The restaurant wasn't exactly what you'd call a fast-food joint, it was the kind of place that hovered between categories, with colorful neon lights on the ceiling and burgers whose names tried a little too hard to be funny. But the tables were big, the music wasn't too loud, and most importantly, Dr. Ashton wasn't there.
This last point constituted, without anyone saying so out loud, the evening's main selection criterion.
They'd settled in with the careful casualness of people leaving prison who don't yet know what to do with their arms. Shoulders dropped a notch. Voices rose by half a tone. Léo ordered a beer with the enthusiasm of a survivor.
— Right, he said, planting his elbows on the table and surveying the group with the look of a summer camp counselor who's just had a brilliant idea. Since we're going to be working together for an unspecified amount of time under the supervision of a cold-blooded predator, we might as well get to know each other. I propose a round-table introduction. Name, first name, age, previous department, university of origin.
He paused.
— And sexual orientation.
Déborah and Anaïs stared at him simultaneously, two different variations on the same expression.
Léo scratched his head.
— To set the mood.
— The mood for what, exactly? said Déborah.
— For... the evening.
— We're in a fast-food restaurant with our new coworkers after a traumatic day.
— Exactly. Might as well know who we're dealing with.
Anaïs looked at him for another two seconds, then shrugged with the philosophy of someone who'd decided certain battles weren't worth the energy.
— Since it's your idea, you go first.
Léo nodded with the confidence of a man who hadn't considered that his proposal could be turned against him.
— Léo Moore, twenty-six, former ophthalmology department, Brussell-Centre University, straight.
He gave a slight bow.
— And yes, eyes are my specialty, so if anyone needs a professional opinion on their vision, I'm here.
— Congratulations, said Anaïs. What a groundbreaking revelation.
Déborah picked up the thread.
— Déborah Beckwell, twenty-five, trauma surgery, same university as you, straight. And no, I don't give free massages, so don't even try.
— Incredible, Léo murmured. Such plot twists.
Everyone looked toward the end of the table.
Mathys Carabel—who had been there from the start, something several people had, in all honesty, slightly forgotten—lifted his head like a man realizing the inevitable has just knocked on his door. He had round glasses, hair a touch too long, and that way of holding his shoulders forward that people develop after spending too much time trying to take up less space.
— Mathys Carabel, um, twenty-four. Pediatrics department. Saint-Louis University. I'm... straight.
The tone on that last word sounded less like a statement than a question posed to the assembly for validation.
A silence.
— Hey, relax, Léo said immediately. We're not taking notes.
— Usually, anyway, Anaïs added.
Mathys went pale.
— She's joking, Déborah cut in.
— Yes.
A pause.
— Well, I think so.
Mathys looked close to fainting.
★★★
Jacob had been sipping his soda since the start with the focus of a man who hears everything, retains everything, and has no intention of participating until forced to. When all eyes turned to him, he set his glass down on the table with calculated slowness.
— Jacob Lawson, twenty-five.
He paused long enough that Léo started to open his mouth.
— Hartwell University.
An admiring silence rippled through the table. Even Tae-Hee had heard of that university. The tuition fees were roughly equivalent to the GDP of a small country.
— Gay.
The silence that followed had that particular texture of people receiving information they weren't expecting and trying to figure out how their faces are supposed to react.
Jacob let them figure it out.
— I'm already in a relationship, he added, with the absolute detachment of someone reading a weather report. Just so *some people* don't get the wrong idea.
Every gaze drifted slowly toward Léo.
— Why are you all looking at me?
— Instinct, Anaïs replied.
— I'm hurt.
— You'll survive.
Tae-Hee coughed gently into his fist. He focused on the menu.
Dave cleared his throat with the casualness of a man who'd rehearsed his line in his head and knew it would land.
— Dave Brownson. Twenty-eight. Applied Health Sciences University, orthopedics department, then ICU.
He smiled at the group that broad, bright smile that seemed engineered specifically to disarm crowds.
— Bisexual. Single.
Second silence.
This one had a slightly different texture from the first—livelier, with a few glances exchanged and Déborah's attempt at a neutral expression failing halfway through.
Anaïs laughed outright.
— The whole school's gonna fall off its chair when it finds out the little prince isn't exclusively into girls.
Dave tilted his head with the modesty of someone accepting a backhanded compliment.
— The little prince? Tae-Hee repeated.
— You didn't know?
— I mostly live at the hospital.
— That explains a lot.
Dave buried his face in his hands.
— I already regret this conversation.
— Too late, said Anaïs.
A moment passed, then:
— Anaïs? said Léo.
Anaïs set down her glass, crossed her arms on the table, and rattled off her information with the efficiency of someone who gives this kind of exercise only the strictly necessary amount of attention.
— Anaïs Shirley. Twenty-seven. Vascular surgery. Hartwell University, the class above Lawson's, which explains why I'm less weird than he is.
Jacob didn't look up from his soda.
— Lithosexual, she concluded.
