Fatal Pulse: My Secret Wife's Lie

Let's break up.

She said it with the sheet still warm, pulling it up to her chest like the last hour hadn't happened.

The girl I'd wanted since freshman year. The one every guy in the program watched and none of them ever got near. She looked at me now like I was a chart she'd already signed off on.

It had started the way I never let myself hope it would. Her heart freshly broken by someone else, a late-night text, come drink with me. I was young and stupid and sure my turn had finally come.

What she wanted was a warm body to press the ache down with. That's what I told myself, anyway.

We tangled all night. By morning we were a couple.

Now graduation was here, and she peeled the whole thing off like a glove. No reason. No last word.

She just stepped out of my life.

She didn't look back. But her hand caught on the doorframe, one white-knuckled second, and she shut the door too fast, like she couldn't breathe in the same room as me.

I told myself it meant nothing.

I read bodies for a living. I still got hers wrong.

Chapter 1

Five years. Then, with no warning, the hospital walked her right back into my life.

The med-school prodigy had gone further than any of us. Internationally known now. The kind of surgeon other surgeons fly across the world to watch.

She stood at the front of the conference room in a clean white coat and glasses, her face the same cold I remembered.

"Good morning. I'm Vivienne Sinclair."

That face still stopped a room. Every nurse and resident found a reason to glance over and then pretend they hadn't.

The chief gestured toward me.

"This is Dr. Sebastian Hale, our best in surgery. Our pride and joy, honestly." He grinned. "You're both young, both brilliant. You two should know each other."

Five years since I'd last seen her. I'd run a hundred versions of this moment in my head, and now that it was here I couldn't get one word out.

She followed his look to me.

The unsure girl I'd known had turned into this. Hair pinned back, sharp and certain, every inch the professional.

Neither of us moved. The room started to feel it, that thin layer of wrong settling over everything.

The chief broke it.

"Good to have you back, Vivienne. Look at this. We've got ourselves a golden couple." He said it because the two of us, looks and skill both, ran ahead of everyone our age.

My pulse picked up without asking me.

She stayed perfectly still. Like we'd never met.

"You're too kind, Chief. I'm engaged, actually."

Engaged.

The word emptied my head out. I don't remember the meeting ending. I'm not sure I was in the room for it.

* * *

I dragged through the rest of the day on autopilot and finally got home.

The class group chat had been dead for two years. Tonight it wouldn't stop.

All of it about her.

[Sinclair's back?? She was a consulting surgeon overseas. Why come home?]

[Love. Obviously.]

[Heard her fiance moved back to the city. She followed him.]

[The ice queen herself. Nobody got within ten feet of that woman in school. Who lands someone like her?]

[Wasn't Hale tight with her back in the day?]

Then someone tagged me.

[@Sebastian Hale bro you've gotta know who the fiance is. Give us something.]

I didn't know.

Same as nobody back then ever knew she'd been mine.

I left it and put the phone face-down on the table.

The doorbell went.

Delivery, I figured. I opened the door to a courier instead.

"Evening. Mr. Hale? Package from a Ms. Sinclair. Sign here."

Ms. Sinclair. Vivienne?

I carried it inside and opened it.

Then I just stood there.

Paper cranes. Every love letter I'd ever written her. The lopsided clay figure we'd painted one rainy Sunday, still chipped on the same ear. Photos, the kind you print so they count.

Five years. She'd kept all of it this long.

And today, without one word, she'd boxed it up and shipped it back.

Chapter 2

I found her in my contacts and pinned the thread to the top.

It was blank. Five years of nothing.

I started typing. Deleted it. Typed again. Deleted that too. There's no opening line for a woman who mailed your whole history back to you in a box.

I gave up and went to close the app, and my thumb clipped a sticker. Sent it before I could stop it.

A small red Not Delivered bloomed under it.

She'd blocked me. Of course she had.

I sat there and let the old stuff surface, the way a bruise comes up once you stop pressing on it.

