Professional Distance
1547 Words
Jack couldn’t sleep.
He’d left Asher’s penthouse sometime after midnight, the door clicking shut behind him like a period at the end of a sentence he wasn’t ready to finish. Back at his own place, he lay on his bed fully clothed, staring at the faint cracks in the ceiling as if they might rearrange themselves into answers. Instead, the night just looped in his head: the sharp jolt of discovery, the scorching heat of Asher’s hands on his skin, and then worst of all that sudden, arctic dismissal.
He pressed the heels of his palms into his eyes.
This doesn’t happen again.
The words felt like both a promise and a lie.
6:04 AM.
Jack's alarm rang for four minutes before he finally turned it off.
He lay still for a moment, then reached for his phone. He opened the dating app out of habit and scrolled to the conversation thread.
User Not Found.
He blinked and refreshed.
User Not Found.
Jack set the phone on the nightstand and stared at the ceiling.
So that was how it would be.
He wasn’t really surprised. Asher Wiseman controlled every part of his life with precision. Of course, he would cut off the one thing that had gotten out of hand. Clean and efficient, with no loose ends.
What felt wrong wasn’t the deletion. It was the silence. No conversation. No agreement. Just gone.
Jack didn’t like being erased.
He got up, grabbed his bag, and headed for the door.
7:52 AM
The cardiology wing was already active when Jack arrived, with nurses changing shifts, residents doing early chart reviews, and the steady rhythm of a hospital morning.
Jack clipped his badge to his scrub pocket and walked to the intern meeting point near the nurses' station.
Most of the group was already there, standing straighter than the day before. They had survived day one, which counted for something.
Zoey appeared at his side and pressed a coffee into his hand without saying a word.
He took a long sip. "Thanks."
"You look functional," she said.
"High praise."
She gave him a sideways look. "Did you sleep?"
"Enough."
She opened her mouth, but footsteps interrupted her.
Dr. Wiseman came around the corner with a tablet in hand, his white coat crisply pressed, moving with the efficiency of someone who never wasted a step. The resident behind him half-jogged to keep up.
He reached the group and stopped to scan the faces.
"Eight patients today," he said. No greeting or preamble. "I expect you to have reviewed overnight charts before we start. If not, go to the back and stay quiet." He turned. "Follow me."
The first patient was in room 401. Mr. Hartley, fifty-eight years old, forty-eight hours post-bypass surgery. He was sitting up in bed when they entered, a remote in his hand, which he immediately switched off.
Asher stopped at the foot of the bed. He first looked at the monitor, then the chart, then the patient.
"Status," he said.
One of the interns, Priya, stepped forward. "Vitals stable overnight. Minimal chest tube drainage. He’s been up and walking since this morning. Made it to the end of the hallway and back."
"Chest X-ray."
"Small right-sided pleural effusion. Radiology flagged it as non-significant."
"What do you think?"
Priya hesitated. "I… agree with radiology?"
"Are you asking me or telling me?"
"Telling you."
Asher studied the image on his tablet for two seconds. "It's borderline. We'll repeat it tomorrow. If it increases, we’ll tap it." He turned to Mr. Hartley. Something in his voice softened a bit, still precise but less sharp. "Pain levels this morning?"
"Four out of ten." Mr. Hartley glanced at the interns lined up behind Asher like nervous ducklings. "Better than yesterday."
"Day four will be worse. That’s expected. Don’t let it stop you from walking." He wrote a note and stepped back. "Next."
Jack moved with the group into the corridor.
He waited until Asher turned to the next chart, then glanced over.
Asher didn’t look up.
Room 403. Mrs. Park, seventy-one years old, had a new pacemaker implanted six days ago.
They arranged themselves around the bed. Asher stood at the foot, interns fanned out to one side, and the bedside nurse quietly stood near the window.
Asher let thirty seconds pass while he reviewed the chart. Then, without looking up, he said, "Dr. Harper."
Jack straightened. "Yes."
"MRI contraindications. Patient with a recently implanted pacemaker."
"Depends on the device," Jack replied. "Older pacemakers are an absolute contraindication. MRI-conditional devices can be scanned under specific protocols—correct field strength, appropriate programming mode, monitoring throughout the scan."
"Which applies here?"
