4. Chapter Three
Chapter Three
Julianna
T hey say the heart remembers what the mind tries to erase.
I disagree. The heart, like any muscle, adapts, calluses, forgets.
It’s the mind that keeps the ledger. So when I step out of the OR after twelve hours of removing clots and patching leaks in a teenage boy’s vascular system, I am not thinking about the families, the faces, the drama.
I am cataloguing everything: the acid wash of antiseptic still in my nostrils, the sticky crescent moons of sweat at the edges of my armpits, the way my calves threaten to seize with every step down the emergency-exit stairwell.
Every detail is a record. Every record is a shield.
By the time I reach the first floor, the world is denatured, washed to grayscale by the kind of fatigue that sharpens your thoughts but exhausts your limbs.
It’s late enough that the only people left in the hospital are the ones who have to be: janitorial, security, trauma teams coasting on six hours of caffeine and other peoples shit.
The main lobby is deserted. Even the badge-swipe doors wheeze open like they can’t stand the effort.
I exit through the staff entrance and immediately regret not cutting through the ER, the auxiliary lot is empty, every light in the concrete garage flickering in a way that can only be described as horror-movie cliché.
My heels click against the stained cement, the sound bouncing up and down the ramps.
I picture myself as prey, but the sensation is so clinical it’s almost funny.
If only they knew…
I am no ones prey.
Fingering the keys in my pocket, my thumb presses against the pattern of the panic button.
One, two, three, four. My steps are even, measured.
Every hair on my body is flat with exhaustion, but my mind is running statistical analysis on every shadow.
Someone is here. I can feel it by the way my skin goosebumps.
The air is colder than I expected, maybe forty degrees, maybe less, but I can’t tell because my internal thermostat is shot to hell. My breath exhales in short, visible clouds. There is nothing, no one, for three entire rows.
Until there is.
He doesn’t so much appear as unravel. First a stutter in the corner of my vision, then a hurried shuffle, then a human form materializing out of the dusk-light.
Like some fucking ghoulish nightmare. His jacket is Army surplus, at least three owners past respectability, and his face is raw hamburger, uneven beard, red eyes, something wrong with the set of his jaw.
He lurches forward, one hand inside the coat, the other hanging deadweight at his side.
I slow, adjust my center of gravity, and recall every self-defence class the hospital ever made me attend. Step back, yell “No,” assess for weapons. My hand goes into my purse, wrapping around the butterfly knife I keep there… just for situations like this.
“You fucking bitch!” His voice is ragged, the kind of sound that pulls blood from your eardrum. “You killed her! You killed my wife! You let her die on your table!”
Oh. So this isn’t random. This is personal. My favorite.
I recognize the face now, not him, not the man himself, but the configuration of grief and rage and need for an explanation.
He’s one of the ones who never attended rounds, never returned calls, only showed up after the ventilator turned off, wanting a miracle.
I don’t remember the wife, but I remember the type.
He closes the distance with shocking speed for someone so strung out. His hand leaves the jacket and I see the object, metal, black, the geometry of a small pistol. Shit.
I throw myself sideways behind a car, catch my hip on the bumper, and roll. He follows, howling. The first shot is so loud it stuns the air out of my lungs. I don’t think he’s aiming so much as painting the world with his desperation, but it hardly matters. I’d say this is surprising, but it’s not.
I’ve dealt with this before, sliding my blade under the skin of a woman who tried to bottle me for the death of her son. He was scum and I have no regrets letting him die. Record for rape. Useless waste of air who didn’t deserve to live.
Before I can make a move, a blur, a very big blur rushes past me.
Creed appears with the intensity of a man possessed. One second, it’s just me and the man and the horrible echoing noise of bad decisions, and the next, Creed is behind the man, silent and tall as the executioner’s shadow. He doesn’t yell. He doesn’t warn.
He just moves.
His hands close around the man’s forearm, twisting it up and back with such torque that the wrist folds at a ninety-degree angle, gun clattering to the concrete with a thin, metallic chirp.
The man howls, but Creed is relentless. He uses the leverage of his own body, six-four at least, built like a war lord, to slam the man’s head into the nearest SUV, then spins him around and throttles him in a chokehold so efficient it makes my surgical heart proud.
