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I watch her mouth as she talks.

I watch the small unconscious tells—the way she says we about her team and you about the patient, the way her voice drops half a register when she gets to the part she loves, the way that careful surgeon’s composure cracks just enough to let the fire underneath show through.

Two years of photographs and silent footage and I never once got this: the sound of her, lit up, talking about the one thing that makes her forget to be afraid of me.

I would have taken her a year sooner if I’d known it would be like this. I would have waited a decade longer if that’s what it cost.

She’s flushed now, beautiful in a way that has nothing to do with her actual looks and everything to do with the fact that she has briefly forgotten exactly where she is and who she’s talking to.

“You speak about it like a calling,” I manage, my mouth dry.

“It is.” She catches herself then remembers where she is and who she’s with, and the light goes out behind her eyes. I mourn it like a small death.

She sits back and studies me, her eyes narrowing.

She tilts her head to the side, her glorious mane of hair sliding over her shoulder and my heart beats faster.

What I wouldn’t do to run my fingers through it…

“Have we met before?” she asks bluntly.

There it is. I could lie.

It would be easy, and it would buy me time, and time is the one thing I’ve never been short of.

But I find I don’t want to lie to her, not about this.

I’ve imagined her knowing for two years.

I’m not going to squander the moment now that it’s here.

“Yes,” I admit. “Two years ago. At Columbia Presbyterian.”

She goes very still and I don’t think she’s breathing.

“I didn’t see most of it. I was a little busy dying,” I say wryly, with a faint smile. “But I’ve watched the traffic footage more times than I’d admit to anyone. You’d just come off a shift and you were walking to the train when a car went into the barrier half a block ahead of you. The driver was still inside, bleeding out, no ambulance for blocks. Most people would have called 911 and kept walking, a good New Yorker would.” I hold her eyes. “But not you. You ran toward it. You got into what was left of that car and you kept him breathing with your hands and your voice until the medics finally came. Then you rode in with him to Columbia Presbyterian and you put him back together on your table, when everyone else in that trauma bay had already written him off.” I pause, trying to keep myself together. “And for three weeks after, you came by his room at the end of shifts just to check and make sure he was still holding on.”

The color has left her face and I watch confusion bloom across her beautiful face first, then disbelief, then realization.

“That—that was you,” she breathes. “The—the John Doe. The one who—” Her throat works and she swallows heavily. “You discharged yourself. You were there and then you just weren’t. Security was asking questions⁠—”

“I had reasons to leave quietly.”

“You.” She’s staring at me like I’ve grown two heads. “I remember you. You were a nightmare of a patient. You wouldn’t answer questions, you set off every alarm in the department…” She stops, as if realizing what she’s saying and shakes her head. “No. No, this is—you don’t get to do this.”

My brow furrows. “Do what?”

“Make it mean something.” Her voice is cold and furious, and it’s the most beautiful thing I’ve heard all night. “I save lives. I saved yours the way I’ve saved hundreds of people’s. It’s what I do. It wasn’t special. It wasn’t fate. You were a chart, Mr. Barone. You were a set of injuries and a blood type. Whatever you’ve built this into in your head, I was just doing my job.”

“I know,” I say softly. “That’s exactly what makes it remarkable.”

She blinks in confusion.

“You held a stranger’s life in your hands like it was the most valuable thing in the world, and to you it was nothing. It was just a regular day.” I lean forward. “Do you understand how rare that is, Katerina, in my world? I have spent my life surrounded by people who calculate the worth of every life they touch. What it costs them, what it buys them. Then there was you, kneeling over a man you’d never met, a man you’d have run screaming from if you’d known what he was, fighting for him with everything you had because his life had value to you simply because it was a life.” I take a deep breath. “I have thought about you every single day since. Not one of them passed without you in it.”

The wine glass is trembling very slightly in her hand. She sets it down before it can betray her further.

“You’ve been—” She can barely say it. “You’ve been watching me. For two years.”