Will hustled down the hall and into the workroom, changing out of his scrubs as quickly as possible, wanting to get whatever Abraham had in store for him over with. When he walked out, bag over his shoulder and bike helmet under his arm, the man was there waiting, paging through the small leather notebook he always kept in the pocket of his white coat. Probably he never wrote anything like sock history/hamster??? in there.

They fell into step silently, Will altering his strides to accommodate Dr. Abraham’s. He was going to get a lecture; he could sense it. He knew he’d been off since he’d been back, but surely that was normal after such a long break. Surely he hadn’t done anything to warrant—

“You gave my wife two kittens.”

Will almost missed a step. He had done that.

“My ex-wife,” Dr. Abraham corrected.

“It wasn’t so much that I gave them to her,” Will said.

“She’s very taken with them. She’s named them—”

“Quincy and Francis,” Will finished. “I know.” She’d sent him a few more videos, all received while he’d been at the hospital. He’d saved every single one and thought about sending them to Nora.

But thought better of it every time.

“Sally often lobbied for a pet, during the time we were married.”

Oh, Jesus. What kind of mess had he stepped into here? A month ago, walking these halls with Abraham, he’d had the sense that there was something different about his boss when he talked about his ex, but back then, Will was still his mostly normal self, and that meant he didn’t get near anyone’s sloppy romantic problems. Unfortunately, Will was currently his mostly abnormal self, with a head full of memories he didn’t want and a heart in his chest that felt like it was made of cracked glass.

“You didn’t want pets?” Will said, abnormally.

Abraham cleared his throat. “Sally and I had different ideas about what made for a comfortable home.”

Even from the brief time Will had spent with Sally, he could tell that what made for a comfortable home was probably only one item on a very long list of things she and Dr. Abraham had different ideas about. The truth was, Will couldn’t imagine how they’d gotten together in the first place. And that was the hell of it, wasn’t it? People did all kinds of wild shit for love, and this was only one of the bad ways it could turn out: getting divorced and then trying to initiate an awkward conversation with a colleague about your ex-wife’s adopted kittens and your disparate household management preferences.