Page 37 of Obeying

"I'm not taking this from you, Mr. Institutional Injustice." He crosses his arms. "But seriously. I heard she's good. Really good. And if someone like her was actually your rival in med school, then she must have one hell of a mind." He pauses. "If the board loses her over some rich guy's vendetta, they're idiots."

"Well, let's hope to God they're not."

In the afternoon, Kristen and I are on a case together. A motorcycle accident. The patient comes in with multiple fractures, a pelvic ring disruption, and internal bleeding that the paramedics flagged as abdominal but couldn't localize. It's the kind of case that separates residents who've memorized the textbook from residents who can actually think on their feet.

I assign Kristen as the lead. She looks at me for about two seconds, processing it. A lead role in a major trauma while she's under investigation. She could defer or ask me to take it.

She doesn't.

She moves. She reads the imaging fast, calls out the pelvic fracture classification, and orders a binder before anyone else has finished processing the CT. She redirects the team, pulls a nurse off a task that can wait, and puts her on one that can't. She checks the FAST exam herself, moves the probe with a steady hand, and reads the screen without hesitation.

"Free fluid in Morrison's pouch and the splenorenal recess," she orders. "Prep two units, get a massive transfusion protocol on standby."

The CT comes back, and there's a splenic laceration that the initial scan made ambiguous. Something you could argue either way on paper. She doesn't argue. She calls it.

"Grade three splenic lac with active extravasation. I want IR on standby for angioembolization, and if his pressure drops below ninety, I want the OR ready."

The room moves. She doesn't look at me for permission. She doesn't hedge or soften her call with 'I think' or 'maybe'. She says it like she knows it, because she does, and the team follows—because when someone speaks with that kind of certainty in a trauma bay, you listen.

Brennan is assisting, and he's watching her with his mouth slightly open. One of the nurses catches my eye and gives me a look that says where has she been hiding this?

I stand back and watch. Watching her work, watching her hands, watching her make the right call at the right time without hesitation while shouldering the pressure of a formal investigation—pride soars in my chest for her. The old Kristen is finding her way back out.

The patient stabilizes. The splenic lac gets embolized by IR, and the bleeding stops. Good outcome. Clean work.

After the case, the adrenaline fading, we end up in the break room. It's empty except for us, which is rare. Usually, there's at least one resident asleep in the corner or a nurse heating up leftovers. But tonight it's just Kristen and me.

She's writing up notes at the table. I'm sitting across from her, pretending to read a chart. The room is quiet, except for the scratch of her pen, the hum of the vending machine, and the clock on the wall ticking off seconds that feel longer than they should.

She's sitting close enough that I catch her shampoo. Something warm. Maybe vanilla.

I watch her write for a minute before I realize I'm doing it. She looks the same. Despite the years, despite everything she's been through, she's barely changed. The fullness in her cheeks is gone, and there are lines around her eyes that weren't there at twenty-five, but she looks wiser. Prettier, even.

Her hair is tucked behind one ear, and there's a smudge of something on her collar from the case that she doesn't seem to have noticed. She's completely absorbed, pen moving fast, and she has no idea I'm watching her.

And then it hits me. I used to do this. Back in med school. She'd sit across from me at the library table, buried in notes, and I'd stop studying and just watch her. The way she'd mouth words to herself when she was memorizing something, or the way she'd tap her pen against the page when she was stuck. She never caught me doing it. Always too focused.

I'm doing the exact same thing right now, years later, in a hospital break room. Habits die hard.

I straighten in my seat. "You were good in there."

"I know."

She looks up at me, the ghost of a smirk on her face, and for a second, we're in our early twenties again.

"There she is." I smile.

Her smirk fades into something softer. "She comes and goes."

"She should stay."

She holds my gaze for a moment. Then two. The room feels smaller than it is, and the vending machine hum is the only sound louder than my heartbeat. Neither of us is looking at our work anymore.

My hand is on the table, and hers is next to it. Close. I reach over. My fingers brush the edge of her hand. Barely touching. A question, not a statement.

She doesn't flinch. She looks down at our hands like they are something foreign, and then a finger moves. Slowly. It traces over mine, light, like she's testing whether this is real. Whether it's safe.

For a few seconds, neither of us speaks. We just watch her fingertip against my knuckle, the smallest point of contact and yet somehow the loudest thing in the room.