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“Every woman deserves someone like my husband. Passionate, dedicated, and kind. He only sees me, always.” She gripped Everly’s hand.

“Love is blind to everything but what matters. Don't waste your time on men or memories that don’t touch your heart, move you, or make you happy.” That hit Everly like a gut punch.

Not because it was cruel. But because it was so…

foreign . Intimate in a way that felt almost painful.

For the first time, Everly felt like she was staring at two people who had seen the worst and somehow built something beautiful anyway.

Something that didn’t diminish in the face of trauma.

Something that was more real than she’d ever imagined.

It left her aching with a longing she didn’t have a name for.

Two hours later, showered and unable to believe that was her in the mirror, she went across the hall to show Pippa the whole effect.

She lifted her hand to knock, but before she connected, she heard, muffled, but clear enough, “Everly,” Pippa said.

“She’s the one, right? Her husband…he refused to leave Shifa Unity Hospital when you were tasked with neutralizing those insurgents outside Kabul. ”

Joker’s pause was brief, but the silence felt like a crack of thunder.

“Yeah,” he said. “That’s her. Fucker refused to leave. Civilians were already evacuated, the hospital was marked, and we had a hard exfil deadline. I’ve never met anyone more arrogant in my life.”

Everly’s breath caught. She stepped back instinctively, but the words kept coming.

Pippa blew out a soft breath. “That’s saying something, considering who you work with.”

Her voice softened, just enough to make Everly lean in, to ache with the need not to miss a syllable.

“It was kind of you,” Pippa said. “Never telling her. Letting her keep her memory intact. Most wouldn’t have been that generous, especially when she still blames the military for what happened. You could’ve told her. You had every right.”

Joker’s voice came quiet, stripped bare. “To what end? She was already wrecked from the blast. From watching him die. But if you ask me? He never deserved her.”

“God, Elias. I love you so fucking much,” Pippa said.

Everly stood in place, every molecule in her body suddenly dense and trembling, her vision narrowing to a single point of sound. She couldn’t breathe. Couldn’t move. The walls around her husband’s legacy weren’t just cracked, they were splintering.

He stayed? He refused to evacuate? He was warned ?

The uniform she’d condemned might not have cost her Rob. Maybe it tried to save him. Maybe, God, maybe the man she’d idealized, defended, mourned, had been more flawed than she ever allowed herself to see.

Joker, the man she thought a battle-hardened uniform, had stayed silent. Carried that weight. Chosen compassion over blame. She hadn’t seen that coming. Not from him. Not from any of them.

Her pulse pounded in her ears. Grief, anger, and something sharper than either, doubt, twisted beneath her ribs.

She turned away, but the ground beneath her had shifted. With Joker’s terse words, something inside her would never look at Rob…or Zorro’s team…the same way again.

The curtained hallway behind the stage buzzed with muffled sound, polished shoes against laminate, the soft hiss of headsets, murmured cues. But to Everly, the air felt too thin, like the walls were pressing inward, a crush of silence after what she’d just heard.

She found Madeline adjusting note cards near the lectern, face composed, lips moving silently as she rehearsed. Everly didn’t hesitate. She walked straight toward her, voice low, breath unsteady.

“Did you know Rob was warned?”

Madeline blinked, startled. Her fingers went still over the edge of the podium. “What?” Her eyes widened. “Wow, you look amazing.”

Everly took a half-step forward, her voice cracking. “Did you know? Did he…was he warned before the strike?”

The silence that followed spoke more than any answer. Madeline’s eyes widened in slow horror, the color draining from her face.

“I…I begged him to leave,” she whispered, stunned. “He said they’d overestimated the threat to cover their asses. He refused. Called it a scare tactic. Oh God, Everly…”

Everly couldn’t breathe. Her knees buckled slightly, a cold rush swarming her skin like something had slipped beneath it and started unmaking her from the inside out.

Madeline saw it. She crossed the space in a heartbeat, gripping Everly’s arm and guiding her to the edge of the stage platform where a folding chair sat half-buried in cables.

“You didn’t know,” Madeline said softly, her voice cracking. “Oh my God. You didn’t know .”

Everly shook her head, slowly, once.

Madeline’s hands fluttered, helpless. “I told him,” she said, frantic now. “I told him it was his decision if he stayed, but the staff had to be informed. You had to be told. He promised me, Ev. He said he would explain. That you two had talked about the risk. That you supported him.”

