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MIA

After that Friday night with Yulian, the weekend flies by.

When I get home from my early shift the next day, I spend the rest of my free time curled up on the couch with my kid, watching cartoons and guzzling popcorn, with the occasional trip to the park to pet other people’s dogs and play hopscotch with the potholes.

It’s the most relaxed I’ve felt in ages. It’s fun. It’s…

Missing something.

No, not “something.”

Someone .

I try to brush the thought away. Ever since Friday night, Yulian hasn’t been in touch. I’ve texted once to thank him again for everything, but he hasn’t replied. Not to that, not to the daily selfies, nothing.

He’s probably just busy. And maybe, just maybe, he’s feeling raw about what he shared.

Yulian doesn’t strike me as the type to ever have a heart-to-heart, least of all in a money-printing basement, under the whir of machinery, with the woman he hired to play girlfriend.

But is that still all I am to him?

I shake my head, force myself to think about literally anything else. What’s brewing between me and Yulian could be a love story or a recipe for disaster. Either way, I can’t afford to let it distract me.

Because today, I’m going back to work.

As I walk through the ER doors, my heart starts pounding against my ribcage. I keep stealing glances towards Bay C, half-expecting the curtain to move and reveal that razor-sharp smirk, those dark eyes filled with cruelty.

“Nurse Winters?”

Gwen’s voice snaps me out of my thoughts. “Y-yes?”

She pauses in front of me, arms crossed, considering. There’s a trace of impatience on her brow, but also concern. It dawns on me she might have called my name more than once before I finally heard her.

Shit. Great first day back, Florence Nightingale.

After what feels like interminable silence, Gwen sighs, “You’re wanted upstairs.”

“Upstairs?”

“Seventh floor.”

I blink. “The admin floor?”

“Unless they’ve been wheeled into the basement overnight, then yes. The admin floor.”

I’m used to Gwen being snappy and sarcastic, but today, something feels off with her. Like she isn’t just being mad at the world at large, but at something very specific.

On the off-chance that it’s me, I give the quickest nod in history and hurtle towards the elevator. I don’t even get changed first. Just bolt for the closing doors and squeeze in.

The seventh floor. Come to think of it, I haven’t been back there since my contract was made permanent. It’s where the hospital’s bureaucrats reside, scalpels traded for ballpoint pens and red tape.

Which means this can’t be good.

Calm down, Mia. Maybe there was a typo in your last patient’s chart.

Maybe they’re finally giving you that raise you asked for last year.

Or maybe they’re firing your ass.

Before my anxiety can win the Olympic gold for jumping to the worst possible conclusion in the shortest amount of time, I slam the brakes on my thoughts.

Then, when the elevator goes ping at my floor, I fling myself out of there.

And collide with a horribly familiar white suit.

The scent hits me first. Expensive, artificial, sanitized, like the chemicals used at the morgue to mask the smell of death.

Then his laugh.

Grating. Mocking. Close.

He catches my forearms, “helps” me back upright. Only I can feel the way his hands linger, snakelike, feeling the soft skin of my inner arm before slinking away like silk.

“Speak of the devil,” he croons.

That’s my line, asshole.

“Brad.” I step back, my teeth gritted so tight I might need a trip to Orthodontics. “Fancy seeing you here. Again.”

“Excuse me.” An older man with gray hair and a pair of half-moon glasses steps between us. “Please refrain from addressing my client directly.”

“‘Refrain from’—?” I balk. “Smithers, you know me.”

“I have no such recollection.” The man adjusts his glasses and fixes me with a cold, impassive stare. “Now, if you’d please step back, Ms. Winters.”

Swallowing my frustration, I do as he asks. One, because I don’t actually mind being further away from Brad.

And two, because I know exactly who this man is: Theodore Smithers, the Baldwin family’s infamous shark lawyer.

Which begs the question of what the fuck he’s doing here.

A bureaucrat in a brown suit clears his throat. Someone who works for the hospital, though I don’t recognize him. “Seems like we’re all here,” he says. “If you’d kindly follow me, gentlemen, Nurse Winters.”

“Wait,” I say. “What’s going?—?”

Then I see him

Dr. Adams.

If the Chief of Surgery is here, it means this is bad. Like, earth-shatteringly bad. He loathes his bureaucratic duties like no one else. Doesn’t move from his OR unless the MRI machine is on fire or the hospital’s about to get sued into the ground.

And since I can’t smell barbecue…

I’m fucked, aren’t I?

“Gentlemen. Thank you for coming.” He shakes both their hands. “Nurse Winters,” he adds, sans handshake and with the sourest tone I’ve ever heard.

Fuck. Fuckity-fuck-fuck, with a side of duck with an F. I have no idea whether my contract of employment includes an exclusivity clause, but clearly, it must, right? Because there can only be one reason we’re all here.

Brad found out about my other contract.

The one with Yulian.

And he’s here to rat me out to whoever will listen.

We’re made to sit on a C-shaped leather couch bigger than my whole living room. It goes around a glass coffee table. No coffee is provided, but then again, why would it? I’m about to face my doom. Meet my maker, at least career-wise.

God, I’ll never work in this city again, will I?

I brace myself for the inevitable. Consider begging, too.