* * *

Junior year, she got the offer. Johns Hopkins. The fellowship every surgeon I knew would have traded a kidney for.

She wasn't going to take it. Because of me. Because I was here.

Her parents gave her one way to stay: win the national surgical competition, and they'd let her turn the offer down.

Her mentor found out and called me. He didn't ask me anything. He just told me what I was.

"You're being selfish. You're holding her back. A talent like hers, chained to some guy in a city this size. You're ruining her."

He was right. That was the worst part. He was right.

So I didn't fight it. I didn't beg her to pick me.

I went to the senior running the competition and made sure her name came off the roster.

No competition, no win. No win, no deal with her parents. Nothing left for her to stay for.

She'd have to take Hopkins. She'd have to go.

I did it clean, and I did it knowing the whole bill. She'd find out. She'd hate me. This was the last good day the two of us were ever going to get.

She found out.

We had it out in a stairwell, both of us wrecked, and then she walked.

Five years ago. The last time she looked at me before today.

* * *

After that, work was just work.

Same department, same floor. Two strangers who happened to know each other's hands. I tried to break the ice more times than I'll admit to. She looked through me every time, clean and cold, like I was a window.

I started thinking about transferring out. Maybe not seeing her was the only way to stop.

Then Brody Walsh got hold of me at the end of a shift.

"Come on. Sinclair's taking the whole department to dinner. The Whitmore Club."

I told him I was busy.

"It's invite-only, Hale. You and me, we do not get through that door in this lifetime. She's buying. You do not say no to that."

He hauled me out by the sleeve. I let him.

* * *

The Whitmore Club.

I ended up across the table from her. Look up, and there she was, that cold beauty that made the whole room sit straighter.

First time since she came back that I got to just look at her.

Then a man walked in.

Tailored suit. Easy stride, like the place had been built to his measurements. He went straight to her and set his hand on her shoulder, settled and sure, a hand that had been there before.

"Evening, everyone. Lachlan Whitmore."

A warm pause. Unhurried.

"Vivienne's fiance. And the name on the door."

He smiled around the table.

"You're her people, so eat, drink. It's on me tonight."

His hand stayed where it was.

I looked at the ring on her finger. I'd never seen it before.

The one I'd made her, she'd taken with her when she walked out five years ago. I'd long since figured she'd thrown it away.

Chapter 3

The two of them sat close, easy with each other, and something curdled in me.

I pulled my eyes away and didn't let them go back.

The table didn't help.

"Mr. Whitmore's got it all, doesn't he. Brilliant, gorgeous. Him and Dr. Sinclair, perfect match."

The dinner had the warm noise of an engagement party. I sat in it like a man at the bottom of a cold well.

I wanted out.

"Sorry. Something came up, I have to run," I told Brody, low, and stood.

A voice caught me before I cleared the chair. My name.

I looked up into Lachlan Whitmore's eyes. Nothing in my memory matched his face. I didn't know him at all.

I opened my mouth, and a coworker beat me to it.

"Mr. Whitmore, you know Dr. Hale?"

Every head at the table turned to him.

He smiled, unhurried.

"He's Vivienne's ex. Of course I know him."

I went rigid.

The looks swung to me, sharp as needles.

"No way. You and Dr. Sinclair actually dated?"

I had nothing. Since she came back she'd denied every piece of me, flat.

So I said nothing, and the table turned to her instead.

"Dr. Sinclair, is that true?"

I looked at her too. My hands knotted in my pockets where no one could see.

She didn't look at me. She drew Lachlan down into the seat beside her, and then, smooth and final:

"It's ancient history."

Everyone could see she was done with it. They laughed and let it go.

* * *

After that night, something shifted.

Maybe it was in my head. But I kept catching the looks, the way a room went quiet when I came near. I asked once. They scattered like I'd kicked an anthill.

Then one day I was in a bathroom stall, and the whole thing came to me through the door.

"You hear? Hale's a simp. Chased Sinclair the whole way through school. Wouldn't quit."

"No matter how many times she shot him down. Still won't, by the look of it."

