Chapter 8 Isla
ISLA
It was a one-time thing.
That was what Isla told herself in the days that followed, as she moved through her shifts with a precision that bordered on mechanical.
The locker room encounter had been an aberration.
A pressure release valve. Two people who had been circling each other for weeks finally giving in to the tension that had been building between them.
It didn't mean anything. It couldn't mean anything.
Marianne was still the woman who had helped restrict her surgical privileges.
The committee's new requirements were still in effect, forcing Isla to seek consultation and document her reasoning for every procedure that fell outside standard protocol.
Every hour of her day was now shaped by the decisions that Marianne had enabled.
The woman she wanted to fuck held her fate.
Nothing had changed.
Except that everything had.
Isla was acutely conscious of Marianne's presence whenever they were in the same room. The way she moved. The way her voice sounded when she spoke to other administrators. The slight flush that crept up her neck when their eyes met across a crowded hallway.
She could feel the memory of that night pressed against her skin like a brand. The taste of Marianne on her lips. The sounds she had made when she came apart under Isla's hands. The desperate, almost violent need that had consumed them both.
It was supposed to be over. They had gotten it out of their systems. They could move on now, return to their roles as adversaries, pretend that nothing had happened.
So why couldn't Isla stop thinking about it?
She threw herself into work with renewed intensity, taking extra shifts and volunteering for the most complex cases.
The restrictions made her slower, more cautious, but she compensated by being more precise.
She documented everything. She sought consultation.
She followed every bureaucratic requirement to the letter, building a record that even Victor Shaw couldn't criticize.
The work helped, in a way. When she was focused on a patient, when her hands were moving with precision and her mind was calculating the next step, she could almost forget.
Almost push down the memory of Marianne's body against hers, the desperate sounds they had both made, the terrifying intimacy of losing control completely.
She performed six surgeries in three days. Treated dozens of patients. Made decisions that saved lives, even if those decisions now required consultation and documentation that slowed her down. She was still good at her job. The restrictions hadn't changed that.
But every night when she went home, the memories came flooding back.
The way Marianne had tasted. The feeling of her fingers tangled in Isla's hair. The moment when all her careful composure had cracked open and she had become something raw and real and desperately human.
Isla lay awake in the darkness and replayed those moments over and over, her body aching with the memory of pleasure, her mind racing with questions she couldn't answer.
But underneath the professional focus, her mind kept drifting. To the curve of Marianne's hip under her palm. To the way her eyes had gone dark with desire in the dim locker room light. To the words she had spoken afterward: I want it to happen again.
They hadn't spoken since that night. Not really. Professional exchanges in hallways. Brief nods of acknowledgement in meetings. Nothing that would suggest anything had changed between them.
The distance was intentional. Necessary. They both knew what was at stake.
But it was also torture.
Three days after the locker room, a multi-vehicle collision brought four critical patients into the trauma bay simultaneously.
Isla was running point on the response, coordinating resources and making decisions with the forced consultation the committee required, when Marianne appeared in the doorway.
She was observing. Recording. Doing her job.
But the moment their eyes met, Isla felt it like a physical blow.
Marianne's expression was neutral, but tension rippled through her shoulders, her lips parting slightly. She remembered what those lips felt like. Remembered the desperate sounds Marianne made when Isla's fingers moved inside her.
"Dr. Bennett." Tamsin's voice cut through her distraction. "Patient in bay three is deteriorating."
Isla snapped back to the present, her focus sharpening on the crisis in front of her. The middle-aged man in bay three had internal bleeding that was getting worse despite their interventions. He needed surgery. Immediately.
"Page Dr. Hartman for consultation." The words tasted like ashes in her mouth.
The old Isla would have made the call herself, opened him up and found the source of the bleeding without waiting for authorization.
But the new rules required her to consult with a senior surgeon before any major deviation from protocol.
The consultation took four minutes. Four minutes of the patient's blood pressure dropping while Isla explained her assessment and requested permission to proceed. Four minutes that felt like hours.
"I understand your assessment, Isla." Hartman's voice came through the phone line, measured and careful. "But the imaging doesn't clearly show the bleed location. Are you certain about your approach?"
"I'm certain." Isla fought to keep her voice steady while the monitors behind her showed the patient's deteriorating condition. "The imaging is inconclusive because the contrast hasn't had time to reach the bleed site. If we wait for better imaging, he'll be dead."
"You understand that if you're wrong—"
"I understand. I'm not wrong."
A pause that stretched for an eternity. Then: "Proceed."
By the time Hartman signed off, the patient was in worse shape than he had been. Isla got him into surgery and stopped the bleeding, but the delay had cost him. He would recover, but his prognosis was worse than it would have been if she had been able to act immediately.
This was the cost of compliance. This was what the restrictions meant in practice.
And Marianne had watched the whole thing, her expression unreadable, her pen moving across her clipboard with infuriating steadiness.
Afterward, when the trauma bay had cleared and the patients were stabilized, Isla stood at the nurses' station trying to force her hands to stop shaking.
The adrenaline crash was hitting her hard, compounded by the frustration of knowing that she could have done better if she hadn't been hamstrung by bureaucratic requirements.
"You okay?" Tamsin appeared beside her, her voice low and concerned.
"Fine."
"You don't look fine." Tamsin glanced toward the observation window where Marianne had been standing. "You and Ms. Cole seemed... tense today."
"She's the woman who helped restrict my practice. Tension is expected."
"That's not the kind of tension I meant." Tamsin's dark eyes were knowing, too knowing. "The way you two were looking at each other during that response... that wasn't professional animosity, Isla."
Isla felt her heart stutter. "I don't know what you're talking about."
"You know exactly what I'm talking about." Tamsin's voice dropped even lower. "I'm not going to ask questions. Whatever is or isn't happening between you two is none of my business. But if you think nobody noticed the way the air changed when she walked in, you're fooling yourself."
The observation hit Isla like cold water. She had been so focused on her own awareness of Marianne that she hadn't considered how visible their chemistry might be to others.
"There's nothing to notice."
"If you say so." Tamsin's expression suggested she didn't believe a word of it. "Just be careful. This hospital runs on gossip, and the last thing you need right now is another scandal."
She walked away before Isla could respond, leaving her alone with the weight of her words.
Isla stood at the nurses' station, her mind racing. Tamsin was right. The chemistry between her and Marianne was visible. Palpable. If someone as discreet as Tamsin had noticed, others might have too.
This was dangerous. More dangerous than she had realized.
But even knowing that, even understanding the risks, Isla couldn't make herself regret what had happened in the locker room.
Couldn't make herself wish that they had kept their distance, maintained their professional boundaries, stayed on opposite sides of the conflict that defined their relationship.
What she felt for Marianne wasn't going to go away just because it was inconvenient. The only question was whether they were going to continue pretending otherwise.
The day dragged on. More patients, more consultations, more documentation. Isla worked through it all with grim determination, refusing to let her personal complications affect her performance. But by the time her shift ended, she was exhausted in ways that had nothing to do with physical exertion.
She went home to her apartment, a modest two-bedroom in a building that valued privacy over luxury.
The space was functional rather than beautiful, decorated in neutral tones with furniture chosen for comfort rather than style.
She had lived here for three years and still hadn't put anything on the walls.
She showered, standing under water as hot as she could bear, letting it pound against the tension in her shoulders.
The steam carried the eucalyptus scent of her shampoo, familiar and grounding.
Changed into soft clothes. Poured herself a whiskey she didn't really want, the sharp burn of it against her throat doing nothing to quiet her racing thoughts, and stood at the window watching the Los Angeles skyline glitter in the darkness.