Bare Skin

The first time I saw him, I was wrist-deep in a stranger's chest cavity.

Not the most romantic meet-cute, I'll admit. But you take what you can get when you're a third-year surgical resident at San Francisco General and your entire life has been reduced to the smell of betadine and the beep of a heart monitor. The patient on my table was a sixty-three-year-old man named Harold who'd had the poor judgment to ride his bicycle through the Tenderloin at rush hour. A taxi clipped him at the intersection of Turk and Hyde. He'd come in with a fractured sternum and a pericardial effusion that was tamponading his heart, which is a fancy way of saying blood was filling the sac around the organ and squeezing it like a fist.

I had my hand inside him, literally, fingers wrapped around the base of his heart, holding it steady while Dr. Chen threaded a drain into the pericardium. My gloves were slick. The overhead lights were hot on the back of my neck. And then the doors swung open and he walked in.

Not Harold. Harold was unconscious and intubated and had no idea he was about to become the backdrop for the most inconvenient attraction of my adult life.

The man who walked in was tall. That's the first thing I noticed, because I'm five-four and everyone is tall to me, but this was different. He filled the doorway in a way that made the room feel smaller. Dark hair, a little too long at the collar. A jaw that looked like it had been carved by someone who didn't believe in soft edges. He was wearing scrubs, navy blue, with a white coat that had been shoved up to his elbows. No stethoscope. No badge. Just a leather satchel slung across his body and a look on his face like he'd rather be anywhere else.

"Who's the attending?" he asked. His voice was low, a little rough, like he'd been yelling at someone or hadn't slept in days. Both, probably.

Dr. Chen didn't look up. "Busy. Who are you?"

"Dr. Elias Grant. Trauma consult. I was told there was a pericardial tamponade."

"Was. I've got it."

He stepped closer to the table. I felt him before I saw him, a shift in the air pressure, the faint smell of something that wasn't hospital soap. Coffee, maybe. Cedar. Something underneath it I couldn't name. He stood across from me, looking down at Harold's open chest, and then his eyes moved to my hands.

I was still holding the heart. My fingers had gone numb ten minutes ago. I hadn't let go.

"You're the resident," he said. Not a question.

"Dr. Sloane."

"Dr. Sloane." He said my name like he was testing it, rolling it around in his mouth. "You've been holding that heart for how long?"

"Long enough."

"Let go. I've got it from here."

"I've got it."

His eyes came up to mine. They were gray, the kind of gray that looks blue in some lights and green in others, and right now they looked like the sky before a storm. He didn't blink. Neither did I.

Dr. Chen sighed. "Sloane, let the man work. Go scrub out. You're off in twenty anyway."

I wanted to argue. I wanted to tell her that I'd been the one who'd kept Harold's heart beating for the last forty minutes, that my fingers had cramped into a claw and I'd earned the right to see this through. But I was a resident. I didn't have rights. I had obligations.

I pulled my hands out slowly, carefully, watching the drain catch the last of the fluid. Harold's blood pressure ticked up on the monitor. Good. He'd live. Probably.

I stripped off my gloves and dropped them in the bin. When I looked up, Dr. Grant was already scrubbed in, his hands inside Harold's chest, his movements precise and unhurried. He didn't look at me again.

Fine. Whatever. I didn't need him to look at me.

I pushed through the doors and into the hallway, where the air was cold and smelled like antiseptic and someone's reheated lasagna. My hands were shaking. That happened sometimes, after. The adrenaline drained out and left me hollow. I leaned against the wall and closed my eyes.

"You okay?"

I opened my eyes. It was Maria, one of the nurses, her scrubs covered in cartoon cats. She had a coffee in each hand and offered me one.

"I'm fine."

"You're white as a sheet."

"I'm always white as a sheet. I'm Irish."

She laughed and pressed the coffee into my hand anyway. "There's a new trauma attending. Did you meet him?"

"Unfortunately."

"He's hot."

"He's arrogant."

"Those aren't mutually exclusive."

I took a sip of the coffee. It was terrible, burnt and bitter, and I drank it anyway. "I don't have time for hot or arrogant. I have a presentation tomorrow and I haven't slept in thirty hours."

"You should come out with us tonight. A bunch of us are going to that bar on Valencia. The one with the good margaritas."

"I can't."

"You can. You just won't."

She wasn't wrong. I'd been saying no to everything for three years. No to drinks, no to dates, no to anything that wasn't surgery or sleep or the occasional shower. My friends from med school had stopped calling. My mother had stopped asking when I was coming home. I was a machine, and machines didn't go to bars.

