Thoughts of Dr. Collington's younger brother momentarily fade as I push through the hospital's revolving doors, still in my cap and gown because I didn't even think to change, and I'm quickly swallowed up by an endless stream of well wishes from hospital staff. Nurses I recognize from my follow-ups stop me in the corridor. An orderly gives me a thumbs-up from behind his cart. It's as if everyone knows I graduated today, and by the time I reach Dr. Collington's floor and push past the tinted glass doors of his consultation room—
Oh my gosh!
Party poppers shower confetti in the air as everyone gives me one of the happiest surprises of my life as they yell out"Congratulations!"
The room I know so well, the room with the pale wood desk and the calligraphy scroll and the stone basin that's been sitting on its shelf for a hundred years, is covered in streamers and balloons, and someone has pushed the desk against the wallto make space, and there's a cake on the coffee station where I learned to make rosetta art, and it's all so ridiculous and so beautiful and sowrongfor this room that it can only mean one person is behind it.
Emily gives me a tight hug, and when she pulls back, all I can do is stammer incoherently.
"H-How—"
I want to say something else, but it's impossible, with my throat all choked up, and my lip already starting to tremble.
I don't want to cry.
I shouldn't.
This is a happy occasion.
But the moment I hear Emily cheekily say, "The boss knew you'd insist on coming here straight—"
I burst into tears, and even though everyone around me laughs, I...I...
Because I'm remembering.
The very first time I opened my eyes after the surgery. Before the hospital room, before the heart monitor, before "grwd." There was a recovery room, and there were faces I didn't recognize, and my vision was blurring in and out, and I was so scared because I didn't know where I was or what had happened to me or if I was even still alive.
But then I saw him.
I didn't know his name yet. Didn't know he was the one who had just cut open my skull and saved my life. All I knew was that a man with dark curls and the gentlest eyes I'd ever seen was looking down at me, and the way he looked at me...it made me feel safe. Like everything was going to be okay, even though nothing made sense, even though I couldn't move or speak or do anything at all except lie there and be terrified.
His eyes told me I was going to be fine.
And I believed him.
And then later, it was Emily who told me about the thesis. How Dr. Collington had spoken to someone, or called someone, or donesomething, because the professor who had refused to let me defend my thesis had suddenly, inexplicably, changed his mind. Emily wouldn't tell me exactly what he did. She just smiled and said, "The boss has his ways."
And now this.
Confetti in my hair and Emily's arms around me and a room full of people who showed up becausehemade it happen, and he's not even here, he's in surgery right now saving someone else's life the way he saved mine, and I'm crying so hard I can't breathe, and my heart feels like it's about to explode because this...
This has to be proof.
Right?
Even if he doesn't know it yet, Dr. Collington is totally in love with me!
Part Three
Chapter One
KAZEYUKI CHECKED TODAY'Scalendar, printed out by his assistant and left centered on his desk with the edges aligned to the leather blotter because Emily was, if nothing else, aggressively precise about things that did not require precision.
3:00 PM. Kitty McKenna. Routine neurological follow-up.
The clock on his office wall read 3:05.
He set the paper down. Picked up the pen he had been using to annotate a patient file. Put the pen down. Looked at the clock again.