Those two words sent ice water through my veins and adrenaline right behind it.
Exam room three. He was pale as old paper, a sheen of sweat on his forehead, one hand pressed flat against his sternum like he could hold his heart in place through sheer will. His wife sat beside him, their fingers interlaced, her knuckles white.
"Mr. Hoffman, I'm Dr. Bennett. What's happening?"
"Driving through." His breathing came shallow, labored. "From Gatlinburg down to Atlanta—our daughter's place. Started maybe twenty miles back. This pressure, right here. Like someone parked a truck on my chest."
"He has angina," his wife cut in, words tumbling fast. "He takes medication. We have his pills right here, but they're not working. They always work."
I was already moving—vitals first, EKG ordered before I'd finished my second question. Blood pressure climbing, pulse racing but steady. The monitor told me what my gut already knew: cardiac stress, teetering on the edge but not over it. Not yet.
"Mr. Hoffman, I'm giving you something for the pain right now. We're going to run some tests, make absolutely sure your heart's stable before you get back on that road. You made the right call stopping here."
Nitroglycerin first, then labs. I watched his color creep back from gray to pink, watched his breathing slow and deepen. Watched his wife's death grip on his hand finally ease.
"Thank you, doctor." Her eyes were glass-bright with tears she refused to let fall. "We were terrified."
This. This was why I'd survived medical school, why I'd chosen emergency medicine, why I'd given up sleep and sanity and any semblance of a normal life. These moments when fear transformed into relief, when I could actually fix something and actually help.
So why did I feel so hollow?
I stepped out of the exam room to write orders, and that's when the voices drifted over from the nurses' station—low, conspiratorial, but not quite low enough.
"—heard she went up to the Orc village and spent her whole time off there. One of the humans that lives up there was running their mouth about it in Walmart."
"No way. Dr. Bennett?"
"Swear to God. Apparently, she was treating some sick Orc kid."
My pen froze mid-stroke.
I shouldn't have been surprised. Franklin was the kind of town where everyone knew what you'd bought at the grocery store before you'd finished unloading your car. But somehow I'd convinced myself that what happened in the mountains stayed in the mountains.
Stupid.
It could've been anyone of the humans from the Orc village who'd talked. Sarah the teacher, probably—she had that chatty, well-meaning energy that turned every conversation into a social marathon. Or maybe old Tom, who came down for supplies and to catch up on all the news. Hell, it could've been any of them, just making innocent conversation, not realizing they were lobbing a grenade into Franklin Memorial's gossip ecosystem.
Heat crept up my neck. Not shame—I'd do it again in a heartbeat, helping Ardin. But the sudden exposure made my skin prickle. The knowledge that my private life was now being dissected over coffee in the break room, that people were whispering about me in a town where most folks crossed the street to avoid walking past an Orc.
Yeah. That would be making the rounds for weeks.
"Well, that explains why Nadine's been breathing fire all morning."
Oh, fuck. Nadine.
I looked up to find both nurses watching me with expressions I couldn't quite parse—curiosity mixed with something else. Admiration? Concern? In Franklin, those emotions often wore the same mask.
The sharp staccato of heels on linoleum announced her before her voice did.
"Dr. Bennett." Nadine's tone could have flash-frozen a lake. "My office. Now."
The weight of inevitability settled over me like a familiar coat. On some level, I'd known this was coming the moment I'd climbed that mountain path.
Setting down my pen, I caught the nurses exchanging glances—the universal look of "better you than me"—and followed Nadine's rigid form down the hallway. She moved like a woman perpetually braced for impact, every step measured, every muscle held in check. Her hair was scraped back so tightly I wondered if it gave her migraines. Even her mouth seemed locked in a permanent line of disapproval, as if smiling might crack her face open and reveal something human underneath.
She was wound so tight I half-expected her to snap and ricochet off the walls.
Her office matched her personality—sterile, colorless, everything arranged at perfect ninety-degree angles. She shut the door with a soft click that somehow sounded like a judge's gavel, then turned to face me. Neither of us sat.