Valentina had played with drugs for a while, which were common in that world. At thirty-two, she was saner now, and still a top model, but one day her career would be over, and Sasha couldn’t imagine her sister leading a quiet life with a husband and kids. She needed the frenzy and glamour now, and the high life. She had become addicted to it, and unlike Sasha, she loved being in the limelight. Coming back down to earth one day would be rough. And getting older was a nightmare to Valentina, or losing her looks. Whenever they talked about it, there was panic in her eyes. She ran harder every year, trying to escape the future and the truth.

“So what do you do for fun?” he asked Sasha, and for a moment she looked blank.

“What was that again? Could you spell that for me?” They both laughed, since they got almost no time off, and hadn’t in years. “Work, I guess. I love what I do.” She had said it earlier, and he could see that she did, and gave herself to it to the fullest. It didn’t leave her time for much else. “What about you?”

“I love to sail,” he said immediately. “My brother has a small boat on the lake. We go out on it every chance we get. I used to play tennis, but I never get time to play here. I was a jock as a kid, but some of the moving parts aren’t what they used to be.” He and Sasha were the same age, but he said he’d had a lot of injuries playing sports in college. “I like being outdoors. I wanted to be a professional baseball player as a kid, a firefighter or a forest ranger, anything outside.”

“I wanted to be a doctor, a nurse, or a vet.” She smiled. “My mother had a fit every time I said I wanted to be a nurse. She’s an overachiever and a big-time feminist. She’d really have preferred it if I wanted to be president of the United States, but that sounds like a lousy job to me. Everybody hates you, criticizes what you do, and tries to make you look like shit. I think my mom would like to be president, but I don’t think she’d get a lot of votes. She’s pretty tough.” Alex liked the fact that Sasha wasn’t. He could tell that she was strong, but there was a gentleness to her, and he liked how open and straightforward she was.

“Could we have dinner sometime?” He finally got up the guts to ask her. She was so beautiful that he still felt intimidated by her. She didn’t flirt with him, or act coy, and she treated him like a pal more than a date. He wasn’t sure what that meant. Maybe she wasn’t interested in him, or attracted to him. He hadn’t figured that out yet, and Sasha looked surprised for a minute when he asked about dinner, as though that hadn’t occurred to her. He couldn’t tell if she wanted to or not. She had said nothing about a boyfriend or her personal life during lunch, only about her family and her work.

“You mean like a date?” She almost choked on the words.

“Yes, kind of like that,” he said cautiously. “Any interest?” She hesitated before she answered.

“I don’t have much free time,” she said honestly, but he didn’t either, and it didn’t stop him from asking. He wanted to go out with her, however infrequent or disjointed it might be. His own dating life had been spotty and irregular all through medical school and his training. It was the nature of the life they both led.

“You have to eat,” he pointed out to her, “and from what I can see, you’d be cheap to feed. You don’t eat much.” She hadn’t finished the fruit plate or the salad—she was more interested in talking to him—although the big cookie had disappeared.

She laughed at what he said, and relaxed again. “Sure. Maybe. I guess. Why not?”

“I wouldn’t call that a vastly enthusiastic response, but it’ll do.” He smiled at her.

“I just hesitate to go out with anyone right now. You know what our life is like. Every time I make a plan, I have to cancel. They change my schedule every five minutes, or I’m on call and they yank me in, and I have to leave before the food comes. It pisses normal people off. And it gets old pretty fast. And I live in scrubs and Crocs. How sexy is that?” Not very, they both knew, but she was a beautiful, intelligent woman, and he was determined to go out with her. He liked everything about her, and he had a crazy feeling that they were meant for each other. He had never met a woman he liked as much.

“I get it. I’m a doctor too. Our lives will be sane one day,” he said hopefully.

“Maybe not,” she said truthfully, “if I stay in OB.”

“So you’re going to take a vow of chastity?” She grinned at what he said.

“No. But I hate disappointing people, and I always do. And dating is so much work.”

“Dinner is easy. We each get ten free passes to cancel for work. And you can come to dinner in scrubs and Crocs.” He looked as though he meant it, and she smiled. He was making it easy for her, and hard to refuse. And she liked him too. She couldn’t see into the future, but she liked the idea of having dinner with him, a lot more than her recent dinner with the actor/underwear model. At least they had medicine in common, and they both had crazy schedules.

