Chapter 9 #3
Nitroglycerin first, then labs. I watched his color creep back from gray to pink, watched his breathing slow and deepen. Watched his wife's death grip on his hand finally ease.
"Thank you, doctor." Her eyes were glass-bright with tears she refused to let fall. "We were terrified."
This. This was why I'd survived medical school, why I'd chosen emergency medicine, why I'd given up sleep and sanity and any semblance of a normal life. These moments when fear transformed into relief, when I could actually fix something and actually help.
So why did I feel so hollow?
I stepped out of the exam room to write orders, and that's when the voices drifted over from the nurses' station—low, conspiratorial, but not quite low enough.
"—heard she went up to the Orc village and spent her whole time off there. One of the humans that lives up there was running their mouth about it in Walmart."
"No way. Dr. Bennett?"
"Swear to God. Apparently, she was treating some sick Orc kid."
My pen froze mid-stroke.
I shouldn't have been surprised. Franklin was the kind of town where everyone knew what you'd bought at the grocery store before you'd finished unloading your car. But somehow I'd convinced myself that what happened in the mountains stayed in the mountains.
Stupid.
It could've been anyone of the humans from the Orc village who'd talked.
Sarah the teacher, probably—she had that chatty, well-meaning energy that turned every conversation into a social marathon.
Or maybe old Tom, who came down for supplies and to catch up on all the news.
Hell, it could've been any of them, just making innocent conversation, not realizing they were lobbing a grenade into Franklin Memorial's gossip ecosystem.
Heat crept up my neck. Not shame—I'd do it again in a heartbeat, helping Ardin.
But the sudden exposure made my skin prickle.
The knowledge that my private life was now being dissected over coffee in the break room, that people were whispering about me in a town where most folks crossed the street to avoid walking past an Orc.
Yeah. That would be making the rounds for weeks.
"Well, that explains why Nadine's been breathing fire all morning."
Oh, fuck. Nadine.
I looked up to find both nurses watching me with expressions I couldn't quite parse—curiosity mixed with something else. Admiration? Concern? In Franklin, those emotions often wore the same mask.
The sharp staccato of heels on linoleum announced her before her voice did.
"Dr. Bennett." Nadine's tone could have flash-frozen a lake. "My office. Now."
The weight of inevitability settled over me like a familiar coat. On some level, I'd known this was coming the moment I'd climbed that mountain path.
Setting down my pen, I caught the nurses exchanging glances—the universal look of "better you than me"—and followed Nadine's rigid form down the hallway.
She moved like a woman perpetually braced for impact, every step measured, every muscle held in check.
Her hair was scraped back so tightly I wondered if it gave her migraines.
Even her mouth seemed locked in a permanent line of disapproval, as if smiling might crack her face open and reveal something human underneath.
She was wound so tight I half-expected her to snap and ricochet off the walls.
Her office matched her personality—sterile, colorless, everything arranged at perfect ninety-degree angles. She shut the door with a soft click that somehow sounded like a judge's gavel, then turned to face me. Neither of us sat.
"Is it true?" Her arms crossed over her chest like a barrier. "Did you go to the Orc settlement?"
I met her gaze steadily. "Yes."
"And you treated one of them?"
"The child who was here. His wound had become infected. I—"
"I don't care about his wound." Each word dropped like a stone.
"You are employed by Franklin Memorial, Dr. Bennett.
Your license, your malpractice insurance, your authority to practice medicine—all of it exists under this institution's umbrella.
You don't get to go off on unauthorized house calls to treat Orcs and expose this hospital to liability. "
"I went on my own time. A child was dying—"
"A child that wasn't your patient. Wasn't anyone's patient. Do you have any concept of the position you've put us in?" She leaned forward, tendons standing out in her neck like cables. "What if something had gone wrong? What if you'd been hurt? What if that creature had died and they'd blamed you?"
"That creature is a six-year-old boy named Ardin," I said, heat rising in my chest. "And he's alive because I went."
"That's not the point."
"Then what is the point, Nadine?"
She held my gaze, and something flickered in her eyes—not quite anger, not quite fear. Something colder. Something that looked like revulsion. I gave consideration to telling her I'd kissed Ruka just to see if her head would actually explode.
"The point, Dr. Bennett, is that you don't seem to understand where the lines are. This community has certain... expectations. Standards. We coexist with the Orcs because the government gave us no choice, but that doesn't mean we erase the boundaries between us and them."
"Boundaries," I repeated, the word tasting bitter. "You mean like the Hippocratic Oath? First, do no harm? Or does that only apply to certain species?"
Her jaw could have cracked walnuts. "Don't be glib. You know exactly what I mean."
"I really don't," I challenged.
She exhaled through her nose like a bull preparing to charge. "Then let me be crystal clear. You're fired, Dr. Bennett. Effective immediately."
The words hung in the air between us, sharp and final.
I waited for the devastation to hit, for my knees to buckle, for panic to claw its way up my throat.
Instead, what bloomed in my chest was something unexpected—relief.
Pure, weightless relief, like someone had just cut the strings holding me to a puppet master I'd never wanted.
Maybe it was because being fired meant no breach-of-contract penalties, no financial shackles keeping me chained to this place. But even as the thought crossed my mind, I knew that wasn't it. The relief came from somewhere deeper, somewhere I'd been too afraid to look until this very moment.
