Page 10 of Vital Signs
His praise landed harder than it should have. It always did.
As the patient began to stabilize, the room exhaled in tiny, imperceptible ways — voices softening, movements slowing just a fraction, that collective sense ofwe’re not losing him right now. I didn’t realize how tightly I’d been holding myself until my shoulders finally dropped, the adrenaline easing just enough to let my hands start to tremble.
Desmond noticed. Of course he did.
He leaned in just enough that only I could hear him over the remaining noise. “You did well,” he said, voice low, grounded. “You kept your head. You kept the patient alive. Don’t shrink that down.”
“I always feel like I’m one step behind,” I admitted, the words slipping out before I could stop them.
He shook his head slightly, a small, certain motion. “You’re exactly where you should be. And you’re moving forward faster than you think.”
There was pride in his voice. Real and unguarded. Then, just likethat, he straightened, slipping fully back into attending mode, his voice lifting to address the room. “Good work, everyone.”
But the look he gave me afterward lingered a second longer than necessary.
Chapter 6
Desmond
Ihad learned over the years to catalog desire the same way I cataloged everything else.
Identify it.
Name it.
Put it where it belonged.
Contain it.
That system had worked for a very long time.
It did not work with Anya Volkov.
I stood at the workstation longer than necessary after the room cleared, pretending to review labs I already knew by heart, letting the noise of the department wash over me while my mind stubbornly replayed moments I had no business lingering on. The way she’d caught the drop in pressure before the monitor alarmed. The way her voice had steadied when she called for respiratory. The look on her face when I’d told her she’d done well — like the praise had landed somewhere deeper than simple professional validation.
I had seen that look before. Rarely, and never on residents who were merely competent. It was the look of someone who wanted to be seen.
Who wanted to bechosen.
That was the dangerous part.
I spentyearstraining myself not to want things that complicated my life. I was good at boundaries. Excellent at them, actually. They were clean. They kept me functioning. They kept me respected. They kept me from making decisions that would ripple outward and hurt people who didn’t deserve it.
Anya complicated that.
Not because she was reckless. Not because she was naïve. Because she wasgood. Because she was learning fast. Because she looked at me with something that felt like trust, and admiration, and — if I wasn’t lying to myself — something warmer that evenshehadn’t named yet.
I told myself I was imagining it.
Ihadto.
But the evidence kept stacking up in quiet, undeniable ways. The way she came when I called for her, immediately, without hesitation. The way her attention sharpened when I spoke, like my voice tuned her focus instead of distracting it. The way her pulse visibly jumped at praise, like it mattered to her more than it should.
I had watched enough people fall into bad ideas to recognize the early symptoms.
I just… hadn’t expected to be one of them.
I closed my eyes briefly, resting my hands on the edge of the counter, grounding myself in the familiar pressure.
