CHAPTER 6 — THE NORTH WING DOESN’T RECEIVE RESIDENTS #3
“Don't talk about that night here.” Her voice almost broke, but the command held. “Not in this corridor, not with that last name, not after Bram used ‘father’ like a weapon and I discovered that my worst recent choice might have been the only thing I didn't regret until this morning.”
The words hit me low. The only thing she didn't regret.
I should have stepped back immediately, because that was pain, not invitation.
But Lucia was close—too close—and the anger between us had turned into something else, denser, hotter, made of held-back desire and denied trust. She didn't pull away either.
Her gaze dropped to my mouth for an instant so quick it could be denied by anyone who hadn't spent a night learning how her body responded.
“I regret not asking your last name.” The confession slipped out before caution could catch it. It wasn't enough—not even close—but it was true. “I don't regret you.”
Lucia closed her eyes for half a second.
When she opened them, the anger was still there, but something wounded lay beneath it—something that pulled me forward a step before I'd decided to move.
The space between us shrank until I felt the heat of her breath, the scent of hospital soap mixed with skin, the whole tension of her body leaning toward me and ready, at the same time, to push me away.
“You don't have the right to say that like it's simple.” Her hand rose, not to my chest, not touching me, just hovering between us as if her body had begun a choice her mind still vetoed.
“You're my supervisor. You're Bram's father.
You're part of this place. And I need air, not one more thing that pulls the ground out from under me.”
“I know.” My hand found the wall beside her head, not her skin, because touching would cross a line she hadn't yet chosen. The proximity, even without contact, burned through every shred of self-control I still pretended to possess. “Tell me to back off, Lucia.”
She should have said it. I needed her to say it.
Instead, she stood motionless, looking at me with a fury that no longer had anywhere to go.
Her mouth parted just enough for an answer, but the answer didn't come.
Neither did my name. The air between us grew unbearably thin, and I felt the exact instant when the almost stopped being an accident and became a decision hanging by a thread.
The alarm erupted in the corridor before either of us could close or preserve the distance.
An obstetric emergency call from the east wing—shrill, repeated, brutally real.
Lucia stepped aside as if she'd been jolted awake inside her own body, and I pulled my hand from the wall with a speed that erased nothing.
The blind spot seemed too small to contain what had almost happened there.
“Go,” I said, more to myself than to her, forcing the hospital back between us with enough effort to hurt. “Emergency in the east wing. You follow me, but don't enter the field until I clear you. You're still unstable.”
“Don't use unstable on me right now.” She was already walking, the folder pressed against her body, her voice low and cutting. “Pick another word if you want me to keep listening.”
“Tired, then. Exposed. At risk of being used by people who know how to pick their words.” I matched her pace down the corridor, keeping my distance because any approach still carried the almost. “And too competent to pretend this doesn't affect your judgment.”
Lucia didn't respond, but she didn't slow down either.
For now, that was the closest we'd get to agreement.
We crossed through the security door as the alarm summoned the team, and for a few minutes the emergency returned us to what we did best: transforming panic into sequence, sequence into action, action into chance.
I didn't touch her. She didn't look at my mouth.
Still, what had almost happened in the North Wing remained between us like data no report could hold without destroying the page.
The patient from the call stabilized before needing surgery.
It was a small victory—tense, technical, with no room for romance or discussion.
When the wing began to catch its breath, my pager vibrated again.
I expected an audit update, a response from Maureen, or anything that still pretended to belong to the previous problem, but the screen showed something worse, in letters too clean for the size of the threat: Restricted authorization approved — North Wing.
Authorized user: Lucia Avenel. Validation: C. Hawthorne.
I stood frozen in the middle of the wing, the hospital noise receding to a distant background as the words burned into the screen.
Lucia was a few feet away, washing her hands, oblivious to the fact that, according to the system, I had just authorized her access to the very door I'd just stopped her from crossing.
And this time it wasn't just my name used on a patient.
It was my name opening a trap with her name inside.