By this time I’m close to another orgasm, my eyes wet and tears meshing with the sweat forming on his neck. And the moment I actually tumble over the edge, Marshall following quickly after me, my entire body is shaking with sobs. I try to stop it, but holding it in only makes it noisier and, well … much worse.
“Izzy?” Marshall says, alarm ringing in his voice. “Are you okay? Did I hurt you?”
I shake my head and mumble no against his skin.
“No, you’re not okay? Or no, I didn’t hurt you?” His biceps are trembling but he still keeps a steady hold on me as he walks over to the king-sized bed and lays us both across it.
“You didn’t hurt me.” Neither of us has any clothes on, so I have no place to wipe my eyes. I force myself to breath slow and deep. “It’s just … just …”
Marshall leans over me, one arm wrapped around my shoulders, and brushes the tears off my cheeks with his fingertips. “It’s just what?”
“I’m sorry.” I sniff, and more tears come out, along with a few unattractive sobs. “Medics Unedited, March 1999 issue, page twenty-one. Endorphins. With lots of endorphins, your brain can short-circuit. It’s a good thing.”
“Huh.” His entire body seems to sag with relief. I must have really freaked him out. He rests his head against the pillows and pulls me closer until my cheek is against his chest and our limbs are tangled together. “A crying orgasm. I’ve witnessed all kinds of orgasms, but never one of those.”
“All kinds of orgasms? What else is there besides the crying and non-crying kinds?” Each breath I take is still coming out shaky, and after a few more, Marshall’s hand makes circles over my back in a soothing motion, while his other hand combs through my hair.
“Well … there’s the small sweet kind that you get excited about mostly when they happen at the same time as whoever you’re with,” he explains like this is an academic lecture. “That’s where I was with my ninth-grade girlfriend. I swear she was way hornier than me, but she didn’t want anyone’s hands south of her belly button, so it was all non-sex orgasms. And then we’d both stop after and neither of us would talk about what had happened. Or why there was a big wet spot on the front of my jeans.”
I laugh a little but don’t say anything. I close my damp eyes and reposition my cheek so it fits in the crook of his neck. I just want him to keep talking, to keep forcing the beautiful sound of his voice into my long-term memory.
“And then there’s the intense, screaming-my-name, pulling-my-hair, shaking-for-thirty-seconds-afterward orgasms,” he says. “Those are most often associated with oral sex and the G-spot—if it’s even a real thing. I once had a girl hyperventilate. I think that’s worse than crying. She got all pale and sweaty, clawing at her chest. I had to tell her to put her head between her knees—and not in a kinky way.”
He pauses like he’s giving me the opportunity to interject with some medical explanation, but I don’t.
He continues, “And then there’s the hard-and-fast orgasm that comes—no pun intended—far too quickly because either you’ve been abstaining or you get some awesome hands-off foreplay. But those usually leave you wanting more. None of the sweetness or the exhausting satisfaction and relief that the other types have. It’s more of a beginning. Except this was basically my early sex life, and most girls lost their confidence and lust blinders after I lost my—” He stops, lifts my chin so that our eyes meet. “You aren’t going to argue with me? Throw some medical jargon my way?”
“No argument.” I reach my arm around him, skimming my fingers up his side, dancing them along his ribs. “You’re making perfect sense, believe it or not,” I mumble against his skin.
His chest swells. “I think this is my favorite day ever.”
My stomach flutters. I lift my head and kiss him to avoid thinking about that jolt of half anxiety, half excitement, and maybe something even deeper than excitement. But when Marshall takes hold of my face, his fingers sliding over my neck and through my hair, whispering the words “You’re beautiful,” across my lips, the jolt doubles in size.
“We should probably eat our dinner at some point,” I say.
He kisses me once more. “I’m taking a shower first. You can join me if you want.” He’s all raised eyebrows and amused expression, and far too sexy to resist.
