Chapter 13 Sloane
SLOANE
Icouldn’t get my hands to stop shaking. I sat on the floor, pathetic, scared.
I counted the lacerations. One on the palm. Another below the elbow. A superficial abrasion at the hairline. Nothing deep. Nothing requiring stitches. Superficial. Superficial. Superficial.
Except I was not fine.
I stared at the red on my palm like it belonged to someone else, like this altercation happened in a simulation. The kind we trained with in residency, when no one could actually get hurt. Those exercises always seemed silly, but they were real, and a dangerous incident had happened.
The tremble in my spine and panicked breaths told me this was very damn real. My body was still reacting—elevated pulse, shallow breathing, visual disruption in my peripheral field.
Panic response.
Dorsolateral prefrontal cortex firing off danger signals. I needed to regulate. I needed to de-escalate, but my mouth stayed closed, my throat locked. Hayes wasn’t in his right mind. He was freaking out. But his size… what if he grabbed me? What if he punched me?
My mind raced with what-ifs when Oliver crouched and joined me on the ground. Then, he touched me, gently.
His hands, warm and slow, pressed gauze against my skin with care. He didn’t flinch at the blood. He didn’t ask dumb questions. He didn’t treat me like I was fragile. I met his eyes and saw worry and concern and even fear. He was scared for me.
I tried to breathe around it. “I know head trauma can alter emotional response. Frontal lobe deregulation. But I didn’t see that coming. He—he wasn’t exhibiting classic agitation. I had his file. I should’ve—”
“Stop.” Oliver’s voice came low and grounded. His eyes locked onto mine. “You don’t have to explain his behavior. He fucked up and made you feel unsafe.”
“He broke the frame,” I whispered. “It was a photo of my med school class. He knocked it off the desk when he shoved the chair. I didn’t even see it fall. It’s stupid, but… it was mine.”
He didn’t respond at first. Just slid his palm along my forearm again, slow and steady, his comforting touch reassuring my overactive nerves.
Every motion calculated, like he knew any sharp movement would startle me.
I couldn’t overthink how or why, but Oliver’s touch was the only thing keeping me from breaking down.
“He was escalating,” I said, blinking hard. “I should’ve hit the alert button. I have one under the desk. I had time. But I was worried about increasing his adrenaline. I didn’t want to make his anger worse.”
“You didn’t make it worse. He did.” Oliver leaned in closer, his lips set in a firm line. “You didn’t fail. You didn’t miss anything. You were doing your job.”
I swallowed hard, the pressure behind my eyes mounting fast and sharp. “That’s the part I can’t stop looping—how calm I tried to be. How quiet I kept my voice. But none of my tactics mattered. It didn’t stop him. Nothing stopped him.”
My voice cracked, and I hated that too. I hated how raw it felt coming out, like I’d left some essential part of myself open too long.
Oliver moved closer without hesitation. Our knees locked as he slid his hand behind my neck, fingers spreading wide and warm at the base of my skull.
The contact sent a wave through me—steadying but dangerous.
I didn’t flinch. I couldn’t. Everything inside me felt like it had unraveled, and he was the only thing holding the threads together.
My throat worked once, twice, before I forced the words out. “Can you please… can you hold me?”
I barely recognized the voice as mine. It was too quiet. Too small. Like it belonged to someone else—someone I swore I’d never be. How could I, a doctor, be seeking comfort from a player? One younger than me?
Oliver didn’t hesitate. He didn’t say a word. He reached for me with both arms like he’d been waiting for permission. And then I was there—wrapped tight against him, every muscle in my body giving out the second his chest met mine.
His arms came around me fully, one at my lower back, the other up high, bracing the back of my head. He didn’t squeeze too tight. He didn’t rock or shush or say anything stupid. He held me, his steady breath a rhythm I could match.
I tucked myself closer, the weight of my body melting into his.
My cheek pressed to the front of his T-shirt, and I could feel everything—his heartbeat, his breath, the warmth of his skin bleeding through the cotton.
His thumb traced a slow path across the ridge of my spine, between my shoulder blades.
His other hand cradled my head, fingertips splayed wide against my scalp. He stroked once through my hair, and my breath caught at the tenderness in it. No one in my life had ever held me or been this gentle and careful with me, and his comfort undid the thin restraint I had.
I didn’t mean to cry.
The tears started slow, then all at once. Silent but steady, soaked into the fabric of his shirt before I could wipe them away. I clenched my jaw, trying to hold the rest in, but he whispered, “I’ve got you,” like he could feel me slipping again. “Let it out, Sloane. I got you, okay?”
“God, this is embarrassing.” I sniffed and tried to pull back, but his grip around me tightened.
“No, it’s not,” he said quietly. “I’m not done holding you. Give me this…a few more minutes. I need this too.”
We stayed like that for a few minutes, his reassuring hand rubbing circles on my back as his chin rested on my head. He trembled, and his heart raced, and it hit me that he was truly worried for me. This kind, gentle man was worried about me. “He didn’t touch me, Oliver, not really.”
“You’re fucking bleeding and shaking, Sloane. That’s more than enough damage. God,” he snapped, his grip around me tightening. “Too close, that’s too close for me.”
I pressed my lips together, trying not to flinch at the truth in his words.
My eyes burned. My throat ached. The cold reality of it all hit me again—how close Hayes had gotten to actual violence.
How I had kept telling myself I was in control, that I could de-escalate, redirect, regulate his anger with enough calm tone and grounded language.
That was what I’d been trained to do. That was what worked ninety percent of the time. But this… this was the ten percent.
“I’ve done hundreds of sessions,” I whispered, still pressed to him, still breathing in the scent of his skin and cologne.
“I’ve worked with every kind of resistance, rage, grief.
But this…” I shook my head, the tremble crawling back up my arms. “I’ve never felt like that before.
Never had someone look at me and see nothing. ”
Oliver’s jaw flexed against my temple. “You need to report it.”
“I will,” I said quickly. “I already have to write the incident log. Protocol requires immediate documentation and notification to Mac and HR.”
“That’s not what I mean,” he said, pulling back enough to stare at me in the eyes. “I mean a full report. You need to make sure he doesn’t return. Ever.”
My stomach twisted. “If I do that, his career’s over.”
His eyes flared. “So what? You could’ve gotten severely hurt, Sloane. Do you not see that? He was twice your size. If I hadn’t walked by…”
He didn’t finish the sentence. He didn’t have to. I’d looped that moment at least a dozen times already.
“I get it,” I whispered. “Believe me, I do. I just… this isn’t how it’s supposed to happen. I built systems. Training. De-escalation methods. Boundaries. I followed every damn rule.”
“And it still happened,” he said, quieter now. “That’s not your failure. That’s his. So I don’t want to hear for one second that this is your fault. That is unacceptable.”
The truth of the event hit somewhere deep and hollow.
I’d spent years preparing for every worst-case scenario.
But I’d never really believed an event like this would happen to me.
That one of my own—one of the people I’d worked so hard to support—would cross the line in a way that could’ve ended with me in a hospital room.
While this was different, it felt the same as failing my brother.
I didn’t stop his downward spiral. I didn’t stop him before he ruined his career, and life.
And here I was, missing the signs from Hayes too.
My eyes welled up again, and Oliver cupped my cheek, smiling softly at me. “Come on, Doc. Let’s go report. I’ll be with you, okay?”
I nodded, and despite all the reasons I shouldn’t want to be near him, I couldn’t stop the pull toward him.