Page 15 of Fear No Hell

Sam

December's lights and cheer bleed away into January, cold, dark, and dreary as fuck, with the type of weather that sees general seasonal grumpiness and goes, “what if I made it diagnosable?” Ordinarily, I would be struggling my way through basically living at work during my third and final year of residency.

Not only is Lila’s existence the best part of mine, but we’ve also somehow managed to completely avoid being implicated in what happened at Arthur’s retirement party.

Five weeks since we burned Arthur’s house down, and the institution that was Arthur Francis, aka Chicago’s Favorite Author, has not only been lost to the news cycle but also become the most hated man in the city.

In the days after the fire, there was a flurry of articles raging about the burning of Arthur Francis’ house. All of them very much along the lines of “who would do this to Chicago’s favorite son.”

Maybe a week later, law enforcement revealed they had found human remains in the debris.

Afterwards, the police contacted me and my mom to chat with us.

Since both of us have been no-contact with Arthur for years and neither of us were invited to the exclusive retirement party, the conversations were cursory, even with Arthur's almost decade-old restraining order against me. A few days after that, the Chicago Police Department announced they wanted Arthur for questioning. Obviously, he didn’t meet with them.

As time went by, people grew more and more suspicious about where in the world Arthur Francis is.

Although suppositions vary wildly about his role in the events of that night, Chicago has made up its mind: Arthur Francis is at least an arsonist. At most, a murderer. Either way, they're not here for it.

When Lila read the article doing a credible job bobbing and weaving through suppositions of Arthur burning his own house to the ground and barely hidden accusations of murder, I swear I saw her do a full body shimmy. Her happiness was radiant, burning so bright it made the dark ass winter bearable.

I’ll do pretty much anything to make sure she’s as content as she can be, which is why, three weeks after Christmas, I’m standing in front of the attending in charge of scheduling and asking to change my shift for the remainder of my residency.

“You want to take the graveyard shift?” Seth, my attending, asks disbelievingly.

“Yup.” No additional information beyond that because Seth is, in fact, a contender for biggest asshole in the hospital.

Plus how do I explain that I’m doing it because my live-in dream woman prefers to torture my father during the nighttime?

A fact I only discovered after I got home from a random night shift the day after Christmas and Lila made an offhanded comment about how great it was to be in the basement at night rather than during the day.

When I asked her why, she said the sunlight made her happy after, and I quote, "all of the blood. "

Since I have to get to work putting Arthur together again pretty much immediately after she’s done with him, any shift I take has to end around the same time Lila calls it quits.

If she prefers working him over after the sun goes down, so she can walk out of the basement into bright, cheery sunshine, then it’s time to make some changes to my schedule.

Lila gets whatever she wants. If she wants to torture Arthur at night, I change my shift to work nights. It’s that simple.

It took me a couple of weeks to realize exactly how much I was willing to do to make her happy.

I had a sneaking suspicion the night I volunteered to burn a house to the ground, took her home to live with me, and agreed to perform clandestine surgery and repair on Arthur for the foreseeable future.

Any one of those things alone may have been a big sign I had lost my mind, but all three of them together?

They signified a seismic shift in the way I thought, which, after weeks of observation, I can officially confirm is here to stay.

And it all circulates around Lila.

She’s the first person I want to see when I wake up and the last one I want to talk to before I go to bed.

I’m able to power through interminable work days because I know she’s on the other end of them.

I’m already half in love with the most off-limits woman I’ve ever met—one who may never be ready for a sexual relationship, thanks to the shit my own flesh and blood did to her—and it has only been three damn weeks.

How bad off will I be in a few more weeks? Months? Years?

Except I don’t really care. I just want to be with her, however she’ll have me, which means… graveyard shift.

I have to play it carefully, though. If Seth knows how badly I want this, he’ll find some bullshit reason not only to deny the perfectly reasonable request but to foist the least sought after hours on some poor doctor who doesn’t want it.

“Really?” Seth presses.

“Yeah, really.”

“And this will address those attendance issues we’ve been seeing the last few weeks?”

Oh for fuck’s sake. I grit my teeth before answering, trying to hold back the snarky response brewing in my brain. I missed work once and was less than ten minutes late twice in a total of five weeks. Attendance issues, my ass. “Yes.”

“And you’re sure you’re ready to take this on?” His tone heavily implies that he doesn’t as he rakes his eyes over my disheveled scrubs, raising an eyebrow in distaste.

I bare my teeth in something resembling a smile.

I’m disheveled because a patient coded while I was on the other side of the floor, meaning I had to sprint several hundred yards, dodging gurneys, patients in wheelchairs, and staff, not to mention family members who couldn’t understand what a doctor running meant or the general importance of getting out of someone's way.

“I’m finished with my residency in a few months.

As you know, I also accepted an offer a few weeks ago to stay on here once I complete the program later this year.

I doubt they would have offered me the position if I weren’t doing what I needed to.

” If my words are clipped, Seth is too self-absorbed to notice.

Case in point: he’s already trying to catch a glimpse of his reflection in a nearby window.

Asshole.

“So yeah, I’m prepared to take on the graveyard,” I finish.

My best friend, Dillon, claps their hands silently behind Seth, their colorful mohawk waving as they bounce excitedly on their toes.

They started the same day I did, but the similarities between our career paths ended there.

They were a nurse with 15 years experience who had moved to the area recently with their partner, and I…

well, I was the clumsy new resident with a prosthesis and a baby face.