"He's not bad-looking, either. Waste of a face."

"She is gorgeous, though. Can't really blame him."

"She's getting married, though. So what's that make him? The other man?"

Laughter.

My skull went white with it.

I waited until the voices drained out into the hall. Then I came out slow, into an empty room, mirrors and tile and the AC humming for no one.

I couldn't get a full breath.

It took me a while to make my feet carry me toward the office.

And passing Vivienne's door, I heard a second voice inside.

"I just transferred in, and the first thing I hear is a whole floor of nurses tearing into you and Sebastian Hale. It's ugly out there."

I knew that voice. Margot. Vivienne's roommate from school.

Inside, Vivienne said something low. An answer that wasn't one.

Then Margot again, clear through the door.

"So go set them straight. Why won't you just explain it?"

Chapter 4

The question stopped my hand halfway to the door.

Because I'd asked her the same thing once. Five years ago, I'd tried to lay the whole misunderstanding out for her, and she'd looked at me with exactly this much interest. None.

I breathed in and lifted my hand to knock.

Then Margot, through the door.

"You've known the truth about back then for years. Haven't you?"

Something hit me square in the chest.

All this time I'd thought we were wreckage because of a misunderstanding. That she'd read what I did as cruelty and never learned the rest.

She'd known. All of it.

Which meant this was never a thing I could talk my way out of. She'd understood exactly why I did it, and she'd walked anyway. Not a mix-up. A verdict.

So why did she still go cold every time the past came up, like touching it would cost her something?

I pushed the door open.

Both of them snapped their eyes to me.

I held my face flat and ordinary. Margot gave a thin laugh, read the air in the room, and found a reason to leave.

The lock clicked shut. The AC droned on, loud enough to crawl under your skin.

I had a file in my hand. My fingers had gone pale around it.

I went first.

"What happened back then. You knew the whole time."

She brushed it off without a blink.

"Dr. Hale. Did you need something?"

There it was again. The past, sealed off.

For years I'd told myself she didn't know, told myself I'd earned the hate fair and square.

But she knew everything.

I kept breathing wrong until the corner of the folder bit into my skin and brought me back.

Karma, maybe. I'd gone looking for this.

I dropped my eyes, packed the bitter back down, and held out the file. When I spoke again my voice had gone perfectly level.

"I've got a surgery that needs you."

Her nail dragged down the plan. "You can handle this one yourself."

"Patient's got hypertension, diabetes, high cholesterol. Better odds with you in the room."

She went quiet. My pulse wouldn't settle.

"Leave the chart. I'll let you know when." A nod.

Some of the weight went off me. "Thanks."

* * *

Surgery day came fast.

She led. I assisted.

We moved the way we always had, no words needed, each of us already knowing where the other's hands would be. For a few minutes my body forgot that anything had broken.

When it was done I looked at the side of her face and slipped, for a breath, back into school.

Back then we tied for first in every lab. She used to strip off her gloves after a case and grin at me, a grin that could pull the cold straight out of a morgue.

Now we were two strangers who happened to sync, trading only the words the work required.

"Count's clear," a nurse said. Vivienne turned and went.

I followed, eyes on the blue back of her scrubs, and finally got it out.

"Thanks."

"It's the job." Cold, thrown over her shoulder. She didn't turn around.

I stood there. I wanted to ask if it really had to be like this. I never did.

Then Brody clapped my shoulder.

"Chief wants names. There's flooding down in the disaster zone, the hospital's sending a relief team. You in?"

Maybe if I didn't have to see her, I could finally cut it clean.

"I'm in," I said.

Chapter 5

Before we shipped out, I went home to see my dad.

When he heard I was headed for the flood zone, he cooked every single thing I loved.

Halfway through dinner he must have read my face, because he set his chopsticks down.

"Sebastian. I hear the Sinclair girl's back in town. Same hospital as you?"

He let it sit there. "You two, these days..."

I hadn't thought he'd heard. I pushed out a thin smile. "It's nothing. We're just coworkers now."

