Chapter 11
CATHERINE
The silence in her condo was sterile.
Catherine stirred beneath crisp, perfectly tucked sheets, the familiar weight of her comforter grounding her as sunlight slanted through the floor-to-ceiling windows.
The glass panes framed the city skyline like a painting, flawless and distant.
Everything here was in its place. Everything was quiet.
Too quiet.
She sat up slowly, her spine straightening out of habit more than anything, her bare feet pressing to the cool wood floors. The bed hadn’t shifted through the night. There was no indent beside her. No trace of another body’s warmth lingering in the sheets.
Sloane was gone. No, not gone. She had never been here. Not in this space.
Catherine pulled on her robe, the silk sliding over her skin like armor.
She moved through her home with familiar precision: blinds drawn halfway, thermostat checked, espresso machine hissing to life in the corner.
The routine was seamless. Her hand reached for her favorite mug without hesitation, measured exactly one shot of espresso, added just the right amount of steamed milk, no foam.
It was muscle memory. Discipline. Control.
And it was lifeless.
She carried the mug to the kitchen island, setting it down with the same muted grace she applied to everything. Her phone buzzed on the counter. The screen lit up with a name she knew too well.
Sloane.
She didn’t open the message, didn’t need to see it to know the tone—warm, teasing, probably some flippant comment meant to mask sincerity. Catherine set the phone down face-first, hiding it from view as if the gesture could somehow press the woman back into the dark.
Her hand hovered over it for a moment longer than necessary.
No. No, she couldn’t afford that right now.
Instead, she crossed to the other side of the kitchen and began wiping down surfaces that didn’t need cleaning.
Her apartment was immaculate. Not a single pillow out of place, not a speck of dust on the mantle. The white and gray tones were neutral and curated. There were no canvases leaning against walls, no jars of paint, no tangled string lights or stray shirts left on the floor.
It was nothing like Sloane’s studio.
And this morning, it felt…wrong.
Catherine pressed her fingertips to the cold marble of the counter and closed her eyes.
Breathe. Focus. Let it go.
She shouldn’t have stayed.
The thought came uninvited and unwelcome, like a slap to the chest.
She shouldn’t have stayed wrapped in Sloane’s arms, her skin still damp from heat and paint and sweat.
She shouldn’t have let her fingers rest there, over Sloane’s heart, as if she had the right to feel anything.
She shouldn’t have whispered things into the quiet she couldn’t take back, not with her body, not with her breath.
It was a mistake. A lapse in judgment. A moment of weakness, nothing more.
She opened her eyes.
The espresso had gone cold.
Catherine didn’t sip it. She simply carried the mug to the sink and poured it down the drain, watching the dark swirl disappear without a sound.
She had surgeries scheduled, a meeting with the board, and a departmental audit she was overseeing personally because no one else would do it correctly. There was no time for this.
There was never time for this.
Her phone buzzed again.
The vibration echoed off the counters, louder than it should’ve been in the silence.
She didn’t move.
After a beat, it stopped.
She inhaled through her nose, then exhaled slowly and reached for her tablet instead and pulled up the surgical schedule for the week.
Her work ethic was what she could control.
Love, if you could even call it that, was just chaos dressed up in moments of sweetness. It was temporary and unreliable.
She padded back into her bedroom and changed into her scrubs. Crisp, clean, and folded in neat stacks in her closet like soldiers waiting to be deployed. As she pulled her hair back into a tight twist, the reflection in the mirror caught her by surprise.
She looked tired.
Not tired in the usual way. Not the clinical exhaustion of long shifts or back-to-back cases. This was deeper. Hollowed out. Her cheekbones were a little sharper than usual, the shadows under her eyes bruised with something more than sleeplessness.
She adjusted her collar, smoothing down a wrinkle that wasn’t there.
Control. Discipline. Detachment.
That’s what she was good at. That’s what she needed now.
So why did the silence follow her into every room?
Why did she feel like something had been carved out of her?
Catherine grabbed her coat and keys. As she headed for the door, her phone buzzed a third time. She paused, fingers brushing the handle.
She didn’t turn back. Just let the phone vibrate itself still again and walked out the door.
The lock clicked shut behind her.
And she let the silence swallow the room whole.
