Heat crawled up my neck, unwanted and undeniable. I reached for the chart to give myself something to hold on to besides his words. “It was… stitches,” I muttered, deflecting.
“No,” he said gently, hand covering mine. “It was you.”
The room shrank around us for a second — monitors, hallway noise, the entire emergency department fading into a soft blur at the edges. I pulled my hand away without thinking, scribbling notes that already existed just to keep my breathing steady.
“You didn’t hesitate,” he added after a moment. “Even with Patel breathing down your neck.”
I swallowed. The admission slipped out before I could filter it. “I’m tired of apologizing for being competent.”
A corner of his mouth lifted — not a full smile, just a flicker of something proud and soft and a little awed. “Good,” he said.
I adjusted his blanket — unnecessary, automatic — letting my fingers linger against his wrist a fraction longer than protocol allowed. He caught my hand again, thumb brushing once across the inside of my wrist as if he were checking my pulse. “You didn’t need me to step in,” he murmured.
“No,” I said, voice quieter than I intended. “But it was nice knowing you were there.”
The admission hung between us — too honest, too close to something personal for a curtained ER bay during shift change. Someone shifted outside. A supply cart rattled past. Reality pressed back in, loud and unavoidable.
I slipped my hand free and cleared my throat, retreating behind clinical language like it was armor. “Dressing’s secure. Keep weight off that leg today. Ice every two hours. I want you back for a recheck in forty-eight.”
“Yes, doctor,” he said, but the words carried a warmth that made my pulse stumble. “I believe that my doctor makes house calls; will that suffice?”
For the first time since Frank walked into the room, my hands stopped shaking. With a shaky laugh, I gathered the tray, disposed of the sharps, and documented one last time. Anything to give myself a second to breathe before stepping back into the chaos waiting outside the curtain.
When I finally looked at him again, he was still watching me — not like a patient grateful for competent care, but like a man witnessing the version of me I’d fought hard to become.
And instead of feeling small under someone else’s scrutiny…
I felt sturdy.
I felt like I belonged.
Chapter 55
Anya
The hallway swallowed me whole the second I stepped past the curtain, noise crashing back in like a wave. Monitors chirping. Phones ringing. Someone arguing with radiology down the corridor. The familiar chaos wrapped around me like a coat I didn’t have to think about wearing.
Good. Busy was safe.
I ducked into the supply alcove under the pretense of restocking suture kits — anything to give my pulse a chance to slow and my face time to cool down. My hands still hummed faintly with leftover adrenaline, that strange hollow-heavy feeling that came after standing your ground when your body expected you to fold.
I stacked gauze I didn’t need. Checked expiration dates that were months away. Breathed in antiseptic and coffee and the faint metallic tang that lived permanently in the walls of the department.
“Are you okay?” I looked up to find Liza leaning against the doorframe. Her eyes were soft, curious rather than prying.
“Yeah,” I said automatically. “Just… shift change chaos.”
She didn’t move. Didn’t call me out. Just watched me reorganizea perfectly organized shelf with the patience of someone who knew exactly what post-adrenaline hands looked like.
“That was something in there,” she said after a beat.
My shoulders stiffened before I could stop them. “Just Frank being Frank,” I said lightly.
“Mm,” she hummed. “Maybe. But that’s not what I meant.”
I paused, gauze box halfway to the shelf. “What did you mean?” I had no desire to name it out loud at this particular moment. Not with her. She would see right through me.
She tilted her head slightly toward the hall — toward Desmond’s room. “You.”