He saw I didn't want to talk and let it go.

* * *

The day we left, the sky was bruised over.

The relief bus idled at the hospital gate, coughing exhaust. I came up with my bag and climbed on, hunting for a seat.

Then my whole body locked.

Back row, by the window, sat the one person I'd spent weeks working to avoid. Vivienne.

I'd come late. The only open seat on the bus was the one next to her.

I stood in the aisle until the driver barked at me, and then I had no choice but to sit.

She tipped her head toward the glass and looked straight through me.

The bus pulled out.

I held myself stiff, every muscle braced to keep from brushing her arm. And still my eyes kept sliding back.

Her profile was soft. None of the cold she saved for my face.

I watched her without meaning to, and it dragged me back to the first trip we ever took.

She'd held my hand the whole way and never once let go. The sun sat warm on her and ringed her in gold. We went down to the coast and held on to each other while the gulls wheeled over us. We walked every little street tangled together, kissing like two people who couldn't believe their luck.

"Sebastian."

Her voice cut the memory off clean.

I came back hard, into brown eyes with nothing in them but cold.

"Get off."

Reality. I swallowed it, dropped my gaze, and got up fast.

* * *

The rain had been coming down for days. The water had turned to flash floods, and the dirt road into the village was cut clean through. Nothing on wheels was getting in.

I pulled on a poncho and followed the team in on foot.

Rain still falling. Mud to the ankle.

I was hauling a load of supplies when my footing went out from under me.

My hand shot out for the nearest person.

Beside me, Vivienne turned aside on reflex.

My fingers closed on nothing. I was going down, and then a hand caught me.

Silas Reed. The team's captain.

"Dr. Hale. You good? Watch your feet, it's slick."

"I'm fine. Thanks."

I shook it off and looked at Vivienne.

She was already looking at me.

Our eyes held, and I thought about the way she'd flinched clear of me on instinct, and something pulled tight and wrong in me. I looked down.

Then her voice, flat.

"Don't drag everyone down. The team manages fine without you."

Every head swung to me at once.

My grip went white on the supplies.

I didn't say a word. I put my head down, walked past her, and kept going.

The rain came harder. The trail got worse.

Chapter 6

Half an hour out, we reached the staging point.

No time to rest. Vivienne, as captain, was already handing out assignments.

A rescuer came running. "There's a house down in the low ground. Hard to move them, and one of them's burning up. Took the fever meds, no change. They need a doctor now."

He looked around the tent. "Anyone come with me?"

"I'll go." I had the kit in my hand before I finished the word.

A colleague grabbed my arm.

"Rain's too heavy. It's all cliff trail out there, footing's a nightmare. Going now is suicide."

In a breath the doctors had split. The ones with me said you don't miss a window like this. The others said the route was too dangerous, the doctors came first.

The whole thing seized up.

"Dr. Sinclair. What do you think?"

She didn't answer, so I pushed. "Dr. Sinclair."

She looked at me once, and ruled.

"Doctor safety first."

"And the patient?"

I couldn't believe it had come out of her.

She didn't answer. She just walked out into the rain.

The sky was sinking, the drizzle steady. I caught her sleeve out in the wet.

"Vivienne. Did you forget the oath we took? Treating people, that's the whole job. So what is this?"

She glared. "Let go."

I held on.

She twisted to break loose.

And as she wrenched her arm back, something silver dropped loose from her collar.

The second I saw it, I went still.

A thin silver chain. And on it, a ring.

The one I'd shaped by hand.

She'd had it the whole time. Five years I'd thought it was long gone, and she'd been wearing it against her skin.

Everything I'd told myself about how little she cared came apart at once. I opened my mouth to ask.

She didn't give me the chance. Her fingers closed hard around it, one beat too long, and then she tore it off the chain and threw it into the water.

A bright thread of silver, arcing through the rain.

I lunged for it on instinct.

She hauled me back. "That water's thirteen feet deep at least. You want to die?"

