Page 33

Lauren

The fluorescent lights hummed above me, that particular frequency that only hospital lighting seemed to achieve—somewhere between a whisper and a migraine.

I’d been staring at the same patient chart for twenty minutes, the words blurring together into meaningless medical jargon. Mrs. Anderson, sixty-seven, presenting with chest pain that turned out to be acid reflux. Prescribed a proton pump inhibitor. Follow up in two weeks.

Straightforward. Simple. Nothing like the complicated cases I’d handled in Corazón with limited resources and infinite creativity. Here, everything had a protocol, a proper procedure, a pharmaceutical solution. Clean. Sterile. Empty.

Chicago sprawled around my eighth-floor office window, all sharp angles and calculated risks. I used to like this view, back when I was a resident, back when I thought saving lives in a state-of-the-art facility was the pinnacle of medical achievement, before I discovered there was so much more.

Then lost that knowledge—or at least, pushed it from my mind.

The pen slipped from my fingers, clattering onto the desk. I’d been spinning it again—a nervous habit that had appeared sometime in the last two months, along with the jumpiness, the insomnia, and the constant feeling that someone was watching me.

Sixty-three days. I didn’t mean to count, but my brain did it anyway.

Sixty-three days since Puerto Rico. Since waking up alone in those expensive sheets, the pillow beside me still dented from where Logan’s head had been.

Since Jace knocked on my door with that carefully neutral expression, explaining that Logan had already caught the early flight back to the States and that he would be escorting me back to Chicago instead.

We need to go over a few details from your extraction, he’d said, professional and kind and clearly uncomfortable with my obvious confusion. Logan had to catch an early flight. Another assignment.

Another assignment. I’d evidently been just another checkbox on his mission list.

Asset secured. Move on to the next crisis.

My desk phone buzzed, making me flinch. Everything made me flinch these days.

“Dr. Valentino?” It was Cheryl from the front desk, her voice carrying that particular tone reserved for unexpected visitors. “You have someone here to see you, waiting in the main lobby.”

My pulse stuttered. For one ridiculous second, I let myself hope?—

No. I shut that down hard, the way I’d learned to shut down all the other pointless hopes. Logan Kane wasn’t coming. He’d made that abundantly clear with two months of silence.

“I’ll be right down.”

I stood, my body moving through the familiar motions.

Smooth the white coat that never quite felt right anymore.

Check that my ID badge was visible. Tuck a stray piece of hair behind my ear.

Playing the part of Dr. Lauren Valentino, respectable physician at Chicago Presbyterian, daughter of the chief of staff.

The elevator descended with hydraulic exactness. Everything here worked precisely as designed. No improvisation needed. No creativity required. Just follow the protocols and fill out the paperwork.

The elevator doors opened to reveal the main lobby in all its marble and glass glory.

Afternoon light streamed through the atrium, highlighting the abstract art installation that probably cost more than the entire annual budget of the Corazón clinic.

The space bustled with controlled chaos—visitors checking in at the information desk, medical staff striding purposefully in their color-coded scrubs, the subtle hierarchy of white coats determining who yielded to whom in the corridors.

I scanned the waiting areas, looking past the worried families and pharmaceutical reps, searching for?—

“Lauren!”

I turned, and something inside me that had been wound tight for two months finally loosened.

Sophia Yang stood near the information desk, looking wonderfully, impossibly unchanged.

Same practical bob that never seemed to need styling.

Same direct gaze that could analyze emotional trauma as efficiently as physical wounds.

Same no-nonsense posture that had gotten us through a hundred crises in Corazón.

“Sophia.” Her name came out rougher than intended, emotion catching in my throat.

I crossed the polished floor quickly, my heels clicking a rhythm I still wasn’t used to after months of practical boots. When I reached her, I pulled her into a hug that went on too long for casual colleagues, just right for people who’d survived something together.

She smelled like hotel soap and somehow, impossibly, like the jungle after rain. Or maybe that was just my mind playing tricks, the way it did sometimes when I passed the cafeteria and caught a whiff of rice and beans.

“God, it’s good to see you.” I pulled back, drinking in the sight of her. Real. Solid. Proof that Corazón hadn’t been some fever dream. “What are you doing in Chicago?”

“Medical conference.” She gestured vaguely toward the convention center. “Latest trauma protocols for resource-limited settings. Figured I couldn’t be this close without checking on you.”

