The hospital corridors are half-lit, operating on night mode. My footsteps echo as I pass empty waiting areas and darkened exam rooms. The hushed nighttime routine of a major hospital unfolds around me—quieter, slower, but never truly still. Life and death don’t respect office hours.
As I round the corner to the main nurses’ station, Sheila looks up from her computer. She’s been working nights in orthopedics longer than I’ve been practicing medicine, and nothing escapes her notice.
“Doctor Shepard, leaving before sunrise? Should I call security?” Her mouth quirks up at one corner, eyes twinkling behind reading glasses that hang from a beaded chain.
“Very funny, Sheila. I do have a life beyond these walls.” It’s a bald-faced lie, and we both know it.
“Mmhmm.” She leans forward, voice dropping conspiratorially. “Hot date?”
I snort. “At eleven-thirty at night?”
“Best time for it, if you ask me.” She winks, and I find myself smiling despite my impatience to leave. “Though I have to say, ifyou’re dating at this hour, no wonder things didn’t work out with Trudy.”
Christ. Trudy. I’d almost succeeded in forgetting that disaster.
“How is your neighbor doing?” I ask, because there’s no escaping this conversation now.
“Disappointed.” Sheila gives me a reproachful look. “She said you were a perfect gentleman.”
“That’s… bad?”
“It is when she was hoping for a little less gentleman and a little more action, if you catch my drift.”
I rub the back of my neck. “The date was fine. We just didn’t click.”
“Didn’t click,” she repeats, shaking her head. “You young people and your ‘clicking.’ In my day, we gave things a chance to develop.”
“Your day sounds exhausting.” I adjust my bag on my shoulder, edging toward the exit. “Look, I have to—”
“My niece is coming to town next month,” she continues, as if I hadn’t spoken. “Lovely girl. Pediatric nurse in Boston. Very pretty, very smart.”
“I’m sure she’s wonderful.” I take another step backward. “But I really have to go.”
“Fine, fine.” She waves me off. “Go to your mysterious middle-of-the-night meeting. But don’t think I’m giving up on you, Doctor Shepard. A man your age needs someone to come home to besides medical journals and takeout containers.”
“Goodnight, Sheila.”
Her laughter follows me down the corridor. I push through the double doors into the parking garage, breathing in the cold concrete smell of it. My car sits alone in the physicians’ section, a practical sedan that needs a wash.
As I slide behind the wheel, I ask myself what the hell I’m doing. Driving across town at this ungodly hour to confront a potentially hostile patient about a medical condition that might not even exist beyond my intuition. It’s unprofessional, possibly unethical, definitely not in the standard care protocols.
But I can’t get Jacob Mancini’s face out of my mind. The way he’d looked at me in that locker room, sizing me up, dismissing me, then reassessing when my fingers found the spot that made him flinch. There was something unguarded in that moment, a crack in his armor. And behind it, something complicated I want to understand.
I start the engine and pull out of the garage, programming the gym address into my GPS. The streets are empty, the city as close to sleeping as it ever gets. I tell myself this is about solving a medical puzzle, about doing my job well. I’m good at lying to others, but I’ve never been great at lying to myself.
The truth is, I want to see Jacob Mancini again. And that might be the biggest mystery of all.
3
Jacob
I pound the heavy bag until my knuckles burn through the wraps, until sweat turns my shirt into a second skin, until the pain in my right shoulder screams loud enough to drown out the thoughts in my head. The gym is empty at this hour: just me, the equipment, and the buzzing fluorescents overhead that cast everything in a sickly glow. This is what midnight looks like at Knockout: a fighter who can’t stop fighting, even when there’s no one left to hit but himself.
Left hook. Pivot. Right cross—fuck. The twinge shoots down my arm like lightning. I drop my stance, rolling my shoulder in small circles, willing the muscle to cooperate. No one’s here to see me wince, but I clench my jaw, anyway. Force of habit.
I’ve been here three hours already, pushing through combinations, testing my limits. Finding them. Hating them. The mirror along the far wall doesn’t lie: my form is off. I’m telegraphing my right side, hesitating when I shouldn’t, compensating in ways only someone who’s studied fighting would notice.
Someone like that doctor.