But something made me say yes that night. I don't know what. Maybe it was the way Dr. Grant had looked at me, like I was a puzzle he was already bored of solving. Maybe it was the coffee, which was so bad it made me want something better. Maybe it was just the exhaustion, the kind that makes you do things you wouldn't normally do.

"Fine," I said. "One drink."

Maria's face lit up. "Yes! We're meeting at eight. Don't be late."

I wasn't late. I was early, actually, which never happened. I stood outside the bar for ten minutes, debating whether to go in, before I finally pushed through the door. The place was dark and loud, all exposed brick and Edison bulbs and people who looked like they had lives outside of work. I spotted Maria at a table in the back with a few other nurses and a couple of residents I vaguely knew. She waved me over.

I ordered a margarita. It was good. I ordered another one. It was better.

An hour later, I was tipsy enough to laugh at jokes I didn't understand and loose enough to stop thinking about Harold's heart and the way Dr. Grant's hands had looked inside his chest. I was almost having fun. Almost.

And then the door opened and he walked in.

Of course he did. Because the universe has a sense of humor, and it's a cruel one.

He was with a group of people, other doctors probably, and he was wearing jeans and a black t-shirt that fit him too well. His hair was damp, like he'd just showered, and he hadn't shaved. He looked like he'd stepped out of a cologne ad, the kind where the man is always brooding and the woman is always throwing herself at him.

I turned back to my drink. I would not look at him. I would not.

"Hey, isn't that the new trauma guy?" Maria asked, because she had no sense of self-preservation.

"Yep."

"He's coming over here."

"What?"

I turned around just as he reached our table. He wasn't looking at me. He was looking at Maria, or maybe at the space between us, and he had a smile on his face that didn't quite reach his eyes.

"Mind if I join you?"

Maria practically shoved a chair at him. "Of course! We were just talking about you."

"All good things, I hope."

"All terrible things," I said.

He looked at me then. Really looked. His eyes traveled from my face to my drink to my hands, which were wrapped around the glass, and something flickered in them. Recognition, maybe. Or amusement.

"Dr. Sloane."

"Dr. Grant."

"You're off duty."

"So are you."

"I'm always off duty. It's one of the perks of being a consult."

"Must be nice."

"It has its moments."

He sat down across from me, which meant I had to look at him, which meant I couldn't pretend he wasn't there. He ordered a whiskey, neat, and drank it slowly, and every time I glanced up he was already looking at me.

It should have been annoying. It was annoying. But it was also something else, something I didn't have a name for. A heat that started in my chest and spread downward, pooling in places I hadn't thought about in months.

"So," Maria said, because she had no shame, "are you single?"

He didn't look away from me. "I am."

"And you, Sloane?"

"I'm married to the hospital."

"That's not a real marriage."

"It's real enough."

Dr. Grant smiled. It was a real smile this time, not the performative one from before. It crinkled the corners of his eyes and made him look younger, almost boyish. "The hospital doesn't cook you dinner. Or keep you warm at night."

"How would you know?"

"I've been married to it too. It's a cold bedfellow."

I took a long sip of my margarita. The salt on the rim was sharp against my tongue. "I don't need anyone to keep me warm."

"Everyone needs someone to keep them warm."

"Are you offering?"

The words were out before I could stop them. I blamed the tequila. I blamed the exhaustion. I blamed the way he was looking at me, like he could see through my scrubs and my skin and my carefully constructed walls.

He leaned forward, his elbows on the table, his voice low enough that only I could hear. "I'm offering a lot of things. But I don't think you're ready to hear them."

"Try me."

He held my gaze for a long moment. Then he stood up, pulled a pen from his pocket, and wrote something on a napkin. He slid it across the table.

"Call me when you're ready."

He walked away. I watched him go, watched the way his jeans hugged his ass, watched the way he didn't look back. The napkin sat on the table in front of me, a phone number scrawled in messy handwriting.

Maria grabbed it before I could. "Oh my god. He gave you his number."

"He gave me a napkin."

"He gave you his number on a napkin. That's the same thing."

I took the napkin back. I told myself I would throw it away. I told myself I didn't need it. I told myself a lot of things.

I still have it. It's in my wallet, folded into a square, the ink smudged from being carried around for three weeks. I haven't called him. I won't call him.

But I think about it. I think about it more than I should.

