Page 99 of Stuck with Doctor Grump

It was a reminder:Contract deadline—12:00 p.m. today.

I didn’t hesitate.

I pulled a notebook from my bag and wrote a single word beneath Ruby’s closing line.

Yes.

Then, I added something more—something that had lived in the back of my mind for weeks but finally demanded a voice.

Let’s make Cedar Springs the heartbeat of something real. Together.

I folded the reply, slid it into an envelope, and walked it to the nearest mailbox like it carried something holy.

Afterward, I returned to the staff lounge, picked up my duffel bag, and turned in my ID badge.

“Heading out for a break?” the receptionist asked, glancing up.

“No,” I said, adjusting the strap over my shoulder. “I’m heading home.”

She smiled politely. “Back soon?”

I looked down at the pressed daisy Ruby had given me, still tucked safely in the corner of my wallet.

“Not this time.”

Because I wasn’t just visiting anymore.

I wascoming home.

For good.

Chapter twenty-six

Damien

Hospitals never sleep.

Even on my last day, the place hummed with a low, constant rhythm—monitors beeping, sneakers squeaking down sterile hallways, clipboards shifting in calloused hands. It was the heartbeat I’d lived by for most of my adult life.

And today, I was walking away from it.

I moved slowly, deliberately. No rush now. No one to page me. No emergency to chase. Just echoes of a hundred lives I’d touched—and more than a few I’d let slip away.

The OR stood quiet behind the glass, dark and cold. I pressed my palm against the door like it might thrum back with memory. For a moment, I saw it all—the bright lights, the scalpel in my hand, the charged tension of split-second choices. It had once made me feel invincible.

Now, it just felt… distant.

I kept walking.

The staff lounge was half-full. A few younger residents huddled by the coffee machine, laughing too loudly over something on a phone. They didn’t notice me. I liked it that way.

It reminded me of who I was when I first walked into this building—hungry, stubborn, ready to carve my name into the world. Back then, I thought medicine would fill all the cracks.

I didn’t realize I’d built my entire identity around fixing things—while quietly breaking myself.

I stepped into the locker room and opened mine for the last time. Inside was the usual: backup scrubs, a notebook filled with old case notes, and a photo of my mom I’d taped to the back wall years ago. Her smile still made my chest ache.

Taped beneath it now was a dried clover Ruby had once handed me after I’d talked an anxious patient through a panic attack. “For good luck,” she’d said, grinning like it was magic.

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