Chapter 8
I got into the car.
And I didn’t look back.
The Manhattan apartment was on the Upper East Side.
Vincent had purchased it through one of his companies several years earlier.
I’d visited it twice.
It was beautiful, naturally.
Cream walls.
Floor-to-ceiling windows.
A spacious kitchen that looked as though nobody had ever cooked in it.
There were fresh flowers waiting on the dining table.
Someone had stocked the refrigerator.
Vincent’s assistant had probably arranged everything.
Even my escape came with his fingerprints.
I stood in the middle of the living room and felt unexpectedly angry.
Not because the apartment was inadequate.
Because it was another room designed to make me comfortable without asking what I wanted.
I took the flowers out of the vase.
Then I put them back.
They hadn’t done anything wrong.
That thought made me laugh.
The sound startled me.
It had been so long since I’d heard myself laugh alone.
I opened the curtains.
Then I unpacked.
I put my medical bag on the desk beside the window.
For several minutes, I just looked at it.
I had no plan.
I had no job.
I wasn’t even certain I could still practice medicine.
I’d been away from active clinical work for almost eight years.
Eight years.
I whispered the number aloud.
Medical knowledge didn’t stand still.
Neither did surgical techniques, hospital policies, technology, or licensing requirements.
I wasn’t foolish enough to imagine I could put on scrubs the next morning and walk into an operating room.
But I also knew that medicine had once belonged to me in a way nothing else ever had.
I opened my laptop.
My hands hovered above the keyboard.
Then I searched for St.
Catherine’s Medical Center.
The hospital website appeared.
I stared at photographs of the entrance.
The emergency department.
The surgical wing.
The building had changed.
There was a new trauma center.
Several names on the leadership page were unfamiliar.
But one name made my heart beat faster.
Dr.
Evelyn Shaw.
Chief of Trauma Surgery.
I remembered Evelyn standing beside me during my first difficult night as an attending surgeon.
I remembered her sharp voice.
Her steady hands.
Her complete intolerance for self-pity.
When I was younger, she used to tell me that confidence was not the absence of fear.
It was knowing what to do despite it.
I opened a blank email.
Dear Dr.
Shaw,
I hope you remember me.