The hotel shower is where I figure out Marshall’s desire to clean himself with scalding-hot water—a fact I tuck away for later analysis—and that people really can keep themselves busy kissing naked under a stream of hot water for far longer than I would have ever thought possible. When we finally emerge and wrap up in towels, our fingers are prune-like and the food is ice cold. Marshall pulls one of his T-shirts over my head before I can get my bag open, and after inhaling his scent infused in them, I grab only a pair of panties and leave his shirt on.
Luckily, we have a microwave in our room—three-star hotels are good for that sort of accommodation—and while Marshall is heating up the food, I check my phone and see that I have a missed call.
Justin.
I groan, and Marshall turns to face me, giving me a full view of his abs and the way his boxer briefs sink low on his hips. “What’s wrong? Mom and Dad stuff?”
“No, just my former co-worker slash inferior prodigy.” I sift through texts to see if he’s sent me a message. The only reason I can think of for Justin to call is something to do with my dad.
“Wait.” Marshall pulls a cucumber from my Greek salad, eats it, and then stuffs one in my mouth, too. “Is this your ex? The on-call room guy?”
Heat creeps up my neck. We haven’t really done this conversation yet, the one where we give specifics. “Um … technically, yes, but—”
“But what?” He’s wide-eyed and curious now. “But there’s more than one on-call room guy?”
I snort back a laugh. “No. Just one. But he’s not a real ex in the normal sense of the word, if that’s what you’re wondering.”
“I’m wondering everything, Izzy. You’re a very interesting person.” He smiles, picks up my container of dressing and a plastic fork. “You want this on the side, right?”
I nod and stare down at my phone, thinking.
Marshall takes my burger and pops it into the microwave next. “You’ve been avoiding the whole freshman-fifteen thing for way too long. I think you need to get started on it soon.” He skims a hand over my ass and squeezes it, pulling me in closer. “You could use some meat on your bones. Or did the fatty tissues of cadavers in your childhood traumatize you to the point of disordered eating?”
“I’m not traumatized.” I roll my eyes and then return to staring at my phone.
“Prove it. Eat a french fry or a big hunk of white bread,” Marshall says. Then he leans over and hits the button to dial Justin. “Get it over with so I can have all your attention. I’m selfish like that.”
I flash him another smile, bringing the phone to my ear and taking a seat at the desk in front of my dinner. Justin answers on the first ring, and in a quick last-minute decision, I put the phone on speaker just to keep the honesty flowing between me and Marshall. I respond to Justin’s hello with, “What?”
“God, I’m so in love with you, Isabel,” he says. “How did we ever survive being apart?”
I glare at the phone and shake my head. “Is my dad okay?”
“Yeah, why?”
Marshall pulls the lid off his soup container and heads back to the microwave. A large hunk of French bread is now hanging from his mouth. Bread is his BFF. He told me that last week.
“Nothing,” I say with a sigh. “I figured that’s the only reason you’d need to call me, and it’s the only reason I’d return your call.”
“Actually …” He pauses, takes a deep breath. “I need a consult.”
I dip my fork in dressing and then hook some dark green lettuce onto it before taking a huge bite. “Sorry, I’m in Nashville.”
Only because my mouth’s full, it sounds like “Iminnashbull.”
“Did yo
u just say that you’re in Nashville?” Justin repeats.
“What are you doing in Nashville?” Dad’s voice emerges from somewhere in the background. The break room, maybe. “You can’t go to Nashville without telling me!”
I fork another angry bite. “I told Mom. It’s not my fault the line of communication between the two of you is severed.”
At least I hope it’s not my fault.
Dad goes quiet in the background and Justin speaks up again. I wonder briefly if Dad was in the room when Justin made the sarcastic comment about being in love with me, but somehow I doubt Justin would be that way in front of a superior, and especially one in his desired field—cardiothoracic surgery.
“We can do this via phone,” Justin says.
“Are your fledglings around? Can I tell them about the time you contaminated the OR by barfing all over the floor after drinking half a bottle of tequila the night before?”
