And then, I noticed Alex’s doctor’s coat.
It didn’t fit him right. The seams were straining across his shoulders, as if they were begging for mercy. The sleeves barely grazed his wrists.
And stitched neatly on the pocket, just above his perfect chest: Dr. Elle Sparks.
I think I made a sound. A tiny, involuntary gasp or maybe a small, incredulous“huh?”Whatever it was, it got his attention because Alex finally noticed that I was there. And he didn’t look happy to see me. Actually, he resembled a deer in headlights.He rushed across the hallway, grabbed my arm as if I were an unstable patient, and he ushered me into an empty room. The door clicked shut behind us.
“Kathleen,” he said, voice tight, “what are you doing here?”
“I lost my job,” I said, stepping toward him, arms open for a hug. For comfort. Forsomething.
He blinked. “Again?”
That one word landed like a slap. No concern. No sympathy. Just pure, undiluted annoyance.
Before I could even flinch, he stepped back, creating the kind of distance usually reserved for contagious patients.
He tugged at the too-tight sleeves of the lab coat as if they were suffocating him (not as much as I was, apparently), and hit me with the kind of tone doctors use when telling you anesthesia isn’t covered by your insurance: “We need to talk,” he said. “I’ve fallen for someone else.”
No warning. Just an emotional scalpel right to the chest.
And then—because apparently breaking my heart wasn’t dramatic enough—he launched intotheirorigin story.
“As crazy as it sounds, we were enemies,” he began, with the kind of breathless sincerity usually reserved for reality TV confessionals. “Fierce rivals, both gunning for lead intern. Always neck and neck.”
He paused, as if he expected me to faint at the romance of it all. I didn’t.
“But fate had other plans. We got trapped in an elevator during a blackout—just the two of us, no way out. And then, an emergency hit. Right there. In that tiny, dimly lit box, we performed surgery together. Hands moving in perfect sync. No instruments, barely any light... but somehow, we saved a life.”
He looked off, misty-eyed, like he was reliving a scene fromGrey’s Anatomy.
“That was the moment everything changed,” he whispered.
I blinked. Was I supposed to swoon? Applaud? Offer to write the screenplay?
The whole thing felt surreal, like I’d been yanked out of my own breakup and dropped into a hospital-themed soap opera. But no. This wasn’t fiction. This was my life. Unraveling in real time, beneath flickering fluorescent lights and the faint smell of antiseptic.
“You can’t be surprised,” he continued in that infuriatingly calm, doctor-y tone, like he was explaining a diagnosis to a particularly slow patient. “You and I have been dating for two years, and you’ve never really opened up to me. It’s like there’s this wall between us.” He sighed, as if I was supposed to feel guilty for not burdening him with my baggage when he had to save lives every day.
My words failed me. I was still trying to wrap my head around the absurdity of the situation.
“I need someone with more drive,” he went on, his voice slipping back into that condescending, I-know-what’s-best-for-you tone. “Someone like you used to be in high school. You were valedictorian. You had so much ambition back then. Now, well, you’re not that person anymore. You’re wasting your potential, Kathleen.”
My eyes narrowed, and I resisted the urge to laugh in his face, to blurt out that he hadn’t even been in the top half of our high school class. I silently cursed the day I had decided to attend our high school reunion.Who knew that one night of bad punch and awkward small talk would lead to this mess?
He didn’t seem to notice my growing discomfort. “Elle—Dr. Sparks—she’s got that fire, that passion for medicine. She’s everything I need in a partner.”
Something struck me as he kept talking. Dr. Elle Sparks. The name sounded so familiar, but I couldn’t quite place it at first. Then, like a ton of bricks, it hit me. Sparky. I had heard all about Sparky. Sparky was always doing something impressive. Sparky can intubate a patient in under thirty seconds, whatever that means. Sparky’s the best at managing… um, intracranial something-or-other post-op. And Sparky could assist in a double-arterial bypass, just like she was flipping pancakes. Not that I had the slightest clue what a double-arterial bypass actually involved, but judging by the reverent way Alex said it, it might as well have been open-heart brain surgery on a moving train.
I blinked, the pieces falling into place. He had been talking about Sparky our entire relationship. Sparky was the superstar, the one who could handle any medical crisis without breaking a sweat. Somehow, in my head, I’d always pictured Sparky as some rugged, middle-aged guy with a gray beard and a gruff voice—maybe because the way Alex talked about Sparky made it sound like he idolized him. Um,her.
So, Sparky wasn’t a grizzled, experienced surgeon. Sparky was Dr. Elle Sparks. And now, I was realizing that my boyfriend had been infatuated with her all along, right under my nose. All those times he’d gone on and on about Sparky’s incredible skills and how Sparky had saved the day yet again, I’d thought it was just professional admiration.
I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. Not only was he dumping me in the most cliché way possible, but he was doing it while wearing another woman’s lab coat—a woman who had just stepped out of a supply closet with him. My life had officially become a bad soap opera, and I was stuck in the role of the blindsided girlfriend.
But he didn’t have to know that.
“So, this is convenient,” I said, trying to keep my voice steady and nonchalant, even though my insides were twisting.
