Back in Seattle, when I led a team of first-year residents in my final year, I always picked the scrappy kids. I looked for the ones with marks on their record and picked them first. It was a challenge to step up.
Most did. Not all.
Spending so many nights on the street hunting ispulling me back to the dark side. Filling me with adrenalin that takes the place of the high I used to get with drugs. I need this job to balance out my life. I want my family to see me back on the right path.
Especially Ana.
Because I made a decision a few months ago…
Iwantmy son.
Not full custody, I would never do that to Ana. But I need to prove to them I can be a father. We can work out sleepovers and weekends. I’ve been out of that Irish prison for three months and living in a nice apartment in Manhattan with plenty of room.
It’s time. I’m ready.
Beginning my life over, reconnecting with my family, and now with this new job, I have to stop my extracurricular dealer-killing activities and focus on making the world a better place another way.
Darragh parks in the dedicated garage for Hamilton Medical College and pulls into a spot with a placard that reads:Professor Dr. Darragh O’Rourke
I’ve grown out my blond hair to the same length as his again. That shaved mess wasn’t something I could stomach looking at anymore. Darragh and I once again look identical except for the tats crawling up my neck.
“Hey, they can save money on a new sign. I’ll just get a Sharpie and cross out Darragh.”
“Very funny.” He puts a hand on my arm, stopping me from getting out. “One more thing. There’s another requirement to this position, Cormac.”
“Now you tell me?” I hiss in response. “What? I’ve been clean since I left the California rehab. You know that. I was with you for two days before Kieran sent me to Dunbar.”
“Not that. I trust you’re clean, Cormac.” Darragh seems uneasy for the first time. “I’ll let Bradley bring it up.Just… Don’t fly off the handle.”
“Great.” I push out of the car, unable to fathom what a medical school dean can throw at me that I can’t handle.
I was ordered to go to a prison camp for a year. What the hell can be worse than that?
“I’m just looking out for you.” Darragh marches around the car, stops me, and holds my face close to his. “Preparing you.”
With Darragh so close to me, the world falls away. It was my comfort zone for the longest time. It flares up the bond we once had like a flame meeting oxygen.
My twin is the air I breathe.
“I believe in you,” Darragh whispers. “You were a better doctor than me. And you know it.”
“Maybe then.” I push a hand through my hair as I fidget in the suit. Never cared for them. Loved scrubs. And I loved working in our hospital. “The pressure got to me. When you’re the best, there’s only one place to go. And look where it got me,” I add.
That fall from grace, hitting every damn rung on the way down, left scars I’m not sure will ever heal.
“It brought Ana into my life. It brought us both home to our family. No more hiding or waiting for the other shoe to drop, having mafia killers as brothers. We’re home, Cormac. Where we belong,” he says, and I suspect he thinks I’ll run again. “You could have stayed in the shadows. You knew punishment at Dunbar waited for you. You took the risk and saved my life.”
Last year in Seattle, I watched in horror as a hitman stood outside a glass door and pointed a gun at Darragh. My brother. My soul. I blew that fucker’s head off without even a nudge from my old oath.
“You would have done the same, Darragh,” I brush it off. “Your savage is showing through.”
“We’re O’Rourkes.”
Shoulder to shoulder, we strut to the entrance of the building from the garage, our gait and step length identical.
In the elevator, I ask the question that had escaped me until now. “How does one become a professor with no teaching experience?”
Darragh shrugs. “It’s all textbook at the freshman stage. All memorizations. You just need to show up and talk through the lesson. Answer questions. Hamilton hires doctors from Ivy League medical schools to boost enrollment and charge a fortune in tuition.”