Page 90 of Stuck with Doctor Grump

My heart kicked hard in my chest. “Are you okay?”

“I don’t know yet,” he said honestly. “But I will be. I just… I need to tell you face-to-face. I owe you that.”

“Damien,” I whispered, gripping the phone tighter. “You’re scaring me a little.”

“I don’t mean to.” His voice dropped. “It’s not bad. Just… big. Like something cracked open in me today. And now I have to figure out what to do with it.”

The garden lights flickered in the wind. I closed my eyes again, grounding myself in the sound of his voice.

“Okay,” I said softly. “I’ll be here.”

“I know,” he murmured. “And that’s the only reason I can even say this out loud.”

The call ended with a soft click, and I sat there in the dark, phone resting against my chest, heart pounding like a question that hadn’t been answered yet.

Whatever was coming… it was going to change everything.

Again.

Chapter twenty-four

Damien

The scrub room smelled like antiseptic and nerves.

I rolled up my sleeves, lathered my arms, and let the water run hot. Not scalding, but near enough to remind me I was still alive. The hum of fluorescent lights buzzed overhead, and behind me, two young nurses whispered about me like I couldn’t hear.

“That’s Dr. Damien Cole,” one said. “He used to run cardio at St. Jude’s.”

“He’s the one who diagnosed the Hawthorne girl in under five minutes,” the other replied, almost reverent.

I shut off the faucet and turned to face the mirror.

The man staring back had the same storm-gray eyes. The same razor-sharp jaw. The same scar on his brow from a reckless teenage fight. But something was different. Like I’d aged a decade in the last two hours and worn every second on my shoulders.

The OR doors swung open.

“Dr. Cole,” a surgical tech called. “We’re prepped.”

I nodded once, grabbed my gloves, and stepped through.

The lights were too bright. The monitors beeped in a too-perfect rhythm. The surgical tools gleamed like silver soldiers in formation.

Everything was new—streamlined, state-of-the-art. But sterile. Almost soulless.

The patient was a teenage girl—sixteen, maybe. Skin pale as linen. Tubes in her nose. IV taped to her arm. Her heart monitor blipped irregularly, dangerously close to the edge.

I didn’t need the attending’s rundown. I’d reviewed her scans. Her congenital defect had gone unnoticed until today, and if we didn’t intervene fast, she wouldn’t see next week.

“Ready when you are,” the anesthesiologist said.

I took a breath, lowered my mask, and murmured, “Let’s begin.”

The room fell into silence as I made the first incision. My hands didn’t shake. They moved like they used to—fluid, exact. Muscle memory carried me through suture and bypass, clamp and stitch. My mind silenced every thought that wasn’t about the girl on the table. No Ruby. No job offer. Just arteries, valves, and blood flow.

The kind of silence I used to live for.

We worked for hours.

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