“I don’t have an issue with you, Piers. I only wish you weren’t such a self-centered prick all the time.”
I paused at the door and looked back at her. I wanted to make her understand that this wasn’t about me, that it was about her as much as it was about any doctor—but I knew my words would fall on deaf ears. I’d never gotten along with Gina, mostly because I really was a self-centered prick, and truly hated taking direction from anyone but myself. Even still, personality flaws aside, I wasn’t wrong about this.
I left, and as I walked down the quiet hospital hallway, a new plan began to form. It was probably stupid and reckless, but I couldn’t sit back and let that PI stalk me all over the city. I had to do something, and if Gina and the hospital wasn’t going to help, then I’d do it all myself.
Lori stood talking with a group of other young surgery residents. I pulled her aside, practically tugging her by the wrist.
“What are you doing?” she asked, stopping and glaring at me.
“There’s something we need to do.”
She rolled her eyes. “Come on, Piers. You can’t just yank me around the hospital like a dog.”
I hesitated. Maybe I was being a little much. “Fine, fair enough. We’re going to go confront my stalker.” I walked on then, heading toward the elevators.
She caught up. “Your stalker?”
“The private investigator that’s been following me around. Have you seen him yet today?”
“Down in the lobby. Wait, hold on, you’re going to confront him?”
I nodded and jammed the call button. We rode the elevator down in silence, surrounded by a gaggle of nurses on their lunch break.
He wasn’t sitting in the waiting room, or in any of the chairs in the atrium. Lori kept up and tried pushing for more information, but I was too set on this plan to listen or stop. I stepped out the front door, through a wafting cloud of smoke from a pair of janitorial staff, and hesitated. The streets were full, and I wondered if I’d be able to spot the guy. I squinted, scanning for a familiar face, but the mass of people heading to and from their jobs felt like a blur.
“There,” Lori said, pointing.
I followed her gaze and sure enough, there he was, sitting at a nearby bench. I marched up to him, ignoring Lori’s protest, and he watched with a surprised frown.
“You,” I said. “Stalker.”
He was a middle-aged man, pale skin, boring face. He had a black hat pulled down low and wore the most banal outfit I’d ever seen: gray windbreaker, khaki pants. He had a small notebook in his lap, and he closed it as I loomed over him with my arms crossed.
“Can I help you?” he asked, trying out an awkward smile.
“Let’s cut the bullshit. You’ve been following me around for the past week and I want to know why.”
His face melted into a mask. “I’m not sure you want to do this, Mr. Hood.”
“Yeah, well, I’m not sure you understand what you’re getting yourself into. You realize you’re affecting my work? And my work’s important, unlike yourself.”
He didn’t rise to my bait. “I understand that I can be a nuisance, and I apologize for that, however—”
“You need to stop following me,” I growled at him. I practically felt Lori jumping from foot to foot behind me, probably eager to get me to stop whatever I was doing, and she was probably right—as soon as I opened my mouth, I knew this was a bad idea.
But I couldn’t help myself. This blob of a man represented everything wrong with the world. Doctors were treated like nothing more than healing robots, and when something went wrong, everyone wanted to instantly jump to lawsuits. The Tippett family knew the risks when I operated on Nil, and they knew the risks were even worse than usual, considering his age and his overall health. And yet they went ahead with it, as if their eighty-year-old patriarch was invincible.
I resented them, and hated myself for taking them on, but that was what we did. When rich people wanted a special surgery, we performed it, and apparently, we accepted their lawsuits afterwards.
It was garbage. It was beyond garbage—it was blackmail.
“I need to do my job,” Blobman said. His eyes flicked over to Lori. “Are you the new student?”
“Don’t answer,” I said, glaring at her, then looked back at the blob. “If you understand what you’re doing, then you know that you’re distracting me from my patients. I know the Tippetts hired you to stalk me and try to find something to use against me in court, but I’m telling you that you’re on the wrong side. Those people only want money, they don’t give a damn about the people I work on every single day, and all the other lives I save. They want to make a quick buck on their family member’s death.”
Blobman didn’t even look at me. I was so pissed off, but he only continued to give Lori a curious stare. “What do you think about this?” he asked her. “Do you think he’s right? Am I just a big distraction?”
“I don’t know,” she said. “Honestly, I don’t know what either of you are talking about.”
“She’s not a part of this.” I stared down at the blob and realized he wasn’t the issue. He was a symptom of the problem, but he wasn’t the problem himself. The Tippett family was the problem, and anyone else that thought they could bully their way into more money, simply because life didn’t go their way every time.
I turned away, back toward the hospital. This was a mistake, a stupid mistake. I got emotional and angry, and let my anger make decisions for me. I learned a long time ago to push past my emotions and to follow logic as much as possible. I learned on the operating table that emotions could get someone killed, and
