Except that everything had.
Isla was acutely conscious of Marianne's presence whenever they were in the same room. The way she moved. The way her voice sounded when she spoke to other administrators. Theslight flush that crept up her neck when their eyes met across a crowded hallway.
She could feel the memory of that night pressed against her skin like a brand. The taste of Marianne on her lips. The sounds she had made when she came apart under Isla's hands. The desperate, almost violent need that had consumed them both.
It was supposed to be over. They had gotten it out of their systems. They could move on now, return to their roles as adversaries, pretend that nothing had happened.
So why couldn't Isla stop thinking about it?
She threw herself into work with renewed intensity, taking extra shifts and volunteering for the most complex cases. The restrictions made her slower, more cautious, but she compensated by being more precise. She documented everything. She sought consultation. She followed every bureaucratic requirement to the letter, building a record that even Victor Shaw couldn't criticize.
The work helped, in a way. When she was focused on a patient, when her hands were moving with precision and her mind was calculating the next step, she could almost forget. Almost push down the memory of Marianne's body against hers, the desperate sounds they had both made, the terrifying intimacy of losing control completely.
She performed six surgeries in three days. Treated dozens of patients. Made decisions that saved lives, even if those decisions now required consultation and documentation that slowed her down. She was still good at her job. The restrictions hadn't changed that.
But every night when she went home, the memories came flooding back.
The way Marianne had tasted. The feeling of her fingers tangled in Isla's hair. The moment when all her carefulcomposure had cracked open and she had become something raw and real and desperately human.
Isla lay awake in the darkness and replayed those moments over and over, her body aching with the memory of pleasure, her mind racing with questions she couldn't answer.
But underneath the professional focus, her mind kept drifting. To the curve of Marianne's hip under her palm. To the way her eyes had gone dark with desire in the dim locker room light. To the words she had spoken afterward: I want it to happen again.
They hadn't spoken since that night. Not really. Professional exchanges in hallways. Brief nods of acknowledgement in meetings. Nothing that would suggest anything had changed between them.
The distance was intentional. Necessary. They both knew what was at stake.
But it was also torture.
Three days after the locker room, a multi-vehicle collision brought four critical patients into the trauma bay simultaneously. Isla was running point on the response, coordinating resources and making decisions with the forced consultation the committee required, when Marianne appeared in the doorway.
She was observing. Recording. Doing her job.
But the moment their eyes met, Isla felt it like a physical blow.
Marianne's expression was neutral, but tension rippled through her shoulders, her lips parting slightly. She remembered what those lips felt like. Remembered the desperate sounds Marianne made when Isla's fingers moved inside her.
"Dr. Bennett." Tamsin's voice cut through her distraction. "Patient in bay three is deteriorating."
Isla snapped back to the present, her focus sharpening on the crisis in front of her. The middle-aged man in bay three had internal bleeding that was getting worse despite their interventions. He needed surgery. Immediately.
"Page Dr. Hartman for consultation." The words tasted like ashes in her mouth. The old Isla would have made the call herself, opened him up and found the source of the bleeding without waiting for authorization. But the new rules required her to consult with a senior surgeon before any major deviation from protocol.
The consultation took four minutes. Four minutes of the patient's blood pressure dropping while Isla explained her assessment and requested permission to proceed. Four minutes that felt like hours.
"I understand your assessment, Isla." Hartman's voice came through the phone line, measured and careful. "But the imaging doesn't clearly show the bleed location. Are you certain about your approach?"
"I'm certain." Isla fought to keep her voice steady while the monitors behind her showed the patient's deteriorating condition. "The imaging is inconclusive because the contrast hasn't had time to reach the bleed site. If we wait for better imaging, he'll be dead."
"You understand that if you're wrong?—"
"I understand. I'm not wrong."
A pause that stretched for an eternity. Then: "Proceed."
By the time Hartman signed off, the patient was in worse shape than he had been. Isla got him into surgery and stopped the bleeding, but the delay had cost him. He would recover, but his prognosis was worse than it would have been if she had been able to act immediately.
This was the cost of compliance. This was what the restrictions meant in practice.