The thing is, I'm not good at this. I'm good at surgery. I'm good at staying up for forty hours and remembering every detail of a patient's chart and keeping my hands steady when everything around me is falling apart. But I'm not good at people. I'm not good at letting them in. I'm not good at wanting things that aren't scrubs and scalpels and the clean, bright certainty of an operating room.

I learned early that wanting things was dangerous. That letting people close meant giving them the power to leave. My father left when I was seven. My mother left when I was nineteen, not physically but in the way that matters, the way where she stopped calling and stopped asking and stopped being my mother. I had a boyfriend in med school who told me I was cold. He wasn't wrong. I'd built myself a fortress and I'd locked the door and I'd thrown away the key.

But Dr. Grant, Elias, he looked at me like he could see the door. Like he knew it was there and he was already planning how to knock it down.

I didn't see him again for two weeks. Not in the ER, not in the OR, not in the cafeteria where I ate my sad salads and pretended not to notice the other residents. I started to think he'd disappeared, that he was a hallucination brought on by sleep deprivation and too much bad coffee. I started to relax.

And then he showed up in my OR.

I was doing an appendectomy on a nineteen-year-old kid who'd waited too long to come in and was now paying the price. It was a routine procedure, the kind I could do in my sleep, which was good because I hadn't slept in twenty-six hours and my hands were starting to feel like they belonged to someone else. I was halfway through when the doors opened and he walked in.

He didn't scrub in. He just stood there, leaning against the wall, watching. His arms were crossed over his chest and his face was unreadable.

"Do you need something?" I asked, without looking up.

"Just observing."

"There's nothing to observe. It's an appendectomy."

"I heard you're the best resident in the program. I wanted to see for myself."

"Who told you that?"

"Everyone."

I tied off a suture and glanced at him. He was wearing a white coat over a gray sweater, and his hair was pushed back from his forehead. He looked tired. Not the kind of tired that comes from a long shift, but the kind that comes from something deeper, something that doesn't go away with sleep.

"Flattery won't get you anywhere."

"I'm not trying to get anywhere. I'm just stating a fact."

"A fact you heard from everyone."

"Are you saying everyone is wrong?"

I didn't answer. I went back to work, my hands moving on autopilot, my mind racing. Why was he here? What did he want? The napkin in my wallet felt like it was burning a hole through the leather.

He stayed for the rest of the surgery. When I closed the final stitch and stripped off my gloves, he was still there.

"Good work," he said.

"Thanks."

"Have you thought about my offer?"

"What offer?"

"You know what offer."

I did. I'd thought about it every night for two weeks, lying in my bed in the dark, my hand between my legs, his face in my mind. I'd thought about it in the shower, in the elevator, in the quiet moments between patients when I had nothing to do but breathe.

"There's no offer," I said. "There's a napkin."

"Same thing."

"I haven't called."

"I noticed."

"So why are you here?"

He pushed off the wall and walked toward me. He stopped a few inches away, close enough that I could smell him again, coffee and cedar and something underneath that made my stomach tighten.

"Because I'm patient," he said. "And because I think you're worth waiting for."

"I'm not."

"You are."

"You don't know me."

"I know enough."

"What do you know?"

He reached out and touched my face. Just his fingers, light against my cheek, tracing the line of my jaw. His skin was warm. Mine was cold. I hadn't realized how cold I was until he touched me.

"I know you're afraid," he said. "I know you've been hurt. I know you've built walls so high that no one can climb them, not even you. And I know that underneath all of that, you're lonely. You're so lonely it's eating you alive."

I should have pulled away. I should have told him to go to hell. I should have done a hundred things that weren't standing there, frozen, letting him touch me.

"I'm not lonely," I said.

"You are."

"I have my work."

"Work doesn't hold you at night."

"I don't need to be held."

"Everyone needs to be held."

"You keep saying that."

"Because it's true."

He dropped his hand. I felt the absence of it like a physical blow.

"I'm not going to chase you," he said. "I'm not going to beg. But I'm here. I'm not going anywhere. And when you're ready, when you're tired of being alone, you know where to find me."

He walked out. The door swung shut behind him. I stood there in the empty OR, surrounded by stainless steel and fluorescent light, and I felt something crack inside me. Something small. Something I'd been holding together for years.

I went home that night and I didn't sleep. I lay in bed and stared at the ceiling and thought about his hands, his voice, his eyes. I thought about the way he'd looked at me like I was something worth seeing. I thought about the napkin in my wallet and the phone number I'd memorized without meaning to.

