Page 86 of Burn Bright (Cobalt Empire #1)

HARRIET FISHER

I ’m desperate. It’s the sole reason I’m standing inside Metropolitan Med’s emergency department. I can admit that to myself.

The busy front-desk lady talks briskly on the phone, hoists a finger for me to wait, then appraises me in a quick sweep.

She reminds me of my mom. Not because of her terse demeanor or her appearance.

Her honey blonde waves and angular chin couldn’t be further from my mom’s light brown hair and rounded face.

It’s simply where she’s sitting.

Behind the plexiglass wall, checking patients into the hospital, asking for their insurance cards and IDs. When I was little, I heard the story about Hope Danes and Grant Fisher meeting in the ED. She was a medical receptionist. He was starting his trauma fellowship.

“The very first time we had the same shift, it was love-at-first sight,” my mom recalled before the divorce.

Only later did the recollection of events flip from love story to horror story.

“He was a pretentious narcissist who wanted attention from the youngest ‘hottest’ girl in the hospital.” She went hard on the air quotes.

“Some weren’t even legal to drink. What was he going to do?

Buy them a soda.” She’d scoff and fume, as if she didn’t meet him when she was twenty, and he was in his early thirties.

Three months later, she became pregnant with me. A big surprise, they said. Not a good one either since I was the main strain on their short relationship, but they stuck it out until I was five.

“Surgeons are a different breed, Harriet,” she’d tell me while we grocery shopped, angrily tossing boxed mac ‘n cheese into the cart. “They’re sadistic, emotionless assholes who get paid to cut people up. Remember that.”

It’s as if she implanted her voice in my brain for this very moment. So I would turn around and bolt and never confront him.

My stomach curdles. This might be a serious mistake, but I’ve run out of good options. With a stomach full of nerves, I just think about Ben. Picturing his infectious, slow-rising smile edging across his face only makes me want to smile back and not bang my head on this lady’s desk.

Are these Cobalt powers from afar? Has Ben zapped me with poise? But I know I have my own brand of self-assurance.

I didn’t get this far on my own without putting myself out there.

I can do this.

Taking a deep breath, I prepare myself for the next step. So as the honey-blonde receptionist hangs up the phone and motions me forward, I feel ready.

“Dr. Fisher is in surgery,” she explains. “But if you can wait twenty minutes?—”

“I can,” I say fast.

“Okay, you can come on back and wait in the staff lounge.”

My mouth nearly drops. She’s letting me back into the staff lounge? Me . I thought she’d point to one of the waiting room chairs and tell me to park my butt. Though—most are taken by sniffling kids and worried parents.

I don’t question it. I just follow her through the double doors and down the sterile hallway.

Doctors, nurses, and technicians meander around, and I don’t bother searching for my dad.

If he’s in surgery, he won’t be strolling down the hall.

She leads me into a small room with couches and chairs and a long table that has the basics.

Microwave, mini fridge, and a pile of plastic takeout utensils.

A woman in scrubs pours herself a cup of coffee. I read her medical badge: Twila Vandersloot, M.D. “Who’s this?” she asks the receptionist, but her eyes are on me.

“Dr. Fisher’s kid.” The receptionist motions to the chair for me to sit. I slowly sink down. Careful not to make any noise. Break anything. Be too much of a problem. I don’t want anything to get me kicked out.

Twila’s brows furrow. “Siggy?”

“No, from his first marriage.”

Her eyes bug. “Ohhhh.”

Great, great. That sound totally means they’ve discussed my dad’s first marriage, or maybe there’s some horrible rumor about how my dad knocked up his young receptionist in Pittsburgh and married her a year later.

Twila’s phone beeps and she leaves hastily without any formal introductions or even a quick goodbye. The receptionist exits the room right behind her in just as abrupt fashion.

For a moment, I felt like I belonged. That quickly vanished.

But my dad wants to talk. He didn’t immediately dismiss my request to speak to him, so that’s the positive spot I land on.

Twenty minutes pass with doctors dipping in and out of the lounge. Some ask who I am. Most just grab a coffee or an energy drink and scroll on their phone for ten minutes before returning to work.

The thirty-minute mark nears when the door bangs open again. No one else is in the room, so I’m preparing to either blend into the chair like an invisible dust bunny or explain my name and relation to the trauma surgeon on duty.

I have to do neither because I’m face to face with the trauma surgeon. It dawns on me that I haven’t seen him in person since I was eight years old, and I doubt he could find me on social media when Fanaticon internet sleuths still haven’t.

