Chapter Twenty-Five
THERE WAS BLOOD EVERYWHERE.
The floor. My scrubs. My shoes. The purified white room had turned the color of something unholy.
Three different heart monitors sang the same haunting note, a long, unwavering flatline that carved itself into the back of my skull.
“Dr. Tariq,” Betsy said softly. “You have to call it.”
I didn’t answer. I couldn’t. My mind was still clawing its way through the last fifty minutes—every suture, every clamp, every desperate adjustment that hadn’t been enough.
Robert looked up at the clock. “Time of death: eight-forty-two p.m.”
The words echoed against the walls, cruel in their finality.
Someone turned off the machines, one by one. The silence that followed wasn’t silence at all—it roared.
Robert’s hand closed around my arm. “Dr. Tariq,” he said, but it sounded far away. “Come on. Let’s step out.”
I didn’t move. My eyes were still fixed on the table, on the woman who’d come in terrified but alive, who’d told me she wasn’t ready because they weren’t ready.
And she was right.
He tugged a little harder, dragging me toward the door as nurses swarmed around what was left behind. The smell of antiseptic mixed with blood clung to the back of my throat.
“Lilly.” His tone sharpened once we were in the hallway. “You’ve got to snap out of it. We have to go tell the husband.”
Tell him, as if the words could be contained in a single breath, as if anything I said could make sense of the fact that there were now three bodies where moments ago there had been three heartbeats.
Jennie Thompson was twenty-five. She’d had a nervous laugh and a birth plan typed in color-coded bullet points, and now—
My lungs tightened. My chest felt like it was caving in on itself.
Her babies, Luna and Logan, names picked out the moment she saw them on the ultrasound, and now—
Robert’s hand landed on my shoulder. “Hey, listen to me. It wasn’t your fault, okay? You did everything right.”
I nodded because that’s what people did when there was no right way to respond. Then I started walking.
“Wait—” Robert called after me. “You don’t want to change first? You’re covered in—”
But I didn’t stop. My body was moving without my permission, every step taking me closer to the waiting room and further from the lives I couldn’t save.
The doors slid open with a hiss.
Mr. Thompson was on his feet before I could speak. His eyes went straight to my scrubs—crimson splattered across blue—and widened with dawning horror.
“No,” he said, shaking his head. “No, no, please—”
“Mr. Thompson,” I began, my voice fragile, a whisper masquerading as strength. “I’m so sorry. We did everything we could, but there were too many complications—”
“There were no complications,” he snapped. “It was you. You were the problem. You killed them.”
I flinched, my shoulders jerking as if I could physically dodge the accusation.
Robert stepped forward, his tone firm. “Sir, you’re out of line—”
But Mr. Thompson lunged, grief twisting into something feral.
His hand shot out—not for my arm, not for my badge, but for my hijab.
His fingers hooked into the fabric, yanking hard enough to snap my head back, the safety pin slicing into my skin before popping open.
My messy bun sprung loose in an instant, and the scarf coiled around my neck in a makeshift noose.
A strangled choke lodged in my throat, fear braided tightly with disbelief.
I gasped, trying to rip the fabric away so I could breathe, but he wouldn’t let go, wouldn’t stop pulling.
Robert intervened, wrenching him backward, breaking his grip so abruptly my hijab slipped free of his hand. Mr. Thompson stumbled, still shouting, still broken, as security rushed in to restrain him.
I stood there for one second too long—long enough for the words to dig into my bones, to find a home somewhere deep inside my chest where I knew they’d echo for the rest of my life.
I fumbled to fix my hijab, smoothing it back into place even though my fingers wouldn’t stop trembling.
And all the while I could feel the weight of every pair of eyes in the waiting room, intense and steadfast, pinning me in place as if I were the problematic spectacle instead of the woman who’d just been called a murderer and palpably attacked in the same exhale.
I turned and walked away, each step heavier than the last, each breath a reminder of the ones that had stopped, and still, that single word followed me—
Killed.
Like it might never stop ringing.
The hallway outside my apartment was spinning, or maybe it was me.
I blinked, realizing I was standing in front of the door with my keys in my hand, metal teeth catching the light as they vibrated between my fingers.
I didn’t remember the drive here. I didn’t remember the parking garage, the elevator, the trudge up the stairs.
