The voice cut through the room like a scalpel—cold, precise, absolutely lethal.
I didn't look at Gerald. I looked at Riven. At the muscle that had gone tight along his jaw. At the way his stillness had changed into something else entirely, something that had edges to it.
Dr. Cross stood utterly still. But everything about him had changed. The professional detachment had evaporated, replaced by something that made the temperature in the room plummet.
His steel-gray eyes fixed on Gerald with an intensity that could cut through bone.
I'd never seen him like this. In six months, I'd only ever seen the neutral mask, the clinical distance. This was something else entirely—something dangerous barely contained beneath a civilized surface.
A shiver ran down my spine despite the warm blanket.
Gerald went pale, his bluster evaporating. “Dr. Cross, sir…” His voice pitched high, suddenly thin. “I… I didn’t know she was… yours.”
Dr. Cross didn't even look at him. He kept his focus on me, but his voice carried absolute authority. "Get. Out."
Gerald scurried backward, papers scattering from his hands, stammered apologies fading as he fled into the corridor.
The silence that followed felt heavy, oppressive.
Dr. Cross turned back to me. I stared at a crack in the ceiling, my gaze anywhere but at him. Everything I'd been trying to hide—the debt, the desperation, the fear—had been laid bare in the most humiliating way possible.
He knew everything now.
"He won't bother you again," Dr. Cross said quietly. His thumb traced my pulse point gently, almost absently. "I treated his father years ago. Multiple cardiac surgeries at significantly reduced cost. He owes me more than he could ever repay."
"Oh." It was all I could manage.
He shook his head. “I can’t believe he wouldn’t extend that same compassion to others…”
That was my landlord Gerald. He was always on our case when it came to our rent, but nowhere to be found when something in the apartment needed fixing.
"And don't worry about your apartment." He said it the same way he called for instruments in the OR. Calm. Decided. "You're coming home with me."
My brain stuttered to a halt.
"Sorry." He blinked once, the briefest flicker of something crossing his face. "I meant you can stay with me. If you want."
The correction was so quick, so carefully neutral, that I almost missed it. Almost.
"Dr. Cross."
"Riven."
"Riven." The name felt strange in my mouth. "I can't."
"You can."
"It's completely inappropriate. The ethics alone, the power dynamic, I work for you, I don't even really know you outside of the OR and my mother is already worried and I can't just…"
"Mireya."
I stopped.
He stood beside the bed with his hands at his sides, watching me run out of words with that particular stillness of his.
"I have a sister," he said. "Emma. She's fifteen and she's eight months post-op from a congenital heart repair. She's stable, but she still needs someone nearby who knows what to watch for. Anxiety can spike her heart rate. I need someone with cardiac training in the house, not a rotating roster of strangers."
I looked at him. "You want me to be her nurse."
