Love, A Fan • A Tom Hardy fanfic

2:1

"Stella you got a text," Kait, one of the other techs said through the surgery window. Stella had been in there for 2 hours, while Connolly performed exploratory surgery for a bowel obstruction. They had fun but after 2 hours things started to get a little dreary within the four walls. Stella's friend, Elisa was waiting at their apartment for a repairman to come by. She assumed he did and it was Elisa telling her what he said.

"Go ahead," she shrugged, welcoming the distraction.

She proceeded to read the text aloud leaving Stella standing there dumbfounded.

"Uh, it's from Tom. It says: 'If you're not still pissed… or even if you want to just yell at me. I'm staying at the Arthouse on Broadway.' Do you want me to text back?" The young blond said.

"Uh, no, no. That's fine," she turned her attention back to the monitors checking the patient's vitals and charting the numbers.

"Is this the guy you met in London 4 months ago?" Kait asked, looking from Stella to Patrick.

"Yeah," she said without turning around. "I'll deal with it when I'm done here. Thanks."

Kait got the hint and closed the door. Stella wondered if she would scroll through the rest of the texts from him, or god forbid her photos. Although there had been a lot of photos taken since March that were unrelated to Tom Hardy.

Her and Patrick had gone out a few times but nothing came of it. They enjoyed flirting but neither made the move afraid to ruin their work relationship if the other wasn't interested or if it didn't work out.

"So are you gonna go?" Patrick asked.

"I don't know actually," Stella said, still staring at the monitor trying to avoid eye contact.

"You met this guy for a week, what could you possibly have to yell at him about months later?" Patrick began internal suturing of the intestines, next to both of them on the surgical tray was the sock that was wedged in the pup's upper bowel.

"Uh, he had a girlfriend," she didn't change her voice, but kept it steady as if she was reading him the patient's oxygen levels.

"Oh. That's fucked up," he said.

"Yeah, it wasn't just that. But I don't know if I'll see him," she lied. She knew she was going to go. Even though that situation was awful, he was only in New York for a few days, how could she not go visit the sexy movie star.

"Gotcha."

Once closed, Stella and another tech moved the beagle from the operating table to a kennel for recovery. Patrick got cleaned up and went to refill his coffee mug, needing a desperate caffeine hit.

"I can't believe she hooked up with someone with a fiance. That's really fucking low," one of the girls whispered.

"Right and with a guy she had just met. How slutty can you get?"

"Who knew gossiping by the water cooler was a real thing?" Patrick said as he shuffled through the girls.

The girls whispered more quietly to each other but stopped suddenly as Stella entered.

"Ok…" she went to her cubby for her water bottle and chugged it back. She reached in the bucket for her cellphone.

Her text message was still opened when she clicked the phone on, meaning Kait probably read it like she thought she would. She scrolled through her texts with Tom since she left London. Luckily the thread Kait probably read, had been from a new number he got, so there were no photos or dirty text messages.