Page 49 of Crash

“Absolutely not.” The words came out as barely a whisper, probably because all the oxygen had suddenly vacated the room.

“Tessa—”

“Look, I really appreciate everything you’re doing for me, but this is going too far.” I ran my hands down my pants, trying to pretend warmth hadn’t flooded my body at his offer. Unwelcome warmth at the thought of waking up in his space, breathing his air, being surrounded by him.

He stepped closer, his voice gentle but urgent. “My place has been tested and is clean of any environmental factors that could be making you sick. Diagnosing what’s going on with you is like a science experiment. We need to remove as many variables as possible.”

“Why don’t I just move into a petri dish while I’m at it?” I tossed my hands into the air. “Live in a bubble? Breathe only fresh oxygen out of a tank?”

“That’s not fair.”

“No, none of this is fair,” I agreed. “But I get to decide how much this impacts my life from this point forward. I am not moving out of my place, and nothing will make me change my mind.”

As it turned out, “nothing” was going to happen in forty-eight hours.

And it would change everything.

28

BLAKE

“Who wants to play a game?” The stack of papers hit the conference table with a sharp crack, silencing the whispered speculations.

Eight interns jolted in their chairs, the smell of hospital-grade coffee and nervous sweat hanging in the air while the fluorescent lights cast shadows under their eager eyes. Eyes that followed my every move like they were watching a cobra about to strike.

“A game, sir?” Martinez’s voice cracked.

“Call it a competition.” I circled the table. “I need help with a case.”

The air sparked with sudden attention.

“Have a bit of a medical mystery on my hands,” I continued, noting how their spines straightened at my tone. “And I need to solve it as soon as possible. The patient is a close friend of mine.”

Eight heads snapped up so fast that I thought I heard cervical vertebrae crack.

“Yes, I have friends. Despite hospital rumors, I don’t actually freeze people with my gaze.”

“Aclosefriend?” Rhet, perpetually testing my patience, wiggled his eyebrows like a cartoon villain. “That why the rumor mill says you were smiling at a patient?”

Thenormalme would’ve kicked his sorry ass out just to maintain order, but Tessa needed his irritatingly brilliant mind on this.

“Stop trying to impress the other interns,” I snarled. “I saw you practicing your confident-doctor walk in the parking lot at 6 a.m.”

Rhet’s face went from cocky to corpse pale in record time.

“Now.” I tapped the papers. “This patient …” I watched their expressions shift from amusement to focused intensity. “Her heart stopped beating in our ER. Healthy hearts don’t just quit without reason. There’s an underlying condition here, hiding behind a year of seemingly unrelated symptoms. And if we don’t crack this …” I let the silence stretch, heavy and meaningful. “She might die.”

I had to swallow the bile that came up every time that thought thundered through me.

What if Tessa was dying? Contrary to popular belief, there were plenty of things that could kill a person that were hard to diagnose, and one look at Tessa, you could see the toll this mystery thing was doing to her body. Almost like it was eating her from the inside out.

“The winner gets to be more than just another clipboard-carrying lab scout.”

Time to dangle the real prize.

“Solve this …” I paused, letting the tension build. “And you’ll present the case at Grand Rounds.”

Grand Rounds was an event where medical cases were presented to hospital leadership, attendings, and peers. It was rare for interns to get this chance. Rarer still for them to be invited.