Just for the Summer(15)

“Have him fly to Hawaii to see if it works. We do not go out of our way for men. We do not inconvenience ourselves for men, we do not change our well-laid plans for men. No.”

“Tickets to Hawaii are like a thousand bucks round trip right now. I can’t ask him to do that once a week for a month, that makes no sense. Look.”

I opened the laptop. “Look at the place I found for us—”

“There is no place cool enough for me to—”

“It’s a historic cottage on an island in the middle of a lake.”

She paused in the way that I knew meant I’d gotten her attention.

I tapped on the tab and turned the screen toward her. “It’s two bedrooms. It’s super cute. Look at the porch. We could have our coffee there every morning, overlooking the water. It has a beach, with sand and a firepit.”

She peered over and pressed her lips together while she studied the pictures. Then she looked up and narrowed her eyes at me. “If it’s on an island, how are we supposed to get to it?”

“It comes with a boat.”

She arched an eyebrow. “A boat?”

“A pontoon.”

She paused. “I get to be a sea captain?”

I nodded. “You get to be a sea captain. It’s only fifteen minutes from the hospital. And guess which one it is? Royaume Northwestern.”

Her eyebrow went higher. “Royaume?”

“Yup.”

Minnesota had never been on our top twenty-five, but Royaume Northwestern was one of the best hospitals in the world. It was a huge selling point. Hospitals like Royaume had excellent certified-nursing-assistant-to-nurse ratios, nice lounges, lots of perks.

She seemed to think about it for a second. Then she shook her head again. “We’ll piss off the agency if we bail on Hawaii.”

“Nope. We haven’t signed contracts yet. They really need nurses at Royaume, they said they’re more than happy to make the switch. And it’s only a six-week assignment, we’ll be in and out. Just for the summer.”

She sat back against the sofa. “What department?” She looked at me.

I closed the lid of the laptop and mumbled it under my breath without looking at her.

She leaned in. “What? I couldn’t hear you. I thought for a second there you said Med Surg.”

I glanced at her. “I did. It’s Med Surg.”

She slapped her hands on her thighs and got up. “NOPE.”

“Come on!” I said, watching her walk to the door. “It can’t be that bad!”

She turned. “Med Surg and it can’t be that bad? Are you kidding me? Surgeons are assholes. They are assholes in direct proportion to how good they are. Can you imagine the absolute audacity of the doctors working there? The abuse we will be subjected to on a daily—No.” She shook her head. “I’m not doing it. Absolutely not.”

“They’re only assholes if you suck at your job—”

“They draw their energy from making nurses cry. We’ll be sacrificial lambs. And you know we’ll get all the crap assignments because we’re the newbies, they’ll float us three times a shift—No.”

I let out a slow breath. Then I set the laptop gently next to me. “I didn’t want to have to do this…”

She crossed her arms again. “Do what?”

“The trailer park.”

I let it hang there between us.

Her arms dropped. “You said you were never going to bring that up again,” she breathed.

“No, I said I was going to drop it. But I guess now I’m picking it up because you’ve given me no choice.”

“That was three years ago, Emma—”

“I agreed to a three-month stay in a luxury trailer home in a luxury trailer park in Utah with allllll the amenities—”

“Emma—”

“And when we got there, it was a two-thousand-year-old camper with no working AC, mice, a drained pool, and a creepy laundry room. No long-term rentals in sight because it was peak tourist season, so we were trapped in the RV from Breaking Bad for three months—”

“I found us a different place and you didn’t want it!”

“Really? The spare bedroom from the drunk guy you met in the ER who kept telling me I’d be prettier if I smiled more? That guy?”

She looked away from me. “I can’t believe you’re bringing this up,” she muttered.

I stood and walked slowly toward her, knowing I had her. “All I’m asking is to put off Hawaii for six more weeks. We get to stay in a gorgeous cottage on a lake, we have a boat for the summer, we get to cross Royaume off the bucket list. Yes, I realize Med Surg is less than ideal, but we’ll be working with some of the best surgeons in the world. And then I get to try this thing with this Justin guy—it’ll be an adventure.”

She didn’t reply.

“You can pick where we go for the following six months. You get two turns back-to-back.”

Her eyes slid to mine. “Can I pick the same place the whole time?”

This caught me by surprise. “We never stay at the same place for six months,” I said.

“Yeah, well we also never chose from a state not on our top twenty-five and we never skip turns.”