The breakdown came on Friday night.
Marianne had spent the day in meetings. Budget reviews. Risk assessments. A two-hour session with Alexandra where she presented her preliminary recommendations and watched the CEO's expression shift from expectation to disappointment to thinly veiled frustration. The recommendations weren't aggressive enough. The restrictions weren't comprehensive enough. The board would want more.
By the time she got home, she was shaking.
Her apartment felt cold and empty, the curated minimalism that usually brought her comfort now seeming like a reflection of everything she lacked. No pictures on the walls. No personal touches. Nothing that suggested a life being lived rather than simply endured.
She had been surviving for so long. Building walls. Maintaining control. Pretending that safety and solitude were the same thing.
And now everything was falling apart.
When Isla knocked at nine o'clock, Marianne opened the door and immediately burst into tears.
"Hey. Hey." Isla was inside in an instant, the door closing behind her, arms wrapping around Marianne with a strength that felt like the only solid thing in a crumbling world. "What happened? What's wrong?"
Marianne couldn't answer. The sobs were coming too fast, too hard, years of contained emotion breaking through the barriers she had built. She cried against Isla's shoulder, her body shaking with the force of it, all the fear and grief and exhaustion she had been holding at bay finally demanding release.
Isla didn't ask questions. Didn't try to fix anything. She just held on, one hand stroking Marianne's hair, her voice a steady murmur of comfort. "I've got you. I'm here. You're okay."
They stood like that for a long time, Marianne crying and Isla holding her, until the sobs finally subsided into shuddering breaths and then into silence.
"I'm sorry." Marianne's voice was hoarse, embarrassed. "I don't know what—I shouldn't have?—"
"Don't." Isla's hand cupped her face, tilting it up so their eyes met. "Don't apologize for feeling things. Don't apologize for being human."
"I'm supposed to be stronger than this."
"Stronger than what? Than having emotions?" Isla guided her to the couch, settling them both into the cushions. "Tell me what happened."
And so Marianne told her. Everything.
Not just about today. About all of it. About Riverside General and the systemic failures she had tried to flag for months before the disaster. About the patients who had died because no one listened. About the board meeting where she had been named as the scapegoat, where her own documentation of the problems had been twisted into evidence of her negligence.
"They said I should have done more." Her voice cracked on the words. "I had been warning them for over a year. I hadfiles full of documentation, reports I had submitted, meetings I had requested. Seventeen separate memos about staffing shortages. Twelve formal complaints about equipment failures. A presentation to the board that they refused to schedule. And when it all fell apart, they said I should have done more."
"That's insane."
"That's institutional self-preservation." Marianne pulled back just enough to look at Isla. "You want to know what really happened? Three patients died in one week. Three people who should have survived routine procedures, except the equipment failed or the staff was stretched too thin or the protocols I had been trying to update for months weren't followed. And the board needed someone to blame who wasn't themselves."
"So they chose you."
"They chose me." Marianne's laugh was bitter. "The woman who had been screaming about these problems since the day she arrived. They took all my warnings, all my documentation, all my attempts to fix things, and they reframed them as evidence of awareness without sufficient action. As if knowing about the problems made me responsible for not solving them single-handedly."
Isla's arm tightened around her. "That's cruel. They made you the scapegoat."
"It doesn't have to be fair. It just has to be convenient." Marianne wiped at her eyes, anger mixing with the grief. "They needed someone to blame. I was visible. I had a paper trail. I was perfect."
"What happened after?"
"I lost everything. My job, obviously. But also my reputation, my sense of myself as someone who could make a difference. I spent two years trying to rebuild, taking consulting jobs no one wanted, proving myself over and over again." Marianne laughed,the sound bitter. "And then I came here. To Oakridge. For a fresh start."
"And now?"
"And now they're asking me to do the same thing to someone else." She took a breath. "The board wants me to destroy your career to protect themselves, and I don't know how to say no without destroying my own."
Isla was quiet. "Is that what's happening? They want you to build a case against me?"
"They want visible accountability. They want restrictions and oversight and documentation showing they took proactive steps." Marianne turned to face her, needing her to understand. "Shaw suspects something. About us. He made comments today, veiled threats about bias and professional objectivity. If I try to protect you, he'll use it against us both."
