Chapter 15
Chapter fifteen
Clear and bold and fucking undeniable
Carina
It’s been almost two weeks since I last saw Reid.
The Storm’s deep in the first round of conference playoffs, and he’s back on the ice, where he belongs. I haven’t seen him since the morning I left his house with honey on my tongue and his T-shirt swallowing me whole.
And that’s fine.
He’s on the road, and he’s focused. I’m drowning in seventy-two-hour call blocks and back-to-back OR days. This is what adults with real lives and real careers do—they drift. They pause things without falling apart, especially when they have nothing more than a no-strings-attached thing going on.
So I tell myself I don’t miss him.
And if I do, it’s just my body misfiring. A phantom itch for quiet and warmth, and someone who makes me coffee and bacon without asking.
This morning, I woke up in the surgical on-call room with my contacts still in and a knot in my spine that’s screaming at me. I didn’t even make it home after the motor vehicle accident patient we had last night—just collapsed face-first onto the too-firm mattress available after scrubbing out.
Now my eyes are burning, my back’s a mess, and I can’t remember the last time I ate something that didn’t come in a paper bag or fall out of a vending machine.
By the time I drag myself back into clean scrubs and log into the system to review the day’s cases, it’s already past noon. Peds fracture first, then a post-op check on a knee we scoped last week. After that, whatever the trauma gods feel like throwing at ortho.
I roll my shoulders, scan the OR board again, and try not to think about how many more hours are ahead of me—or how long it’s been since I slept for more than three in a row. The letters on the screen blur for a second, and I try to blink it away.
It doesn’t help, so I press a hand to my temple and tell myself I just need food. And water. And one uninterrupted hour.
After making it through the first two cases running on caffeine alone, I check my schedule and realize I’m due back at the clinic by three.
Technically, I could’ve swapped the afternoon consults with one of the junior residents.
But Dr. Moreno likes when his post-ops are reviewed by someone who won’t screw up the charting or miss something subtle.
So I slap on another layer of concealer and head across to the clinic, pretending the lead in my limbs is just adrenaline wearing off.
The clinic’s waiting room is half-full when I arrive. Jenny gives me a once-over that lands somewhere between unimpressed and deeply concerned, but doesn’t say anything. She never does.
I duck into the back to grab a chart off the counter and nearly collide with Heidi rounding the corner, not reacting fast enough to dodge.
She steadies me by the elbow before I can step back, then pauses, eyes narrowing as she takes me in.
“Jesus, Park. You look like someone chewed you up and forgot to spit you out.”
“Rude.”
“Accurate.”
I grunt. “It’s called residency, Grant. Let me know when you’ve gone twenty-eight hours without peeing.”
“You say that like it’s impressive.” She falls into step beside me. “You should eat something. You’re getting that look again.”
I shoot her a glare. “I’m fine. Just a long day… and night.”
“You said that yesterday. And the day before that.”
“That’s because all my days are long.”
She narrows her eyes. “You eaten?”
“Coffee.”
“That’s not food.”
I wave her off. “I’ll grab something when I have a minute.”
She doesn’t press, but her expression softens as I duck into the stairwell, and I hate that softness. The pity of it, the knowing. I don’t want anyone asking if I’m okay when the answer is no, and I still have hours to go.
Everything feels frayed at the edges—my nerves, my skin, my schedule. I miss a step on the way down the stairs and catch myself too hard on the railing. My shoulder twinges, and I manage to refrain from cursing, just.
This is surgical residency. This is what I signed up for. Bone-deep exhaustion isn’t a crisis; it’s the cost of getting where I want to go, and you don’t get to fall apart just because your body’s tired.
But when I close my eyes for just a second, the floor tilts beneath me.
Still, by the time I get home—well into the later hours of the evening—my limbs are shaking, and my brain feels like it’s been stuffed full of cotton.
I kick off my shoes in the entryway and sink to the floor, sitting there a full minute before I drag myself back up and make it to the kitchen.
My fridge is a crime scene. I eat a granola bar with half the wrapper still on and slump against the counter, then force myself to the bathroom and start the shower.
Water hits my skin, and I close my eyes, breathing in steam and silence and the memories of his hands gently washing my hair.
I tell myself I just need one good sleep. I’m not sick. Not crashing. This is just stress, skipped meals, and not enough fucking time in my day.
Still, I blink at myself in the mirror afterward, towel-wrapped and bare-faced, and the ache in my chest won’t settle. The feeling of him wrapping me in a towel and guiding me to bed won’t stop. His fingers weaving through my hair as I fell asleep.
I inhale sharply and make my way back to my bedroom, grabbing my phone off the charger and absently scrolling—but pause when I see a message from Reid.
REID HUTCHISON: You alive, Doc?
Sent two hours ago. Beneath it, a photo of a quiet hotel hallway, with his bag at his feet. A coffee in one hand and his shadow stretched long against the wall. No caption, no face. I stare at the photo too long, thumb hovering over the reply field.
At first, I type something conversational.
Me: Just landed in bed. You?
Then I delete it.
Me: I missed you today.
Delete.
Me: Wish you were here.
Delete.
The ache in my spine throbs as I shift onto my side in bed. My throat burns for no reason I can name, because fuck it. I do miss him. Finally, I settle on two short lines and hit send before I can overthink it.
Me: Just barely, thanks for checking in.
I could call him. I want to call him. But that’s a different kind of tether, one I can’t afford to grab hold of right now.
Instead, I shift again, trying to get comfortable, with his name still glowing on the screen, and tell myself again I just need one solid night of sleep. I swipe up on the screen to close our text thread, my eyes catching on the food delivery app on my home screen.