Jack checked the chart on his tablet. "Her device is MRI-conditional, but she’s within six weeks of implantation. We’d wait unless imaging is urgent."
Asher made a note on his tablet.
That was it.
No acknowledgment, no correction, and no approval either. Just a stylus moving across a screen while Asher shifted his attention to the next thing.
Jack looked at him, holding the gaze a beat longer than necessary.
Asher turned to Mrs. Park. "Any chest discomfort? Shortness of breath?"
"A little twinge here and there," she said, touching her left side. "Is that normal, doctor?"
"Completely. The pocket where the device sits is still healing. It will settle in the next few weeks." He spoke to her the same way he spoke to everyone—measured, direct, without warmth but not cruel either. Then he turned and walked out.
Jack followed.
By the fifth patient, Jack had it figured out.
Asher moved through the group methodically. Everyone got called on. Everyone received the same clipped precision questions delivered without feeling, answers given without comment, corrections issued without softening. Equal treatment, no favorites.
When it was Jack's turn, it was just like the others.
Clinically. Impersonally.
Like they were strangers.
Which they were, technically. Professionally. On paper.
Jack stood at the back of the group outside room 408, watching Asher correct another intern on a drug dosage calculation. Asher's voice was flat and matter-of-fact, not unkind—just neutral.
The intern beside Jack, a quiet guy named Daniel, leaned over and whispered, "Does he ever actually say well done to anyone?"
"I don't think that's in his vocabulary," Jack replied.
"How are you so calm about it? He made Priya cry yesterday."
Jack watched Asher hand the chart back to the resident and turn toward the next room.
"He doesn’t bother me," Jack said.
And that, at least, was completely true.
After rounds, the group split. Half went to a seminar with Dr. Reid while Jack got assigned to surgical observation with Dr. Caroline Webb, Chief of General Surgery.
She was efficient, direct, and as warm as a scalpel which Jack found refreshing after a morning of feeling invisible.
"Harper?" she said as he scrubbed in beside her.
"Yes."
"First surgery?"
"Yes."
"Observe. Ask questions during closing. Don’t touch anything unless I say so." She snapped her gloves on. "And don’t pass out. You’d be surprised."
"I won't."
She glanced at him and seemed to decide she believed him. "Good."
The procedure was a routine laparoscopic cholecystectomy forty minutes, clean and precise.
Jack watched every move. During closing, he asked two questions, and both times Dr. Webb paused and actually looked at him.
After they de-scrubbed, she said: "Where did you do your clinical rotations?"
"University Hospital."
"Thought so." She dried her hands. "Good instincts. Keep them."
That was all. Simple, direct, and enough.
Jack carried that with him into the afternoon.
Lunch.
Zoey was already at their table when Jack arrived with a tray of cafeteria pasta that smelled better than it tasted.
"Surgery?" she asked, stealing a breadstick before he'd even sat down.
"Good. Dr. Webb is solid."
"Better than Dr. Satan?"
"Different." Jack sat down and pushed the pasta around with his fork. "Warmer."
"That's a low bar." Zoey tilted her head. "You’re quiet."
"I’m eating."
"You’re never quiet when you’re eating. You’re never quiet when you're breathing." She pointed her breadstick at him. "What’s going on?"
"Nothing." He took a bite. It tasted like cardboard. "Just tired."
She studied him for a moment, and Jack could see her deciding whether to push it.
She pushed it.
"Did Wiseman do something?"
"No."
"Because if he's singling you out—"
"He's not. That's the thing." Jack looked up. "He’s treating me exactly like everyone else."
Zoey blinked. "Isn't that... good?"
"Sure," Jack said.
She opened her mouth again, but her eyes moved past him toward the cafeteria entrance, and something shifted in her expression.
"Don't look now," she said, "but—"
Jack looked.
Asher stood at the entrance, one hand resting on the door frame. He scanned the room methodical and unhurried, just like he did everything. His gaze moved across tables and chairs and trays of bad pasta until it landed briefly on Jack’s table.
One second.
Then Asher's hand left the door frame, and he turned and walked away.
Zoey watched him go. "He just left. He walked in, looked around, and left."
"Maybe he forgot something," Jack suggested.
"That's weird, right? That’s a weird thing to do."
"He's a weird person." Jack stabbed a piece of pasta. "Can we talk about something else?"
- Writer
