Total pages in book: 72
Estimated words: 67982 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 340(@200wpm)___ 272(@250wpm)___ 227(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 67982 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 340(@200wpm)___ 272(@250wpm)___ 227(@300wpm)
Kevin doesn’t ask for details as he watches a surgeon remove a large tumor from a patient’s abdomen, only to sag to the ground with it still clutched in his hands. I’m going to guess that wasn’t from him being grossed out—because he’s a surgeon and used to it—but maybe from an illness.
Still…a little funny.
“Hey, Josie,” Aiden says, and I look back to him. “Got a minute to talk about something?”
“Sure,” I say as I glance at my watch, even though I really don’t. “But just a minute.”
Aiden turns from the hub and walks over to the on-call office. I follow him in and he closes the door behind us. Neither one of us sits down because we don’t have time for that in the emergency room.
I tuck my hands casually into my lab coat. “What’s up?”
Aiden crosses his arms, not in a defensive posture but in more of a serious, professional way. “I was talking to Dr. Hubbard the other day and he’s invited me to do a research project under his supervision to publish.”
My eyes widen and I can’t hide my delight. “That’s amazing. What is it about?”
We both worked under Dr. Hubbard during our residency and he teaches at Duke’s school of medicine. He’s highly esteemed in the field of emergency medicine and widely published.
“Comparing emergency field medicine techniques to those in an urban setting,” Aiden tells me. “I’d use my case experiences the past few years and compare them to like cases here. I’d have to get several doctors to help me out to get a good sampling of cases, and wanted to know if you’d help.”
“Of course,” I exclaim. “I’d totally be glad to give you what I can.”
“That’s awesome,” he says with a chuckle. “And I’ll take whatever you can give me, but I was hoping you’d sort of cowrite the paper with me. Help me cull through the data, draw conclusions, and then help write it. You’d get equal credit.”
My eyes go round with surprise because it’s a really big deal to get published. “Why me?” I gasp.
Aiden’s eyes chide me silently for a moment before he says, “Why not you, Josie? You’re a brilliant doctor and I trust you to do a good job.”
“But, Kevin—”
“—is a great friend and a great doctor too, but I know you better and you’re my first choice.”
“What kind of time frame do you want to accomplish this in?” I ask him.
“Three months, maybe four,” he says. “I’ve already got my field data, so I figure a few weeks to pull urban data and we can get to work on comparing it. Maybe six to eight weeks to do that, reach conclusions, and another two to four weeks to write the paper to submit to Hubbard.”
“Time commitment per week?” I press. This is a major project and I need to know what he expects.
“Ten, fifteen hours a week?” He says it as a question, lobbing it my way to see if those numbers offend me.
My mind quickly calculates. I usually have at least three days off a week due to the longer shifts I work, and that will easily take up two of those days. My first consideration is Reed and how that will cut into the time I spend with him, because we have been spending practically all of my free time together since he’s still on his summer vacation before the season starts.
The argument could be made that in a month, Reed’s going to be starting the preseason, so his time is going to be limited again and thus our time together is going to get cut anyway. Why not have a professionally satisfying project going that would put a published paper under my name?
This makes sense, but the only thing that truly sucks about that proposition is that Reed and I had just talked about this very thing last night while we were lying in bed. He asked me if I would travel to some of his away games with him if my concurrent days off matched up to his travel schedule.
“Yes,” I’d exclaimed without any thought. As I learned more about hockey and Reed’s career, I had been getting really excited about watching him play. I had only ever thought to catch his home games, but the fact he wants me to go see some of his away games caused my heart to squeeze in pleasure.
Reed had laughed and pulled me into him. He buried his face in my neck and murmured, “I can’t get enough of you, Josie, so I want you close to me as much as possible.”
I almost dissolved into a puddle of tears, because those words were so damn special. Reed wanted me near him. Even though his career would take him away for a good chunk of our time, he was already planning on ways that we could be together. It only served to highlight the disparity in my relationship with Aiden, who essentially didn’t want to be with me bad enough.