Page 20 of Careless Whisper (Modern Vintage Romances #11)

Elias

B efore I confronted Maren, I wanted to get the facts about what the fuck happened in Boston.

It took me three days, several calls to Boston—and one favor I’d rather not owe—before finally getting a number for Kajal Patel, the former head nurse at Stratford who was now living and working in London.

After making sure I wasn’t calling her in the middle of the night, I got her in the evening, her time, and hopefully after her shift.

“This is Kajal Patel.”

Relieved, I said, “Hi, Kajal, it’s Elias Graham…ah…from Boston.”

“Oh.” I didn’t blame her for being confused. I was a blast from the past. “How are you?”

“Good? ”

I chuckled. “Kajal, I’m sorry for bothering you. I heard you live in London now.”

“Yeah,” she replied. “My husband got a job here and so we moved. And…I could get a job as a nurse.”

“That’s great. So…how’s the weather?” I almost groaned at that stupid question, but I didn’t know how to ask her what I needed to.

“Ah…Dr. Graham, can you tell me why you’re calling me? I don’t think it’s to, you know, ask me how the weather in London is…which, by the way, is total shite as they say here.”

Now, I laughed. “Kajal, I wanted to ask you what you think happened five years ago…with Reggie Sanchez and Dr. Maren Loring.”

She gasped. “God! I’m so glad someone is finally asking because every time I brought it up with anyone, no one wanted to talk about it. You know, I even filed a report officially when I was leaving. I mean…I was leaving, right? What could they do to me? Is that why you’re calling?”

I struggled to breathe for a moment.

“Ah…no, Kajal. I’m calling because I’m now at Harper Memorial in Seattle and…I have both Maren and Reggie working here.”

“That woman is a menace,” she muttered angrily.

I knew she wasn’t talking about Reggie, but I asked for clarification.

“Dr. Maren Loring!” she exclaimed. “Look, Reggie paged Maren about the patient. I remember it clearly . She saw the tamponade signs. She followed protocol. She pushed.”

“I never saw that in the M her breath caught in a gasp. “What is it you’re trying to do, Elias?”

“I’m seeking the truth.”

She let out a short, humorless laugh. “And what truth would that be?”

“That you manipulated the evidence for the M I’m not the only one who has filed an official complaint, the head of the department…

you have also filed one, a scathing one from what I’ve been told. ”

I had to rescind that fucking thing, I realized. I had let my ego and fear run my life—and ruin Reggie’s.

“I want you to resign.” I shot her a displeased look.

Her eyes narrowed in confusion. “Are you out of your mind?”

“There are now several complaints about your behavior and attitude.” I got up, tucking my hands in my pockets.

“Oh, and by the way, speaking of official complaints, expect one about how you handled a post-op bleed, ignoring nursing escalation for over an hour. The patient tanked in recovery before you moved.”

She took a small sip of her latte, then looked at me over the rim of the cup.

“Cindy Liu will not be filing a complaint. I’ve already talked to her, and we’re in agreement,” she declared smugly.

I wondered how she coerced the head nurse.

“Don’t throw away everything we’ve built because of some nurse with a chip on her shoulder,” she continued in that same haughty tone.

“You've been telling everyone we’re engaged. We’re not,” I threw at her.

The corners of her mouth dipped almost imperceptibly. “Your father would like to hear from you about that.”

“Maren, it’s been a long time since I did my father’s bidding. You know that, don’t you?”

She tossed up her shoulders. “What I know is that I love you, Elias, and that you love me. What I know is that you’re here out of guilt and worry, which I admire, but I’m not the bad guy in this equation.”

There it was again. That practiced calm and clinical detachment. The way she made herself sound reasonable even when she was twisting the truth. Maren never said anything outright. There was no clear denial, no obvious lie, just carefully curated ambiguity .

It made her impossible to pin down. And impossible to trust. How had I not seen this before?

Because you didn’t want to, you jackass.

She stepped closer, voice low now. “Elias, baby?—”

I moved away before she could touch me. “Write up your resignation letter.”

“When I get the Lancaster funding, Dr. Cabrera is not going to want to see me gone,” she threatened.

“ If you get the funding,” I reminded her. “Let’s see how far you get without your department head’s recommendation.”

I walked to the door of her apartment. She followed me. I got into the elevator, and before the doors closed, she warned, “Just be sure, Elias. If you pick her over me, you won’t get to walk it back.”

I let the elevator doors close without responding to her ridiculous threat.

I drove to the hospital and ignored several calls: one from Maren, one from her father, and one from mine.

I processed what I learned in the past few days, and my conclusion was that Maren was a liability for the hospital and its patients. She hadn’t denied what she did. But she hadn’t admitted anything either. I couldn’t hold a single thing against her, not in front of a review committee.

But thoughts of Maren went out the window as I stepped into the ward and was immediately hit with back-to-back crises .

A trauma code had been called on the cardiac floor—a post-op patient with a sudden drop in pressure.

The ICU needed consults on two fresh transfers, one of them already pre-coded in the elevator.

Radiology flagged a concerning scan on a transplant candidate.

By the time I reached the OR board, three cases had been bumped, a fourth had no attending assigned, and a junior resident was in tears in the stairwell after being chewed out by an anesthesiologist.

I barely had time to shrug into a clean coat all damn day.

I didn’t have the luxury of thinking about Maren, the complaint, or the ethics of keeping someone like her in my department.

For the next ten hours, I didn’t stop moving.

I scrubbed in on two emergency cases—one ran late, and the second ran long. By the time the post-ops were stabilized, I was ready to go home and collapse. I didn’t realize until the next day that I had, by getting too busy, fucked up Reggie’s career again .