TEN
JORDIE
The office door clicks shut behind me. I keep walking. Shoulders back. Chin up.
As if I hadn’t just sat through forty-three minutes of polite execution by three people in business-casual suits who kept using the word “unfortunate.”
Unfortunate timing.
Unfortunate incident.
Unfortunate outcome—if I’d been wrong.
The managers and HR called it insubordination.
“This isn’t about clinical judgment. It’s about conduct.”
Conduct. Like I’d spat in Hart’s face instead of correcting him.
“If we let this slide, it sets a precedent.”
Right. Can’t have that. Can’t have nurses stepping in when arrogant consultants make calls that could kill someone. Can’t have people questioning authority, even when authority is fucking up.
I sat there. No tears. Spine straight. Hands in my lap. While they dissected my career as if it were something small and insignificant.
So now I walk out of the office. The hospital hums around me, machines beeping, voices murmuring, life moving forward as if nothing happened.
I move past the reception desk. Past the nurses’ station.
Someone turns their head. Then another. An obvious lull in conversations.
“That’s her.”
A pause. The soft rustle of paperwork that no one is really reading.
“Did you hear what happened this afternoon?”
Before the meeting started, I was offered a support person. Someone to sit next to me. To what? Hold my hand? Also, who? One of these fuckers whispering about me now? Or the cowards earlier who didn’t back me up?
And now I walk past the people who believe the version they were fed. Past the ones who would rather talk about me than to me. Past the ones who’ll forget by next week because it doesn’t touch them.
“She’s in a load of shit,” someone says.
A throat clears. I feel it more than I hear it.
But it touches me. Guts me.
I just don’t let it show.
I step outside, and the heat wraps around me like a wet towel. Thick. Humid. Suffocating. My feet carry me toward my car on autopilot, the pavement radiating warmth through the soles of my shoes.
“Jordie!”
I turn. Find Callum jogging towards me to catch up. He falls into step beside me, matching my pace. He doesn’t ask if I want company. He just gives it.
“That patient is fine,” he says, “in ICU, but stable.”
I nod, shifting my bag from one shoulder to the other. “Thanks for letting me know.”
We walk in silence.
Then, softly, “Jordie, you did the right thing.”
I know I did.
“Thanks.”
That’s all I can manage. I don’t have the mental capacity for anything that requires more than two syllables.
We reach my car, and I fish through my bag for my keys, fingers grazing old receipts, a stray pen, and a pack of gum with exactly one piece left.
Callum shifts beside me, the soft scuff of his shoe against the pavement is the only sound between us.
I keep searching. A granola bar wrapper, a lip balm that’s seen too much summer, a hospital ID I don’t even know if I should still be carrying. My fingers finally close around the keys. I pull them out with a sag of my shoulders—more from exhaustion than relief.
“Jordie, are you going to be okay?”
I shrug. The closest thing I can offer to a lie.
He doesn’t push. Doesn’t pretend to have the answer either. I appreciate that.
“Guess I’ll see you tomorrow,” he says finally.
I snort, shaking my head as I pull the door open. “No, you won’t.”
His brows furrow. “What?”
I slide into the driver’s seat, roll the windows down, and turn on the aircon. Hot air pours out like a furnace’s exhale.
“Shifts are canceled indefinitely.” I shrug. “Until they decide what to do with me.”
His jaw locks, hand coming out of his pocket as he drags his fingers through his hair. “That’s—are you shitting me?”
I wish I were.
After a moment, his voice drops, more measured now. “What if I have you on my service?”
“Thanks, Callum, but it doesn’t work that way.”
He looks at me for a long second. Then, “Well . . . what are you going to do?”
I shut the car door, lean an elbow against the windowsill, and glance up at him. “Read books.”
Then I drive off.
The next morning, I wake up with that disoriented, unmoored feeling, like I’ve stepped off something solid and into open water, limbs suspended, waiting to find out if I’ll float or sink. My head aches in that hollow, puffy way that comes from crying without ever quite letting the tears fall.
I make coffee in my kitchen and wonder if I should be calling the union. Drafting a statement. Doing something that resembles a plan.
Instead, I drive.
To Eleanor’s.
My brain must’ve short-circuited somewhere along the way, deciding that what I needed wasn’t a strategy, but an escape.
The bell above the door gives its usual polite ding as I step inside. The air smells like paper and cinnamon tea and fresh ink. Near the counter, Eleanor unpacks a crate. The rustle of pages is the only sound in the quiet.
I make it to my usual corner with a small stack of books—literary fiction, a thriller, and an expensive hardcover classic I have no business touching right now.
I sink to the floor with my back against the shelves, and I let the world shrink to just this: crisp pages, smooth covers, spines that don’t snap under pressure.
An illusion of normal.
“What have we got here?” Eleanor asks as she slides a few new arrivals onto the shelf beside me.
I glance up, lifting the books in my lap.
She scans the titles, nodding. “A little bit of everything, I see.”
“A little bit of avoiding reality,” I say, voice too dry to be funny.
Eleanor goes quiet for a beat and looks at me with that soft, maternal concern I’ve always been a little too greedy for.
“Is everything alright, dear?” she asks.
This time, I’m the one who’s silent.
Her gaze sharpens, gentle but knowing. “Do you need me to call Leith?”
Pfft. Of course she’d go straight to Leith.
He must be on her speed dial by now. Not that I blame her.
She’s had to pry me out of this exact corner when adenomyosis turned my uterus into a low-budget horror film, and once watched the ambos cart me off from the register after I face-planted from anaemia.
Eleanor pats my shoulder and my cheek once—firm, motherly, completely unimpressed—and disappears back behind the counter.
I stare down at the books and shift them in my lap. I feel the reassuring weight of them. The solid press of paper and made-up lives that, for a moment, let me forget mine is falling apart.
So, I let myself have this. Read the jackets. Skim the first chapters. Almost convince myself that I deserve some indulgence, that I can ignore the voice in my head telling me to be practical.
But fiction doesn’t pay bills. Or meds. Or debt.
I push myself up, wincing as the blood rushes back to my legs. One by one, I return the books to their shelves. Letting go of each one is a little harder than it should be.
Empty-handed, I head to the counter.
Eleanor looks up as I approach. “Heading out so soon?”
I nod. “Sorry, Elle. I just can’t . . .” The words catch, half-formed, stuck somewhere in my throat.
Eleanor simply bags up some books—the titles that I’d spent the last hour convincing myself I didn’t need—and pushes them gently toward me.
Her smile is soft. Kind. A little mischievous.
“They’ve already been paid for, dear.”
I blink down at the bag. “What?”
She reaches under the counter and pulls out one more book.
The special edition of Pride and Prejudice. The one Callum had bought just to spite me, back when my biggest worry was surviving a shift without throwing a syringe at him.
Now it’s here: immaculate, perfect, gold-foiled edges glinting under the soft bookstore lights.
“He returned it last night,” Eleanor says gently. “Told me to make sure you got it. Left his card details, too. Said to keep a tab. Just in case you came back.”
Something lodges in my throat, sharp and aching.
Callum.
He’d returned it. For me.
Because—
I don’t know why. Guilt? Pity? A twisted sense of fairness? An apology disguised as kindness?
“Thanks, Elle,” I whisper, voice unsteady.
Outside, the sun is brutal. I walk to my car in a daze, bag clutched in my hand.
Inside my car, I pull Pride and Prejudice free. Hold it. Stare.
I don’t understand Callum. I don’t understand this gesture. I don’t understand why I'm sitting here, in a hot, sun-drenched parking lot, hugging this stupid, beautiful book to my chest as the tears finally—finally—spill down my cheeks.