Page 157 of Alphas Like Us

A blonde thirteen-year-old girl in a flower sundress nears the hostesspodium.

Dear World, I’m so damn grateful for this good luck. She needed it. Best Regards, a human who’s a bigbrother

“Holy shit,” Kinney’s eyes bug. “She’s here.” She glances at her phone. “Audrey—”

“Go fall madly in love and you must tell me everything!” Audrey hangs upfirst.

And before Kinney darts away from the booth, she stretches over Farrow and flings her arms around me in a short hug. “I’m sorry. I was the turd this time,” she tells me. And then she looks to Farrow. “But not to you. You were late.” She skips off at that, and Jack follows my sister to film Holly and Kinney greeting eachother.

I’m about to apologize to Farrow, but he’s laughing hard. “God, yoursiblings.”

I love him.I love that he loves my siblings, even when they’re emotional and wound up and taking jabs left andright.

And as his laughter fades, our hands intertwine, and I tell him, “You made it in enough time so I can beat you atbowling.”

He smiles softly, almost sadly. It fucking hurts, and I can easily fix my sister’s tiny crisis—I can try to fix anything—but I can’t even attempt to fix this. And I want to bepatient.

I need to bepatient.

If I ask what I can do, I know he’ll just say,be here.And I’m here. But it’s been over twenty hours since we last even saw each other. Those digits are becoming normal, and I can’t remember the last time his shift was under twelvehours.

“Farrow…”

I want to find the right words. To tell him it’s alright if he has to be late again. To not make promises to my little sister aboutnext time. Because it’ll feel worse for him if he breaks it. But I’m not sure how to sayanything.

And more than that, I can practicallyfeelhis fatigue, the heaviness that mounts on his chest and tries to drag him under. I want to take that weight off Farrow. So damn badly. I open my mouth to speak, but aching, strained words come out of himfirst.

“I’ll beokay.”

28

FARROW KEENE

I made a mistake.

It’s been hitting me all week. All month. Shit, possibly even the first day I stepped into the hospital. I thought I could weather it out. What’s one more day. One more week. One more year. But my boots clap along the sterile halls, and I feel my time draining away with my energy and will to keepcourse.

Pushing open the break room door with my shoulder, charts fill my hands, and I see the sofa. Instantly, I collapse on it lengthwise and kick my feet on thecushion.

Charts lie on my lap, but I don’t have any desire to finish them. I have—I glance at the wall clock—around fifteen minutes before I’ll need to check on my other patient. Unless someonecodes.

It’s been that kind ofday.

“Can’t believe he tried to shock an asystole rhythm,” Dr. Shaw says, entering the break room. The third-year Med-Peds resident heads straight for the coffee pot. “Nice catch on that intern,Keene.”

I stopped a first-year resident from trying to shock a flatline. Asystolic patients are non-shockable and won’t respond to defibrillation. And if an attending had been present, he would’ve done the same thing asme.

I can’t muster a response. I just click apen.

Do your motherfucking job,Farrow.

Dr. Shaw pours coffee. “You look beat.” He sweeps me from head to toe. “Roughday?”

I could explain to him how a simple diagnostic exam that’d normally take twenty minutes lasted an hour and ahalf.

The patient instantly recognized me and wanted pictures, wanted an autograph, wanted to Instagram Live—which I turned down. And then she called her friends, who showed up ten minutes into the exam. I had to run through the whole paradeagain.

It’s not the same as patients gawking at my tattoos and piercings. I was used tothat.