It’s the same one that, three days ago, Reid used to send me Thai food unannounced. I hadn’t even asked, had just mentioned I was stuck at the clinic late, and half an hour later, it arrived with a note typed in the comment field: Eat something before you fall up the stairs, Havoc.
He doesn’t text constantly, but when he does, it’s always intentional.
I place my phone on the nightstand and decide I won’t check for a reply tonight, not because I don’t want him to, but because if he does, I’ll want more.
And there’s no room for more right now. There’s no room for even thinking about it.
I curl up my legs with the ache still sitting low in my back, and the last thought before sleep claims me is that my period should’ve come by now.
But I don’t panic, because when you live by a schedule like mine, time goes elastic.
Days blur and hours vanish. It’s easy to forget what day it is.
Time collapses in on itself until your body becomes something you manage between cases instead of something you listen to.
It’s not unusual to be late, and it’s probably just stress.
Or exhaustion. Low iron. Too many shifts stitched together and not enough rest in between.
I let the thought drift past and tell myself I’ll deal with it later. But it follows me into sleep, and presses into the hollow of my throat when I stir awake in the morning.
Dull light fills my bedroom, and the apartment is too quiet. Too still. The kind of stillness that makes my skin itch, and when I sit up, my body feels heavy in a way that doesn’t lift.
I drag myself out of bed and pad to the bathroom, the floor cold under my bare feet. My limbs feel like someone else’s as I turn on the shower, steam spilling over the glass, and step inside on autopilot.
The heat soothes the worst of the soreness from my shoulders and the burn behind my eyes, and I wash my hair with slow, methodical movements. Maybe if I follow the right order—shampoo, rinse, conditioner, rinse again—everything else will fall into place too.
When I step out and reach for my contraceptive pill pack, it’s muscle memory. I flip the case open, pop one out, and swallow without thinking. But as I go to close the case, I frown.
Something’s off. I count the pills once, then again.
There’s one extra.
My brain tries to correct it automatically—a miscount because I’m tired. So I do it again.
Same result.
I blink at the pack like it might correct itself, as though my exhaustion has tipped into hallucination, but a memory surfaces with brutal clarity.
A night I scrubbed out past midnight, sitting on the edge of a gurney in scrubs that smelled faintly of antiseptic and sweat. Telling myself I’d take the pill when I got home, or grab it from my bag in the locker room. Or before I finally got home and slept.
But I didn’t. I remember thinking I had, that’s the worst part.
I didn’t.
My chest tightens, breath going shallow as the implications slot into place with awful efficiency. One missed pill, one exhausted night. One slip that doesn’t care how careful I am the rest of the time. One goddamn moment of forgetting.
I stare at the counter, willing my brain to find another answer. Another reason. But all I can think about is the way I’ve been dragging, the sleep that never quite refreshes. The tug in my lower back that won’t go away.
Still, I move carefully, not panicked. This might be nothing. I open the bottom drawer and pull out a pregnancy test I bought months ago. It was from a pack I’d got for Heidi, from some half-drunken night when she joked she might be pregnant with twins.
I’d kept the spare one, because I keep contingencies. Because I don’t like being unprepared.
I sit on the toilet while it processes, letting the minutes tick by, the test lying on the counter beside me. I don’t let myself pace. I just stare at the grout between the floor tiles as though it might rearrange itself into a different answer.
When I finally drag my eyes to the test, the result is already there.
Two pink lines.
Clear and bold and fucking undeniable.
The air leaves my lungs in a sharp exhale as I stand, and my hand presses to my mouth without conscious thought. I don’t make a sound, just clutch the test in my other hand and sink down until my back hits the cabinet and the coolness of it seeps through my skin.
There’s a long, splintering silence as I hold my breath, staring at the test. This isn’t a question of who; there’s no confusion there.
I haven’t been with anyone else, haven’t wanted to be. Haven’t had the time or the inclination or the emotional bandwidth for anything beyond the quiet, unspoken orbit Reid and I slipped into months ago.
This baby is his.
That certainty lands heavy in my chest with an inevitability that terrifies me, not because of who he is, but who he was.
My patient.
I was his surgeon. Not the attending, but still involved and part of his care. Still someone who stood across from him in a hospital room and made decisions about his body, his recovery, his future.
I can already hear the voices. Not illegal, but unethical. Not unethical, but irresponsible. Not irresponsible, but unprofessional.
And for women in medicine, perception is everything.
Even if he was signed off my care by the time we first slept together, the overlap alone is enough to invite scrutiny. Enough to invite whispers and change how people look at me.
I see it all at once—the raised brows, the quiet recalculations. The timing, the optics. The assumptions layered onto my work like sediment.
Female surgeon gets pregnant by the professional athlete she treated.
Will they wonder if I compromised care? Will they question my judgment? What will Moreno say?
My stomach twists with nausea, and I press my palm flat against it like I can contain the fallout if I hold still enough.
This wasn’t in the plan. And I don’t get to not have a plan, because I’ve always had a plan.
The one I built piece by perfect piece. The one I’ve bled for and fought for. Protected at the cost of sleep, sanity, and sometimes self-worth.
I’ve built my life on precision. On timing and control. Knowing exactly where I’m going and how long it will take to get there.
But one missed pill, one late period, and two tiny pink lines have split my future wide open.
The questions keep coming fast, too fast to catch.
Will they think I was reckless? Stupid? Will they question whether I can still do the job?
Will I?
I lean my head back against the cabinet door and shut my eyes, trying to breathe around the weight settling in my chest.
For the first time in a very long time, I don’t know what my next move is.
And that scares me more than anything else.