4. Riven
CHAPTER FOUR
RIVEN
I gave Mireya an hour.
Sixty full minutes to think through her options, which were, objectively, limited. I told myself that was the only reason I kept glancing at my watch.
I spent those sixty minutes in my office pretending to work. Surgical schedules. Staffing conflicts. Patient charts. Anything to keep my hands moving and my mind off the look on her face when I'd said what I said.
You're coming home with me.
I had not planned to say it that way. The words had come out before the professional filter caught them, blunt and possessive in a way that had surprised even me. What I had meant was practical. Logical. A solution to a problem.
What it had sounded like was something else entirely.
I did not examine that too closely.
At exactly sixty-three minutes, I walked back to her room.
She was still in the hospital gown, IV in her arm, staring at the ceiling like it owed her an answer.
Her hair had slipped free from its bun and spread across the pillow in loose waves.
She looked younger than she did in the OR.
Softer. Like someone had finally stopped asking things of her for five minutes.
I pulled the chair close and sat down.
She turned her head. "Dr. Cross."
"Riven," I reminded. "How are you feeling?"
"Better." A pause. "The fluids helped."
"Good." I leaned back slightly. "I want to revisit the offer."
"I already told you my answer."
"You told me no. I'm asking you to reconsider."
She pushed herself upright against the pillow, and I could see her gathering herself, rehearsing.
"I appreciate what you're trying to do. I do.
But I don't have time for a second job. I'm already working overtime every week just to keep my head above water.
Adding private nursing shifts on top of that isn't rest, it's just a different kind of exhaustion. "
"I'm not asking you to take on more work," I said.
She frowned. "You said you needed someone to monitor Emma."
"I said I needed someone present. Someone qualified. Not someone running double shifts." I kept my voice even. "You would not be working as my surgical assist during this time."
Her face dropped. Something moved across it fast, there and gone before I could name it.
"At all?" she said.
"Not as often," I corrected. And I watched her try to hide the relief, which told me more than she probably intended.
"The point is for you to recover. You cannot do that if you are running yourself back into the ground the moment you leave this bed.
You would have your own space, real meals, and time to sleep more than three hours between shifts. "
"That's very generous," she said. "But I can't."
"Why not?"
"Because." She pulled at a loose thread on the blanket. "My mother lives with me. I can't just move out and leave her."
"How many bedrooms do you need?"
She blinked. "What?"
"The penthouse has three guest suites. Your mother is welcome to one of them."
The look on her face was almost worth everything. Pure, unguarded disbelief.
"Riven. I cannot bring my mother to live in your penthouse."
"You can."
"She would never agree to that."
"Does she have somewhere stable to go right now?"
The silence that followed was its own answer.
"This is too much," she said quietly. "You'd be doing too much. I don't know how to accept something this big from someone I barely know outside of an operating room."
"You know me well enough," I said. "Six months, Mireya. You have read me better than most people I have known for years."
She looked at me for a long moment. Something shifted in her expression that I couldn't quite read.
Then my pager buzzed against my hip.
I checked the screen. The ICU. I stood, pushing the chair back.
"I have to go," I said. "But think about it. Please."
I picked up my coat from the back of the chair. At the door I stopped, and I turned back, and I looked at her sitting there in that thin hospital gown with her hair loose and her hands folded in her lap like she was bracing for one more thing to go wrong.
"I need to know you're somewhere safe," I said. The words came out quieter than I meant them to. "I need to know my sister is cared for. And right now those two things happen to be the same solution."
I held her gaze for one beat too long.
"Think about it," I said again. And left before she could see that I had meant the first part more than the second.
My office was quiet when I got back to it.
I made coffee I didn't need, stood at the window I always stood at, and tried to remember why inviting Mireya Rosen to live in my home had seemed like a reasonable idea at the time.
It had made sense in the hospital room. She was exhausted and homeless and too proud to ask anyone for help. Emma needed supervision. The guest suites were empty. The logic had been clean and simple and I had presented it that way and I had meant every word of it.
I had also meant the first part more than the second and I was trying very hard not to think about that.
I sat down at my desk and pulled up the surgical schedule for next week. Three bypasses. A valve replacement. A complex repair I had been preparing for since Tuesday. Enough work to fill every hour I wasn't sleeping, which was most of them.
This was manageable. She would have her own space. I would have mine. We would pass each other in the hallways the way colleagues did and it would be professional and appropriate and completely fine.
I had told myself cleaner lies than this and almost believed them.
The truth, if I was being honest with myself in the way I rarely allowed, was that I had known something was wrong the moment I found her on that supply closet floor.
Not wrong in a clinical sense. The dehydration and exhaustion were straightforward.
What was not straightforward was the way something cold had moved through me when I saw her there.
Fast and sharp, the way fear moves before you have time to name it.
I had carried her to the bed and taken her pulse and stood there with my fingers on her wrist longer than was medically necessary.
That was the part I could not explain away.
Having her in my home was a terrible idea. I knew that with the same certainty I brought to surgical decisions, the clean instinct that said this is the wrong move, find another way.
But she had nowhere to go. And her mother had nowhere to go. And I had three empty rooms and more than enough resources to fix a problem this size without feeling it.
So I would fix it. Carefully. Professionally.
And I would keep my hands to myself and my thoughts where they belonged and it would be completely fine.
I almost believed that too.
My phone rang—an unfamiliar number with a Connecticut area code. There was only one person who'd be calling from that particular location.
Sebastian Cole. My father's estate attorney. Third call today.
I answered. “Dr. Cross.”
"Finally." Sebastian's voice carried sharp irritation. "I've been trying to reach you for weeks."
"I've been occupied."
“We need to discuss the Connecticut property. There are documents that require your signature.”
“Email them.”
“I already did,” he snapped. “Six times, Riven.”