Checking on me. Because that’s what you did with damaged goods—you checked on them.

“I’m glad you did.” I glanced around the pristine lobby, suddenly seeing it through her eyes. The excess. The waste. The careful distance between caregivers and cared-for. “Let’s get out of here. Coffee?”

“Lead the way.”

We walked in comfortable silence through the October afternoon. I led her to a diner three blocks from the hospital, the kind of place where the health department rating was questionable but the coffee was strong enough to wake the dead.

She looked around with a smile. “This is where you wanted to take me for coffee rather than the perfectly acceptable shop in your hospital’s lobby?”

“Yeah, I come here when I need…” I wasn’t sure what I was needing when I came here multiple times a week.

“To be able to breathe?”

That was it in a nutshell. “Yeah, maybe.”

We sat at a booth, and the waitress brought us coffee.

“So.” Sophia wrapped her hands around her mug, studying me with that clinical assessment that had always been both comforting and unnerving. “You look…”

“Like my father’s daughter?” I gestured at my pristine white coat, the designer blouse underneath, the carefully applied makeup that took fifteen minutes every morning. “Professional? Put-together?”

“I was going to say exhausted.”

The honesty of it felt like a crushing weight on my chest. Trust Sophia to skip the social niceties.

“Just adjusting.” I focused on arranging the sugar packets into neat rows, edge to edge, perfectly aligned. “You know how it is, coming back from the field. Everything feels…”

“Hollow?”

“And loud.” I nudged one packet out of line, watched how it disrupted the entire pattern. “Everything here is so loud. The machines, the people, the procedures. In Corazón, I could hear myself think.”

“It’s been two months, Lauren.”

“Some adjustments take longer than others.”

She leaned back, that steady gaze not letting me deflect. “Talk to me. Really talk to me. What’s going on?”

The carefully constructed walls I’d built—professional competence, family obligations, temporary circumstances—wavered under her scrutiny.

This was Sophia, who’d held pressure on a spurting artery while I’d searched for the source.

Who’d covered for me when I’d needed five minutes to sob behind a tree after losing a teenage mother to eclampsia.

Who’d been there when the weight of all that need pressed too heavy.

“I’m drowning.” The words slipped out before I could stop them. “I know I’m safe. I know Mateo is dead. Logan shot him, blew up his boat, I watched it happen. But I can’t shake the feeling that someone’s watching me. Following me.”

“PTSD is?—”

“Normal after trauma, I know.” I pushed all the sugar packets out of formation, scattering them across the scarred Formica.

“Hypervigilance, exaggerated startle response, intrusive thoughts. I can diagnose myself just fine. Doesn’t make it easier when a car backfires and I hit the ground, or when I check my rearview mirror twenty times on the way home. ”

And all of it made me think of Logan. How he’d been dealing with this day in and day out for years. Was it still the same? Had Corazón made his symptoms worse? Had he ever gotten help?

“Are you seeing anyone? Professionally?”

Heat crept up my neck. “The hospital has an employee assistance program.”

“That’s not what I asked.”

I met her eyes, seeing my own shame reflected there. “I went once. The therapist wanted to talk about my survivor’s guilt and savior complex . Asked if my choice to work in dangerous areas was related to unresolved childhood issues with my parents.”

“Oh my God.”

“Yeah.” I started building a pyramid with the scattered packets. “I didn’t go back.”

Lady kept trying to get me to process my feelings. No wonder Logan had never gone back to therapy. I didn’t plan to go anytime soon either.

“Where are you living?”

The heat in my face intensified. “It’s temporary.”

“Lauren.”

“My parents’ building. A few floors below theirs.” The admission tasted like failure. “It’s just until I figure out something more permanent.”

Her eyebrows climbed. “The same building where you swore you’d rather live in a cardboard box than?—”

“I know what I said.” The words came out sharp, defensive. “But the security is good, and after everything…”

“And this job?” She gestured toward my ID badge. “Chicago Presbyterian? Working for your father?”

“Locum tenens. Temporary position filling in for docs on leave.” I focused on balancing the sugar packets. “Internal medicine. Nothing too complicated.”

“The girl who performed emergency surgery by candlelight is doing temp work in internal medicine?”

“They’ve offered to make it permanent.” The words fell between us like stones in still water.

“And?”