Chapter 2 #2
She shouldered her bag and walked out. I let her, because that was what I always did. I let her leave every room and I stayed exactly where I was and I did not follow.
Go home, I had told her.
I had absolutely no idea how to take my own advice.
My office was silent when I reached it. I made coffee in the small machine on the credenza, bitter and strong enough to wake someone from a coma, and then settled behind my desk to review patient charts while the caffeine worked its way through my system.
The surgery went well. A textbook repair. The patient would need careful monitoring for the next seventy-two hours, but barring complications, he would survive.
My friend, Dr. Cassian Reeds, showed up at noon and swung the door open like he owned the place. The smell of his fast-food lunch drowned out his cologne.
"You look terrible." He dropped into the chair across from my desk with his trademark smirk.
"Thanks for the assessment." I didn't lift my eyes from the chart. "What do you want?"
“Your charming company, obviously." He unwrapped what appeared to be a turkey sandwich drowning in mayonnaise. "Heard you dragged Rosen in for emergency surgery at three in the morning."
"Cardiac contusion with ventricular rupture. Needed someone competent."
“After a thirteen-hour shift?”
I set down my pen and finally looked at him. “What’s your point, Cassian?”
He shrugged. “That you don’t know when to stop.”
"My work ethic is my concern."
“Yeah, yeah.” He leaned back and smeared a little mustard on the wrapper. “I get it. The hospitals can wait and you can ignore sleep, but seriously, Riv. Did you think no one would notice?”
I rolled my eyes. “Notice what?”
“Your complete lack of self-care. Also…” He leaned forward conspiratorially, elbows on my desk. "That particularly arrogant expression you get when you tell everyone else to relax while you're secretly drowning in stress."
"I don't get stressed," I said flatly.
“Right,” he said, grinning. “Because thirteen-hour shifts plus an emergency call at three in the morning is totally normal behavior for a sane human being.”
Despite myself, the corner of my mouth twitched. "You're insufferable."
"And yet you tolerate my presence in your office. Clearly you enjoy my company on some masochistic level." His smirk became positively gleeful. "Don't bother denying it."
I ignored him and continued working.
He tossed the sandwich wrapper playfully into the trash. “Now, serious question. You coming to that fundraiser next month?”
“No,” I replied without missing a beat, anticipating the next push.
Cassian had always made it a point to be the thorn in my side since the day he decided it was interesting to poke fun at my boring life choices. His words.
"Come on. Free food, open bar, you can lurk in corners and intimidate donors. You're exceptional at that."
I crossed my arms. “I don’t intimidate anyone.”
“You absolutely do. It’s your whole vibe.” He leaned back, spreading his arms dramatically as if to show the evidence of my aura. “Everyone knows it. Even the attendings are afraid of you. But secretly, you enjoy social events. Admit it."
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” I said, fighting to keep my expression neutral.
Cassian sighed dramatically. "Fine. Be difficult. But bring Emma—she'd probably enjoy getting out of the penthouse for once."
“My sister goes to plenty of places.”
“Yeah? When’s the last time you took her somewhere that wasn’t a medical appointment or cardiac rehab?” He raised his eyebrows challengingly. “Think about it, Riv.”
I couldn’t remember. Emma was still recovering from a complex congenital heart surgery. She couldn’t handle any kind of overstimulation. The excitement would only send her heart rate climbing too fast. Exhaustion would hit her harder, and infection was still a risk.
She needed stability and routine. Not crowded events with strangers and noise.
“She’s fine where she is,” I said.
“Didn’t say she wasn’t.” His eyes lost some of their humor. "How are you really doing? And don't say fine. I can tell."
"I'm fine," I repeated anyway, because what else was there to say?
He snorted. “You’re working yourself into the ground. Haven’t taken a day off in six months. And you’re still ignoring August’s calls about the hospitals. That sounds fine to you?”
My jaw clenched. “The hospitals can wait.”
“It’s been nine months since your father died, Riv.”
I looked away, unwilling to respond.
