Page 156 of The Ampersand Effect

That sounded terminal in Tobin’s head. A finality she absolutely didn’t want.

She wanted more of Grier’sands.

And… if she was going to ask for more—forall—of Grier’sands, then she needed to stop with all thebuts. Because there truly was no room forI love you, but…

No. Everything about Grier—everything about their love—was a perpetual, repeating, infinite ampersand.

And Tobin wanted to choose a life of perpetualands. She wanted to choose love and leave behind the fear. She wanted to chooseGrier.

“I want to give her all of myands. Overlapping ampersands, shared history, and promised tomorrows.”

Tobin shifted her jaw back and forth, perplexed by the looseness she felt in the muscles of her face. Interestingly, her entire body felt pretty good. Really good, if she was being honest.

Which—she was trying to be.

Nadia huffed a stifled snort of laughter from her seat across the room, dramatically interrupting Tobin’s internalized thought dissection. “Your body is giving you away, Tobin.”

This woman was infuriating. How could she just sit there and gloat while her clients experienced their epiphanies? Sadist.

Tobin tried to fume, to make Nadia work for her admission. But her body felt so good. Like—a literal weight had been lifted from her chest. She could breathe—and feel her ribs expanding with each breath. Her head felt clear. Certain.

She didn’t want to fume. She wanted to rush out of here and find Grier. To take her in her arms and tell her she loved her. She wanted all of herands.

And she wanted them to startright now.

“I have to go. I have to find Grier.”

Nadia rose and walked to the door, opening it with a smug and somehow affectionate smile. “Andthat is how you get the girl. Go get her, Tobin.”

Twenty-Eight

Grier woke to the soft snick of her office door closing. The aroma of fresh-brewed coffee stirred her senses as she lifted her head from the desk, where she’d stolen a few moments of rest during her lunch break. Her vision was partially obscured by a crumpled paper airplane stuck to her face—apparently a casualty of her hasty attempt to nap.

Maren set the coffee in front of her, her expression etched with concern. So much concern, in fact, that Grier didn’t bother putting up her façade. She was too tired—too raw—to summon the strength for emotional barricades.

Instead, she looked up at Maren, knowing her friend could interpret her wordlessly—the precision and understanding only a friend could accomplish. Maren’s lip twitched into a half-hearted smile. It was the same smile everyone on the floor had been giving her all week.

Jonah’s fight had cast a shadow over the entire hospital. And everyone knew the trajectory. So, they wore their half-smiles like armor, a flimsy shield against the constant onslaught of tears, while time ticked slowly, painstakingly away from Jonah’s timeline.

“You need to go home and get some sleep, hon. Jonah’s stable, and Vanders is gone.” Maren circled around the desk, her warm hand settling on Grier’s shoulder with a comforting squeeze. “Everyone is rooting for him—he’s as safe as he can be. But you’re killing yourself staying here. Don’t let Vanders’s mistake create two casualties. You have to take care of yourself, too.”

Grier started shaking her head in opposition. Her hand moved instinctively to the base of her throat, finding comfort and gathering resilience from Nora’s pendant. “Molly needs me…”

Maren’s grip on her shoulder tightened. “She has the entire hospital behind her. And Dr. Rhodes is having the same conversation with her right now. You both need to take care of yourselves, or you’ll be no use to Jonah.”

“So this is an intervention, then?” Grier stated blandly. She’d suspected it was coming, though she’d expected Dr. Miles to be the one delivering it. Maren was the better choice—at least with her, Grier didn’t have to keep up appearances and could react as herself.

But she wasn’t about to let anyone see her vulnerability—not even Maren. Not when Jonah lay comatose, fighting for his life, the very embodiment of vulnerability. No. Grier would not deign to show that kind of weakness.

She’d been in survival mode for days—trapped in a constant state of hyper-vigilance as she, Haleigh, and Dr. Miles worked to remove Vanders. The fight had shaken her system and brought her to the brink of what she had previously thought she could tolerate. And then she fought harder.

Once Dr. Miles had been updated—thanks in no small part to Haleigh and their unorthodox house call—the recourse unfolded with a certain degree of expediency. And in the stillness that followed, Grier was left both astonished and quietly proud.

The Peer Review Committee had convened two days earlier. Both Haleigh and Grier had been asked to recount the events as they experienced them, followed by Vanders’s opportunity for rebuttal.

He spoke eloquently of his evaluation of Jonah’s condition. He choked up when he detailed his “discovery” of Molly’s alleged incompetence in seeking timely care for her son. He painted himself a reluctant hero, driven by duty. Stripping a mother of her rights had weighed heavily on him, he claimed, but he had acted within current medical standards for surgical intervention. The amputation, while tragic, had been inevitable, he argued. And, truly, he was working to undue the harm the mother’s failure to intervene had manifested.

All in all, it had been a beautiful, articulate, and completely bastardized version of events. And he might have walked away unscathed—if it hadn’t been for Jenn.