Chapter One
Julien
New Haven, Connecticut,the Monday before Friday...
I believed in three things: precision, punctuality, and the profound satisfaction of a well-organized filing system. Which was why, at exactly 7:00 AM on this particular Monday morning, I stood at the head of the conference table in Clinically Approved’s main meeting room, coffee in hand, agenda printed and collated, ready to begin the weekly staff meeting.
What I didnotbelieve in was the circus that typically unfolded when my five colleagues decided that “meeting” was synonymous with “open mic night at the comedy club.”
“Gentlemen,” I said crisply, setting my coffee down with the kind of controlled precision that suggested I’d measured the exact distance from the table’s edge. “If we could begin—”
“Hold on, hold on.” Fitzpatrick Lovejoy, our OB-GYN and the clinic’s resident smooth-talker, sauntered in with the kind of leisurely gait that made my left eye twitch. “I need caffeine before I can handle your particular brand of Monday morning cheerfulness, Darcy.”
“It’s 7:01,” I said flatly.
“Is it?” Fitz checked his watch with exaggerated surprise. “Huh. So it is. Funny how time works like that. Just keeps... moving forward. Second by second. Tick, tock, tick—”
“Fitzpatrick.”
“—tock, tick—”
“Sit. Down.”
Gabriel Lyon, our pediatrician and the closest thing I had to a reasonable colleague, slid into his seat with an apologetic smile. “Morning, Julien. Lovely weather we’re having.”
“It’s raining.”
“Yes, but optimistically.”
I pinched the bridge of my nose. It was going to be one ofthoseMondays.
The door swung open again, and Nathan Carter—Internal Medicine, chronic coffee addict, and the man who’d once diagnosed himself with twelve different terminal illnesses in a single week—stumbled in looking like he’d been dragged backward through a hedge. “I’m here. I’m present. I’m... moderately conscious.”
“Rough night?” Hayden Walker, our geriatric specialist and the oldest of the group at a distinguished fifty-two, asked mildly.
“My neighbor got a drum set.”
“Ah.”
“Adrum set, Hayden. At 11 PM. Do you know what it’s like to try to sleep while someone discovers they have absolutely no rhythm whatsoever?”
Hayden chuckled but said nothing.
Quinton Wesley, our ER doctor and the man who treated every conversation like a potential trauma case—high energy, quick decisions, occasional inappropriate humor—burst through the door with his usual controlled chaos. “Sorry, sorry! Multi-vehicle pileup on I-95. Everyone’s fine, but there was this guy with a—you know what, never mind; you’re all eating breakfast.”
“I’m not,” Fitz said helpfully.
“Well,nowyou won’t want to.”
I cleared my throat with the kind of authority that had made medical students weep. “If everyone is quite finished with theirmorning theater, we have seventeen items on today’s agenda, and I’d like to get through at least half of them before the death of the universe.”
“So ambitious,” Fitz murmured.
“Item one: Patient load distribution. Gabriel, you’re overbooked on Wednesdays—”
The door opened one more time, and Winnifred Potter—Winnie to everyone except me, because I believed using nicknames in the workplace was a slippery slope to anarchy—breezed in with a stack of folders and the kind of knowing smile that immediately put me on edge.
“Good morning, doctors,” she said cheerfully. “Julien, before you get too deep into your agenda, you have mail.”