“I’ll review them.”
“When?” He didn't bother hiding his irritation. "August keeps calling my office. He helped build those hospitals. And he deserves clarity."
"I'm aware of what August deserves," I said quietly.
"Then handle it." His tone sharpened. "These delays are creating problems."
Handling it meant paperwork and lawyers and confronting an estate I didn't want—dealing with a house full of memories I'd spent nine months avoiding.
"I'll take care of it," I said.
"You said that three months ago."
“And I’m saying it now. Send the documents.”
I ended the call and opened my email. There were indeed six unread messages from him. I moved them into a folder labeled Later without hesitation.
The Connecticut estate could wait. Everything could wait. Because dealing with any of it meant acknowledging loss, and I’d become very good at avoiding that.
I turned back to the patient files on my computer screen. A sixty-three-year-old man awaited valve replacement surgery scheduled for Thursday morning. I should’ve been thinking about surgical access, possible complications, and post-operative care plans.
Not some unclaimed inheritance or a relative impatiently waiting for the chance to demand ownership.
I continued to work. But thoughts kept drifting back to Mireya's face when she said she couldn't be indebted to me. The fear hiding behind those words stayed with me.
I left her my card but my phone remained silent. No calls. No messages.
She wasn't going to change her mind. I knew that without needing confirmation. She was the type who would rather break than bend, rather face homelessness than accept help that felt too close to charity.
I'd been that person once.
In many ways, I still was.
The rest of the afternoon blurred into rounds and consultations.
I checked on Arthur Graves in the ICU, reviewed his chart, and monitored his recovery.
His vital signs looked stable and his progress was exactly where it should be.
His wife, Rebecca, thanked me again, her eyes swollen but bright with relief.
I nodded politely and moved on before she could say more.
Gratitude always made me uncomfortable. Especially when I felt like I was only doing what was expected of me.
By the time I made it home, the city was a grid of light forty floors below.
The elevator opened into the foyer and I stood there for a moment the way I sometimes did, letting the quiet settle around me.
It was a particular kind of quiet that only existed up here, above the noise and the traffic and the rest of it.
The penthouse had cost more than I had spent on anything that wasn't a medical education, and most nights I barely noticed it.
The windows. The skyline. The way the city looked from this height like something that could almost be peaceful.
Then the music reached me from the living room. Upbeat. Pop. Completely unrecognizable.
Emma.
I followed the sound and found my sister sprawled across the couch, textbook open on her lap, colored highlighters scattered across the coffee table.
She hummed along to the music while marking passages, wearing one of my old sweatshirts that hung past her knees, her dark hair twisted into a messy knot on top of her head.
"You're home." She looked up with a bright smile. "I ordered Chinese."
"Emma, you don't have to feed me."
"I know I don't have to." She turned a page without looking up. "I wanted dumplings and I wasn't going to order dumplings for one like some kind of sad person. You're welcome."
I sat down across from her. "How was your day?"
"Productive." She closed her textbook and studied my face with that quiet attention that always made me feel slightly transparent. "How was yours?"
"Busy."
"You always say that." Her head tilted slightly. "Tonight it looks different though. You have that look.”
I frowned. “What look?”
"The one where you're thinking about something you refuse to discuss. It's your default setting, but tonight it seems worse."
I sat down, leaving careful space between us. Emma had always been unnervingly perceptive, even when she'd been too weak to stand without assistance.
“It was just a long day,” I deflected.
"Mm-hmm." She was clearly unconvinced.
The doorbell saved me from further interrogation. Emma bounced up to grab the delivery while I cleared her study materials from the table. We ate straight from the containers, Emma absorbed in some cooking competition show while I pushed unanswered questions from my mind.
“There’s a nurse at the hospital,” I said casually between bites.
Emma looked up, eyebrows lifting. “Okay?”
“She collapsed today from exhaustion. She has been pushing herself too hard trying to pay bills.”
“That’s terrible." Emma's face fell. "Is she alright?"
“She will be. It’s just dehydration and exhaustion. Nothing permanent.” I picked up another container. “I offered her a job.”
Emma's chopsticks froze halfway to her mouth. "What kind of job?"
“You need supervision from someone with medical training, just in case complications appear during your recovery.” I kept my tone clinical and detached. “She’s an RNFA. Fully qualified. The guest suite is empty, and the position would be part-time.”
"That makes sense," Emma said slowly, studying me with unsettling intensity. "What did she say?"
“She refused.”
Emma blinked. “Why?”
"Pride. She thinks accepting help is the same as admitting failure." I met her eyes. "She'd rather struggle than feel indebted."
Her expression softened. “You’re talking about yourself.”
“I’m talking about her,” I said firmly.
"Sure." A small smile played on her lips. "But you understand her because you were her. After Dad died, you refused help too. From everyone."
I stayed silent. There was nothing to argue with there.
“Do you like her?” Emma asked suddenly.
The question caught me completely off guard. “What?”
“The nurse,” she clarified. “Do you like her?”
“She’s competent and does her job well.”
"That's not what I asked."
“She’s a colleague. Nothing more.”
Emma leaned back with a knowing smile. “You don't offer housing and a job to just any colleague, Riv.”
“I did it because you need supervision and she meets the qualifications.”
“Keep telling yourself that.” Her smile widened. "But for what it's worth, I think offering was the right thing to do. Even if she said no."
We finished eating in comfortable silence. Emma started talking about a fantasy book she was reading, full of magic and politics and dragons. I listened with half my attention, the other half stuck on Mireya’s refusal and the way she looked at me like I was setting some kind of trap.
After Emma went to bed, I stood alone in my study, staring out at the glittering city skyline.
My phone sat silent on the desk.
She wouldn't call.
I knew that. And yet some irrational part of me kept checking anyway.