“I didn’t notice,” she whispered, reaching up and touching the cut. Her fingers came back covered in blood. “What?”
“Can I…?” I hesitated, already reaching for a clean wipe, unsure how close to attend to this wound without hurting her more. Fuck. I hated seeing blood on her pretty skin. My throat bobbed as I ran a finger over her jaw, her breath hitting my face with how close I was. She shook under my touch, but I waited for her permission.
She nodded.
I leaned in slowly, one hand brushing the hair from her forehead. She froze under my touch but didn’t pull away. Her breath hitched again. I pressed the wipe to the small cut, and she closed her eyes for a second.
“You’re okay,” I said again, barely above a whisper. “I’m right here.”
When I finished cleaning the wound, I didn’t move right away. My hand lingered at the side of her face. Her jaw shifted under my palm. Her skin was warm, but her body still shook beneath the surface.
Once the wounds were cleaned, I stared at her office, sighing, keeping a hand on her. “We need to clean this up. I can help. I can reach out to?—”
“Oliver,” she interrupted, her voice shaky and unlike any tone I’d ever heard from her. “Can you please… can you hold me?”
13
SLOANE
Icouldn’t get my hands to stop shaking. I sat on the floor, pathetic, scared.
I counted the lacerations. One on the palm. Another below the elbow. A superficial abrasion at the hairline. Nothing deep. Nothing requiring stitches. Superficial. Superficial. Superficial.
Except I was not fine.
I stared at the red on my palm like it belonged to someone else, like this altercation happened in a simulation. The kind we trained with in residency, when no one could actually get hurt. Those exercises always seemed silly, but they were real, and a dangerous incident had happened.
The tremble in my spine and panicked breaths told me this was very damn real. My body was still reacting—elevated pulse, shallow breathing, visual disruption in my peripheral field.
Panic response.
Dorsolateral prefrontal cortex firing off danger signals. I needed to regulate. I needed to de-escalate, but my mouth stayed closed, my throat locked. Hayes wasn’t in his right mind. He was freaking out.But his size… what if he grabbed me? What if he punched me?
My mind raced with what-ifs when Oliver crouched and joined me on the ground. Then, he touched me, gently.
His hands, warm and slow, pressed gauze against my skin with care. He didn’t flinch at the blood. He didn’t ask dumb questions. He didn’t treat me like I was fragile. I met his eyes and saw worry and concern and even fear. He was scaredfor me.
I tried to breathe around it. “I know head trauma can alter emotional response. Frontal lobe deregulation. But I didn’t see that coming. He—he wasn’t exhibiting classic agitation. I had his file. I should’ve?—”
“Stop.” Oliver’s voice came low and grounded. His eyes locked onto mine. “You don’t have to explain his behavior. He fucked up and made you feel unsafe.”
“He broke the frame,” I whispered. “It was a photo of my med school class. He knocked it off the desk when he shoved the chair. I didn’t even see it fall. It’s stupid, but… it was mine.”
He didn’t respond at first. Just slid his palm along my forearm again, slow and steady, his comforting touch reassuring my overactive nerves. Every motion calculated, like he knew any sharp movement would startle me. I couldn’t overthink how or why, but Oliver’s touch was the only thing keeping me from breaking down.
“He was escalating,” I said, blinking hard. “I should’ve hit the alert button. I have one under the desk. I had time. But I was worried about increasing his adrenaline. I didn’t want to make his anger worse.”
“You didn’t make it worse. He did.” Oliver leaned in closer, his lips set in a firm line. “You didn’t fail. You didn’t miss anything. You were doing your job.”
I swallowed hard, the pressure behind my eyes mounting fast and sharp. “That’s the part I can’t stop looping—how calm I tried to be. How quiet I kept my voice. But none of my tactics mattered. It didn’t stop him. Nothing stopped him.”
My voice cracked, and I hated that too. I hated how raw it felt coming out, like I’d left some essential part of myself open too long.
Oliver moved closer without hesitation. Our knees locked as he slid his hand behind my neck, fingers spreading wide and warm at the base of my skull. The contact sent a wave through me—steadying but dangerous. I didn’t flinch. I couldn’t. Everything inside me felt like it had unraveled, and he was the only thing holding the threads together.
My throat worked once, twice, before I forced the words out. “Can you please… can you hold me?”
I barely recognized the voice as mine. It was too quiet. Too small. Like it belonged to someone else—someone I swore I’d never be. How could I, a doctor, be seeking comfort from a player? One younger than me?