And then, at 3 a.m., I got up and I called him.

He answered on the second ring.

"Dr. Sloane."

"How did you know it was me?"

"Because I've been waiting."

I closed my eyes. My heart was pounding so hard I could feel it in my throat. "I don't know what I'm doing."

"That's okay."

"I don't know what I want."

"That's okay too."

"I'm not good at this."

"Neither am I."

"Then why are we doing it?"

He was quiet for a moment. I could hear him breathing, slow and steady, like he had all the time in the world.

"Because," he said, "I think we might be good for each other. And I think we're both tired of being alone."

I didn't have an answer to that. I didn't have an answer to anything. But I stayed on the phone, and he stayed on the phone, and neither of us hung up.

That was three months ago. A lot has changed since then. I've changed. Or maybe I haven't. Maybe I'm just learning to let someone see the parts of me I've kept hidden.

His apartment is in the Mission, on a quiet street lined with jacaranda trees. It's small but clean, with bookshelves that take up an entire wall and a kitchen that actually gets used. He cooks. I don't. I sit on his counter and watch him, drinking wine and pretending I'm not terrified.

Tonight, he's making pasta. Something with garlic and olive oil and tomatoes that he bought at the farmers market this morning. He moves around the kitchen like he belongs there, which he does, and I watch him from my perch on the counter, my legs swinging, my glass of wine half-empty.

"You're staring," he says.

"I'm observing."

"Same thing."

I smile. It's a real smile, the kind that surprises me. "Maybe."

He turns off the stove and walks over to me. He stands between my legs, his hands on my thighs, and looks up at me. His eyes are gray today, soft and warm, the color of a winter sky.

"What are you thinking about?"

I could lie. I could deflect. I could make a joke and change the subject and keep my walls up where they belong.

But I'm tired. I'm tired of being alone. I'm tired of pretending I don't want this.

"I'm thinking about how I don't deserve you," I say.

He doesn't flinch. He doesn't tell me I'm wrong. He just looks at me, steady and patient, and waits.

"I'm thinking about how I've spent my whole life pushing people away," I continue. "How I've been so afraid of getting hurt that I've hurt everyone who tried to love me. How I don't know how to do this. How I don't know how to let you in."

"You're letting me in right now."

"This is different. This is just talking."

"Talking is the hardest part."

I laugh, but it comes out shaky. "That's not true. Talking is easy. It's everything else that's hard."

He reaches up and tucks a strand of hair behind my ear. His fingers brush my cheek, my jaw, my neck. "What's hard?"

"Trusting you. Trusting myself. Believing that this is real, that you're real, that you won't wake up one day and realize I'm not worth the trouble."

"You are worth the trouble."

"You don't know that."

"I know enough."

"That's what you said before."

"It's still true."

He leans in and kisses me. Soft, at first, just his lips against mine, gentle and questioning. I melt into him, my hands finding his shoulders, his hair, pulling him closer. He tastes like wine and garlic and something sweeter underneath.

We've kissed before. We've done more than kiss. But this feels different. This feels like a door opening, like a window, like something I've been waiting for without knowing it.

He pulls back and looks at me. His eyes are dark now, pupils blown wide, and I can feel his heartbeat through his shirt.

"I want you," he says. "I've wanted you since the first moment I saw you, standing in that OR with your hands inside a man's chest, looking like you could take on the world and win."

"I was terrified."

"You didn't look terrified."

"I'm good at pretending."

"So am I."

He kisses me again, harder this time, and I wrap my legs around his waist and pull him closer. He groans against my mouth and lifts me off the counter, carrying me through the apartment to his bedroom.

The bed is unmade, sheets tangled, pillows on the floor. He lays me down and stands over me, looking at me like I'm something precious, something fragile, something he's afraid to break.

"I'm not going to break," I say.

"I know."

"Then stop looking at me like that."

"Like what?"

"Like you're waiting for me to disappear."

He kneels on the bed and crawls over me, his body covering mine, his weight pressing me into the mattress. "I'm not waiting for you to disappear. I'm waiting for you to realize you don't have to."

He kisses my neck, my collarbone, the hollow of my throat. His hands slide under my shirt, warm against my skin, and I arch into him, wanting more, wanting everything.

"Tell me what you want," he murmurs against my ear.

"I want you."

"How?"

"However you'll have me."

He pulls back and looks at me. "That's not an answer."

"It's the only one I have."