"If you want to treat animals," Nadine continued, each word dripping with venom, "perhaps you should have become a veterinarian."
I studied her—this woman made of sharp edges and colder convictions, who'd probably forgotten what it felt like to care about anything beyond her precious protocols. A laugh bubbled up in my throat, inappropriate and liberating.
"You know what, Nadine? You're absolutely right." I turned toward the door, my steps lighter than they'd been in months. "I should have."
"Security will escort you—"
"I know the way."
The break room greeted me with its familiar fluorescent hum, empty except for the ghosts of a thousand coffee breaks and whispered complaints. My locker waited at the far end—number seventeen, its combination lock worn smooth by my fingers over countless shifts.
The lock clicked open. Inside, the sparse collection of my professional life stared back at me.
Wrinkled spare scrubs, my stethoscope with its slightly frayed tubing, a bottle of ibuprofen that had seen better days, a fossilized granola bar I'd optimistically stashed during a particularly brutal shift. Not much to show for years of my life.
I was cramming the scrubs into my bag when the door exploded inward.
"Jordan!"
Tammy stood framed in the doorway, her face flushed crimson, her chest heaving like she'd sprinted from the other side of the hospital.
"Tell me it's not true," she demanded, closing the distance between us in three furious strides. "Tell me Nadine didn't actually fire you."
"News travels at the speed of gossip." I reached for my stethoscope, its familiar weight suddenly precious.
"Jordan, this is insane. You can't just—she can't just—" The words crashed into each other, her fury making them clumsy. "You saved that kid's life!"
"Apparently, that's the problem." I coiled the stethoscope carefully, tucking it into my bag like I was putting something sacred to rest.
"Because he was an Orc?" Tammy's voice cracked, disbelief and rage warring for dominance. "That's seriously what this is about?"
I didn't answer. The silence said everything.
"This is bullshit." Tammy's palm slammed against the locker beside mine, the metallic bang punctuating her fury.
"Complete and utter bullshit. You're the best doctor in this entire building, and everyone knows it.
Half the staff would throw a party if Nadine got hit by a bus.
You have to fight this! Don't you have a friend who's a lawyer? Sue her ass!"
"Tammy." I closed my locker with a soft, final click and shouldered my bag. "It's done."
"It doesn't have to be! We could go to the board, file a formal complaint, organize a petition—"
"I don't want to fight this." The words emerged quiet, but they rang with truth. I met her eyes, saw the genuine anguish there, and felt a stab of guilt for how peaceful I felt. "Honestly? I think this might be exactly what I needed."
Tammy gaped at me like I'd announced plans to join a circus. "What you needed? Jordan, you just lost your job!"
"I know." I moved past her toward the door, then paused at the threshold, glancing back. "But somehow, it feels more like a beginning than an ending."
Her expression melted from fury into something softer, more worried. "What are you going to do?"
Ruka's face flashed through my mind—the way his eyes had held mine when I left the settlement. Ardin's gap-toothed smile as he'd played. Ryhain's tears of gratitude streaming down her face.
"I have absolutely no idea," I admitted, and found myself smiling. "But I'll figure it out."
The nurses' station hummed with an unusual quiet when I approached, security badge clutched in my palm like a talisman I was about to surrender. A few heads swiveled my direction—some faces soft with sympathy, others carefully blank. Hospital gossip moved faster than IV drips.
"Jordan." Darla's voice carried the weight of genuine sorrow as she looked up from behind the desk. "I heard. God, I'm so sorry."
"Thanks." The badge hit the counter with a hollow clatter that felt far too final. "Just wanted to say goodbye."
A wave of murmured farewells washed over me, punctuated by tight hugs from the nurses who'd always had my back.
As I stepped away, blinking against the unexpected sting in my eyes, my gaze snagged on something odd—a battalion of white office boxes lined up against the wall like soldiers.
At least a dozen of them, half-stuffed with medical supplies, blankets, bandages, over-the-counter meds, sample packets of antibiotics.
"What's all this?"
Darla tracked my stare. "Care packages. Nadine's got us assembling them for rural clinics that are barely hanging on. Understaffed, under-resourced, the works."
My brain stuttered. "Nadine?"
"Right?" Darla's eyebrows climbed toward her hairline. "Plot twist of the century."
Nadine—the same woman who'd just axed me without blinking, who ran this hospital like a military operation and seemed to feed on other people's discomfort—that Nadine organized charity drives?
"Didn't know she had a heart buried under all that ice," I muttered.
Darla's laugh was dry as autumn leaves. "Jury's still out. My money's on this somehow padding the hospital's tax write-offs. We just haven't connected the dots yet."
"Well." I shrugged, oddly touched despite my cynicism. "Hope they make a difference."
As I turned to go, Darla's voice caught me. "Good luck, Jordan. Wherever the wind takes you."
"Thanks, Darla."
The automatic doors exhaled open, releasing me into the cool embrace of night. The parking lot sprawled before me, my truck a lonely island under the lights. Beyond it, the highway ribboned into darkness. Beyond that... everything. Nothing. The terrifying, exhilarating unknown.
And the first person I wanted to tell was Ruka.
Not my friends. Not my college roommate who worked in hospital administration. Not the colleagues who could forward my résumé. Ruka. I ached to hear his voice, to tell him I was finally, impossibly free. That nothing tethered me here anymore.
The realization should have knocked me sideways. Instead, it settled over me like the most natural thing in the world.