“Okay,” she agreed. “Dinner in scrubs and Crocs. It’s a deal.”

“How about Friday or Saturday? Someone screwed up the schedule and gave me the weekend off.”

“Lucky you. I’m working Friday, and on call Saturday. We could give it a whirl, and hope I don’t get called in.”

“Perfect.” They exchanged cell phone numbers, just as she got a text from L and D. One of their mothers on bed rest had gone into labor, and her water had just broken. They wanted her to take a look. The attending was in surgery. She glanced at Alex regretfully and told him she had to go, but they had had a nice reprieve for lunch. They had been there for over an hour, and had established a good basis for a friendship, or anything else that happened. It had been a pleasant exchange, and she felt surprisingly comfortable with him, more so than with most men. She just didn’t like the games you had to play, and that most men seemed to expect on a “date.” She wasn’t flirtatious, and she always said what she meant, which frightened a lot of men. Alex didn’t seem to mind it—on the contrary, he liked it. And she wondered how he and Valentina would get along. He wasn’t her style, and she suspected her sister would find him boring, which Sasha didn’t find him at all. Their conversation had been lively and thoughtful, and she liked that there was no artifice about him, and he didn’t seem to have a big ego, which was something she didn’t like about male doctors. A lot of them thought they walked on water and were full of themselves. And she liked that he seemed able to laugh at himself, and was fairly modest and respectful of her.

They left the cafeteria, and he walked her back to labor and delivery, where she thanked him for lunch, and he headed back to neonatal ICU on the same floor. They had just texted him too. They both had to get back to work.

“See you Saturday,” he said more casually than he felt. “Don’t forget to wear your scrubs,” he teased her, and half meant it. “That way I can wear mine and don’t have to find a clean shirt.” She laughed at him.

“I’ll try for jeans,” she promised, and as he walked down the hall, there was a spring in his step and a smile on his face.

“What are you so happy about?” Marjorie, the head nurse, asked him when he got to the NICU. “Are you on drugs?” She smiled at him. He was nice to work with, and the nurses liked him, and he was a good-looking guy.

“I have a date,” he confided, looking like a kid. It was hard to believe that was a big deal to him.

“Lucky girl,” the nurse said to him. She was married and ten years older than he was, so she wasn’t interested, but they all thought he was a catch. One of them said he was a “hunk,” unbeknownst to him. He was unaware of the things they said about him, which was just as well.

“Lucky me,” he corrected her. He could hardly wait for Saturday night. And as Sasha walked into the labor room to check on her patient, she was smiling too.

—

Claire and Morgan met at Max’s restaurant for dinner that night. Claire had stopped at the apartment to change her clothes, and Morgan came straight from work. Max was happy to see her and kissed her when she walked in.

“Who are you having dinner with?” He had seen her name on the reservation list and was curious.

“Claire. She wanted to talk to me privately. I think about work.” He nodded and walked her to the table. The restaurant was busy that night, and Claire walked in a few minutes later with a distracted look. She kissed Max on her way in, and saw Morgan waiting for her with a glass of wine.

“Thanks for having dinner with me,” Claire said as she sat down. Meeting away from the apartment made it seem more official, but she hadn’t wanted to be distracted by Abby crying over Ivan, or Sasha coming home from work. She wanted Morgan’s attention and her always-sound work advice. Claire had no one else to talk to, and never liked worrying her mother, who wanted to believe she had a stable job. Claire wasn’t so sure, or if she should stay. She was beginning to feel she was killing her future in shoe design with what Walter expected of her.

“So tell me, what’s up?” Morgan asked with a warm smile as Claire expressed her concerns.

“I hate the designs I have to do for him. We hardly change the shoes from season to season. They want to stick with what they do. He hates change,” she said grimly. “What if people think that’s all I can do? And it’s so frustrating, I don’t get to do anything creative. I never get to design the shoes I want. And he’s terrified of everything I suggest.”

“Would your customers buy more creative shoes, if he let you do them?”

Claire thought about it. “Probably not. But he won’t even let me do one. He hates everything I do. If I make the slightest modification to last year’s shoes, he’s on my back. I don’t even have to design a new season. I could just give him the same drawings three times a year. And he’s getting nasty about it. I don’t think he trusts me, and I know he doesn’t like my style. So what do I do? If I quit, I may not find another job. The market is tough these days, and I can’t afford to be out of work. If I stay, I feel as though part of me is dying, the creative part.”