I stood there and watched the muddy current take it down whole.

I turned to her. The rain had gone to ice on my skin.

"Why keep it." My voice came out wrecked. "And why throw it away in front of me."

She paused.

Then she gave me my answer.

"I kept it because I forgot to throw it out."

"I threw it out because it doesn't mean anything."

She let go of my arm and walked, and she didn't look back, and the last word landed a half-step less steady than the rest.

I stood in the rain a long time. The two lines wouldn't stop circling.

The tears went down with the water, where no one could see them.

Chapter 7

Thunder cracked the sky wide open.

It snapped me back. The patient. The whole reason she and I had been tearing into each other out in the rain. Someone down there was still burning up, still waiting on a doctor who hadn't come.

I got to my feet.

I needed a guide, and the only face I knew was Silas Reed's.

"Dr. Hale." He didn't soften it. "Risk right now is about as bad as it gets. You sure?"

I nodded. Didn't waver.

He didn't try to talk me out of it.

* * *

The boat pitched under us, the filthy water shrugging up sheets of silt.

The treatment house wasn't far, but the current fought us the whole way, and forty minutes burned before we reached it.

The villagers had crowded onto the high ground. With Silas bracing the ladder, I climbed to the window, looked up, and there she was. That back I'd know anywhere, already bent over the patient.

Vivienne.

It hit me a beat late. She'd come out here alone.

Something turned over in my chest, six things at once.

She caught us at the edge of her sight, flicked one glance our way, and turned straight back to her work.

By the time she finished, the fever had broken. The patient was steadier.

I started forward to help.

One step, and she took a big step back, like I'd walked in carrying plague.

My hand stalled on the needle. Then I made it keep moving.

Outside, the flood roared and the wind screamed. Inside, it was dead quiet.

I finished handing out the medicine and turned to find her alone at the window.

I stood there a second. Then I went over anyway.

"You chose to save them. So why won't you just tell everyone the truth?"

Her voice came back flat, drawing a line in the floor between us. "None of your business."

Forgot to throw it out.

Doesn't mean anything.

None of your business.

Every answer she'd ever handed me stacked up in my head, and I kept the grief down. "All you're doing is letting them think the wrong thing."

"The wrong thing?" She cut me off, cold eyes full of contempt. "What gives you the right to talk to me about getting the wrong idea?"

Something flinched in me.

She meant us. Back then.

And she knew. She'd always known all of it.

I opened my mouth to

A roar swallowed the room.

The levee the team had thrown up had given way, and the water was coming for the high ground.

Screaming filled the house in a heartbeat.

Vivienne moved fast, throwing herself over the patient and the kids. The surge drove her into the cracked wall at her back, and her teeth clenched white.

Through the noise I heard Silas roar, "Where's Dr. Hale? Anybody got eyes on Dr. Hale?"

I was at the window when it came, both hands on the frame, hauling the last man up through it. Then the wall of water took me off my feet.

It poured into my lungs, cold and filthy, and tore a cough out of me.

No air. I fought it.

Then nothing.

* * *

I don't know how long it was before I came up in the relief tent.

Outside was all noise and churn. I dragged myself upright. Empty around me, just my cot.

An IV ran into the back of my hand, feeding cold up the line into me.

Then a thin hand pulled the flap aside.

I looked up. Vivienne.

White coat, and that always-perfect face worn down to almost nothing.

She saw I was awake and ran the standard questions, flat, nothing extra in it.

I answered them one by one.

The little tent got quieter and heavier by the second.

"Captain Sinclair! Your fiance's here for you!"

Chapter 8

She turned and left without a second's hesitation.

The talk outside drifted in, no one bothering to lower it.

"The captain's fiance hauled in all these supplies. Lifesaver, honestly."

"You can see how good they are together. Drove all this way because he was worried about her."

"Mr. Whitmore's got a heart on him. Word is the next village's short too, and he's running it out there himself. She's worried, so they're going together."

The pictures came whether I wanted them or not. The two of them, close. That dinner back in the city that had me sweating in my own skin.