Léo frowned slightly.
— Meaning?
— I experience attraction. I don't need it to be reciprocated.
She shrugged one shoulder.
— Single by definition and by preference.
— But... you like someone without them knowing? Léo said, genuinely intrigued. Isn't that kind of hard?
Anaïs looked at him with the expression of a woman who's had this conversation many times and arrived at a definitive answer.
— No. It's perfect. Less investment, less negotiation, zero disappointment. I like being the only one who feels what I feel. It's cleaner.
A thoughtful silence settled over the table, the silence of people trying to understand an operating system foreign enough to their own that they can't tell if they disagree or are simply behind.
Jacob glanced at her for half a second, with the brief, uncommented expression of someone who'd just filed away a piece of information.
What a specimen, he thought, without it being a judgment.
Léo, Déborah, and Dave nodded with the unintentional synchronization of people who understand the word without grasping the thing, and decide that's enough to move on.
★★★
All eyes turned to Tae-Hee.
He startled with the Pavlovian reflex of someone who'd spent several weeks being addressed by his name in a tone that was never entirely kind.
— Ah. Um. Yes.
He straightened in his chair.
— Well, um. Jong Tae-Hee, twenty-two. I'm from the Applied Health Sciences University, in the... well, same one as Dave, actually. I came from the orthopedics department, under Doctor... well, you know. Before that it was the ICU with Doctor Shin, and before that, a short rotation at Lumière Hospital, and-
He stopped.
Started again.
— I'm-
— Good evening.
The voice dropped onto the table like a cold, precise weight.
Everyone froze in whatever position they were in, Léo with his beer halfway to his mouth, Déborah mid-way through opening her menu, Mathys with both hands flat on the table in an inexplicable posture.
Christopher Ashton stood at the end of the table. No lab coat anymore. A blue shirt, dark jeans, a long coat draped over the crook of his elbow with the casual negligence of someone who wears clothes well without thinking about it. He was perfectly, infuriatingly at home in a neon-lit fast-food restaurant on a weeknight, with no visible effort whatsoever.
— If I didn't know him, I might actually fall in love, Léo murmured.
Déborah's and Anaïs's stifled laughs crashed into their respective glasses. Even Dave smiled.
Ashton pulled out the chair across from Tae-Hee and Dave, sat down with the economy of movement of someone who's never had to settle into a room because he already occupied it before walking in, and laid his coat over his knees.
His gaze swept the table briefly and methodically.
— I see no one has ordered, he said.
— We were waiting for you, Doctor, said Déborah.
— Is that politeness or strategy?
— Both, she admitted.
Ashton picked up the menu. The group, in a collective, unspoken movement, also lowered their eyes to theirs, less out of interest in the food than out of that universal human reflex in the presence of a predator: avoid direct eye contact and hope it helps.
Jacob, to his right, sipped his soda with the serenity of a man who'd already decided he wasn't paying and that this fact didn't affect the quality of his evening.
Tae-Hee, across from Ashton, stared at his menu with the intensity of a student cramming for an exam.
He still hadn't finished his introduction.
He decided this probably wasn't the moment to pick it back up.
The silence around the table had that particular quality of people reading menus without reading menus.
Léo was the first to crack.
It was in his nature. He had a constitutional inability to let a silence exist without trying to fill it with something, anything, preferably something funny, and failing that, something that resembled funny from a sufficient distance.
He set down his menu.
— So, Dr. Ashton. How are you feeling in your new department?
Déborah closed her eyes.
Ashton looked up from his menu with the slowness of a man confirming he'd heard what he thought he'd heard.
— It's my department, he said. The question doesn't really work that way.
— Of course, of course.
Léo nodded with the energy of someone who knows he's digging himself deeper but has decided to commit to it.
— And so, outside of work, do you have... hobbies? Passions?
— Léo, Déborah murmured without moving her lips.
— I'm just asking.
— You don't need to ask.
— The atmosphere's tense, I'm lightening it.
— You're not lightening it.
— I'm doing my best.
Ashton looked back and forth between them with the expression of a man witnessing a natural phenomenon he hadn't anticipated, not annoyed, not amused, just assessing.
— Surgery, he said finally.
Léo looked at him.
— That's your hobby?
— It's my passion.
— Ah.
A beat.
— You don't have anything a bit more... relaxing? Hiking, painting, I don't know, knitting-
— Léo, said Anaïs.
— Yes?
— Stop talking.
— I-
— Now.
Léo closed his mouth. He immediately opened it again.
— I'm going to order. Does anyone want fries?
The waitress arrived with the providential timing of someone unknowingly saving a situation. She handed out menus with the automatic smile of staff used to loud groups, paused on Ashton half a second too long—which everyone noticed and no one commented on—and took out her notepad.
Orders followed in succession. Burger for Léo, salad for Déborah, which earned her a look from Léo that clearly meant *we're in a fast-food restaurant*, wrap for Mathys, who took forty-five seconds to decide under the collective pressure of everyone's stares, an extra soda for Jacob, who ordered nothing else.