The man flails, feet scraping the floor. Creed’s arms are locked, his face blank, no emotion at all. The carotid pressure is textbook. You can time the beats to the second, and I do. Sixteen, seventeen, eighteen. The man’s body goes limp.
Creed doesn’t let go. He stares into my eyes as he keeps squeezing, as the legs twitch, as the breath hitches and then stops. He only releases when it’s clear there will be no Lazarus moment, no Hollywood resuscitation. The man sags to the floor, his head lolling at a broken angle.
In the space after, the world is silent. The fluorescent lights flicker in their own time signature, and my heart rate is so elevated it feels like another person’s pulse. The worst part is the growing wet patch between my thighs.
Creed steps over the corpse, looking down at it with the professional curiosity of a butcher admiring a well-cut side of beef.
He kneels, checks the pulse and then stands.
In the half-light, his eyes meet mine, and there is nothing there but…
calculation. Not remorse, not relief. Just a cold arithmetic.
“Are you hurt?” his voice is deep, and it does things to me. Things I don’t want it to do. In fact, I could swear it’s deeper than I remember, but that could also be because suddenly, he’s a whole lot more interesting than just being my stalker.
I check myself. Everything’s fine. “No,” I rasp, and am surprised to find it true.
He nods once. “Let’s go.”
He doesn’t wait for my consent. He just reaches for my arm, grip surprisingly gentle, and steers me toward the far exit. I don’t resist. My body hasn’t caught up to my mind yet. I don’t even look back at the corpse.
Creed’s car is parked in the fire lane, matte black, utterly unremarkable except for the fact that it’s perfectly clean.
I notice the lack of bumper stickers, the absence of anything that might indicate personality or history.
He unlocks the passenger door, opens it, and waits until I am inside before circling to the driver’s side.
I look down at my hands. They are shaking, but only a little. The adrenaline is already receding, replaced by a low, vibrating sense of something like… what? Guilt? Relief? Gratitude? No, none of those fit. I catalog the feeling and set it aside.
Creed slides into the driver’s seat. He isn’t even out of breath. Not even a single bead of sweat on his brow. He starts the engine with a soft purr, the dashboard lighting up with subtle, amber glow.
“What are you doing here?” I ask. My voice is hoarse, like I’ve been smoking all night.
He glances at me, then back to the road. “Ensuring you weren’t dead.”
“You were following me.”
“Yes. But you knew that.”
I did. Which is why I put on a show for him last night. I watch his hands on the wheel, long, sinewy, the veins like cables under his skin. Hands that would look fine as fuck wrapped around my neck.
“Was that really necessary?” I nod back toward the garage.
“Would you prefer to be dead?” His voice is emotionless, but his eyes flash in the instrument light, brown gone almost black.
“No.” I admit it because it is the only honest answer.
He drives with the steady confidence of someone who has done this a thousand times, never speeding, never hesitating, every turn smooth and premeditated. The city slides past the windows in blurred slabs of light.
I lean back in the seat, every muscle slackening now that I am out of the kill zone. I try to reconstruct the events, but they feel distant already, like something that happened in another life.
Silence stretches, a thin membrane ready to snap.
“Thank you,” I say, finally.
He doesn’t respond. Just keeps driving.
I close my eyes, and for the first time since med school, I allow myself to drift. If he wanted to kill me, he would have. If he wanted something else, he would have taken it. This isn’t trust, exactly. It’s a surrender to the mathematics of survival.
I clear my throat because there’s a question I know the answer too, but I want him to say it. “Are you also watching me?”
His eyes flick over, then back to the road. “Only when it’s necessary.”
“And how do you define necessary?” I ask, watching his jaw for any sign of tension.
He is silent for three breaths. “When you’re in danger. Or when you might be interesting.”
There is no heat to his voice, no flirtation. It is simply a fact, and that makes it worse. Or better…
We drive in silence, the city lights painting parallel bars across his face. His hands remain at ten and two on the steering wheel, but the left hand is whiter than the right. I wonder if he notices. I wonder if he cares.
“You don’t seem particularly disturbed by what happened in the garage,” he finally says.
“I’ve seen worse.”
He side-eyes me, and for the first time, there is something like a smile, or at least the suggestion of one. “You have not.”
“I could have handled him,” I say. “I’ve dealt with grieving family members before.”
“Not like that one.”