I looked at the bruised vein on the back of my hand, sat with it a moment, and pulled the needle out.

I went out toward the trucks.

She was at the supply van with Lachlan. He was straightening her collar for her, gentle about it.

"Director Zhou's still laid up. You sure you're alright coming with me?"

I thought about the ring. Five years against her skin, and the second I laid eyes on it, gone into the river without a blink.

And for some reason I needed to know. What I actually was to her, when no one was watching.

Then I caught the end of her answer.

"There's more than one doctor here. And it's not as if he's anything to me."

Something dropped clean through me. The blood left my face.

So that was it. That was where I stood.

The whole thing had only ever been a story I'd told myself.

I didn't stay for the rest. I went back to the tent on legs that didn't feel like mine.

A colleague brightened when he saw me. "Dr. Hale. Glad you're up. Everyone was worried."

"Chief called. The medical team gets here tomorrow. Surgery needs a senior attending to hold the floor."

I nodded. Then I heard myself ask, "And Dr. Sinclair?"

"She's staying on in the zone." They shrugged. "To be with her fiance, probably."

I gave them a tired excuse for a smile. "Sure."

In the end I left the zone a step ahead of them, before she and Lachlan drove out with the supplies.

* * *

Back in the city, the high-risk cases had stacked up, and I worked myself into the ground.

One night I was on call when the ER rang through.

"Dr. Hale, it's bad. We've got a patient who needs you now."

I ran for it.

And the second I made the trauma bay, the floor dropped out from under me.

The man on the table, barely holding on, was my father.

First time in my whole career I'd looked down at someone I loved on that table.

I was shaking head to foot. Nothing in my head. Hands no use to anyone.

Somehow I got the words out and steered the team through it on a voice that wouldn't sit still.

Two and a half hours later, he was stable.

In the room after, I stood over his gray face and couldn't make sense of any of it. A skull fracture. How.

"Dr. Hale, there's still a fragment lodged in the skull we haven't gotten out. It's blocking anything more we try."

"There's shadowing on the basal ganglia. We can't rule out a bleed. This can't wait."

"You're family. You can't be the one to operate. And right now there's exactly one surgeon in this hospital who can."

Chapter 9

The words went off in my head like a flare. I forced the tears down and started calling Vivienne almost before I'd decided to.

Call after call. She didn't pick up.

Inside a few days my father crashed twice more. He was slipping fast.

They were about ready to write up the paperwork that ends it when word reached me that the relief team was back.

I ran for her office like it was the last rope out of a well.

"Dr. Sinclair!"

She hadn't even had a chance to sit before I came through her door, frantic, gray in the face.

I slapped the chart on her desk and put myself as low as a man can go, every word stripped to the bone. "I'm family. I can't operate. Please. Save my father."

She gave it one cold glance and turned me down where I stood. "No."

The word landed and the whole office went dead.

But her hand, flat on the desk, wasn't quite steady. And she hadn't looked at the chart. Not once.

I stared at her like my own ears had failed. The needle in her eyes brought me back.

"This surgery. You're the only one who can do it."

It made no sense. Vivienne wasn't a woman who stood and watched someone die. So why.

Because the man on the table was my father. That was the only thing left.

I kept going. "I know the mess five years ago made you hate me. Fine. But he's my dad. You don't take that out on a man's family. You're a doctor. How do you let someone die?"

"I'll resign. I'll leave the city. Whatever you want, just"

"Are you not hearing me?" Her brows pulled in, her face out of patience. "I said I won't do it."

And then, under it, lower. "This kind of"

She bit it off herself.

The cold came off her words like a draft off ice and went all the way through me.

I looked at the woman I'd carried for five years and never set down, and when I spoke it didn't come out as a shout. It came out quiet, and exact, each word set on the table like a blade on a tray.

"Because he's my father."

"Why. What gives you the right."

"Vivienne. Do you deserve that coat you're wearing? Are you even a doctor anymore?"