"Then I'll give you another one."

He undresses me slowly, piece by piece, kissing each inch of skin as it's revealed. My shirt, my bra, my jeans, my underwear. He leaves them in a pile on the floor and kneels between my legs, looking at me like I'm a feast.

"You're beautiful," he says.

"I'm average."

"You're beautiful."

"You're biased."

"I'm honest."

He lowers his head and kisses my stomach, my hips, the inside of my thigh. I shiver under his touch, my hands fisting in the sheets, my breath coming in short, sharp gasps.

"Elias."

"Shh. Let me take care of you."

He does. He takes his time, his mouth and his hands moving over me like he's memorizing every inch. He finds the places that make me gasp, the places that make me moan, the places that make me forget my own name. And when I finally come, it's like a wave crashing over me, pulling me under, leaving me breathless and shaking.

He crawls up my body and kisses me, and I can taste myself on his lips. It should be embarrassing. It's not. It's the most intimate thing I've ever experienced.

"Your turn," I say.

"I can wait."

"I don't want you to wait."

I push him onto his back and straddle him, my hands on his chest. He's still dressed, which feels unfair, so I unbutton his shirt and push it off his shoulders. His skin is warm, smooth, dusted with dark hair. I run my hands over his chest, his stomach, the waistband of his jeans.

"You're beautiful too," I say.

"I'm average."

"Now who's lying?"

He laughs, a low rumble in his chest, and I lean down to kiss him. I fumble with his belt, his zipper, and he lifts his hips to help me. His jeans come off, his boxers follow, and then he's naked beneath me, hard and wanting.

I wrap my hand around him and he groans, his head falling back against the pillow. "Fuck."

"Not yet."

"Tease."

"You started it."

I stroke him slowly, watching his face, the way his eyes flutter closed, the way his jaw clenches. He's beautiful like this, vulnerable and open, and I feel a rush of power, of tenderness, of something I can't name.

"I want you inside me," I say.

"I don't have a condom."

"Nightstand."

He reaches over and fumbles in the drawer, pulling out a foil packet. I take it from him and roll it on, my hands steady despite the trembling in my chest.

And then I lower myself onto him.

The first moment is always the hardest. The stretch, the fullness, the way he fills me completely. I pause, breathing through it, my hands braced on his chest.

"You okay?" he asks.

"Yeah. Just. Give me a second."

"Take all the time you need."

I move slowly at first, finding a rhythm, learning the shape of him. He watches me with those gray eyes, his hands on my hips, guiding me, steadying me. And then I find the angle that makes me gasp, and everything else falls away.

We move together, faster now, harder, the sound of our breathing filling the room. He sits up and wraps his arms around me, pulling me close, his face buried in my neck. I can feel his heart pounding against my chest, matching the rhythm of mine.

"I'm close," he says.

"Me too."

"Together?"

"Together."

He thrusts up into me, once, twice, and then I'm falling, shattering, coming apart in his arms. He follows a moment later, his body shuddering against mine, his breath hot against my skin.

We stay like that for a long time, tangled together, neither of us willing to move. The pasta is cold on the stove. The wine is warm on the counter. None of it matters.

"I love you," he says.

It's the first time he's said it. The first time anyone has said it to me in years. I should say it back. I should tell him I love him too, that I've loved him since the moment he walked into that OR, that I've been waiting my whole life for someone like him.

But the words stick in my throat. The walls are still there. They're lower now, crumbling, but they're still there.

"I know," I say instead.

He doesn't push. He doesn't ask for more. He just holds me tighter and kisses my forehead and tells me it's okay.

And maybe it is.

Maybe, for the first time in my life, it's okay.

I wake up in his bed the next morning, the sun streaming through the blinds, the smell of coffee drifting in from the kitchen. He's not next to me, but I can hear him moving around, opening cabinets, humming something under his breath.

I should get up. I should go home. I should put on my clothes and slip out the door and pretend this was just another night, another mistake, another thing I'm not ready for.

But I don't.

I stay.

I pull the sheets up to my chin and close my eyes and listen to him hum. And for a moment, just a moment, I let myself imagine what it would be like to stay forever.

The thing about walls is that they're not just there to keep people out. They're there to keep you in. And once you've been inside for long enough, you forget there's a world outside.

But Elias makes me remember. He makes me want to remember.

I'm not fixed. I'm not healed. I'm still broken in ways I don't fully understand. But I'm here. I'm trying.

And maybe that's enough.

For now, that's enough.