“As you all know, there was an unfortunate incident last week which we’re all here to resolve. Mr. Smithers, the floor is yours.”

An unfortunate incident? For a second, I allow hope to bloom in my chest. Hope that, in some counterintuitive way, this whole circus is actually for my benefit.

Because what other incident could have happened last week, if not Brad trying to send me fishing for his trouser trout?

“Thank you, Dr. Adams.” Smithers fixes his papers on the coffee table before rising. “Last week, Ms. Winters provided my client with ineffective care. As a result, he’s suffered.”

I blink. Resist the urge to stick my fingers into my ears and dig for wax, because clearly, I can’t have heard right. “What?”

“Please, do not interrupt.” He flicks his beady gaze to me, then goes back to his papers.

“At the hour of 2:13 P.M., Mr. Baldwin came into the ER of this hospital with acute pain in his left arm. It was aching, swollen. There, Ms. Winters examined him—if it can even be called that. She sent him home with a prescription for, I quote, ‘a cold shower.’”

“Hey!” I snap. “He was perfectly healthy. Only one part of him was aching and swollen, and it wasn’t his damn?—”

“Ms. Winters, if you can’t keep silent during these proceedings, we will be forced to put this in the hands of a judge.”

“For a sore wrist?!”

“Quiet down, Winters!” Adams barks at me. “You’ll have your turn to respond.”

I bite my lip and reluctantly obey.

“Very well.” Smithers clears his throat. All the while, Brad sits cross-legged, perfectly silent and triumphant, happy to let others do his dirty work for him. “As I was saying, my client was not provided effective care. Later in the night, his chest pains grew worse?—”

“He never mentioned any chest pains,” I cut in, but they ignore me.

“He then drove himself to Manhattan General, where he was promptly put under observation,” Smithers drones on. “An EKG revealed he was in the early stages of a heart attack.”

My face drains. “Heart attack?”

“Here.” Smithers provides both Adams and me with a copy of the EKG. “As you can see, he should have gotten immediate care. Luckily, the staff at Manhattan General took him seriously before the damage done by Nurse Winters here could become… irreparable.”

My hands are shaking as I hold up the EKG. Guilt swallows me whole. Arm pain—that’s textbook early heart attack. There are clear signs here, signs I shouldn’t have missed, signs that?—

Wait. Did he say his left arm?

“When you came here,” I say to Brad, “you said it was your right arm that hurt. Specifically, your wrist. Didn’t you?”

Brad opens his mouth, but Smithers cuts him off. “Don’t answer that.”

“Why not?” I retort. “He’s the patient. He should remember what brought him into the ER. Better than that, it will be in our records.”

Brad’s eyes widen in realization. “It’s possible I misspoke at the triage desk,” he says briskly. “But when I saw Nurse Winters, I am certain I informed her of exactly where the pain was.”

No shit. You forced me to cop a feel, too.

“There’s a smudge on this EKG,” I point out. “Right here, next to the patient name. And this data isn’t consistent with a man of your age and?—”

“Ms. Winters,” Smithers growls, “if you insist on denying your mistake, we’ll have no choice but to take this to court.”

“I’m certain Nurse Winters knows better than to cost this hospital a lawsuit with its newest, biggest donor,” Adams hisses, his tone like ice. “Especially when she’s already facing a month’s suspension without pay.”

“What?” I say. “You can’t suspend me. I didn’t do anything wrong. I need this job, I?—”

“I don’t care,” Adams snarls. “You made this mess. A month off will teach you respect. Now, Mr. Smithers, is there anything else we can do to ease your client’s recovery?”

“There is.” He fixes me with a condescending gaze. “In his infinite generosity, my client is prepared to overlook the incident.”

“Great,” I rasp. “Then we’re done here. If you’ll excuse me?—”

“ Provided, ” he interrupts, “that Ms. Winters apologizes.”

I’m seething. Burning with rage like never before. “No,” I spit.

“Excuse me?”

“I said no.” I stand up and get in Smithers’s face. “He comes here with fake analyses, trumped-up charges, and then expects me to apologize?” I point at Brad, still sitting leisurely on the couch, like a king on his freaking throne. “Like hell I will.”

“Nurse Winters.” Dr. Adams stands up too, his voice like ice. “Do it.”

“No.”

“Apologize now,” he growls. “Or I won’t stop at a suspension.”

Betrayal burns behind my eyes. I knew Adams hated me, but to this point?

It’s not that, the rational part of me says. Brad’s a donor now. Adams isn’t going to piss on the hand that feeds him.

If I refuse now, I can kiss my job goodbye. I can kiss my life goodbye.

And I won’t let Brad take that from me again.

I swallow the lump in my throat. Then, staring Brad right in the face, I grit out, “I’m sorry.”

“Didn’t sound like you meant that, Nurse Winters. ”

“I. Am. Sorry.” I spit each word like venom. “Are we done now?”

“I believe so.” Dr. Adams shakes their hands again. “Gentlemen. My assistant will show you out.”

“See you soon, sweet thing,” Brad drawls on his way out.

I clench my fists. Humiliation is burning in my veins. I’m this close to crying, but I won’t let the tears fall.

I won’t let him see me break.