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“Ten a.m. Why?”

“Because I really, really, really want to keep you up late tonight,” Ainsley answered.

***

Ainsley was done by four o’clock that afternoon. The surgery could not wait. The patient, a Crohn’s disease sufferer, was not in the best of health even looking past the Crohn’s and so Ainsley did not want to risk delaying. Quite frankly, the colectomy was only going to be a stopgap measure. The female patient, pushing sixty, needed a lot of other issues addressed, which Ainsley went over with the family after the operation was complete and the patient was in recovery.

As usual, she wished she could look forward to spending the time following up with the family, making sure her recommendations were followed and her concerns addressed. But she was not a small-town country doc who would run into these people at the grocery store one day. She was a top-ranked surgeon in one of the biggest hospital systems in the United States. She literally had to just rely on most of her patients taking responsibility for their own care once she was done with them in the OR. There were follow-up visits, of course, to make sure her patients were healing properly from whatever surgery she had performed for them, but once those were done, Ainsley had no control over what those folks did next for their own well-being.

In the female staff locker room, she changed out of her scrubs, putting them in the laundry basket. They’d be cleaned by the laundry service and returned to her pre-op locker in

the surgical prep room. She put her favorite pair of Crocs, which she wore for all her surgeries, in her locker and put her Skechers back on. Just then, her phone chirped.

Here!

Ainsley smiled. Rachel.

She tapped out a reply stating that she’d be downstairs in no more than ten minutes. She had already dictated her post-op notes after meeting with the family earlier, using the small digital voice recorder in her office. Her assistant, Kyle, would get those input into the computer on Monday. This meant that her work here was done and she was free to go.

“Great work today, doctor,” Famke, one of the new med school interns said, coming into the locker room.

“Thank you,” Ainsley said. Famke and some other interns had been allowed to observe the operation from the viewing gallery today. Normally, Ainsley would have spent a few minutes chatting with the young woman, asking if she had any questions about what she’d seen but Ainsley was anxious to get downstairs to Rachel. Nonetheless, her sense of mentorship kicked in.

“Listen,” she said, stopping as she headed toward the exit, “are you considering a surgical residency?”

Famke nodded.

“Yes, ma’am,” she said.

Ma’am?

Ainsley groaned inwardly. Was she a “ma’am” already? She supposed she was to someone still in med school.

“Are you here on Monday?” Ainsley inquired.

“Yes, ma’am. I’ll be doing rounds with Dr. Jefferson.”

“Great,” Ainsley said. “If you have any questions about today’s procedure, come find me if you have time.”

Famke’s face lit up.

“Thank you so much, doctor! I will!”

“See you then.”

She hurried out of the hospital, hoping no one else would stop her.

“Quickly!” she exclaimed to Rachel, getting into the Tesla. “Drive before someone needs me to pop a zit for them!”

Rachel, laughing, put the car in gear and guided the car out of the parking lot and toward the nearest street.

“Yay! You brought the chocolates!” Ainsley said, noticing the boxes on the car’s backseat.

“Hello!” Rachel said in a teasing voice. “What else were you planning on having for dinner tonight?”

As they drove, Ainsley was thrilled when Rachel kept her hand on her leg. Earlier, once today’s procedure had been completed and her mind had been free to consider other, non-medical things, Ainsley had started worrying that perhaps Rachel, having had much of the day to herself, would reconsider her foray into lesbianism and want to go back to a platonic friendship.

But when they stopped for a traffic light, Rachel leaned over for a kiss. It was passionate and yearning and she only pulled away when the car behind them honked because the light turned green.