Gabriel throws his hands up to the ceiling, appealing to a higher power. “Look at you! You're wound so tight you're going to snap your own spine in half. You operate, you chart, you go to your empty, minimalist condo, and you come back here. When was the last time you went on a date? Two years ago? Three? When was the last time you ate a carbohydrate that didn’t come from the hospital cafeteria?”
“My personal life is not relevant to my surgical outcomes,” I say, my voice stiffening.
“Your lack of a personal life is altogether the problem!” Gabriel practically shouts, leaning into my space. “You live in theOR because it's the only place you feel in control. You have no outlet. You are a walking tragedy of repressed homosexual tension, and frankly, it's exhausting just looking at you.You are going to ruin your own brilliance because you refuse to let yourself be human.”
I drop my gaze to the floor. The worst part about Gabriel's theatrical dressing-downs is that he is almost always right.
“Go home,” Gabriel commands, pointing a manicured finger at the door. “Get out of my sight. Your surgeries are covered for the weekend. Take the next three days, drink a massive glass of wine, and for the love of God, find a man to thaw you out before you totally forget how to speak to another living soul. Dismissed.”
Thoroughly chastised by my mentor, I turn on my heel and march out of Gabriel’s office. I feel my eyes burning with a mixture of humiliation and sheer, bone-deep exhaustion. Gabriel’s demands are unreasonable, much like everyone else in my life.
Outside the massive hospital windows, the mid-February Toronto weather is miserable. Sleet lashes against the glass, the sky a bruised, freezing grey.
I retreat into my private office at the end of the hall, shutting the heavy door and throwing the deadbolt. The silence of the room envelops me. I shrug off my white coat, draping it over the back of my chair with precise care, and loosen my green scrub top. My shoulders ache fiercely, the deep, burning knot from the surgery settling at the base of my neck.
I press my forehead against the cool glass of my interior window, which overlooks the main floor of the paediatric ER below. The contrast between my quiet, sterile office and the bright, chaotic floor is jarring. I close my eyes. I just need five minutes of silence. Five minutes to reset my breathing before I review my post-op scans and head out into the freezing sleet.
My phone vibrates violently in my pocket, shattering the quiet.
I pull it out, fully expecting an urgent page from theneurology residents. Instead, the screen flashes with a FaceTime request.
Mother.
A fresh, different wave of dread crashes over me. Gabriel's lecture is still ringing in my ears, highlighting exactly how lonely my life has become, and I know exactly what this call is going to be about. The timing could not possibly be worse.
I close my eyes, take a fortifying breath, and swipe to accept the call, holding the phone up.
“Arjun, darling!”
My mother's voice fills the office, sharp, polished, and cheerful. Blinding, golden sunlight overwhelms the screen. She is sitting on the sprawling veranda of our family's estate inRajasthan, India, framed by vibrant pink bougainvillea. She is wearing a vaguely expensive-looking sea-foam green silk sari, with a massive diamond catching the light on her finger as she holds a delicate bone-china teacup. The contrast between her sun-drenched, aristocratic paradise and my bleak, sleet-battered Toronto reality is staggering.
“Hello, Mother,” I say, keeping my tone neutral. “I’m at the hospital; I really only have a minute...”
“Nonsense, I tracked your surgical schedule through the online portal. You're done for the day,” she cuts me off smoothly, taking a delicate sip of her tea. In the background, I can hear the faint thwack of a croquet mallet and the polite applause of my British-Indian cousins. “I’m calling with wonderful, wonderful news, darling. Dev is flying in from London on Tuesday.”
My stomach drops out from under me. “Dev?”
“Dr. Dev, darling. The cardiac surgeon? The one with the spectacular cheekbones and the massive flat in Kensington? Do try to keep up, Arjun.” She smiles, a terrifying expression that usually precedes a tactical family strike. “I’ve spoken to thefamily astrologer. He ran the numbers, and your charts are magnificently compatible. He says the stars are practically demanding a union. I expect you here by Wednesday.We will have a small, informalengagement dinner. Just seventy or eighty close family members to celebrate.”
“Mother, stop,” I say, rubbing my temples where a massive headache is rapidly blooming. “I am not marrying Dev. I've told you this. We had a single dinner in London three years ago, and we spent the entire time arguing over the efficacy of beta-blockers versus surgical intervention.”
“A shared passion for medicine! It's deeply romantic,” she counters seamlessly. “Arjun.” Her voice loses its cheerful, lilting quality, dropping into the icy, aristocratic tone that makes even the toughest, most resilient aunties in our family tremble. “You are thirty-three years old. You haven't brought a man home since your residency. You spend one hundred hours a week at that freezing Canadian hospital.”
“I am saving children, Mother. It requires focus.”
“You are hiding,” she corrects ruthlessly. “If I leave it to you, you are going to marry your scalpels and die alone in a sterile room. Dev is perfect for you. He is handsome, he is from an impeccable family lineage, he understands our world, and most importantly, he is even willing to relocate to Toronto for a year to sort out the visa paperwork after the ceremony. It is decided.”
I snap, my renowned composure finally cracking, “It has not been decided!” The walls of my office feel like they are actively shrinking, closing in on me. Between Gabriel telling me I am a repressed tragedy and my mother aggressively planning my arranged marriage across the globe, I feel like I am suffocating.
“Be reasonable, darling. Daadi has already approved the caterer,” she says, as if picking out appetizers is the binding legal contract of matrimony.
I turn away from the phone, looking desperately through the glass of my interior window, down into the ER below. Down there, amidst the bright primary colours and the turmoil of the afternoon shift, is Dr. Casey Welling.
Casey is a paediatric generalist, the frontline defence of the emergency room, and he is the undisputed, universally adoredgolden boy of the floor. He is massive, standing six-foot-three with broad, sweeping shoulders and the sturdy build of a lifelong Canadian hockey player. His chest and muscular thighs strain against his scrubs. His blonde curls are a chaotic, unruly mess spilling out from beneath his surgical cap.
Right now, he is squatting in the middle of a suturing bay next to a crying six-year-old boy with a split eyebrow. There's nothing about his look that suggests a sterile or detached environment. His presence feels grounded in the here and now. He is effortlessly applying purple Dermabond across the laceration with steady hands while delivering a booming, chest-deep laugh that echoes all the way up to my office window. He finishes the glue, pulls a brightly coloured sticker out from behind the child's ear like a magician, and slaps a holographic T-Rex right onto the kid's hospital gown.
The child instantly stops crying. He giggles, his face lighting up. Casey stands up, his own face radiant, his blue eyes crinkling at the corners as he high-fives the profoundly relieved mother standing nearby.