Chapter 19 Cassian
CHAPTER NINETEEN
CASSIAN
"Dr. Reed, thank you for coming. We've completed our initial review of the complaint and need to discuss what we've found."
"Of course."
Dr. Cross spread several folders across her desk, each one labeled with careful handwriting. I recognized my own name on one. Calla's on another.
"These are employment records from your time at Metropolitan General," she said. "Before you transferred to Obsidian."
Metropolitan. The hospital where Calla and I had worked during our marriage. It was where we'd fallen in love in operating rooms and fought in break rooms and slowly, painfully, broke apart.
"During our review, we discovered something that wasn't disclosed on either of your employment paperwork." She slid a document across the desk. "You and Dr. Karras were previously married."
I nodded slowly. "Yes. We divorced five years ago."
"This information was not included in your current files at Obsidian."
"It didn't seem relevant. We'd been divorced for years before she joined the hospital."
Dr. Cross made a note, her pen scratching against paper. "The original complaint regarding sexual misconduct at the district hospital remains unsubstantiated. However, this new information about your prior marriage has opened additional questions about potential conflicts of interest."
My stomach sank. "What does that mean?"
"It means the investigation will continue." She closed the folder. "We'll need to conduct further interviews and review your work on the protocol more thoroughly. Given your personal history, the board wants to ensure that all decisions have been made objectively."
"They have been. Every decision we've made has been based on medical evidence."
"I'm sure it has. But we have a process to follow." She removed her glasses and met my eyes. "There's something else. During our review of Dr. Karras's records from Metropolitan, we found a file that may be of personal significance to you."
She slid another paper across the desk.
I looked down. The Metropolitan General letterhead was familiar. The date was from five years ago, just three months before our divorce.
Patient: Calla Karras.
Department: Obstetrics.
Procedure: D&C.
Diagnosis: Spontaneous abortion, incomplete.
The words didn't make sense. I read them again, allowing for my brain to catch up with what my eyes were seeing.
Obstetrics. D&C. Spontaneous abortion.
Calla had been pregnant.
She'd miscarried.
And I'd never known.
"Dr. Reed?" Dr. Cross's voice pulled me out of my daze. "Are you alright?"
I couldn't answer or do anything except stare at the paper in my hands. It contained the information that reduced the worst moment of my wife's life to clinical procedures.
"I didn't know about this," I heard myself say.
"I'm sorry." Her voice softened slightly. "Patient privacy laws prevent me from sharing any details beyond what's in that file. If you want more information, you'll need to speak with Dr. Karras directly. Or contact Metropolitan General."
I stood.
"The investigation," I said, my voice hollow. "How long?"
"A few more days. We'll be in touch."
I nodded and left.
I found myself driving to Metropolitan General. I couldn't remember most of it. The highway blurred past, exits and signs and other cars all fading into background noise while my mind stayed fixed on that piece of paper.
Spontaneous abortion. D&C procedure. Calla's name typed neatly at the top like it was another patient file, another case, and another woman who'd walked into that hospital and lost a child.
I tried to remember what happened three months before our divorce. We'd been fighting constantly. The fellowship offer had arrived. I'd accepted Obsidian without consulting her. Every conversation had been a minefield.
But a baby. Our baby. How could she have kept that from me?
The parking lot at Metropolitan was half-empty when I pulled in. I sat in my car for a long time, staring at the building where I'd spent years of my life. Where, apparently, she'd lost our child while I was somewhere else.
I walked through the main entrance. The lobby looked the same as I remembered, all beige walls and uncomfortable chairs. A few people glanced up as I passed, but no one stopped me. I still had my Obsidian badge, but I looked like I belonged.
I didn't know where I was going. I didn't have a plan. I just needed to be here, in the place where it had happened, and to understand something I couldn't make sense of.
"Dr. Reed?"
I turned. A woman in scrubs was watching me from near the elevators, her face creased with surprise and concern. She was in her fifties, gray streaking through dark hair that was pulled back in a practical bun. Her eyes were warm, familiar, and it took me a moment to place her.
"Cathy?"
"It's been years." She crossed the lobby toward me, her sneakers squeaking against the floor. "What are you doing back here?"