“Totally saw that coming, and took you off speaker phone a minute ago.” I can hear the grin in his voice, like he thinks he’s outsmarted me. Asshole. “Three-year-old female, coronary artery aneurysm …”
“Uh-huh.” I lift my black bean burger and take a bite. Marshall and his underwear-only self stretches across the bed, the soup in his hand along with a plastic spoon.
“Dysrhythmia, fever, rash, joint inflammation …”
Already the hotel is dissolving, a puzzle beginning to lay itself out in front of me one piece at a time. If Justin is calling me with Dad’s consent, then I know they’ve eliminated all the basic diagnoses and have Googled the symptoms; they’re hoping that I can reach inside my very wide memory and pull out something from an old medical journal or a textbook that no one else remembers. It wouldn’t be the first time I’ve done something like that.
“Early thoughts?” Justin asks, but he knows me better than that. I’m not gonna start shouting out random diseases without having the complete workup. Not that I don’t have some ideas already. “Let me guess,” he continues. “You’re thinking rheumatic fever or maybe Kawasaki disease?”
“If by ‘thinking’ you mean that I haven’t been given evidence to eliminate them yet, then yes.” I lean over and dig through my bag, pulling out a Sharpie. Then I rummage in the desk for the hotel’s pad of paper and tear off several sheets, spreading them out on the table. “Have you eliminated them?”
“No history of group A streptococcal infection—”
“So no rheumatic fever.” I cross the scribbled disease name off the list I’ve quickly drawn up.
“And the patient’s been treated for Kawasaki disease,” he says, “The rash faded, but the fever, joint inflammation, and heart complications are still hanging around, so we’ve got no other option but to put our heads together and dig for some other similar, rare infectious disease.”
“Read me the full workup including patient history, labs, and everything.” I’m writing so fast my hand is cramping and letters are running together from the force of pressing a Sharpie so firmly onto thin paper. My heart is circulating blood almost as fast as it was doing a little while ago when Marshall pressed me up against the wall and gave me a sobbing orgasm. I’m like an addict who feeds off this chase, this search for the answer. It’s like my body shouting, I’m alive! I’m really alive!
Twenty-five minutes later I end the call. I’ve got dozens of pieces of paper spread on the table around my dinner, and my thoughts finally return to the hotel room. I glance over at the bed and notice Marshall, stretched out on his back, wearing nothing but those sexy boxer briefs. And he’s fast asleep. My gaze travels to the nightstand where his soup sits, still more than half-full. I stand up and stretch, the Sharpie clutched in my hand.
I smile to myself, remembering him telling me he felt manly today and then lifting me off the ground. I have a strong desire to take the marker in my hand and write I’m not Superman across his chest so he’ll see it when he wakes up and stands in front of the mirror.
For a second, I think about crawling into bed with him and burying my face in the crook of his shoulder again—it’s such a perfect geometrical fit. But the papers on the hotel desk call to me in a way that I can’t ignore.
And then I bury myself in disease.
Chapter 22
I wake up with a start, jerking myself to a sitting position. My hands feel around, noticing the soft bed. I have no idea how I got here. Last thing I remember is writing the word anemia on the paper that had been lying in front of me.
“You look like you’re ready to operate on someone.” Marshall’s now standing in front of the TV, wearing jeans and a blue button-down shirt, his dark hair combed to a less-unruly state. He’s got a brown paper bag in one hand and a giant bagel in the other.
I shake out my messy hair. “How did I get here?”
“I woke up about two hours ago and you were passed out in a pile of diseases.” He smiles and then reaches into the bag, passing a blueberry bagel my way. “Kelsey wants us to meet her in the lobby in fifteen minutes. Something about finding a good spot …”
Suddenly I’m wide awake and fully aware of what’s going on. The bagel half-forgotten in my hand, I jump to my feet and rush over to the desk, scanning the rows and rows of paper. “You didn’t touch anything, right? Please tell me you didn’t touch anything …”
I grab my phone and read through the twelve texts from Justin over the last two hours. Answers to questions I’d sent him last night, and more updates like this from him:
Add nosebleed to the list. Couldn’t stop it. Had to cauterize and transfuse.
