Gabriel stares at me.
I stare at Gabriel.
A porter pushes a gurney past us, wheels squeaking on the linoleum. Somewhere on the floor above, a pager goes off with a shrill, insistent beep. The fluorescent lights buzz their endless, institutional hum.
“Yours,” Gabriel says. The word is flat. Neutral. The kind of neutral that a bomb disposal expert uses right before deciding which wire to cut.
“Yes.”
“You are engaged.”
“That is what I said.”
“You. Arjun Kapoor. The man who has not been on a date in three years. The man who once told me that romantic attachment was 'an inefficient allocation of cognitive resources.' The man whose idea of personal intimacy is allowing someone to sit in thesame room as him without being actively dismissed. That man is engaged.”
“People change, Gabriel.”
“People change. Yes. Glaciers also change. They simply do it over the course of millennia, and you, my darling boy, are the most magnificent glacier I have ever trained.” He sets his espresso cup on the window ledge with a soft clink and folds his arms across his chest. “Who is it?”
“I don't believe that information is relevant to my leave request.”
“Everything about your personal life is relevant to me because you don't have one, and the sudden, inexplicable appearance of one is a statistical anomaly that requires immediate investigation.” He leans forward. “Is it someone I know?”
“Gabriel.”
“Is it someone at this hospital?”
“I am not going to?—”
“It's someone at this hospital.” His eyes widen. Not with surprise. With the sharp, glittering delight of a man who has just turned over a card he's been waiting to see. “Oh, this is spectacular. Who? One of the attendings? A resident? Please tell me it's not a resident, Arjun, the paperwork alone would give me an aneurysm.”
“It is not a resident.”
“A fellow? A nurse? A visiting consultant?” He is pacing now, his shoes clicking in tight, excited circles on the linoleum, his hands gesturing with the dramatic flourish of a conductor approaching a crescendo. “I want a name. I want details. I want to know how the most emotionally inaccessible man in Canadian medicine managed to form a romantic attachment without my knowledge, because I am the Chief of this department and I know everything that happens on my floor. That this eluded my attention is a personal affront.”
“Gabriel, I have forms to sign.”
He abruptly stops pacing, and stands still. His head tilts to theleft by approximately seven degrees, and his dark eyes go sharp and quiet in a way that I recognize immediately, because I have seen him do it a thousand times during case presentations. It is the moment Gabriel stops performing and starts seeing.
“It's Welling,” he says.
My face does not change. My posture does not shift. My hands, clasped behind my back, do not tighten. I give him nothing. I am a neurosurgeon. I have spent my entire career cultivating an exterior so controlled that my own pulse rate is a choice.
But Gabriel has been reading me since I was a young fellowship candidate who showed up at his door with a perfect CV and the interpersonal warmth of a block of surgical steel, and he has never once needed me to confirm anything.
“It's Casey Welling,” he says again, and this time his voice is different. The theatrical delight has quieted. Something underneath it surfaces, something careful and almost gentle, which is a word I do not typically associate with Gabriel Moretti.
“I would prefer not to discuss this further,” I say evenly.
“I'm sure you would.” He picks his espresso cup back up and takes a slow, measured sip. “How long?”
“Gabriel.”
“Arjun. I am asking you a direct question, and I am asking it as your mentor, not as your Chief. How long?”
I hold his gaze. The corridor is empty. The porter is long gone. It is just us, standing by the cold grey windows, and Gabriel is looking at me with an expression that I have only seen once before, when I was a second-year fellow and I lost my first patient on the table and he found me in the stairwell at two in the morning with my hands shaking so badly I couldn't hold a cup of water. He had sat down on the step beside me and said nothing for twenty minutes, and then he had said, “Grief is not weakness, Arjun. It is the tax you pay for caring. And you care. That is why you will be extraordinary.”
“Eight months,” I say. The lie tastes clinical and precise and entirely hollow.