Page 34 of Mirror Image

“Are you planning on giving one?” I ask, curious to observe him in this new role of his.

New to me, anyway.

“No, but we are about to release a statement saying that she’s been admitted for treatment following an accident in Everglades National Park and is in stable condition.”

I nod. “Sounds reasonable enough.”

He cocks his head to one side, obviously assessing me. “We settled, you know. With the Millers. For nearly a million dollars.”

I did know there’d been a settlement—I just didn’t know how much.

After the catastrophic hearing, the hospital agreed to facilitate a quick and quiet transfer to another residency program so I could finish out my training in peace—away from Miami Killian, Julian Braithwaite, and David Kellogg.

I try to keep my face impassive as I shrug. “Oh, I don’t know, a million dollars seems pretty cheap for the life of a child,” I reply coolly. “It would have cost you a hell of a lot more if you hadn’t settled.”

“Yeah, well, clearly it hasn’t hurt my career.”

I don’t comment. Instead, I pose a question that’s been niggling at me since I got Julian’s call. “Why am I here?”

He doesn’t miss a beat.

“Because the Langstons are powerful people with a lot of money invested in this hospital, and it’s in our best interests to see Mary gets the best possible care. And, like it or not, Julian’s right about you being the best person for this particular case.” I’m about to applaud his newfound maturity, but then he goes and ruins it by opening his mouth once more. “Plus, if this goes south, you’ll make a great scapegoat. So . . . win-win,” he informs me with a grin.

Gabe would tell me to ignore him. Stef would tell me to eviscerate him.

I swear, it’s like having a devil on one shoulder and an angel on the other.

In the end, I meet them somewhere in the middle, sighing disappointedly. “Really? Is that the best you’ve got? Well, good luck with that because I’m not a lowly resident anymore. I’m a well-established practitioner in this field. And I wasn’t the one who got caught falsifying charts and forging signatures. I’m not the one who sent a fourteen-year-old home to die.”

He gets to his feet. “You know, Dr. Flores, medicine’s not a fairy tale. There are no heroes and villains—just people who make hard calls. Some of us stomach it better than others.”

“I’m pretty sure you’re the villain now—just like you were back then.”

He smiles thinly. “Keep telling yourself that. In the end, this place doesn’t care who’s right. It cares who’s still standing.”

He doesn’t wait for my reply before strolling out the door.

Chapter Twelve

Mary

Five years ago

When she spun the chair around to face the mirror, I was struck speechless. I watched, fascinated, as the stranger—the woman who looked like me, but not really—reached up to press a lock of her hair between her fingers. It felt soft and silky, the new cut fringing my face perfectly.

“You look amazing!” my stylist told me. “Why didn’t we do this sooner? The shorter hair suits that pretty heart-shaped face of yours perfectly!”

She was right: it did. Of course, I’d known that long before I walked through the doors of the salon. I only had to conjure an image of Sam to know exactly how the cut would look on me.

We were less than a month out from our excursion to Oregon. I just had to try and keep the uneasy peace that had settled in our house until then, hoping that a little distance might just give my parents a better impression of Sam and our burgeoning friendship. They’d come around once they realized how close we’d become and how she made me push my limits—doing things outside of my comfort zone.

The haircut was totally my idea, and I planned to follow it up with a tattoo that matched Sam’s. I’d been thinking about how fun it would have been to have an identical twin when I was a kid—fooling teachers, taking tests for each other, covering for each other . . . We had missed out on the whole The Parent Trap experience! But that didn’t mean we still couldn’t have a little fun with it.

My intention had been to spring it on my sister first, then the two of us could surprise my parents together. But my mom intercepted me the second I walked through the front door.

“Sam? I wonder if you and I might have a chat?”

She didn’t give me so much as a second glance. I couldn’t believe it. My own mother couldn’t tell us apart!