Everly closed her eyes, her whole body rigid with the effort to keep from unraveling. “He didn’t,” she said, her voice raw. “He told me he had no choice. That the military refused to evacuate him. That they left him to die.”

Madeline sat beside her, trembling. “I’m so sorry. I left. I evacuated. I told him the operators weren’t bluffing. They don’t bluff. You’ve seen them. You know. But he refused. Said it was his hospital, his patients, his call. I thought he told you. I thought that guilt wasn’t yours.”

It was too much.

Everly folded forward, elbows braced to her knees, a hand to her mouth like it could stop the howl working its way up her throat. But it was too late. The truth had landed, and it was merciless.

He stayed. He chose it.

He lied .

She had built an entire cathedral of grief around that lie.

“Good morning, and welcome to the eighth Annual White Line Symposium,” Madeline said, her voice clear and practiced at the podium.

“On behalf of the conference committee, we’re honored to host you here in Rio de Janeiro for a week of innovation, collaboration, and commitment to field medicine, trauma care, and surgical response under fire. ”

A polite ripple of applause moved through the room.

“Before we begin,” she continued, “a brief update. As many of you know, our original keynote speaker, Dr. Caroline Devlin, was forced to withdraw due to a family emergency. While we were disappointed, we are incredibly fortunate to have someone uniquely qualified to step into her place.”

A few discordant murmurs moved through the crowd.

“Please join me,” Madeline said with a knowing smile, “in welcoming this year’s keynote speaker, Dr. Everly Quinn.”

The reaction was instant. A low hum surged into applause. Then louder. Then sustained.

Everly, waiting in the wings, froze.

It wasn’t just polite clapping. It wasn’t even recognition. It was…respect.

The kind that came from reputation. From the kind of work she never did for applause. From people who knew her name and had been waiting to hear what she had to say.

Her stomach flipped. Her pulse skittered. This wasn’t what she expected. It felt like standing on a cliff’s edge with the wind at her back and no tether.

Madeline pressed on, voice warm and sure.

“Dr. Quinn is a graduate of the University of Chicago, where she completed her undergraduate degree in biochemistry before attending Johns Hopkins Medical School on a full merit scholarship. She completed her surgical residency at Massachusetts General, followed by a trauma fellowship with a dual focus in combat field response and infectious disease integration.”

More heads lifted now. Recognition. Admiration. Even from the clinical corners of the audience.

“She has served with Doctors Without Borders and the Red Crescent Alliance, establishing emergency triage protocol during post-cyclone recovery in Mozambique and co-developing scalable blood-conservation techniques in rural Uganda. Her white paper on battlefield transfusion compression ratios, Pulse, Pressure, and the Paradox of Prolonged Bleeds , was adopted by the ICRC in their updated trauma guidelines last year.”

A few murmurs of acknowledgment rippled through the physicians clustered in the front rows.

“Dr. Quinn is currently stationed in the Philippines with Doctors for the World, serving as lead trauma consultant for Regions XI and XIII. She stepped in to fill the post of the late Dr. Gregory Matthews, who was killed while partnering with Dr. Bayani Aquino and Dr. Jaslene Bacunawa to immunize underserved communities against a resurgence of tuberculosis along the Agusan Valley. Dr. Quinn’s research into mobile sterility and cross-contamination in jungle-adjacent trauma wards is already changing how field medicine is approached in climate-challenged zones. ”

Silence fell .

Madeline’s tone softened.

“But what many don’t know is that Dr. Quinn didn’t hesitate.

She flew out less than seventy-two hours after the call.

She’s been in-country ever since. Her work speaks for itself.

Her record speaks for itself. Today, we have the rare opportunity to hear from her, not only as a trauma surgeon, but as a survivor.

A voice forged in fire. A woman who carries the weight of the wounded and still finds the strength to stand and speak. ”

The silence cracked open again into applause.

Everly stared down at her own hands. Trembling.

That applause…was for her .

She didn’t know if her legs would carry her to the podium or buckle beneath her before she ever stepped into the light.

The chandelier cast fractured light onto the polished floor, splintering into shards that danced around her feet like judgment. Her heels clicked too loudly. Her skin felt too exposed. The weight of what she had discovered built behind her sternum like a pressure valve refusing to release.