“I’m not judging," Cassian said, raising his hands placatingly. "Just pointing out the obvious. You can’t keep running yourself like this. At some point, you have to eat actual food, sleep more than three hours, maybe even laugh at something besides sarcasm.”
Despite myself, a smirk tugged at my lips.
“Anyway,” he said as he stood, “I came for food, company, and the sheer joy of watching you glare at me while I make reasonable points about your life.”
“Sure.”
He grinned and slid a wrapped sandwich across the desk toward me. "Now eat, drink your coffee, and try to relax. Or don't. But when you collapse from exhaustion, don't say I didn't warn you."
I let the distraction loosen some of the tension I'd been carrying. He was annoying and persistent, but somehow he reminded me that the world didn't have to feel so heavy all the time.
He left after fifteen more minutes of commentary I mostly ignored. The rest of the afternoon dissolved into patient rounds and chart reviews, one task bleeding into the next until I lost all sense of time.
By the time I made it home, darkness had settled over the city. Exhaustion settled in my bones. The penthouse smelled like smoke, setting off every alarm bell in my exhausted brain.
“Don’t come in here!” Emma's voice rang out from the kitchen, half-panicked.
I ignored her and followed the smell. She stood at the stove, waving a dish towel at smoke pouring from a pan. She wore an oversized sweater with her hair twisted into a messy knot, and she was grinning at me like she hadn't just nearly set the place on fire.
“I was trying to make stir-fry.”
“I can see that.” I crossed to the stove and turned off the burner.
She dumped the smoking pan in the sink. “Pizza?”
“Pizza.”
While we waited for the food delivery, Emma curled up beside me on the couch, launching into an animated story about her day. The caregiver brought books from the library and spent the afternoon on the balcony reading. She wanted to adopt a cat but knew I'd refuse.
She was right. At least for now.
Eighteen months ago, she’d undergone a congenital heart surgery that nearly took her from me. Now she laughed, talked, and dreamed about the future. Color had returned to her cheeks and she looked healthier than I could ever remember since she was little.
And I couldn’t be more grateful for that.
“How was work?” she asked, nudging my arm.
“Busy.”
“That’s always your answer.”
“Because it’s always true.”
She studied me with those unnervingly perceptive eyes. "You look exhausted, Riv."
I didn’t answer.
"Stay home tomorrow," she said quietly.
"Can't."
"Won't," she corrected. "There's a significant difference."
The doorbell rang before I could respond. We ate pizza in comfortable silence while Emma scrolled through her phone, occasionally showing me funny posts I didn't understand and didn't particularly want explained.
This was enough. Emma was alive, recovering, thriving against all odds.
She was okay. That had to be enough.
After she went to bed, I stood at the floor-to-ceiling windows and stared out at the city.
Forty floors below, the city never fully slept.
The skyline stretched in every direction, a grid of light that cost more per square foot than most people earned in a year.
I had grown up watching my father stand at windows like this one, hands clasped behind his back, surveying things he owned.
I had told myself I was nothing like him.
Yet, I was standing in the same posture.
Somewhere out there, the patient from this morning was lying in the ICU with his heart beating because we had gotten to him in time.
That should have been enough to quiet my mind.
It wasn't.
Instead I was thinking about ibuprofen. About a water bottle passed hand to hand in an empty scrub room at two in the morning.
About the way she had said goodnight like it cost her nothing at all.
Easy. Unbothered. While I was standing there coming apart over the ghost of her fingertips against my palm.
I had operated on a man's heart today. Held it, essentially, in my hands. Kept it beating through sheer will and twelve years of surgical precision.
I could not, for the life of me, figure out what to do with my own.
Mireya Rosen was going to be the undoing of me. I had known it for a while now. I just hadn't found a way to make peace with it yet.
My phone buzzed on the counter.
I didn't have to look to know who it was. August had been calling every few days for three months, and each voicemail was more insistent than the last.
I could answer right now. Have the conversation I'd been avoiding. Deal with the responsibilities I'd been running from. Face the reality that my father was gone and his empire was crumbling without leadership.
But not tonight.
So I declined the call.