And still nothing would change, no matter what I did.
“They can,” he said. “We both know they can.”
“How are you standing there taking it? Why aren’t you doing something?”
His gaze came up, hot and angry. “What do you want me to do? Run around the hospital, complaining?”
“I don’t know,” I said. “Something, anything. You can’t let them toss you out of here.”
“It’s just a suspension.”
“We both know that you’re never coming back from this.”
He flinched away from me like I’d punched him in the gut. He leaned up against the door to his office, one hand on the frame, and hunched over slightly. I thought he might be sick, but instead, he looked at the floor for a long, quiet moment.
“The notes they’re talking about. It’s bullshit. It’s not real.”
“I believe you.” I stepped closer to him and put a hand on his shoulder. “So what are you going to do about it?”
“Nothing right now,” he said, shaking me off and moving away.
I felt like he’d kicked me in the ribs. I clutched at myself like I really did feel pain. I wanted to help him, desperately wanted to do something that might change whatever was happening—and yet he didn’t seem to want to do anything about it.
That hurt most of all. Now that he really had to fight, he was turning away and giving up.
Which was such a waste. He was a gifted surgeon, one of the best in the world, definitely the best I’d ever seen. He could do things that I didn’t even think were possible, and with the lightest touch, leaving the smallest scars, the gentlest traces of his scalpel. He was a magician in the operating room, and yet these people were forcing him out for political expedience—and for money.
“What am I supposed to do now?” I asked, feeling unmoored and adrift.
“Go find Dr. Baker,” he said. “Join the other residents. Keep moving forward.”
“Piers—”
“Juist go,” he said, not looking at me. “I’m finished. There’s nothing I can do about this. I tried to change, but that wasn’t enough. So just go.”
I took a step back away from him, heart thudding. I didn’t want to leave him, but he wasn’t acting like himself—like the confident, strong man I’d grown so close to over the last few months.
He sounded hollow and broken. It wrecked me and I thought my heart might rip itself out through my throat.
“Piers—”
“Just go,” he said, his voice hard. “Go before you say or do something stupid.”
I turned and walked away. I didn’t want to and each step felt like it burned my lungs, but I kept going, away and away, until I left him there alone in the hall, and I went to find the other residents, numb and swirling with emotion. The rest of the day was a blur—questions from Dr. Baker, a brief visit from Gina, but none of it seemed to stick.
All I could do was think about Piers, and it felt as though the world had come to a stop, and I was flung out into space.
24
Piers
I did the only thing I could think of—
I got shit-faced drunk.
It was pretty easy. As soon as Lori left, I went to a bar around the corner, and started drinking. I didn’t stop drinking, not even when Dr. Baker showed up for a while, not even when a couple of the nurses stopped by to check on me, apparently at Baker’s behest. I kept drinking until I woke up the next morning with a splitting fucking headache in my apartment, on the living room floor, missing a shoe, my mouth tasting like a sewer, and completely unsure of how I made it home alive.
Maybe next time, I wouldn’t. That might not be so bad.
I got up and made breakfast. I retched in the shower, but recovered. I went out, drank coffee at a nice spot near my house, and watched people walk past. Any other day, and I’d be in the operating room, doing what I did best.
Doing the one thing I’d trained my whole life for.
The fucked-up part of it all was, I didn’t feel bad for myself. I was angry, and I felt as though I’d failed, but it didn’t have to be the end of my life. I could find another job somewhere else, or even leave the state if I had to, start over in a new city across the country. I had savings and options and a skill that was very much in demand. I’d be okay, if I wanted to be.
But no, I felt bad for Lori.
I let her down. I was supposed to be her teacher and her mentor, and maybe something more than that, but I’d gotten my ass thrown out, and now she was stuck with Baker and the other surgical clowns. They were good people, but I knew I could turn her into something better than they could, into something that truly shone—into a goddamn star.
Instead, none of that would happen, a bright future lost.
Still, it bothered me. That two-bit hack Gina and pencil-pusher Caroline somehow got the better of me felt like a red-hot poker getting shoved down my throat. I was angry about it, angry as hell, but I didn’t know what I could do.
They had documents, supposedly. I knew it was made-up bullshit, forged to look like my handwriting, but that wouldn’t matter. No court would take my word over their word, regardless of how much I’d tried to rehabilitate my image. I could get a thousand patients in there to attest to my honesty and integrity, and it still wouldn’t matter: the hospitals always won. They had the money and the connections, and now they had the Tippett family, too.
I’d lose, as soon as I got called in front of a judge. I’d
