I'm the cohort joke at Wexler Med.
Dr. Adrian Shaw teaches forensic pathology — Choate, Yale, untouchable. The man I've chased for three years and never landed.
He has a girlfriend. Lindley Brannock. Everyone calls her Lindy.
She's pretty in the Beacon Hill way, soft-voiced, old money. The girl I hate most in the world.
Then there was a wreck on Storrow Drive, and when I woke up, I was inside her.
I opened my eyes wearing her face, and the first thing I saw was Adrian beside the bed, looking at me the way I'd written into my diary for three years and never gotten.
I thought I'd finally won.
Then I moved into his condo, and every night he came home smelling like blood.
Until the afternoon I stood in the records room at the Suffolk County OCME and saw my own autopsy report.
Decedent: TREMAINE, YVONNE M.
Pathologist of Record: Adrian Shaw, MD.
He was behind me. His voice was very soft.
"Sweetheart. How's the new body feeling?"
He reached up and tucked a strand of Lindy's long hair behind my ear, tender, wrong.
"It's all right if you're not used to it. You'll have a brand-new one soon."
Everyone in our cohort knew I liked Dr. Shaw.
I brought him coffee at eight a.m. I sat front row in every public lecture. I waited outside the path building in the rain to hand him an umbrella once, which is the kind of thing you do at nineteen and don't recover from at twenty-four.
What I got back was always some flavor of:
"Ms. Tremaine. Don't waste your time on me."
The whole room laughed that day. Someone pulled out their phone.
By that night it was on r/WexlerMed_Confessions:
the M2 forensic-path girl who keeps leaving Dunkin' coffees on Dr. Shaw's lectern is back this morning. her cohort is taking bets. some of us are worried, mostly we're just laughing.
Top of the sub by lunch.
I stared at the post for a long time. My thumbs hovered. Then, like an idiot, I texted him anyway.
Dr. Shaw — cold front coming through tomorrow. Layer up.
He didn't reply.
Ten minutes later Lindy posted a story. Adrian across the table from her at Neptune Oyster, sleeves pushed up, carefully working a piece of lobster tail out of its shell with his fingers. Feeding it to her.
Caption: he remembers I won't touch the shell.
The replies were all hearts.
I opened it. Closed it. Opened it. Liked it.
A second later, a DM from her landed.
Yvonne. Please stop chasing him.
You're embarrassing yourself.
I was angry enough to actually type back.
Not your business.
She sent a photo. Adrian leaning across the booth, fastening a thin gold chain around her neck. His face soft in a way I'd never seen it.
He's taking me home tonight.
Please don't be there when he comes out. I'm asking you.
So of course I went.
Nine p.m. Outside the forensic-path building. I had a Dunkin' iced coffee in one hand, the kind he drinks, extra ice, no sugar. The rain had been getting heavier for an hour.
Lindy came down the steps first. Saw me. Her face changed.
"Why are you still here."
I wiped the rain off my face. I think I was still trying to look like a person who hadn't just been turned down on the internet.
"Waiting."
She came at me fast, grabbed for the cup. The lid popped. Coffee went over the back of my hand, scalding, and I let go on reflex — but she was the one who started crying first.
Adrian was coming out of the building.
She got to him before I could move. Pressed her face into his coat.
"Adrian — she said she was going to ruin me."
I stood in the rain with my hand turning red.
Adrian looked at me. There was nothing in his face.
"Yvonne. That's enough."
The cold ran down the back of my neck like someone had walked me into the harbor in October.
I turned and ran into the rain.
I didn't get far. Headlights, swerving. A box truck on Longwood, brakes screaming, the world washing white.
The last thing I heard was Lindy screaming my name.
When I opened my eyes I was in a hospital bed and Adrian Shaw was holding my hand, his eyes rimmed red.
"Lindy. Don't be scared. I'm here."
I lay there a full half-minute and couldn't speak.
The ceiling tiles were that washed-out white you only see in private hospital rooms. The air had that hard chemical edge — bleach, alcohol, the wipe-down they use on bed rails.
Adrian's palm was warm around my hand. He had never looked at me this way in my life.
I opened my mouth. My throat was a sandpit.
"Dr. Sh—"
Then I heard my own voice.
Wrong. That was the only word for it. Light, clear, with the soft little catch on the end of every word that Lindy Brannock had carried into every seminar I'd ever shared with her.
I pulled my hand back and shoved myself upright on the bed.
There was a small mirror on the rolling tray table they push toward you when they want you to drink water.
The face in it wasn't mine.
It was Lindy's.
I stared. My fingers shook.
Adrian put his hand on my shoulder.
"Don't move around. The neurologist said you have a mild concussion."
He was close enough that I could see the gray ring around his irises. My heart was hitting my sternum.
He called me Lindy.
He thought I was Lindy.
So where was Lindy.
Before I could find a single safe sentence, the door swung open and a woman in a camel coat came in carrying an insulated thermos with both hands. Her eyes were swollen with crying.
She got to the bed and put her arms around me.
"My baby. You scared me half to death."
I went rigid.
Adrian eased her off me, gentle. "Mrs. Brannock. Let her breathe. She just woke up."
The woman nodded so fast it looked like a tic. Her eyes on me were the kind of eyes I had never had pointed at me in my life.
My mother lives in Phoenix with her second husband. When I was twelve and had strep, I poured my own ginger ale.
This kind of love came down on me like a weighted blanket and the worst part was the half-second where I almost let it.
My phone buzzed on the side table. The screen was Lindy's lock screen — a beach somewhere, palm trees. Unknown number.
Don't tell anyone.
My breath stopped.
A second one.
You're me now and I'm you.
Yvonne. You open your mouth, Adrian never looks at you again.
My fingers closed around the phone hard enough that the case creaked.
She was awake.
She was in my body.
Adrian noticed something on my face.
"Who's texting you?"
I flipped the phone screen-down on the blanket without thinking. "Spam."
He looked at me for two beats. He didn't push.
That night he drove me back to Lindy's apartment himself. South End, parlor floor of a brownstone off Tremont, brick and bay windows. He had a key.
In the elevator I watched the two of us in the mirrored wall. He was close enough that I could smell something clean and woodsy off the collar of his coat.
Something low and ugly moved in me.
Lindy had told me I was embarrassing.
And here Adrian Shaw was, settling his coat around my shoulders so I wouldn't shiver in the elevator.
There was something ugly about it. I let it happen. I think I enjoyed it.
Inside, he moved through her place like he'd done it a hundred times — found the cashmere slippers under the bench, ran the kitchen tap until the water came warm, opened the medicine cabinet and checked her pill organizer.
I sat on the white linen sofa and tried his name.
"Adrian."
His hand stopped on the cabinet door. He turned.
"What is it?"
I made myself say it.
"Could you stay tonight?"
He was quiet for a second. Then he walked over and laid the back of his hand briefly against my forehead.
"Okay."
I thought I'd won.
Until two in the morning, when the front door clicked open and woke me.
Adrian came back in. The embroidered Wexler coat — A. Shaw, MD in small navy thread over the pocket — was folded over his arm.
The right cuff was rust-brown all the way to the elbow.