2. Nathan Sr #2
I give him a long look. “I was angry. I was angry at her, and I was angry at myself, and I was angry that you’d been handed a situation you never asked for. Then I went to your mother’s apartment and told her the truth, and I said she wouldn’t be using my name as a weapon anymore.”
His eyes narrow. “So you cut us off.”
“I cut her off,” I correct, and I keep my voice calm. “I didn’t have a choice back then, Nate, not when she decided to take you away. But when you returned to Boston, I kept you.”
He snorts. “Kept me. Like a dog.”
I don’t smile. “Like my son.” I hold his stare until he looks away.
“I filed papers, I sat through hearings, and I signed my name on a line that made you mine in a way nobody could undo later. You got my last name, my insurance, and a home that didn’t shift every time your mother got bored, and you got a father who showed up. ”
Nathan Jr. pushes up out of the chair, and his face hardens. “You did it to win,” he says, and his voice rises. “You did it so you could tell yourself you’re the good guy.”
I stay seated, and I keep my hands flat on the desk. “I did it so you wouldn’t be left with her chaos and a stranger’s temper.” My tone stays level. “And you want to talk about what changed, so let’s talk about it. What changed wasn’t my care, it was your behavior.”
His eyes flash. “There it is.”
“There it is,” I agree, and I don’t soften it.
“You lied, you stole, you treated people like props, and you learned early that a charming apology gets you another chance. I gave you chances anyway, paid for schools, pulled strings for internships, and smoothed over meetings with deans who told me you were smart and careless in the same sentence.”
He leans over my desk, and his hands clamp on the edge. “You think I’m a disappointment.”
“I think you’re capable.” I meet his gaze without flinching. “And I think you waste it. I’m done funding the waste.”
His breathing goes louder. For a second he looks like he might throw something. He doesn’t. He straightens and laughs under his breath like he’s trying to turn this into a joke he can survive.
“Fine,” he says. “Keep your money. Keep your principles. You always pick the hospital over me anyway.”
I tilt my head slightly. “This is my office,” I say, and I keep my voice dry. “You barged in here to beg, and now you’re trying to accuse me of working. Choose a lane.”
His mouth twists, and his eyes go cold. “You’re going to regret this.”
“No.” I pick up the discharge order again. “You’re going to be angry, and you’ll to try to punish me with silence, but you’ll come back when you need something. That’s the pattern.”
He stands there for one hard beat, then he grabs the back of the chair and shoves it away from the desk with a scrape that makes the intern outside glance through the glass.
“Go to hell.” He turns on his heel, storming out of my office. The door slams hard enough that the frame rattles, and the hallway noise swallows him like nothing happened at all.
I sit still for a moment then straighten the folder again, and I go back to work.
The trauma floor doesn’t wait for family arguments to resolve themselves, and within ten minutes my pager vibrates against my belt with the sharp urgency that means something has gone very wrong somewhere in the city.
“Level one incoming,” a nurse calls from the corridor.
I’m already standing.
The hallway outside my office moves like a machine that has been waiting for a signal. Residents appear with tablets, nurses roll carts into position, and the doors to Trauma Bay Two swing open while someone reads the incoming report over the intercom.
“Male, mid-thirties. Motorcycle collision. Severe thoracic trauma. BP unstable.”
I step through the doors and pull on gloves while the paramedics burst in seconds later.
The next hour disappears.
Blood. Suction. Commands delivered in clipped sentences while the team moves around the table with practiced precision. My hands work without hesitation while the monitors scream warnings we ignore until we can’t.
“Clamp.”
“Pressure.”
“More suction.”
The resident across from me looks young enough to be in college and he watches my hands like they hold the answers to an exam he didn’t study for. I give instructions without raising my voice, and the room follows them without question.
This is where control matters.
Chaos stays outside the sterile field.
The patient survives the first surgery by a margin that makes the interns whisper later in the hallway. I finish closing the incision while the anesthesiologist calls out vitals in a voice that has finally steadied.
When the last suture goes in, I step back.
“ICU,” I say.
The nurses move immediately.
I strip off my gloves and walk out of the operating room while the team transfers the patient to a gurney. My mind drifts to my son while I scrub out in silence.