Your dad just gave the “we’re going with lupus” diagnosis to patient’s parents.
“It’s not lupus!” I shout at the phone.
“It never is,” Marshall says, causing me to look up at him, confused. “Sorry. Seen too many doctor shows.”
He’s wrong, I text back.
The reply comes swiftly. I know. Got anything?
No.
I set the phone down and continue to stare at the words on the pages. “One tiny detail and I’ll have it.” I can feel the answer swimming around in front of me. It’s like a slippery fish I have to catch with only my hands.
“Kelsey’s going to murder us if we’re late.” He rests his chin on my shoulder. “And I just got removed from her blacklist.”
“Right, okay,” I mutter, still standing in the same spot. “Let’s go.”
Marshall sighs, a smile in his voice. I hear him moving around behind me, and then he’s lifting the T-shirt over my head, tossing it to the floor. His T-shirt. I continue sifting through the list of infectious diseases, picking up where I left off in the S category. “Smallpox … snail fever …”
I look down a couple of minutes later and I’m wearing a lacy pink bra. My view of the papers is blocked by the long sleeved purple T-shirt being pulled over my head. There are socks on my feet and Marshall is holding out a pair of jeans from my suitcase.
“Oh my God,” I say, taking the jeans and stepping inside them. “Did you just dress me?”
“Unfortunately. But for the record, I much prefer the reverse activity.”
“Do me a favor and throw a towel over those pages before I go crazy.” I push up on my toes and kiss his neck. “You smell good. You always smell good.”
I spend four minutes in the bathroom taking care of my hair, teeth, and makeup. When I walk back into the room, I make Marshall shove me out into the hallway before I can reread notes my brain has already memorized. He’s still working on finishing his bagel, but he places his free hand on the small of my back, guiding us toward the lobby.
“Are you going to be okay? Do you need to work on whatever you’re working on …?”
“The not-lupus case,” I finish, shaking my head to remove the list of diseases floating around in there. “No, I’m not helping so far, anyway.”
He stops in the empty lobby and turns to face me. His lips touch my forehead. “You look hot when you’re all flustered and distracted. I??
?m completely tempted to force a new distraction on you. It’s an enticing challenge.”
I roll my eyes and point to his right hand. “Eat your bagel, Superman.”
He bites off a big chunk. “Do they really need your help? Even with a whole hospital full of doctors, plus the Internet and probably a library full of medical books …”
“Maybe not.” I shrug. “But diagnostics is kind of my thing, you know?”
“Don’t you want to be a surgeon?”
“Uh-huh. Lots of my diagnosing leads to surgery, so …”
“What diagnosing? Who’s being diagnosed?”
I groan as quietly as possible and wrinkle my nose, but only Marshall can see me. Kelsey and Shirtless Carson (who probably isn’t shirtless right now) are behind me, and it’s Kelsey who’s just spoken.
“Izzy stayed up all night creating piles of diseases,” Marshall explains.
“Well, that’s an odd way of putting it, but you guys are free to call it whatever you want, I guess,” Kelsey says.
“I slept,” I say, hitting Marshall on the chest.
“You slept through it?” Shirtless Carson eyes both of us. “Dude, I can give you some pointers.…”
Kelsey heads for the door, calling over her shoulder, “No, he can’t.”
Marshall snorts back a laugh. “I meant she’s been writing down lists of diseases on sheets of paper. Lots of paper. I woke up and papers were everywhere. She fell asleep on top of diseases beginning with the letter H.”
“I’m doing a consult for a patient back in Chicago.” I try to shove Marshall again, but he wraps an arm around my shoulders from behind and pulls me closer, kissing the side of my neck until I’m full of warm fuzzies.
Shirtless Carson walks ahead to hold the door open for all of us, his eyes glued to me. “So you’re here on a trip, like a vacation, and the hospital is calling you because they can’t diagnose a patient? You’re their last hope before he or she dies …?”
“What did I tell you?” Marshall whispers into my ear. “Novel plot. He’s gonna write about you. Only it will be someone named Trizzy Lenkins or something like that.”