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The lobby is already crowded when I get in, nurses moving in a practiced blur, the morning shift humming with the kind of quiet chaos that usually sharpens my focus. But not today. I nod to people I barely recognize, respond to greetings I don’t hear, and move through the motions like a man playing a version of himself from a distance. I sign a chart I don’t read. I approve a scan I should have questioned. I nearly walk into a gurney before someone pulls it out of the way.

My mind is not here.

It’s in a cab with her.

It’s in the doorway between us.

It’s in the space where she didn’t say my name.

I make it halfway through my rounds before I drop a folder. It hits the floor, pages scattering, and I bend too quickly to pick them up, swaying hard enough that one of the nurses reaches for me. I wave her off. She hesitates but steps back.

Then I hear it.

“Cross.”

I look up. Jordan Singh, one of the younger attendings, stands at the edge of the nurses’ station with a concerned expression, a tablet in one hand. He’s always been respectful, sharp, the kind of doctor I usually trust without needing to second-guess.

“You okay?” he asks.

I open my mouth to say yes, but the word tastes wrong. I say nothing.

“You look like hell,” he adds, not unkindly.

I glance at the chart in my hand, realize it’s the wrong one, and curse under my breath. Singh steps forward.

“Take a breath,” he says evenly. “Seriously, man. Whatever it is, step out. One hour. That’s all. You’re no good to anyone like this.”

The warning is fair, and the shame is immediate, so I step away and toward the hall. It smells like disinfectant and burnt coffee, the kind that has been sitting too long on the burner, curling bitterly in the air. I stand at the window across from the nurses’ station, hands braced against the sill, watching the light shift across the city skyline as the afternoon bleeds slowly into something darker. Behind me, the hospital hums. Monitors beep, doors swing open and shut, pages flutter, voices rise andfall in a language I usually understand without thinking. But today, none of it gets through.

My mind keeps circling the same point like a scalpel tracing a scar.

You lied to me.

I said it last night and I meant it. I still do. But the longer I stand here, the more the words lose their edge, not because the betrayal is any smaller but because something bigger is taking its place. Something heavier. Something louder. Ivy is pregnant with my child. And she is in danger.

That is the only truth that matters now.

She was wrong not to tell me. She was selfish, maybe even scared, but I have seen fear twist people into silence more times than I can count. I have watched it grip the strongest men by the throat and reduce them to shells. And Ivy? She has been living under the shadow of a man who thrives on fear. Who bends people until they break. Who wants to own her, not love her.

Daniel Holt is still out there, and he will not stop.

I push away from the window. The pressure behind my ribs flares sharply again, like a cracked bone finally shifting into place. I head to the locker room, strip out of my scrubs and into my jeans and jacket without bothering to shower. My hair is still damp from sweat, jaw dark with the stubble of a man who hasn’t slept, but I don’t care. I grab my keys from the tray near the sink and don’t even check my phone as I leave.

The ride to her apartment is a blur. Traffic parts for me without knowing why it should. Lights turn green before I reach them, or maybe I run through one—I don’t know, I don’t care. All I see isher face when I closed the door on her, the way her eyes pleaded without asking, the way her hand lifted slightly, like maybe she wanted to stop me. And I walked away anyway.

I’m not ready to do it this time.

The moment I pull up to her rental, I’m already out of the car, moving fast, taking the stairs two at a time. My boots land heavily on each step, my pulse pounding louder than the noise outside. When I reach her floor, I don’t hesitate. I knock once, hard, then again. Louder.

“Ivy.”

The door doesn’t open.

I knock again.

“Ivy, open the damn door.”

I hear movement inside. Then nothing. I knock once more, this time with the flat of my palm. Not violently, but firmly.