Chapter 3 #2
"You're not going anywhere." It wasn't a suggestion. "I'll handle your shift coverage."
My phone buzzed again. Another loud, insistent series of vibrations. I didn't have to look to know what they said. Past-due notices. Final warnings. Legal threats from my landlord's attorney.
Dr. Cross' eyes flickered to the screen. His expression stayed neutral, but his thumb pressed slightly harder against my pulse point. A muscle ticked in his jaw.
I turned away, staring at a water stain on the ceiling. "It's fine. I'm handling it."
He didn't respond. Just held my wrist, monitoring my pulse in silence.
"Where is she?!" A grating voice echoed from the corridor outside. "I know she works here!"
My stomach dropped realizing who it was. No. Not here. Not now.
"Sir, you need to lower your voice—" A nurse's calm voice tried to intervene.
"I'll make as much noise as I want!" The voice grew louder, closer. "She owes me money! Where is Mireya Rosen?!"
My heart rate spiked, the monitor betraying my panic with faster beeping.
This couldn't be happening. There was no way Gerald would come to the hospital to hunt me down. But I'd been dodging his calls for weeks, and apparently he'd decided public humiliation was an acceptable collection tactic.
The door burst open. A flustered nurse tried to block him, but Gerald shouldered past her, his face mottled red, hair disheveled, clutching papers in one meaty fist.
“There you are! Finally!" He stalked toward the bed, jabbing a finger at me. “I’ve been calling for days, Mireya. Days! Do you think I run a charity? Do you think rent pays itself?”
He ignored my IV, the monitors, the hospital gown, and the fact that I was basically a patient.
“You’re three months behind. Three months! I’ve been patient, but enough is enough!” He thrust the papers toward me. “Sign these eviction papers now, or I'll have the sheriff remove you and your sick mother from my property. Tomorrow, if necessary."
My throat closed up. I couldn't breathe.
“Sir, this really isn’t the time.” The nurse stepped between us. “She needs rest—”
“Not the time? When is the time?” Gerald's face turned purple, veins standing out like cords in his neck. He brushed past her. “When she’s four months behind? Five? She’s stealing from me! Months of free housing while I lose thousands!”
“Please,” I whispered, voice breaking. “I just need a few more days. I’m working on the money—”
"More days? I've given you months of extra days!" His fist slammed down on the bedside table, rattling the water pitcher. "Months of extensions, of trusting your promises. And for what? Nothing!"
“I’m trying.” My eyes burned. “My mother is sick. Medical bills—”
"Not my problem!" He leaned in, spittle flying. "Your problems aren't my problems! Sign the damn papers before I—"
"Get out."
The voice cut through the room like a scalpel—cold, precise, absolutely lethal.
I didn't look at Gerald. I looked at Riven. At the muscle that had gone tight along his jaw. At the way his stillness had changed into something else entirely, something that had edges to it.
Dr. Cross stood utterly still. But everything about him had changed. The professional detachment had evaporated, replaced by something that made the temperature in the room plummet.
His steel-gray eyes fixed on Gerald with an intensity that could cut through bone.
I'd never seen him like this. In six months, I'd only ever seen the neutral mask, the clinical distance. This was something else entirely—something dangerous barely contained beneath a civilized surface.
A shiver ran down my spine despite the warm blanket.
Gerald went pale, his bluster evaporating. “Dr. Cross, sir…” His voice pitched high, suddenly thin. “I… I didn’t know she was… yours.”
Dr. Cross didn't even look at him. He kept his focus on me, but his voice carried absolute authority. "Get. Out."
Gerald scurried backward, papers scattering from his hands, stammered apologies fading as he fled into the corridor.
The silence that followed felt heavy, oppressive.
Dr. Cross turned back to me. I stared at a crack in the ceiling, my gaze anywhere but at him. Everything I'd been trying to hide—the debt, the desperation, the fear—had been laid bare in the most humiliating way possible.
He knew everything now.
"He won't bother you again," Dr. Cross said quietly. His thumb traced my pulse point gently, almost absently. "I treated his father years ago. Multiple cardiac surgeries at significantly reduced cost. He owes me more than he could ever repay."
"Oh." It was all I could manage.
He shook his head. “I can’t believe he wouldn’t extend that same compassion to others…”
That was my landlord Gerald. He was always on our case when it came to our rent, but nowhere to be found when something in the apartment needed fixing.
"And don't worry about your apartment." He said it the same way he called for instruments in the OR. Calm. Decided. "You're coming home with me."
My brain stuttered to a halt.
"Sorry." He blinked once, the briefest flicker of something crossing his face. "I meant you can stay with me. If you want."
The correction was so quick, so carefully neutral, that I almost missed it. Almost.
"Dr. Cross."
"Riven."
"Riven." The name felt strange in my mouth. "I can't."
"You can."
"It's completely inappropriate. The ethics alone, the power dynamic, I work for you, I don't even really know you outside of the OR and my mother is already worried and I can't just…"
"Mireya."
I stopped.
He stood beside the bed with his hands at his sides, watching me run out of words with that particular stillness of his.
"I have a sister," he said. "Emma. She's fifteen and she's eight months post-op from a congenital heart repair.
She's stable, but she still needs someone nearby who knows what to watch for.
Anxiety can spike her heart rate. I need someone with cardiac training in the house, not a rotating roster of strangers. "
I looked at him. "You want me to be her nurse."
"I want you to be nearby in case something happens. In exchange, you'd have a place to stay and a salary. It's a practical arrangement." A pause. "That's all it is."
The qualifier landed a little too deliberately.
"You could hire anyone for that," I said.
"I could." His eyes held mine. "I'm asking you."
The room was very quiet.
"I'll give you some time to think about it," he said. And just like that, he walked out.
I stared at the empty doorway for a long moment.
The monitor beeped, steady and unbothered.
I looked down at my wrist where his fingers had been.