Cathy Bells. She'd been a labor and delivery nurse when I'd worked here. We'd worked together a handful of times when trauma cases had intersected with obstetrics, and she'd always struck me as the kind of person you could trust with your worst secrets.
"I needed to see some records," I said. "From when I worked here."
"Records?" Her brow furrowed.
I didn't know how to answer that or to explain the piece of paper burning a hole in my pocket.
Cathy studied my face for a long moment. Then her expression shifted, understanding dawning slow.
"You found out about the pregnancy."
I went cold. "What?"
"Calla's pregnancy." Cathy's voice was gentle, the way you'd speak to someone who'd just received a terminal diagnosis. "That's why you're here, isn't it? Someone finally told you."
I couldn't move. I couldn't breathe. The lobby noise faded to a dull roar, and all I could see was Cathy's face, her eyes full of sorrow that had been waiting five years to be shared.
"You knew?" The words scraped out of me. "You knew about it?"
"I was there." She touched my arm, her grip firm and grounding. "Come with me. This isn't a conversation to have in the lobby."
She led me through corridors I half-remembered, past nurses' stations and patient rooms and all the places where Calla and I had built a life together. We ended up in a small break room on the third floor, empty except for a coffee maker and a few worn chairs.
Cathy closed the door behind us.
"Sit down. You look like you're about to fall over."
I sat. My legs gave out more than I chose to, my body collapsing into the chair like a puppet whose strings had been cut.
Cathy sat across from me, her hands folded in her lap, her face full of compassion that came from decades of watching people receive the worst news of their lives.
"Tell me," I urged. "Tell me everything."
She was quiet for a moment, gathering her words.
“I remember because I thought it was strange,” Cathy began. “Dr. Karras never took lunch breaks. She was always in surgery or in the clinic or buried in research. But that day, she walked into labor and delivery looking like a ghost."
I pressed my hands against my thighs, trying to stop them from shaking.
"She'd been spotting for a few days but hadn't told anyone.
By the time she came to us, she already knew something was wrong.
We did an ultrasound and..." Cathy paused, her voice catching.
"There was no heartbeat. The baby had stopped developing about a week earlier.
Her body just hadn't recognized it yet."
"How far along was she?"
"Eight to nine weeks." Cathy's eyes were wet. "She sat there staring at the screen while we told her, and she didn't cry or say anything. She just asked when we could schedule the procedure."
"The D&C." She exhaled. "That same afternoon. We had an opening, and she insisted on getting it done immediately. I offered to call you and told her you'd want to be there, and that she shouldn't go through this alone. But she said no."
"W-Why?" I choked out.
"She said you were in surgery. A trauma case that had come in that morning." Cathy met my eyes, and I saw my own grief reflected there. "She said you were saving someone's life and she couldn't ask you to leave for something that was already over."
I remembered that day. A six-hour surgery on a patient with multiple gunshot wounds, touch and go the entire time. I'd come home exhausted and found Calla already in bed, her back to me, with the lights off.
She'd been recovering from losing our child. And I'd crawled into bed beside her and fallen asleep without saying a word.
"She was alone?" My voice cracked. "The whole time?"
"I sat with her during the procedure and held her hand when she woke up from the anesthesia.
" Cathy's tears broke free and flowed down her weathered cheeks.
"She thanked me. Can you imagine? She'd just lost her baby, and she thanked me for being there.
And then she asked when she could go back to work. "
I flinched, the ringing in my ears so overwhelming I had to repeat the words. "Back to work?"
Cathy nodded. "That same afternoon. I tried to convince her to go home, to rest, to call someone who could be with her.
But she said she had patients who needed her.
" Her hands trembled. "She walked out of here three hours after the procedure and went back to the OR.
I've been a nurse for thirty years, Dr. Reed.
I've seen a lot of women go through loss.
But I've never seen anyone carry it the way she did.
So quiet. So alone. Like she'd decided she didn't deserve to have anyone hold her while she's breaking down. "
I couldn't see anything anymore. My vision blurred, swimming with tears I couldn't stop.
"I should have known," I whispered. "I should have seen that something was wrong."