But as it turned out, when you were both the sole executor and sole beneficiary of said uncle’s estate, it actually had a lot to do with you. And when that estate was tied to a petty, passive-aggressive, hostage-holding last will and testament, it was going to keep having a lot to do with you.
Twelve months before he could sell the apartment. Twelve months of musty-smelling hallways, must-avoid light fixtures, and mustard wallpaper.
Twelve months of the woman on the balcony, he thought, then clenched his jaw against it.
Focus, Will.
“Here you go, Dr. Sterling,” Janine said, saving him from himself.
Any other day, he’d probably correct her. You can call me Will, he’d say, same as he always did, because almost six years out of medical school and he still didn’t much like being called “Doctor” outside the bay, and even there he sometimes—when he thought it’d make a difference, when he thought it’d make someone more comfortable—led with his first name.
Today, though. Today he only smiled and said thanks. Today he’d get Dr. Sterling–ed all day if it kept his head on straight, if it helped give him the kind of distance he wanted: the distance between the man he was here in this hospital cafeteria, and the boy he’d felt like early this morning. First, when he stepped inside that stuffy, stale-smelling apartment he hadn’t seen in sixteen years.
And then when he’d stood outside on that cool, dark balcony and seen the woman look down at him.
He’d actually been nervous.
“Fucking Donny,” he muttered.
“And who is Donny?” said a voice from beside him, and he let his eyes close briefly.
Of course. Of course it would be the person in this hospital most likely to make him nervous.
“Good morning, Dr. Abraham,” he said, hating himself a little for the way he pitched his voice lower. He already had a pretty deep voice; when he talked to Gerald Abraham he sounded like he was auditioning to play Darth Vader. He’d never wanted to get paged so bad in his life, but unless he heard the chime on his phone, he knew he was well and truly stuck. Dr. Abraham was his direct superior in the emergency department, but even if he wasn’t, pretty much everyone in this hospital knew what Will had learned in the eight months since he’d been hired out of his fellowship as an attending physician at this hospital: you could not walk away from this guy, not when he asked you a question. He was five foot six of fifty-six-year-old dead seriousness, with an encyclopedic knowledge of hospital policy and absolutely zero sense of humor.
“A person called Donny, you mentioned?”
Will turned to look down at his boss, but the man was doing what he was usually doing when they stood anywhere together, which is to say: not looking back at him. Unless Will was seated and Dr. Abraham was standing, eye contact in general was a no-go, though Will had learned not to take it personally. Right now Dr. Abraham was staring at the coffee counter with absolutely fixed concentration, but Will knew the truth.
He was waiting on an answer.
“No one important,” Will tried.
“I certainly hope you are not referring to a patient.”
“Certainly not.”
Will drank a too-hot gulp of coffee instead of wincing. In addition to the Vader voice, he also hated the way he always ended up weirdly mimicking Dr. Abraham’s formalities. A lately deceased kinsman, his Abraham-infected brain said, and out of sheer annoyance at his inner voice he blurted, “My dead uncle.”
That almost got the man to turn his head. Instead, he cleared his throat, rocked back on his heels in that way he had. If he did this while you were on the floor, giving orders for meds or settling on a diagnosis, you knew you’d done something he didn’t like, something he’d tell you later was an “unusual choice” or a “departure from our normal procedures.”
Will waited.
“I assume he’s done something pre- or postmortem to deserve this language?”
Where to begin? Will thought. But he only took another sip of his coffee and said, “He left me his apartment.”
Everything in it, too. Near as he could tell, the same brown recliner was still there. It smelled the same, a fact that flooded him with terrible memories of that terrible day. Getting out of there, it’s what had sent him onto the balcony in the first place. Where he’d met the—
“An unusual reason to curse someone,” Abraham said.