"Yes, I do. You'd do the same for me."
"I'll take care of everything while you're gone. Commissary, protection, whatever you need."
"I know, brother. Take care of your family. That's all I need."
My phone buzzes. Lena:
Board of Nursing summons. They know about the clinic.
Because of course they fucking do. In our world, blood never stops calling for blood, even when you're trying to build something better from the wreckage.
Chapter forty-one
Professional Reckoning
Lena
The certified letter arrives while I'm counting pills—not dispensing them, just organizing what's left of my dignity into neat rows. Twenty-nine weeks pregnant, living on sixty percent of my salary through disability insurance, and now this—the Board of Nursing wants their pound of flesh.
Disciplinary hearing scheduled regarding scope of practice violations.
The paper trembles in my hands, though whether from rage or fear, I can't tell anymore. My body has become a stranger's territory—swollen joints, persistent backache, and Santiago's movements that feel more like protests than comfort. Now my career joins the list of things this pregnancy might cost me.
"Those cabrones can't do this!" Izzy's voice cuts through my spiral when I call her. She's between shifts at the hospital, the background beeping of monitors familiar white noise. "You saved lives, mija. Doesn't that count for something?"
"Not when you do it illegally." The words taste like ash and irony. "I practiced beyond scope. Treated wounds that needed surgeons, gave medications I had no authority to give. They have every right."
"But you had no choice—"
"There's always a choice, Iz. I made mine."
The silence between us breathes with everything we're not saying—that my choices have led here, to this apartment where Zane's cut still sits on my counter like an accusation, where my body grows a life while everything else dies around me.
The State Board building's conference room feels like a courtroom without the honesty of calling itself one. Three board members sit behind a long table, their faces carefully composed into professional neutrality. I sit alone at a smaller table facing them—Zane wanted to come, but his presence would only confirm what they already suspect about the company I keep.
My hands rest on my belly where Santiago performs his own kind of violence, kicking ribs with an intensity that makes mewonder if he's already fighting for his place in this hostile world. Twenty-nine weeks along, and I look like I've swallowed a basketball. There's no hiding what I am—pregnant, unmarried, connected to men who solve problems with fists and fire.
"Ms. Cruz," the board president begins, her voice cutting through institutional silence. "You've been practicing beyond your scope as a registered nurse. Performing procedures reserved for physicians. Administering medications without proper authority."
Each accusation lands like a physical blow. Behind me, I hear the door open—Sister Margaret entering with her particular gravity, followed by Izzy's quieter presence. My witnesses. My character references. As if character could erase the black and white of what I've done.
"These patients had nowhere else to go," I say, my voice steadier than my hands. "Emergency rooms would have meant arrest, deportation, death for some of them."
"That doesn't give you the right to practice beyond your scope."
"No," I agree. "It doesn't."
Sister Margaret testifies first, her careful words lending weight to testimony about service and sacrifice. Izzy follows, switching between English and Spanish in her passion, talking about the children I've saved, the mothers I've helped. But their words bounce off the board's professional armor. Emotion doesn't erase liability.
Then a voice from the back: "May I speak?"
Dr. Reeves. I didn't know he was coming. Semi-retired, silver-haired, carrying the kind of authority that comes from forty years of emergency medicine. He walks to the front with measured steps, each one deliberate.
"This nurse," he says, looking at me with eyes that have seen everything, "has skills most residents don't develop until their third year. Yes, she practiced beyond scope. But she did it with precision and care that saved lives. Lives the system abandoned."
The board president's expression doesn't change. "Are you condoning illegal practice, Doctor?"
"I'm offering a solution." He turns to face them fully. "Supervised practice. She works under my license, my oversight. We run a mobile clinic together—legally this time. The community keeps their healer, the board maintains their standards, and I get the best nurse I've worked with in twenty years."