Somehow, and against all odds given our opposing shifts, we bonded.

They’ve been begging me to get on nights with them for years, and all but threw a party when I told them it’s finally happening.

Well, it’s happening if Seth decides not to be a dick.

“You’re in luck, Eaton. Sullivan asked to get switched to days to take care of his kids.” Seth shifts his gaze away from the window to me. “I already made up the schedule with you on nights.”

Fuck yes. Inside, I’m cheering, same as Dillon is. On the outside, I somehow manage to force a professional smile and jerk my head in a passable nod. “Thanks, man. Appreciate it.”

“Don’t make it weird,” Seth snaps.

My cheek twitches as I try to stop my instinctual eye roll. Fortunately, Seth is already gone, conversation over. Thank fucking god.

“Yes,” Dillon squeals, racing over to me.

“Graveyard buddies! It’s about time you came over to the dark side.

I’m so bored without my bestie!” Their cell appears like magic in their left hand as they tug me close, one arm around my neck, their phone with the camera facing us hefted in the other.

“It’s selfie time! We have to memorialize this! ”

I manage to coach my lips into something resembling a real smile, rather than the grimace I gave Seth, seconds before Dillon snaps a picture.

Once the shutter clicks sounds, they drop their arm and pull the phone in, zooming in on the picture. “Sam!” they scold.

“What?”

“You look like you’re snarling. C’mon, man!” I’m about to argue when they flip the phone around, revealing a photo that—okay, yeah, I see it—does make it look like I’m baring my teeth.

“You gotta give me some warning before you go taking selfies, Dil,” I scold as my own phone vibrates in my back pocket. While I pull it out, I continue distractedly, “You know I’m not photogenic.”

“I’m sorry, have you seen you?” they snip. “Your bone structure isn’t even fair to the rest of us mere mortals.”

This time, I let the eye roll happen before glancing down at my phone. A smile steals across my face when I see it’s a text from Lila.

“Awww, is that her?” Dillon teases, coming behind me to glance at my screen.

Their jaw drops as they see my background: a photo of Lila and me from Christmas, dressed in the most absurd, ugly holiday sweaters I could find.

“Holy Jonathan Van Ness, is that her?” Somehow, despite being the same sentence, their emphasis manages to make it clear they mean two very different things.

“Yeah, that’s Lila,” I respond, tilting my screen towards them.

Since it was our first holiday together, I cancelled my plans with my mom, so I could spend the day at home with Lila.

Which I felt a little bad about until my mom booked a week-long Christmas cruise in the Caribbean while we were still on the phone.

I decorated the house, made sure there were ugly Christmas sweaters and presents under the tree, and baked my mom’s traditional recipes.

It hadn’t been easy, especially not with long days at work and longer nights putting Arthur back together again.

It was all worth it, though, the minute Lila’s face lit up when I handed her a plate bearing a homemade cinnamon roll, a glass with her favorite iced coffee, and my family’s traditional morning present of themed socks, all while a holiday playlist played in the background.

I took the photo at the end of the day—best day of my damn life, honestly—right before I showed her Elf for the first time.

“Holy shit.” Dillon snatches the phone out of my hands and dances out of my reach before I can snatch it back. “Forget you and your bone structure, she’s fucking gorgeous!”

I grab for my phone again, grunting in irritation when they dodge my longer reach.

“Seriously, I might be a little in love with her.”

Same, buddy. Same.

“If it doesn’t work out between you two kids, I’m shooting my shot with this goddess.”

The possessive growl that rumbles out of me in response to their teasing comment surprises me, them, and at least three patients' families lingering in the hallway.

“Did you just… growl at me?” Dillon asks slowly, their eyebrows raising.

“I-I-I—” I stammer, still stunned. “I don’t know what that was about.”

I haven’t even managed to get out my full sentence when Dillon’s face breaks into a gleeful smile. “You’re jealous!” they shout.

“What? No.” I may be a little jealous.

“You are!” Dillon claps their hands to their chest. “My baby’s all grown up and in a relationship with the hottie living with him.” They check their watch. “And it’s 5:03. Go sign out your patients to the next shift, and get home to your girl.”

They're not wrong. With the patients still on the floor, shift change is going to take an eternity. Before I head to the paperwork waiting for me, I glance at my closest friend. “Hey, sorry about the growl…”

“It’s nothing.” They wave me off. “I’ll forget all about it if I get to meet the girl who has my best friend’s primal receptors going haywire.”

I snort. “You know she’s not my girlfriend, right?

We’re friends. That’s all.” Those primal caveman receptors they're referencing go apeshit over the blatant lie because why wouldn’t they?

I’m lying to myself. That being said, Lila hasn’t given me any indication she wants more.

So… lying it is. To myself and everyone else. Easy enough.

“Baby, I know what love looks like, and that?” They tap on my phone screen and shoot me a look. “That’s it. People write songs about this kind of shit.”

“You’re ridiculous. I’m gonna go do my paperwork and get out of here before you start planning our wedding.” The joke lands fine, gets a laugh out of Dillon and everything, but I can’t stop thinking about a ceremony joining Lila and me for life as I abandon them to go close out my shift.

I think about it as I transfer my patients to Dr. Sullivan for the evening. I picture it as I walk out to my car. I obsess over it as I drive home.

And when I open the door to see what Lila is up to, I wish like hell it wasn’t a fantasy.