Page 14 of Knot All is Forgiven

I throw my bag over my shoulder and flick the light switch as I dart out the door, all plans for books and my cat out the window. "I'm on my way. Put me down as her primary physician."

"Right away. See you soon."

Jordan Cross is in the hospital and is an Omega.

I knew it.

At the end of our appointment, when I got closer to her, something about her was drawing me in. My inner Alpha would not accept the fact that she was a Beta.

And now this beautiful, thirty-two-year-old woman just presented as an Omega in the grocery store. She is going through an insane amount of changes, way later than she's supposed to. There is no telling the strain it's putting on her body, which must be why she fainted and hasn't woken up yet.

I climb into my practical, grey sedan and take off towards the hospital. Could I afford a flashy sports car? Sure. But I have no desire for it. For me, cars go from point A to point B, and I don't think about them other than that.

The hospital is only ten minutes from the Clinic. The sixth floor is the Omega floor, and I check in at the nurses' station. "Dr. Valentine. I'm a consulting physician."

"Nice try," the man says before spinning around in his chair. The nurse behind the desk looks at me with exhausted eyes. Once they focus on me, he relaxes. "Sorry about that. Thought you were an Alpha trying to force his way in."

"That happens?" I ask, sweeping my eyes over the waiting room. There's a leather jacket thrown over a chair, but other than that, it's empty.

"More than you'd believe. Who's chart are you on?"

"Jordan Cross."

He snorts but doesn't say anything. He types on his computer and looks at my badge again before nodding. "Go on back, room 622."

"Thank you very much." He buzzes me through the double doors, and I greet some of the nurses I've met during my visits here. Room 622 looms ahead, and my stomach feels tight. Should I be doing this? I don't know her. She's barely a patient. I called in a blood work order and sat across from her at a desk.

I won't be a calming presence to her when she wakes up.

I'm effectively a stranger who decided to throw himself into her hospital room the moment she presents as an Omega.

But at the same time, I am her doctor. In a way. I did examine her genome. Maybe I could test it again and see if there was any mutation or change.

In the three hours since I saw her?It's nothing but delusional justification.

I've almost convinced myself to turn around and leave, forgetting about Jordan Cross when Nurse West shows up. "Dr. Valentine!" she coos, wrapping an arm around me. She's an older Beta woman with greying hair and smoker's lines around her lips. "Miss Cross still isn't awake. I'm not sure what she was seeing you for, but…"

"Is that her chart?" I cut her off, watching her type into the laptop that perches on the cart she rolls around.

"It is, yeah. Do you have privileges?" She doesn't call out my rudeness, and I'm grateful for it. I'm feeling unmoored. These are waters I haven't chartered before.

"I do, yes." She spins the cart to face me, and I scroll through the blood work they ran on Jordan. It's all so very ordinary. Nothing sticks out to me except for elevated estrogen. I point it out to Nurse West.

"Oh yeah, that's the heat spike. It's not full heat because if you flip the page, you'll see the levels are going down regularly." She moves around the back of the cart, peering at me over the back. "You wanna keep that? Or get your own?"

I shake my head, pressing the print icon at the top right of the screen. "No, the printouts will do. I'll go see Ms. Cross now." With the papers in hand, I go into the clinical, uncomfortable hospital room.

The Omega floor is supposed to be much nicer overall than the rest of the hospital. It was designed to be like a little nest in the room, a comfortable place for an Omega to recover. But this room is not that. Sure, there are more blankets and pillows on the bed in soothing, pastel colors, but the walls are bare, the bed is the standard adjustable one with railings, and the air smells so strongly of antiseptic that it makes me feel sick.

There's a single, uncomfortable chair in the room. It's got scratchy blue fabric on the seat and back, with minor padding on the arms. I pull it over to the bed, sit down, and stare at the unmoving form of a woman I barely know.

She's hooked up to a heart monitor with an IV in her right hand, but other than that, she's not being monitored at all. How could they not keep a better eye on her? First, she's shoved into this soulless room, and now she's barely being monitored. I should file a complaint against the hospital for how they're treating my Omega.

Wait.

My Omega?

She's not my Omega.

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