Magic Touch

Chapter 24 - On Hold

[Author's note: I apologize for the break in updates, I've had some issues to deal with. But the story isn't finished and future updates will be coming. :)]

Once she got home, Kate's first course of action was to bury her head in one of the pillows on her couch. She sucked in a deep breath. Her walk home had been at a brisk pace so she had been able to burn off some energy, but not at all enough to calm down. She pressed her face into the pillow, only occasionally surfacing for air.

One thought kept repeating in her head. She should have known.

Rose had approached her about magic before. Rose had used physical contact in an attempt to manipulate her before. How had she not seen this coming?

It was as if all energy suddenly drained out of her. Rose wasn't giving up on the magic angle. That left her with two choices, to keep seeing Rose and hope she managed to not spill the secret, or to break it off and risk being observed while performing a high-risk case. She cursed herself for rescheduling patients so soon. There was no way she could bring herself to cancel them a second time, not after getting their hopes up.

Lacking the willpower to get up, she ended up falling asleep on the couch.

The next morning, she woke up with a canvas imprint that covered the majority of the left side of her face. She hoped it would fade before she got to work. While there existed magic to fix that sort of thing she had never been skilled with it and only applied the occasional bit of makeup manually. A bad morning was not the time to test it, she concluded. Kate dragged herself to work, hoping she'd get lucky and not run into Rose during the day.

The first thing she did when she arrived was to buy a wrapped sandwich from the cafeteria, so she'd be able to eat lunch somewhere else. It had become Rose's preferred spot to seek her out, after all. Her workday started off fairly typical, discussing a number of patients with the rest of the team, checking up on them, and then she had a handful of cases scheduled in the operating room. One was expected to take roughly six hours, which she welcomed.

Her lunch was delayed thanks to the six-hour case but she still decided to eat in the break room, just to be on the safe side of things. Rose didn't show up, and Kate was able to complete her remaining cases without major complications.

When Kate walked out of the hospital, headed home for the evening, her phone buzzed. She pulled it out of her pocket to check who was contacting her. It turned out to be a text message. Her breath caught in her throat for a second when she saw that the sender was Rose. She steeled herself and opened the message.

"Hi Kate, I'm sorry for the way things ended yesterday. Do you think we could meet again this evening? I think our ending could use a re-do."

Kate ignored her initial impulse, which was to just delete the message. Instead she forced herself to text back. The rational course of action was to try and buy herself some time. The later she had to make a decision, the better.

It took a few tries, but she eventually tapped out a response on her phone. "Sorry. I still need some time to process. Can we talk in a couple days?"

She drew a deep breath and hit the send button. No take-backs now.

Kate walked around on high alert for the rest of the day. In spite of the fact that she had turned off her cellphone's vibration, she kept feeling the sensation of it moving in her pocket. Biting back the urge to check wasn't easy, but she figured that if there did turn out to be a message waiting for her it was only going to take her focus away from her work. As evening fell and she returned home she finally allowed herself to look at her messages.

One unread message. Sender: Bean.

Kate sighed with relief. Whatever her dad, or dads, were on about was likely to be harmless. Her suspicion was confirmed when a photo filled the screen. It showed Bean standing next to a life-sized cardboard cutout of a monster from his cellphone game and grinning.

"My only regret is that they wouldn't let me take him home. I wonder if there's a way to print my own?"

She smiled, feeling that there probably was. Who knew, perhaps she was going to be able to see the scene with her own eyes one day. The idea had her chuckling. Just as she was tapping out her response to Bean, the phone vibrated in her hand. She froze for a moment, her amusement replaced by a sense of nausea. One new message. Sender: Rose. She felt her muscles tense up as she read on.

"In two days, okay. Meet me at the hotel?"

Kate agonized over her response for a while, before deciding that she didn't want to risk getting sucked into a second date. Experience so far had proved that a lot of things were possible when Rose was around. She figured that the ideal scenario probably would be discussing the issue over the phone. That way she couldn't give Kate any looks that would change her mind.

Whether Rose would agree to that was a different matter entirely, but she could still try.

"I don't think I can make it. Is it okay if I just call you?" she texted back.

It took hardly ten seconds for Rose's response to arrive. "I'd rather talk to you in person, but sure, if it can't be helped."

Kate felt a sting of guilt. She chewed on her lower lip as she texted back. "I'll call you in two days. Promise."

She received a short confirmation from Rose. With that, things were settled. For the time being. She really, really didn't want to think about what would come after this.