CHAPTER 5 — THE FATHER OF THE MAN WHO LEFT ME #2
I tried to work. For almost an hour, I managed.
I collected labs, checked schedules, corrected a progress note that Rowan had filled out as if the patient were an obstacle in his career path, and fielded a question from a nurse testing me on dosage—she gave me a half-smile when my answer came without arrogance.
Medicine helped because it demanded presence.
Patients didn't care if my ex was my supervisor's son.
They wanted me to know where to put my hands, when to call for help, what not to promise.
Bram found me again in the emergency hallway, because men like him rarely accept an interrupted scene when there's still someone left to hurt.
I'd just left the medication room with a tray of labels when he positioned himself beside the door—not completely blocking the passage, just enough to narrow my route.
His gray suit looked offensively clean in a sector where everyone wore some trace of urgency on them.
“You're pale, Lu.” His voice came low, wrapped in that old intimacy he used when he wanted to seem like the only adult in the room. “Before you accuse me of invading your space, I'm saying this because I know you. This program might be too much to start right now, with everything still so fresh.”
The blow didn't land on the word pale. It landed on “I know you.” Bram always did this: turned shared memory into authority, as if having seen my worst nights gave him a lifetime license to interpret my mornings.
The difference was that now there was a positive test in my bag, and any comment about my body triggered a new kind of panic.
“You know me well enough to know that blocking someone holding medication labels isn't the smartest way to start a conversation.” I raised the tray between us, more to mark distance than out of necessity.
“And don't call me Lu. That nickname left your jurisdiction when you decided I was too exhausting to believe.”
Bram lowered his eyes, pretending to take the hit with grace.
I'd once loved that act. The staged maturity, the man wounded by my sharpness, the silent invitation for me to walk back my words and shoulder the weight of the conversation.
In that hallway, under the hospital lights, with the word pregnant pounding behind my teeth, the trick looked cheaper.
“I never said you were exhausting. I said you were hurting yourself trying to prove intent where there was only pressure.” He took a smaller step than he would have liked, maybe because a nurse passed behind me and looked long enough to become a witness if needed.
“And now here you are, in the most competitive program in the country, on your first day, nearly fainting in hallways and arguing with my father like he's just another wall for you to break through.”
The tray grew heavy in my hands. Not because he'd confirmed it again, but because the word father, in his mouth, killed any hope of a mistake.
My father. Cael was Bram's father. Bram was Cael's son.
The man who'd held me in the hallway, the man I'd let touch me on a night without last names, the man whose son now looked at me as if he still had some right to narrate my life—he was part of the same family I'd been trying to purge from my system.
“Your father is my supervisor.” Each word seemed to demand its own space in my throat. “That's the only reason I talk to him at the hospital. You can save the attempt to turn an org chart into personal drama for someone who still finds your lines profound.”
Bram smiled with calculated sadness. “Do you really think he’s just your supervisor?”
The hallway seemed to narrow. I felt heat rise to my face, but I kept the tray steady.
There was no way Bram could know about that night.
No way he could know about the test. No way he could know—unless he was just shooting in the dark because he knew my reactions well enough to claim any lucky hit as proof.
“I think you’re too bored for a consultant during work hours.
” I took a step to go around him. “And I think if you keep throwing insinuations my way, I’m going to formally request that your presence near me be documented.
You remember documentation, Bram? The thing less charismatic people use when they want the truth to outlast your version. ”
He lightly touched my elbow. Didn’t squeeze. Didn’t hurt. Bram was too smart to leave a mark when he could leave only doubt about whether I was overreacting. Still, my body went rigid in a way that infuriated me. I pulled my arm away before he could withdraw his hand himself.
“Don’t do that.” My voice came out low, clean, dangerous. “Don’t touch me in the hallway, don’t call me by a nickname, don’t fake concern to get access to a version of me you lost by your own choice.”
Bram raised his hands, stepping back with that expression of a man wronged by someone else’s intensity.
