Except.
There were moments I couldn't fully explain away. The way I'd sometimes look up mid-surgery and find his eyes already on me, just for a second, before he looked back down at the field. The way he'd gone still in the scrub room this morning when I handed him the ibuprofen. The way he said my name sometimes, low and careful, like he was paying attention to the sound of it.
I had told myself I was imagining things.
Standing here now, dizzy and hollow and held up by nothing but stubbornness, I wasn't so sure.
Not that it mattered. A man like Riven Cross did not think about his surgical nurses in any way that wasn't purely clinical. He was precise and cold and had made it quietly, consistently clear that I existed to him inside the OR and nowhere else. Half the floor thought he didn't like me. There were days I believed them.
But he kept requesting me.
And I kept saying yes, every single time, at every single hour, because somewhere underneath all the professionalism and all the sensible reasons I told myself, I wanted to be in that room with him.
Which was a spectacular problem to have while currently losing consciousness in a supply closet.
The edges of my vision went dark. Not all at once. Like shadows creeping inward, narrowing my field of sight until I was looking through a shrinking tunnel. I reached for the shelf but my fingers wouldn't grip properly.
I thought, absurdly, that if I fainted right now he would probably find out.
I thought, even more absurdly, that some small traitorous part of me didn't entirely mind.
Then there was nothing but darkness swallowing me whole.
I woke up to beeping monitors.
My body registered, slowly, how wrong it felt to be lying on something soft instead of the hard floor. A scratchy blanket had been pulled over me. A cool, steady pressure circled my wrist, two fingers against my pulse point, and that was enough to snap me back to the present.
I wasn't dreaming. I had become a patient.
I forced my eyes open. Light stabbed through them and I blinked against the assault, shapes and colors swimming until they settled into something I recognized.
Dr. Riven Cross was standing beside my bed.
Two fingers pressed to my radial pulse. His other hand adjusting my IV drip. His eyes were on my chart, that familiar furrow between his brows, like even now, even here, he was solving something.
For one strange, half-conscious moment I just looked at him.
The sharp line of his jaw. The quiet authority in the way he stood, like he had never once in his life been uncertain about where he was supposed to be. He was still in his white coat. Stillsomehow unwrinkled. Still unfairly, unreasonably handsome in a way that felt almost inconsiderate given the circumstances.
I had collapsed in a supply closet and he had apparently found me and now he was standing close enough that I could see the faint shadow of exhaustion under his eyes that he would never, ever acknowledge out loud.
Then the monitors caught up with my brain.
The beeping accelerated in a quick, mortifying climb and I watched with complete horror as his eyes cut sideways to the screen. Then back to me. Slow. Unhurried. One dark brow lifted, just slightly, in that way he had that made junior residents want to disappear into the floor.
"Interesting," he said. His voice was low. Almost casual. "Your vitals were perfectly stable until about four seconds ago."
I opened my mouth.
Closed it.
The monitor beeped again, cheerfully, as if it had decided to finish destroying whatever remained of my dignity.
"I was disoriented," I said. "The light is very bright in here."
He looked at me for a long moment. Then back at the monitor. The corner of his mouth did something that was almost, almost a smile, and he said nothing at all, which was somehow so much worse.
My phone buzzed from where it had been resting on my bedside table, the screen lighting up with a cascade of notifications. Past due notices. Final warnings. Collections threats.
