Chapter 3 Isla #2
Three out of four. Better than the numbers had any right to be.
But as Isla finally stepped away from the trauma bay, pulling off her gloves and trying to let the adrenaline fade from her system, all she could think about was the look on Marianne's face when she had challenged her in front of the entire team.
The staff lounge was quiet when she pushed through the door, exhausted and irritable and desperate for coffee that didn't taste like the break room's perpetually burnt offerings. Tamsin was already there, sitting in one of the worn chairs with her own cup cradled in her hands.
"Hell of a morning." Tamsin's voice was warm with understanding. "How are you holding up?"
"I'm fine." Isla poured herself coffee and dropped into the chair across from her friend. "Three saves, one loss we couldn't have prevented anyway. All things considered, it's a good day."
"That's not what I meant."
Isla looked up to find Tamsin watching her with that knowing expression that always made her feel uncomfortably seen.
They had worked together for four years.
Tamsin had witnessed her worst moments and her best, had seen her hands shake after losing patients and steady themselves before impossible surgeries.
There was very little Isla could hide from her.
"The audit is going to be the death of me," she admitted finally. "I can't focus when she's standing there watching every move I make. It's like having a hawk perched on my shoulder, waiting for me to make a mistake."
"Ms. Cole seems... thorough."
"That's one word for it." Isla took a bitter sip of her coffee.
"She questioned my tube placement in the middle of a critical situation.
Do you know how dangerous that is? How distracting it is to have someone second-guessing you when a patient's life is on the line? Pfft. She doesn’t have a fucking clue. "
Tamsin was quiet for a moment, her expression thoughtful. "She watches you differently than she watches the others."
"What do you mean?"
"I've seen her observe three different physicians this week.
With Dr. Hartman and Dr. Chen, she's clinical.
Distant. She takes notes and asks questions and maintains professional boundaries.
" Tamsin paused, her gaze steady on Isla's face.
"With you, it's different. More intense.
Like she's not just evaluating your procedures. "
Something uncomfortable stirred in Isla's chest. She pushed it down immediately. "She's probably just more focused on me because I'm the reason she was hired. The board wanted accountability, and I'm the most visible target."
"Maybe." Tamsin didn't sound convinced. "But the way she looked at you today when you saved that kid.
.. that wasn't just professional assessment.
I was watching her while you were doing the tube repositioning.
When your hands went in and you made that call to ignore her and save him anyway, she didn't look angry. She looked..."
"Looked what?"
Tamsin considered for a moment, choosing her words with characteristic care. "Fascinated. Like she was seeing something she hadn't expected to see. And maybe didn't want to see."
Something about the observation made Isla's stomach tighten.
She didn't want to examine why. Didn't want to think about what it might mean that Marianne Cole watched her with fascination instead of clinical disapproval.
The woman was here to evaluate her, possibly to end her career.
Nothing about that dynamic should feel anything other than adversarial.
"Don't." Isla's voice came out sharper than she intended. "Don't start with that. She's the woman trying to destroy my career. Whatever intensity you're reading into her surveillance, it's not what you think."
"Okay." Tamsin held up her hands in surrender. "I'm just saying what I saw. You can do whatever you want with the information."
They sat in silence for a moment, the weight of the morning settling over them.
Isla stared into her coffee and tried not to think about the way her pulse had jumped when Marianne stepped closer to question her.
About the way she had been acutely conscious of exactly where Marianne was standing throughout the entire crisis.
It didn't mean anything. It couldn't mean anything.
She was not going to let herself be distracted by a woman whose entire purpose was to find fault with everything she did.
No matter how cool Marianne's gaze was. No matter how her voice cut through chaos with an authority that demanded attention.
No matter how something deep in her chest responded to the challenge in those blue eyes.
The audit would end eventually. Either Marianne would find enough ammunition to end Isla's career, or she would realize that protocol deviations backed by stellar outcomes didn't constitute a crisis.
Either way, the surveillance would stop.
The intensity would fade. And Isla would go back to practicing medicine the way she had always practiced it: on instinct, with absolute conviction, trusting the skills she had spent a lifetime developing.
She just had to survive the next few weeks without giving Marianne any more ammunition.
Which meant being perfect. Flawless. Following every procedure to the letter, even when her instincts screamed that the procedure was wrong.
She would document everything before she did it, seek approval for every deviation, turn herself into the kind of careful, hesitant physician she had always despised.
It would feel like surgery with her hands tied behind her back.
It would feel like betraying everything she believed about medicine.
But she would prove that her judgment was sound, that her methods were valid, that the board's concerns were unfounded. She would give Marianne nothing to criticize, nothing to document, nothing to use against her.
And she would absolutely not think about the way Tamsin's observation had made her heart skip.
Would not think about the moment of connection in the trauma bay, the look in Marianne's eyes when she realized that Isla had been right.
Would not think about what it might mean that she was acutely conscious of exactly where Marianne stood in every room they shared.
That way lay disaster. That way lay the kind of chaos that Isla had spent her entire adult life avoiding.
She had chosen trauma surgery precisely because it was predictable in its unpredictability.
The crises came fast and they came hard, but they always ended.
You saved the patient or you lost them, and then you moved on to the next one.
There was no room for emotional entanglement.
No room for complications that couldn't be solved with a scalpel and steady hands.
Marianne Cole was exactly the kind of complication Isla couldn't afford.
"I should go check on my patients," Isla said finally, standing up and draining the rest of her coffee. "Thanks for the debrief."
"Anytime." Tamsin's voice was gentle. "And Isla? Be careful. Whatever's happening with Ms. Cole... just be careful."
Isla paused at the door, her hand on the frame.
Part of her wanted to turn around, to ask Tamsin what she meant, to have the kind of honest conversation about feelings that she had spent her entire adult life avoiding.
But that would require admitting that there was something to be careful about.
That would require acknowledging that Marianne Cole had gotten under her skin in a way that had nothing to do with the audit and everything to do with the way her pulse jumped whenever they were in the same room.
She wasn't ready for that conversation. Might never be ready.
"I'm always careful," she said instead, the lie tasting bitter on her tongue.
She walked out of the lounge without looking back, her jaw tight with determination.
The hallway stretched out before her, leading back to the patients who needed her, the charts that demanded her attention, the endless work that defined her life.
Somewhere in this hospital, Marianne Cole was probably writing up her observations from the morning, documenting every protocol deviation, building a case that might end Isla's career.
Let her write. Let her document. Let her try to reduce the art of saving lives to checkboxes and compliance metrics.
Isla was going to show her that medicine couldn't be contained in a spreadsheet.
She was going to be so goddamn perfect that Marianne wouldn't have a single legitimate criticism to offer.
And when the audit was over, when the board had been satisfied, she would go back to practicing medicine the way it was meant to be practiced.
On instinct. Without hesitation. Without anyone watching over her shoulder.
The audit was a test. And Dr. Isla Bennett had never failed a test in her life.