows raised, and her chin shifted down the slightest bit. “I see. Well. Let’s hear about the patient.”

“Rachel,” I murmured, a little breathless with awe at how strong this little girl was already proving herself to be.

“Um,” the other guy said. “The patient is seven years old and presented with acute pain in her arm and a recurring fever. A lumbar puncture revealed the presence of leukemia. She’s had her first three days of chemo — ”

“And getting more energy, I see?” I asked Theresa. I couldn’t keep the grin off my face. Rachel and her furious gaming were a picture of hope, at least in this little moment.

Theresa smiled again. “A little. Enough to make me stop worrying so much. At least she wants to play video games and — ”

Doctor O’Donnell cut us off. “Treatment plan?” ’

“She’ll have one round of chemo, wait till her ANC comes back up, and then do it again. If her marrow looks clean, they’ll send her home and do a yearly exam. After five years, she’ll be considered in remission.” The guy gave his own small smile to Theresa.

At that moment, a nurse came in with a rolling table. “Time to clean up your port, cutie.”

Rachel paused the game, sighed, and dropped back on her bed while the nurse came over and lifted up her shirt. I winced, and my stomach turned when I saw the still-raw skin and darkened blood surrounding the circular port. It had been so painful for Dad to have it put in, and I remembered how long it had taken for the skin to look somewhat normal around the site.