“See? This is what I’m talking about. You turn any gesture into aggression.
Any question into a trap. My father might find that fascinating now, but he’s not known for sticking around when fascination turns into work. ”
The phrase hit deeper than it should have because it wasn’t about Bram.
It was about Cael, Celia—whom I still didn’t really know—the hospital, the badge, the age, the authority, the horrible possibility that I had desired a man who might also disappear when my life demanded more than desire.
For a second, the tray in my hands felt unstable.
Bram saw. His eyes dropped to my fingers.
Before he could use that, a voice entered the hallway like a blade laid on the table.
“Take your hand off her.”
Cael stood a few feet away, still in dark scrubs, a folder tucked in one hand, his face so controlled that any distracted person would call it calm.
I wouldn’t. There was tension in his jaw, a stillness in his shoulders, a focus so absolute on Bram that the entire hallway seemed to understand the scene had shifted temperature.
Bram looked at his father with almost imperceptible pleasure. “I’d already taken it off. Lucia and I were just talking, but you’ve always had trouble telling conversation from crisis when you walk in late.”
“I got here in time to see you cornering a resident in the emergency hallway and using old intimacy as leverage.” Cael approached without hurry, which made everything more threatening.
He didn’t look at me right away, and I understood the care: he didn’t want the scene to look like possession.
“If you have technical business with Dr. Avenel, send it via institutional email with a copy to coordination. If you have personal business, she just ended it.”
The most wounded part of me wanted to hate him for speaking for me. The most exhausted part wanted to rest my forehead on his shoulder for half a second and let someone with a steady voice hold up the hallway while I relearned how to breathe. Neither part was safe. Neither could win there.
“I can handle my own business.” I avoided looking at Cael, because I might find the care there and lose the thread of anger keeping me on my feet. “But I appreciate the institutional concern for hallway flow.”
Cael accepted the blow with a slight nod. “Then end it. I’ll stay to make sure the hallway stays a hallway, not an interrogation room.”
Bram let out a low laugh. “You really don’t see how this looks, do you, Dad?”
The word hit the space between us with physical force.
Dad. There was no more pretending the first “dad” in the elevator had been noise, irony, or some kind of symbolic bond.
Bram looked at Cael like a resentful son.
Cael looked at Bram like a man who had failed in many places and no longer knew which ones he could still repair.
And I stood between them, with a positive test in my bag and desire for my ex’s father burning under my skin as if my body had decided to declare war on common sense.
I turned to Cael slowly. Not because I wanted to make a scene, but because I needed to see his face while the truth finished sinking in.
He held my gaze. Didn’t try to deny, explain, soften.
There was guilt there, but no surprise. Of course there was no surprise.
He knew. He’d always known, from the moment he opened my file or from before, and I still didn’t know which of those options I trusted less.
“He’s your son.” The words came out so calm I almost didn’t recognize myself. “Bram is your son.”
Cael didn’t look at Bram. His eyes stayed on me, as if any deviation would be cowardice. “Yes.”
One word. Whole. Unadorned. Maybe that’s why it hurt more.
Bram watched the two of us as if he’d just won something without needing to name the prize.
The tray of labels slipped a little in my hands, and Cael noticed, but didn’t move.
He was learning fast, unfortunately. He knew that touching me now would be worse.
“And you thought this information could wait until when?” The question came out low, more intimate than I wanted in front of Bram, and I hated myself for letting him witness the small tremor at the edge of my voice.
“Until I pieced together the family tree through the system? Until your son dropped ‘dad’ in a casual sentence? Until the hospital decided I was too emotional to receive basic facts?”
Cael breathed—not like an offended man, but like someone who accepted the accusation before responding.
“I found out about your connection through the system after the simulation. Not before. And I didn’t tell you in the administrative hallway because you were pale, under too much casual scrutiny from too many people, with Bram showing up where he shouldn’t have been.
That explanation doesn’t make the decision right. It just makes the decision mine.”