Chapter 35
Zac
My phone rings while I’m working through a stack of medical journals I’ve been meaning to read for months.
Jameson.
I almost let it go. Then I pick it up, because I’ve been alone with my own thoughts for long enough.
“You alive?” he asks.
“Yeah.”
“Saw the article.”
“I figured.” I close the journal.
“Not asking for details. Just wanted to check you weren’t going mad sitting still.”
“Getting there. Only doing what the lawyers told me to do for now.”
“Good. But you know what pisses me off about it?”
“What?”
“They didn’t even try to make it look like anything other than what it was.
Someone handed Peltz exactly what he needed to keep you where he wants you, and the whole town gets to watch it play out like it’s news.
” Jameson knows something about being managed by people who’d rather keep you small and predictable—he’s been doing that his whole life with the garage.
“That’s not discipline. That’s control.”
I push my laptop away. “Yeah.”
“You didn’t do anything wrong.”
“I know.”
“I assume you’re fighting it if you’ve got a lawyer involved.”
“Yeah, I figured I’d do this formally. I was tempted to walk straight to Peltz’s office though.”
“That would’ve made it worse.”
“I know that now.
“Glad you didn’t. So how are you actually doing? Not the lawyer answer.”
I lean back in my home office chair. “It’s strange being off work. I thought I’d fall apart without the OR and I haven’t. That messes with my head more than the suspension itself.”
“Hm. Maybe the OR was always the easier thing to be sure about.”
Deep down, I know he’s right. “Yeah.”
“We need to go fishing when this clears.”
“Definitely.”
“Call if you need anything.”
It’s been a few days since the suspension, and I’ve gone through ethics training, paid the fines, and started supervised practice.
Which means I can still see patients and assist on cases, but I can’t operate independently, can’t be the one holding the scalpel with no one checking my work.
It’s the medical equivalent of being put in time-out.
I follow it without much complaint. My legal team is handling my rights, including what I need to file and what I need to avoid saying.
Sharice, the senior attorney, is looking into how Peltz got that photograph, and I expect to hear something any day.
The hardest part isn’t the supervision. It’s not seeing Hannah.
We’ve kept it to brief texts. Sharice has told me not to contact her until the investigation closes and this so-called conflict of interest stops being something either of us has to worry about.
Our phones could be used as evidence. Every notification with her name on it still makes my heart jump before I force myself to settle down and reply like normal.
Hannah: How’s it going today?
Me: Paperwork and training, but the worst is watching other people do my job while I take notes like a med student.
Hannah: That sounds horrible.
Me: It is. How’s set?
Hannah: Dain made me redo a line ten times because I “didn’t sound excited enough about oak trees.” I’ve never wanted to throw a clipboard at someone so badly.
I laugh out loud at that, alone in my house, which probably says something concerning about how much I look forward to these messages.
Me: Ten times over one oak tree or multiple?
Hannah: ONE oak tree ?
Me: I miss you.
I stare at the message for a long second before I send it. It’s more than I’ve let myself say in days. Then I hit send anyway, because some lines aren’t worth holding anymore.
Hannah: I miss you too.
I miss her in a way I haven’t felt before.
I miss work too, in a more familiar way.
My palms itch for something productive that reminds me why I became a doctor in the first place.
The weight of surgical gloves, the focused silence of an OR, the satisfaction of a successful procedure.
I miss who I am when I’m working. Once the supervised hours are done, I’m planning to go fishing with the guys.
A way to remind me there’s a version of my life that doesn’t revolve around proving myself to anyone.
Sitting in limbo has given me too much time to think, and the thought that keeps surfacing is whether this hospital is even where I want to be once it’s over.
I never seriously considered leaving before.
Pulse Point is supposed to be mine. It’s far enough from my father that nobody could compare us.
And yet here I am, suspended, watching Peltz invoke my father’s name like a weapon every chance he gets, and realizing the distance I built was never actually enough.
The Sterling name followed me here anyway. It just took a different shape.
What I keep coming back to, though, isn’t him.
It’s Peltz. The way he didn’t even pretend this was about ethics.
He told me outright what it would cost me and made it sound like discipline.
But he’s spent years making sure I never forget exactly how replaceable he thinks I am, how convenient it is for him that my name comes with a trigger button he can push whenever he needs to.
But underneath all that is Hannah. I haven’t stopped thinking about her since the day I walked into that hospital room.
I held back everything I wanted to do, every single time, because I was so afraid of losing something I’d spent a decade building.
A title. A reputation. A version of myself that exists entirely to prove I’m not just my father’s son.
I’ve been so careful, and it’s gotten me suspended anyway, my name in the gossip column, my father’s shadow looming over me. All the things I was trying to avoid are happening regardless.
So what exactly was the caution for? The title was never actually the thing I needed to protect.
And what I’ve actually been protecting is an idea of myself that other people built for me.
Peltz’s version, where I’m a liability he can pull whenever it’s convenient.
My father’s, where I’m only as good as the next case I close.
Even my own version, the one obsessed with proving I’m self-made… which means I’m alone.
None of those have anything to do with what I truly want.
I want to operate because I love it, not because I need it to mean something about my worth.
Fuck, I want to stop letting Peltz decide what my career is allowed to look like.
And I want to stop pretending that what’s happening with Hannah is something I can keep filing under inappropriate and not yet and once this is over.
As if there’s ever going to be an interpretation of “over” where I feel ready, where it stops being a risk, where it’s convenient.
There isn’t.
I’m done handing my life over to people who’ve never once had my actual interests in mind.
Whatever happens with this investigation, whatever Peltz offers me when it’s done, I’m not taking the deal that puts me back in a corner just to keep the title. And I’m not waiting for some perfectly timed moment to tell Hannah the truth either.
I just have to figure out how to get there from here.
I’m re-organizing my tackle box when my phone rings. Putting the last lure away, I pick my phone up from the shed’s counter.
My dad’s name is on the screen.
I almost let it go to voicemail out of habit, but I pick up instead because I forgot to call him back last time when he asked me to. Avoiding him again would just be another thing to feel guilty about. “Dad?”
“Hey,” he says calmly. In a way I haven’t heard before. “How are you doing?”
I brace myself for the real questions—how’s the investigation? or have you talked to the board—but they don’t come. There’s just silence like he’s waiting for my answer. It throws me off more than if he’d led with the interrogation I expected.
“Bored out of my mind.” I close the box. “Supervised practice means I’m basically shadowing my own patients. Can’t operate alone. Feels like being back in residency, except worse, because everyone already knows I’m capable and they’re just watching me anyway.”
“That sounds miserable.”
“It is.”
I put the tackle box away and wait for him to actually ask about the case numbers, mention some colleague’s recent publication, find a way to make this about something other than just me being unhappy. But he doesn’t.
“You doing okay otherwise?” he asks instead.
I almost laugh. “Define okay.”
“However you want to define it.”
Taking a deep breath, I rest back against the counter. “I don’t know. It’s a lot right now.”
“Yeah.” Just that. No advice attached to it, no silver lining offered. Just an acknowledgment.
We talk for another few minutes about me heading to fish with the guys and him playing golf.
Surface-level conversation, but it’s better than the alternative.
I do wish I’d speak up and ask him if it’s true that he told Peltz I’m too arrogant for my own good.
But his calm personality has me off balance.
When I hang up, I stand there for a second, phone still in my hand, turning it over.
He just called to ask how I am? No agenda.
No comparison to anyone else. I don’t fully trust it yet.
There’s a piece of me waiting for a call back with the other version of him to resurface, the one who measures everything in achievements and titles.
But so far, he hasn’t. And I’m not ready to examine too closely what that might mean.