Just flashes of red, the sound of a heart monitor flatlining, a man screaming my name like a curse.
The key scraped uselessly against the lock, clanging loud enough to reverberate through the entire building. My heart felt like it was collapsing, my inhales coming in shallow and useless.
The door swung open suddenly. Khalifa stood there, eyes widening. “Oh my God,” he breathed. “Please tell me that isn’t your blood.”
Before I could speak, his hands were on me, desperately grabbing and searching. He was murmuring under his breath, half Arabic, half panic, brushing at my arms and abdomen like he expected to find a gaping wound hidden somewhere.
“It’s not—” My throat felt raw. “It’s not my blood.”
His shoulders dropped, relief leaving him in a rush. But then his gaze found my eyes, and whatever he saw there made his expression shift.
“Lillian, habibti, what’s wrong?” he asked, hands rising to cradle my face, palms warm against my clammy skin. “Why are you covered in blood?”
I looked at him, tried to find the words, but they came out broken. “They died, Khalifa.” My voice was barely audible, a shadow of itself. “All three of them. They just...died. I killed them.”
He took my hand and led me to the couch, his movements gentle, like he was afraid I’d shatter if he moved too fast. He crouched in front of me, fingers working quickly at the laces of my shoes until they slipped off with a soft thud. My socks were damp. My scrubs stiff with dried blood.
“Lillian,” he said firmly. “You didn’t kill anyone. Do you hear me? Complications happen all the time. You did everything you could.”
I shook my head, my eyes brimming before I could stop them. “I was supposed to save them,” I whispered. “I should’ve—”
He wiped a tear before it could fall, his thumb grazing the edge of my jaw. “Stop. Don’t do that to yourself.”
A sob broke loose in my chest, and without any hesitation or careful distance, he pulled me in tightly, folding his arms around me, holding me together when all the pieces I’d meticulously built were unraveling at the seams. I clung to him like I was drowning, his heartbeat thudding steady alongside the hammering of mine, the only proof that something solid still existed in the world.
Shock dulled everything else. My mind refused to wrap around it—to even begin to accept that it had actually happened, my worst fear, the one that haunted every rotation, every surgery, every whispered prayer before the first incision—had come true. Three lives. Gone. Just like that.
I couldn’t stop thinking of them—of the woman whose body had trusted mine to save her, of the two babies who’d never say their first words, never wobble down a sidewalk on training wheels, never grow up to become a princess or a firefighter or fall in love under the Eiffel Tower.
And still, some part of me kept insisting it had to be a mistake.
That there had to be something I could’ve done differently, some switch I’d missed, some warning I’d ignored. Anything but this. Anything but me.
His hand moved through my hair, turning slow, soothing circles on the back of my neck. The tears kept coming—sudden, unrestrained, unstoppable, drenching his shirt. My body sagged against him, the words tumbling out of me, raw and cracked, “I can’t believe they died.”
“I know, habibti,” he murmured, his tone dipping in shared grief. “I’m so sorry.”
It was the first time I’d ever let someone see me cry.
My mother hated emotions, hated anything too noisy, too dramatic, too messy—which, in her world, included the simple act of being human.
So my tears had always belonged to the shower, where the sound of water could disguise them; to my pillow, where I could bury the proof; to the dim glow of the stovetop at two a.m., when I ate undercooked pancakes on the floor after another long residency shift where an attending had torn me apart and everyone at home was already asleep.
But now, here I was, crumbling in front of him, the dam breaking in the same room where less than twenty-four hours ago I’d danced and laughed, giggling about sticks and tickles and the spectacle of an awkward boy’s blush.
I started to draw back once my tears had simmered to shaky inhales, but he didn’t let me.
His arms tightened around me, gripping me a little harder, holding me closer, refusing to let me go just yet.
A few more minutes passed like that—me cradled against him, his warmth pressing into me, his heartbeat steadying mine—before I could even think about breathing on my own again.
He finally released me slowly, brushing away the inky streaks of mascara and saltwater. With a gentle tug of his hand, he lifted me to my feet. “Come on,” he said softly, steadying me when I swayed.
I followed him wordlessly. The bathroom lights hummed to life, bouncing off the mirror that refused to recognize me. He turned on the faucet, the water running warm, filling the room with a sound that was too loud, too ordinary against the howling in my head.
“Can you...clean up, or do you want me to help?”