The locker room sink runs hot water over my hands while I work the antiseptic soap into my skin again even though the procedure is over. It’s habit. Surgeons carry the ghosts of the operating room longer than we admit.
My shoulders ache.
Being Chief of Trauma Surgery means the responsibility doesn’t stop when the incision closes. Being interim Medical Director means the paperwork will be waiting on my desk before I finish drying my hands.
Control is the only way to survive this job.
I shut off the water and reach for a towel. In doing so, I wonder how Nate’s girlfriend is doing. She’s a Child Life Specialist at this hospital, and she’s a good one. I’ve always thought she should be with someone who wouldn’t treat her like trash.
I’ve thought other things too, but I’m better off not admitting them.
She kneels beside hospital beds and turns machines into stories children can understand. She explains IV lines using drawings and puppets while terrified parents watch her like she’s performing a miracle.
I’ve seen it happen.
A boy once refused anesthesia until she drew a cartoon dragon guarding the operating room door and told him the dragon only let brave knights through.
He walked into surgery holding the drawing like it was armor.
Athena watched him go with that soft expression she tries to hide when she thinks nobody important is paying attention.
I noticed.
I always notice her.
She moves through the department like warmth in a place that survives on adrenaline and sterile metal, and she laughs with the nurses during quiet moments while her curls refuse to behave no matter how tightly she ties them back.
She’s competent, kind, and definitely someone who deserves to date a good guy. That thought settles in my chest every time I see them together in a hallway.
Nate gravitates toward charm and opportunity. Athena gravitates toward children who are afraid. Those two traits do not belong in the same orbit.
My phone vibrates in the pocket of my scrubs just as I reach the bench. I pull it out automatically, expecting a message from administration or another consult request.
Instead, the screen lights up with a photo. For a second I don’t understand what I’m seeing. Then my brain catches up.
Athena.
Her tits fill the screen like the photo was taken to ruin somebody’s concentration on purpose, lush and bare and framed in a way that says she checked the angle twice and liked how it looked. Her shoulders are drawn back just enough to make every soft curve look fuller, rounder, more touchable.
There’s the faintest glimpse of pink at the center of it all, enough to hit like a pulse behind my eyes, and her mouth is tipped in that small, knowing almost-smile that makes the whole thing worse in the best way, like she understands exactly how devastating she looks and sent it anyway.
Even for someone who sees bodies constantly, this doesn’t read clinical or ordinary for a second; it lands hot, intimate, and dangerous.
I have to hold on to the sink to steady myself. The locker room feels very quiet.
The caption sits under the image.
Look what you’re missing out on.
I know immediately this was not meant for me. She meant to send it to Nate, but the ass must have done something that sent her off like this. Which immediately makes me wonder—is she safe?
I stare at the screen while something dark and hungry wakes up in the center of my chest. Athena has always been attractive, but this version of her is something else entirely.
I close my eyes briefly and drag a hand over my face.
Delete it, yeah, that’s what I should do. That would be the correct decision. I’m her boss. There are about twenty professional reasons why this conversation should never exist.
My thumb hovers over the screen.
Instead of deleting the photo, I open the message thread.
The locker room bench creaks softly when I sit down.
I type slowly.
Wrong number, Athena. Are you okay?
The message sends. For a moment I just sit there holding the phone while the image burns into the back of my mind with uncomfortable clarity.
She replies a second later with a little Yes omg, I’m so sorry.
I nod and pocket my phone before staring at my hands. I’ve kept the line intact for years. Every hallway conversation. Every staff meeting. Every moment when she smiles at me and thanks me for advocating for a pediatric case.
Still. I remember the way she watches me when she thinks I’m not looking. Curiosity in those gray eyes. Something warmer underneath it.
I remember the way her voice softens when she talks to frightened children and the way she laughs with the nurses when a shift finally slows down.
I remember thinking more than once that my son didn’t deserve her.
Now my phone rests heavy in my pocket while the image sits inside my thoughts like a spark waiting for oxygen.
My shift doesn’t end for a while. By the time it does, one thing is clear. I need to see Athena in person, not as her boss, but a man dangerously close to losing control.