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"Saturday? Somewhere awful. Somewhere with umbrellas in the drinks."

"If there isn't a plastic monkey hanging off my glass, I'm sending it back," she says, pulling on fresh gloves. "Go on, go and do medicine on the living. I'll be down here with the only men in this building who keep their hands to themselves—which frankly, at this point, I'd take a bit less of."

I'm still smiling when I leave. I'm walking through the basement feeling genuinely happy that I let my husband ruin me until I was truly his.

Damn it, I’m not Laszlo’s, but he proved to me yesterday and countless times before that there was never anyone else.

Since the wedding I've been counting down until I could walk away free from this marriage. One year, then I'm free—that was the deal—and I've marked off every single day like a prisoner. This morning I didn't. I got up, got dressed, came to work, and it never once crossed my mind to check how many days I had until I could drop Novak from my passport.

Upstairs, my shift swallows me whole, which is exactly what I need. Two activations before six, a wound check, and a man who keeps calling me sweetheart until I fantasize about putting a chest tube in without giving him anesthetic. And for three hours I don't think about Laszlo's mouth or his hands once, which I'm proud of because this morning, I couldn't sit down without wincing.

It's around eight when I head up to the ICU to chase a bed. My post-op from this morning needs monitoring and they've been sitting on it since lunch. I've already called four times. There's only one thing left to do, and that's physically stand at their desk and refuse to leave until someone helps me. It works every time. Nobody wants an angry doctor blocking their station.

I cut through the surgical outpatient wing because the main elevator is out again, and I'm halfway across the waiting area when I see him.

Laszlo's father is sitting in the third row of chairs at the end on my side, in a gray suit, with a folded newspaper on his knee, chatting to the elderly woman next to him. She's laughing at whatever he's saying and patting his sleeve. I almost smile because that is exactly what happened with my mother at the wedding. The Novak charm. Laszlo didn't lick it off the sidewalk.

Then my brain catches up with my eyes and the smile vanishes.

What is he doing here? Nobody told me he was being seen for anything. Laszlo tells me everything about his family these days, usually at dinner, including things I never asked to know, which cousin can't be trusted with money, which uncle is banned from two countries. But not this. Not his own father having a hospital visit this evening.

He hasn't seen me yet, and I don't go over to him because I don't want him to think I'm following him. He must be here for a reason, and neither Laszlo nor his mother or Dolores have mentioned that Kazik had any health issues.

I head over to the desk to get on with my work. I go to the ICU, get my scan report, and read over it as I retrace my steps. When I reach the waiting room, his chair is empty. The newspaper is still lying on the seat, folded open at the crossword. I walk to it. He managed to do half of it.

Dr. Shah is at the nurses' station writing up his notes. I walk over and don't bother being casual about it because there's no point.

"The gentleman who just left. Gray suit, silver hair. Kazik Novak. He's my father-in-law. I didn't know he was being seen here."

Shah looks up over his glasses. "You didn't know?"

"Nobody told me."

"Ah." He pulls the file up on his screen and turns it toward me. "Annual follow-up. Bloods and a scan, same week every year. He's been coming in like clockwork." He pauses. "Dr. Valmont, according to this file, you were on his case. Seven years ago." He taps the screen. "There's quite a story in these notes."

I frown because I don't understand what he means. I have never treated Laszlo's father. I would remember treating Laszlo's father. So I lean in and read the file.

The dates come first, and there it is in black and white. Seven years ago, in March. High-speed car accident on the Taconic Parkway. Four broken ribs, punctured lung, a spleen the imaging said was fine but wasn't. His blood pressure kept dropping and nobody could find the source. The surgical team signed off on it. Stable, they said. Nothing more to do.

And then come the notes. Pages and pages of them, and running through every one, my name.

Dr. M. Valmont.

Me. My maiden name that I still use at work, on notes I should remember writing. Flagging the numbers that didn't match the imaging. Requesting a re-scan when the attending had already signed off. I start to remember now… Getting told no. Asking again. Getting told absolutely not. Staying past the end of my shift, cornering my attending in the break room on his way out, and telling him I wasn't going home until they opened that man back up.

They opened him up because of me. The bleed was in a place three previous scans had shown clean. Small, tucked away, easy to miss. He would have been dead by morning.

Everything floods back, all at once. Not his face or name, but the feeling. The numbers on the chart that wouldn't sit right. The attending looking at me like I was wasting his time. My own hands shaking as I wrote the last note, because I knew I was putting my job on the line if I was wrong.

I wasn't wrong.

I scroll down to the end of the file, and my hands aren't steady anymore. Seven years of annual follow-ups. Full recovery. Every scan clean. Today's bloods: perfect.

I stand there staring at the screen, and everything is falling into place at once.

Yet, I don't want it to.

Seven years. Can’t be a coincidence.