Ashton ordered a coffee.
The waitress noted it down.
— That's all? she said.
— That's all.
She left. Léo looked at Ashton with an expression of genuine bewilderment.
— Did you eat before coming?
— No.
— You're not hungry?
— I ordered a coffee.
— A coffee isn't a meal, Doctor.
— Thank you for that nutritional insight, Moore.
— I'm just saying, because... well, we're in a restaurant, there's food, it's generally an occasion to-
— Léo, said Dave from the other end of the table.
— What?
— He's a surgeon. He can eat whenever he wants.
— That has nothing to do with-
— He removes organs for a living. Let the man drink his coffee in peace.
Léo considered the argument. He nodded slowly, like a man acknowledging the soundness of a piece of reasoning even when it doesn't fully satisfy him, and turned back to his menu to choose his fries.
The food arrived.
The conversation, deprived of its lead organizer, who was now chewing with the focus of a man at peace with himself, found its own level, parallel threads, natural subgroups, Déborah and Anaïs exchanging things in low voices, Mathys answering Dave's questions with the steadily decreasing caution of someone gradually realizing no one's going to hurt him.
Tae-Hee ate in silence.
Not the awkward silence from earlier. A functional silence, he was hungry, the food was there, and he hadn't yet figured out which register to adopt when his direct superior was sitting across from him, two meters away, out of his lab coat and in a blue shirt that shouldn't have changed much but somehow changed something anyway.
He concentrated on his fries.
— Jong.
He nearly knocked over his glass.
Ashton was watching him over his coffee with that indecipherable expression that seemed to be his default state, not cold, not particularly warm, just present, and with a slightly uncomfortable precision.
— You didn't finish your introduction earlier.
The table fell silent on reflex.
Tae-Hee felt eight pairs of eyes land on him simultaneously.
— I... yes. Um. Jong Tae-Hee. Twenty-two. Applied Health Sciences University, same class as Dave. Before orthopedics, the ICU with Doctor Shin. And before that...
He stopped for a fraction of a second.
Before that, I operated under your orders for fifteen minutes in an OR I technically shouldn't have been in, and then I used you as a crash cushion on a staircase.
— A short rotation at Lumière Hospital, he said.
Ashton took a sip of coffee. His expression didn't change.
— I know, he said simply.
A silence.
— And what about the last part? said Léo, with the carefully constructed innocence of someone who's decided that since he's going to die anyway, he might as well choose how.
Déborah pressed her hand to her forehead.
— Léo-
— It's for the fairness of the round-table. Everyone answered. It's the rule.
— It's your rule.
— A rule is a rule.
Ashton set down his cup. He looked at Léo with the particular attention he seemed to reserve for situations that surprised him, though he hadn't yet decided if it was in a good way.
— Moore.
— Doctor?
— You have a remarkable ability to put yourself in uncomfortable positions with a consistency that's almost admirable.
— Is that... a compliment?
— It's an observation.
Léo processed this.
— I'm going to take it as a compliment.
— That's your right.
Dave, beside Tae-Hee, watched the scene with the expression of a man who'd braced for a catastrophe and was realizing, with slight disappointment, that it might not happen tonight.
Jacob, to Ashton's right, had finished his second soda and was studying the bottom of his glass with the focus of a man weighing whether ordering a third was a reasonable decision. He decided it was.
— The bill, he said without looking up, is the doctor covering it?
The table froze.
Ashton turned his head slowly toward him.
Jacob held his gaze with absolute serenity. No irony, no calculated provocation, just a question asked with the naturalness of someone who simply wants to know where they stand.
The silence lasted four seconds.
— No, said Ashton.
Jacob nodded, took out his wallet, and mentally tallied what he'd spent on sodas with the resigned expression of a man who'd bet on the wrong horse and was accepting it with philosophy.
Léo snorted into his napkin.
Déborah and Anaïs exchanged a look. Mathys looked at Jacob with the eyes of someone who'd just witnessed something he'd never have dared do himself and wasn't sure whether to admire or pity.
Tae-Hee stared at his plate.
But at the corner of his lips, something was resisting staying flat.
The evening unfolded that way in successive layers, shoulders dropping a notch every half hour, voices rising slightly, Léo attempting a joke every ten minutes with a variable success rate but admirable consistency.
Ashton didn't talk much. He listened genuinely, not out of politeness and rarely chimed in, but when he did, it was with that precision that left people searching for a comeback thirty seconds after he'd already moved on.
At one point, Mathys shyly told a story from his pediatrics rotation, about a six-year-old who'd tried to treat his own hamster using his father's first-aid kit. The table laughed. Even Ashton had something at the corner of his eye that resembled the start of a smile, brief enough that everyone later wondered if they'd really seen it.
By ten o'clock, the plates were empty, and Jacob had secured his third soda through means nobody had clearly identified.
The atmosphere seemed to have eased.