Page 76 of Angels Are Falling

Kai: Then I’ll see you when I pick you up from work.

Amelie: Don’t bother. I can get myself home.

It was pointless to try to have a rational conversation with Kai, so I decided against playing his game. I’d rather confront him face-to-face.

I returned to work at eleven fifty, in time for my meeting with Dr. Kwon. He was waiting for me outside the ER. Kwon had two expressions, apathetic and excited when someone was willing to donate to his hospital, and the latter was the expression he was wearing now.

“Amelie!” he said. “Walk with me.”

I walked with him. We went through the double doors at the end of the corridor and into the administrative wing, which smelled of carpet cleaner.

“I spoke with Mr. Cavendish this morning,” Kwon began.

“Did you?” I asked warily.

“He called personally.” There was a long pause, like he was still processing the significance of a man of Kai’s stature calling him personally. “He wanted to inform me of your name change and to ensure the personnel file reflected the legal update.”

My file. He had called the Chief of Medicine to update my personnel file. This man had nothing better to do with his morning than call my boss about my last name.

“He also wired a donation to the pediatric ward,” Kwon added, in the significantly warmer tone he reserved for conversations about hospital funding. “A substantial one.”

Of course he did.

“The donation will be transformative for the pediatric ward.”

“I’m glad to hear it.”

Kwon wore the look of a man about to ask a question he suspected he already knew the answer to. “Amelie. I was under the impression that you tended to Mr. Cavendish on a cruise ship, and that’s why he came to our hospital and requested you as his nurse. Why didn’t you tell us about your romantic connection?”

“Um—”

“Why you felt the need to hide that he’s your husband is beyond me.”

There it was.

Many people at this hospital had met Stefan and knew I was married to him. Kwon did, too. Though we weren’t intimately familiar with each other’s personal lives, I had referenced Stefan in conversations the way married people casually refer to their spouses.

And yet, here was the Chief of Medicine, looking at me with the polite, bewildered expression of a man who had apparently just learned of my marital status, and the previous Stefan-related context had been quietly erased from his memory.

The thousand dollars per person and fat donation hadn’t just been for my name change. It had been for the collective amnesia. Kai had paid the entire hospital to forget Mrs. Noble. It was as if I had never been married to Stefan at all.

“It’s a long story,” I said hesitantly.

“Were you worried about public scrutiny if the word got out?”

“What?” My heart started beating erratically at the thought that my boss knew about my second husband. Oh God. I would just die.

He cleared his throat. “Mr. Cavendish is an important man. He’s practically a celebrity around here. I imagine that comes at the cost of your privacy.”

I sighed in relief. By public scrutiny, he meant because of my marriage to an eccentric tycoon, not because I was married to two people.

“But since Darster Living has already announced your wedding to the entire town, we’ll do everything in our power to practice discretion.”

I nodded inattentively.

“Mr. Cavendish expressed his concerns. He knows how much you love this job and doesn’t want the article to affect you negatively at work.”

Then maybe he shouldn’t have leaked it.