Chapter 2
Jordan
They tell you in med school that you'll get used to it.
They're lying through their teeth.
Five years into my career as an ER doctor and my body still staged a full rebellion against the schedule every single time.
Turns out the human body has opinions about being forced to flip between day and night shifts like some kind of circadian yo-yo, about staying sharp for twelve hours straight while processing one trauma after another, about surviving on vending machine food and coffee so old it might qualify for its own medical chart.
My instructors had painted such a pretty picture: it would become routine, they said. Your circadian rhythm would adapt, they promised. The exhaustion would feel less like being hit by a truck, they assured us with their well-rested, tenured smiles.
What they conveniently forgot to mention was how the fatigue doesn't just fade—it accumulates in your bones like sediment.
How you start measuring your entire life in shifts instead of days, your existence carved into twelve-hour chunks.
How you'll wake up sometimes in complete disorientation, your brain frantically trying to solve the puzzle: morning or evening?
Going to the hospital or coming from it? What day is it?
And they definitely don't tell you about the crash afterward—the way your body presents an itemized bill for all those hours you pushed through on nothing but spite and willpower, and it expects payment in full.
Sleep claimed me like a debt collector finally getting what it was owed—no dreams, no tossing and turning, just the kind of profound unconsciousness that feels like falling into a black hole. The good kind.
When I finally clawed my way back to the surface, the bedside clock's digital glow announced 2:47 AM in accusatory red numbers. Nineteen hours. I'd been out for nineteen hours straight.
My mouth tasted like something had crawled in there to die and been mummified for good measure.
My hair had apparently decided to stage its own rebellion, plastered to one side of my head in a gravity-defying sculpture that would've impressed a punk rocker.
I stumbled toward the bathroom like a zombie extra who'd missed the memo about method acting.
The shower was salvation. Hot water cascading down, washing away not just the fog of too much sleep but that special hospital perfume—eau de antiseptic with notes of recycled air and other people's fear.
That smell had a way of burrowing into your pores during a shift, setting up residence like an unwanted tenant.
I stood under the spray longer than strictly necessary, letting the heat unknot my shoulders and remind my muscles they were allowed to relax.
Afterward, I pulled on my comfort uniform: soft flannel bottoms in a plaid pattern that had faded to the perfect level of broken-in, and the ratty Van Halen t-shirt Mom had given me.
The shirt was more ventilation than fabric at this point, the 1984 tour dates on the back barely legible, but it was hands-down the most comfortable thing I owned.
Mom had actually worn it to concerts back in her wild twenties before she traded mosh pits for hospital floors and became the dedicated nurse who'd raised me to follow in her medical footsteps.
My fingers traced the worn fabric, following the faded logo.
This shirt was one of the few things I had left of her—of both of them.
The car accident had happened three weeks after my med school graduation.
Drunk driver, rainy night, wrong place at wrong time.
All the clichés that sounded hollow because they didn't make the hurt any less sharp.
They'd been so damn proud at graduation.
Dad had actually cried, which he never did—not at weddings, not at funerals, not even during the ending of Field of Dreams. Mom had hugged me so tight I'd barely been able to breathe, whispering that I was going to be an amazing doctor, that she couldn't wait to see all the lives I'd save.
I didn't know those would be some of the last words she'd ever say to me.
I pulled the shirt closer, inhaling even though I knew her perfume was long gone, replaced by years of my own detergent and the particular smell of well-loved cotton.
In the kitchen, I made myself a turkey sandwich with all the culinary artistry of someone building a brick wall.
Mayo, mustard, cheese. Slap, slap, done.
My stomach was still running on hospital time, thoroughly confused about whether this qualified as breakfast, lunch, dinner, or some cursed meal that existed outside the normal space-time continuum.
But I knew better than to skip eating. Your body needed fuel even when it was staging a protest, especially then.
I ate standing at the counter like some kind of feral graduate student, chewing mechanically and washing it down with water.