His stunned expression mirrors mine as I rapidly soak in his features.

His deep brown hair is void of gray except for a few patches on his chin.

The mustache and full scruff along his jaw is neatly groomed.

So unlike his clean-shaven appearance I remember as a kid.

Even in his fifties, his charming demeanor resembles television doctors. Like the ones on Grey’s .

I wobble to my feet, grateful that I chose to wear my khakis and a white blouse tonight and not my leather jacket.

“You’re blonde,” is the first thing he says. His eyes narrow. He shakes his head like it’s hard to put the pieces together. “You’re eighteen now?”

“Nineteen. Last month.”

“Right…right…” He nods slowly. “Sit, sit.” He gestures me to the chair while he scrapes over one from the wall. Just so it can face me. He keeps perusing my features as if he’s documenting each change. “You look so much like your mother.”

My gut drops. I don’t take it as a compliment, and I’m not sure he’s giving it as one.

I swallow hard, words trapping in my esophagus, but I manage to say, “I haven’t seen her in three years. I wouldn’t know.”

It takes him aback. “Three years?” He shakes his head, confused.

That hurts. Because the worst day of my life didn’t even register enough to form a memory for him. “The last time I called you. My sixteenth birthday. I told you she was kicking me out.”

He rubs a palm along his jaw, processing. “Right…right…” He drops his hand, his brows knitted together. “So I’m guessing the child support I was paying her never made it to you.”

I nod once. I never thought about the child support—but I guess he’s right.

“I’m sorry,” he tells me. “You and your Aunt Helena, did you get by?”

My throat nearly closes. “Yeah,” I squeak out the lie.

He scans me. More confusion creases his forehead. “So then what are you doing here, Harriet? Do you need money?”

Bile rises at the insinuation I’m going to ask for cash. I’m not. But is asking for a shadowing position any better? It’s the first time I’ve seen him in eleven fucking years. I should be here to try and form a father-daughter relationship with him before trying to get something from him.

God…I’m a user.

A taker.

I wouldn’t mind transforming into dust particles this very instant.

“I, um…I…” I blink a couple times and take a breath. “I’m going to Manhattan Valley University. I’m a sophomore. Pre-med.”

His brows vault in surprise. “So you’re still doing well in school then?”

“Yeah.” I restrain myself from listing out every course I’m taking, all the clubs, the volunteering and research.

I don’t want to bombard him with my life—even if I ache to have him know all the details.

Every single one. “The plan is to get into medical school, then into a general surgery residency, then a trauma fellowship.” Like you .

He gives me a warm smile. “That’s tough.”

“Yeah, I know, but it’s the life goal.” It’s going well. I think I just need to take my shot. “I have all that I need on my resume. Perfect grades and extracurriculars. But I haven’t had luck getting a shadowing position with any doctors.”

I almost wait for him to say, so that’s what you want .

But he thankfully doesn’t. He nods again.

“Shadowing positions are few and far between, and I wish I could help you out. But Denise and I made an agreement with each other around eight or nine years ago that I needed to cut all ties to your mother. If I were to let you shadow me or one of the residents in my department, it would be breaking that agreement. Denise and the kids, they mean the world to me, and I just can’t let any of that negativity back into my life. Into their lives.”

I’ve stopped breathing. “I-I don’t understand,” I say. “I’m not my mom.”

“You are tied to her?—”

“I’m not ,” I argue, heat baking my lungs. “I haven’t spoken to her in years.”

He holds up his hands, his eyes going wide. “We were having a civil conversation, Harriet.”

I barely raised my voice. But is that all he sees when he looks at me? Hope Danes, who overreacts. Hope Danes, who can’t keep her cool.

I’ll never be anything other than his first wife’s daughter.

I’ll never be just Harriet Fisher.

I’ve never hated him. Not a moment in my life.

Not even when the happy birthday phone calls stopped when I turned eleven…

holy shit . He made that agreement with his wife eight or nine years ago.

That would’ve been around my eleventh birthday.

He never forgot my birthday. He cut ties with me. And I just never knew.

Hurt blasts through my chest as if I’m standing in the center of a nuclear explosion. I don’t plan to say a goodbye. I figure it’s a common thing in this hospital anyway. I just stand from my chair and face the exit.

“Harriet, sit down. Let’s just have a normal conversation.”

Normal?