The bright overhead lights of the operating theater were a kind of salvation, clean, clinical, and unrelenting. In here, nothing was ambiguous. Nothing was chaotic. You knew what to cut, what to fix, what to suture. And if you didn’t, then you had no business being in Catherine Harrington’s OR.
The scalpel in her hand moved with practiced ease, her mind hyperfocused on the narrow field of tissue and bone in front of her. The cardiovascular procedure was complex but familiar. She’d done hundreds of them, if not more. Each motion was a memory embedded in her muscle and nerves.
“Clamp,” she said crisply.
A hand passed it into hers without hesitation.
She didn’t look up, didn’t need to. The field was all that mattered. Everything outside—the buzz of her phone this morning, the brush of paint on her skin, Sloane’s mouth on hers—was gone now, sealed shut behind the sterile mask and the rhythm of her breath.
Only the surgery mattered.
“Pressure’s dropping slightly,” came a voice from her right.
“Adjust and monitor. Do not interrupt unless it’s critical,” she replied, clipped.
“Yes, Doctor.”
The tone was respectful, but she felt the tension in the room shift, tighten.
Good. Let them be tense. Tension kept people sharp.
An hour later, she was out of surgery and down the hallway, already half-scanning the next patient file when Dr. Meyers, a young resident, jogged to catch up with her.
“Dr. Harrington?” he called.
She didn’t slow.
“Dr. Harrington,” he repeated, breathless. “About that bypass consult, we adjusted the dosage as you recommended, but the patient still—”
“You waited to tell me until now?” she snapped, turning abruptly.
Meyers blinked, startled. “I…I was in with Dr. Patel, and then—”
“Your responsibility is to the patient, not your convenience,” she said coldly. “If you ever delay a report again because you're trying to juggle too much, you’ll be off the rotation. Is that clear?”
“Yes, Doctor,” he said quickly, his face flushing.
She pivoted without waiting for a response, leaving him standing in the hallway as she strode toward the admin wing.
By the time she reached her office, her pulse had steadied. Her hands didn’t shake. Her mind was still. The familiar feeling of righteous control anchored her like it always had.
She was fine.
She didn’t need Sloane.
She didn’t need anyone.
“Rough morning?” came a voice as she stepped into the staff lounge to grab a coffee.
It was one of the newer nurses—Laura, maybe? Blonde, kind-eyed. Always tried to make casual conversation, as if Catherine was a woman who did small talk.
Catherine didn’t look up. “Does it matter?”
There was a pause.
“Guess not,” the nurse said, backing away with a polite, awkward smile.
Catherine poured her coffee in silence.
Back in her office, the screens glowed with unread messages.
She clicked through them with methodical efficiency, answering with single-line responses and no unnecessary pleasantries.
The surgical board report, the committee meeting notes, a procurement issue with the new imaging unit. Evelyn would be pissed.
Good.
Let her be.
She typed furiously, correcting figures and rewording phrasing she found inadequate. One hand absently rubbed at her temple. The caffeine hadn’t touched the pounding headache brewing at the back of her skull.
There was a knock at the door. She didn’t look up.
“It’s open,” she said sharply.
Dr. Greene poked his head in. “Just checking if you had a minute. There’s a new paper on cardiac grafts I thought you’d want to see.”
“I’ll read it when I have time.”
“Sure. No rush. Just thought you might want—”
“Is there anything else?”
He hesitated. “No. Sorry. I’ll email it.”
The door clicked softly closed behind him.
Her fingers returned to the keyboard, striking the keys harder than necessary. The words on the screen started to blur slightly. She blinked. Once. Twice.
No tears. Just exhaustion. Just—
Her phone buzzed.
Again.
She didn’t even have to look. She knew it was Sloane.
That woman had a talent for intruding, even from a distance. There was a constant hum in Catherine’s body now, like static under her skin.
She didn’t open it.
She didn’t delete it either.
Instead, she shoved the phone into the drawer and slammed it shut, startling herself with the force of it.
She closed her eyes, just for a second.And in the dark behind her lids, she saw Sloane’s fingers smudged with paint. The way she’d looked at her like she was worth looking at.
Stop it.
She stood abruptly, pulled her lab coat off the chair, and marched toward the OR wing again.
There was always another surgery.
Another distraction.
Another way to drown out the ache.
The silence hadn’t followed her here. It had buried itself inside her—quiet and cold and deep.