The cabin wrapped around me in comfortable silence—just the refrigerator's steady hum and the occasional creak of wood settling into itself for the night.
Through the window, darkness pressed against the glass, punctuated only by the vague silhouettes of mountains standing guard in the distance.
Back in bed, I burrowed under the covers and closed my eyes, coaxing my body back toward that dark, dreamless oblivion.
I was still tired, still paying interest on the debt of too many shifts strung together.
Morning would arrive soon enough, dragging whatever the next day had in store along with it.
Sunlight ambushed me through the bedroom window, and for one blissful moment, I had no idea where I was. Not the hospital. Not on call. Home.
Then the dreams caught up with me—sticky and vivid, clinging like spiderwebs I couldn't quite brush away.
Ruka had been the star of several particularly memorable scenes.
Dreams that now had heat crawling up my neck despite being completely alone in my rumpled sheets.
Those massive hands of his, surprisingly gentle when they'd touched Ardin.
The way he'd looked at me in the hospital, all that intensity focused like a laser.
My traitorous subconscious had taken those perfectly innocent details and spun them into scenarios that would make a romance novelist blush.
I groaned into my palms. Get it together, Jordan. Professional boundaries exist for a reason.
But the other dreams? Those had carved themselves deeper.
Ardin, impossibly small in that hospital bed, his breathing growing thinner and thinner like tissue paper.
Me, tearing through empty medication cabinets, sprinting down hospital corridors that twisted into labyrinths leading nowhere.
Nadine's face looming over me, cold and disappointed, her voice echoing: Let him die.
And Ardin's fever climbing, climbing, his small body convulsing while I stood paralyzed, my hands refusing to move.
I shoved the covers off, sitting up too fast. My heart hammered against my ribs.
The morning air kissed my overheated skin, grounding me back in reality.
Just dreams. Just my exhausted brain trying to process stress and sleep deprivation and—fine, yes—an extremely inconvenient attraction to a seven-foot-tall Orc who'd carried a dying child into my ER like he was cradling the entire world.
But the worry gnawing at my chest about Ardin? That was real. That had teeth.
Nadine had kicked them out before I could administer the second round of antibiotics.
Before I could hand over a prescription.
The first dose would buy Ardin some time, sure, but it wasn't enough—not for a gunshot wound, not with infection lurking like a predator.
And from what little I knew about Orc settlements, they weren't exactly equipped with pharmacies on every corner.
I padded into the kitchen, bare feet whispering against cold hardwood.
The familiar ritual of making a latte became a meditation—grinding beans, steaming milk, the rich aroma of espresso curling through my small cabin like an invitation to breathe.
I cradled the warm mug between my palms and drifted out onto the deck, tugging my sweater closer against the mountain chill.
Dawn was breaking over the Nantahala, painting the world in watercolor strokes of pink and gold.
The forest stretched endlessly before me, ancient and unknowable, ridge after ridge of blue-green mountains disappearing into morning mist. This view had been the deciding factor when I'd moved to Franklin—well, this and rent I could actually afford.
God, it was breathtaking. Each mountain range layered behind the next like a secret, valleys pooled with fog that would burn off by noon.
And somewhere out there, hidden in all that wilderness, was an Orc settlement.
Somewhere out there was a little boy who might be burning with fever right now, his small body waging war against infection without the weapons he needed to win.
The latte turned bitter on my tongue.
I grabbed my laptop from the kitchen counter and curled into the papasan chair on the deck, balancing the computer on my knees. The sun was climbing higher, warming the morning, but I couldn't shake the cold knot in my gut. I needed answers.
I started simple: "Orc physiology medical studies."
The results surprised me—pages of them. In the five years since Orcs had emerged from the depths of the Earth, the medical community had been scrambling to understand our new neighbors.
I clicked through to a peer-reviewed article in the New England Journal of Medicine, skimming past the dense jargon to the meat of it.