She said nothing.

But the silence wasn't cold. It was a held breath, the kind that comes right before something gives.

The tears stood in my eyes and I kept the sound of them down, and the anger drained out into something far worse. Disappointment, with no floor under it.

"Vivienne. I never once thought you were this kind of person."

"Maybe I never should have met you at all."

If I'd never loved her, I wouldn't have spent five years on the rack for it.

She caught the wreck of it on my face, and something in her frayed.

"Sebastian"

The door slammed open before she finished.

"Dr. Hale, your father's going!"

The blood dropped out of my face and I was already moving.

Behind me, half-caught at the edge of my eye, her hand was already going for her phone.

I didn't stop to ask why.

The only thing left was to beg something bigger than me. Dad, you're the only family I have in this world. Don't leave me here. You're going to be fine. You have to be fine.

I made the trauma bay, and the bed was already ringed with staff.

On the monitor beside it, one flat line, level as glass.

The tone had gone steady and wouldn't stop.

The machine held that thin, terrible note, and the whole world stopped on it.

Somewhere in the blur the team gave up and turned their faces to me, soft with the thing nobody wants to say.

"Dr. Hale. We're so sorry."

"There was nothing more we could do. He's gone."

Chapter 10

The death certificate. The cremation. Carrying the ashes out. The funeral.

I don't know how I got through any of it. There was nothing in my head but white.

It wasn't until I was leaving the service that I saw her.

Black dress, grave-faced, something held behind her teeth that she didn't say.

Our eyes met. A cold wind came through and dragged me back into the world.

"Sebastian."

I kept my face like a wall and walked past her.

Nothing. Not one word. A dead man on his feet.

* * *

She stood rooted there, watching his shaking back get smaller down the path.

Something crossed her face that she hadn't worn once since the day he walked back into her life.

Her phone buzzed.

Lachlan. Is Sebastian alright? Did you ever explain to him why you turned down the surgery?

She didn't answer it. She shut the phone off, looked at the empty path where he'd been, and left.

* * *

After the funeral my heart went quiet by inches. The tears were long dried up. All that was left was the grief.

I couldn't stay in this city.

I closed up the house, handed in my resignation, and got on a plane out of the country.

Somewhere in those gray days, half-listening, I caught one of the staff saying the specialist they'd flown in had landed too late to do anything. It slid past me like everything else did.

* * *

At the hospital, Vivienne had changed into her street clothes to leave when she saw a cleaner boxing up the files in his office.

She came over, frowning. "What's going on here?"

The cleaner saw it was the department's Dr. Sinclair and explained. "You didn't hear? Dr. Hale resigned."

Sebastian. He'd resigned?

She went still. For the first time, that cool, level face came apart into something lost.

"When? Did he say where he was going?"

The cleaner flinched. "I just do the floors, ma'am. How would I know that."

She didn't wait for more. She went straight for the chief's office.

She'd told herself the loss had hit him too hard, that he needed time, and then she'd sit him down and make him hear all of it.

It had never once crossed her mind that he would just be gone.

* * *

Thirty thousand feet up, the plane threaded through cloud.

My father's death had wrecked my sleep for weeks. The melatonin never left my pocket.

Half under, I felt the plane buck hard, the cabin filling with panicked shouting.

Then it seemed to drop.

My head hit something I never saw, and the world went out.

I dreamed something long and bone-tired. I fought my way up through it, and at last I dragged my eyes open.

I woke in a soft double bed. As if everything before it had only been the dream.

Foggy, I sat up. And there, asleep beside me, was Vivienne.

My head went off like a struck match, and then there was nothing in it at all.

Why were we in the same bed?

What was this?

On reflex I reached for my phone to get up and leave.

The screen lit at my touch, and the date on it read 2026.

I went rigid.

How. I'd landed a full year later.

I'm a doctor. I don't believe in ghost stories, in opening my eyes in some other time.

When the shaking settled, only one thing was left that made any sense at all.

I'd lost a whole year of my life.

Chapter 11