Page 21 of Crossing the Line
The comment was perfectly professional and demonstrated exactly the kind of analytical thinking Carmen valued in students. Harper was connecting different medical specialties, identifying learning opportunities, showing the intellectual curiosity that made exceptional surgeons.
Carmen felt her carefully constructed irritation beginning to crack around the edges.
"Emergency trauma often reveals underlying cardiac issues," Carmen agreed, settling into teaching mode despite herself. "What patterns did you observe today?"
Harper's analysis was comprehensive and insightful. She'd identified cardiac stress patterns that could complicate recovery, recognized the relationship between trauma response and cardiovascular function, and demonstrated understanding that went far beyond textbook knowledge.
Carmen found herself engaged in the kind of medical discussion she genuinely enjoyed—complex case analysis, theoretical exploration, the collaborative thinking that made teaching worthwhile. For twenty minutes, she forgot about Friday night and focused on Harper's obvious passion for cardiac surgery.
When the conversation concluded, Carmen realized she'd been smiling. Actually enjoying herself. Teaching someone who understood not just the technical aspects of surgery but the intellectual beauty of cardiac medicine.
The realization was deeply unsettling.
Carmen found herself genuinely enjoying teaching the woman who'd shattered her trust with carefully constructed lies. And if Harper's surgical competence was this real, this undeniable…what else about Friday night had been genuine?
6
HARPER
Harper's apartment felt like a disaster zone when she finally dragged herself through the door at six-fifteen. The boxes that had seemed full of possibility yesterday now looked like evidence of her own stupidity, like cardboard containers holding the remnants of a life she'd systematically destroyed in one weekend of spectacular poor judgment.
She dropped her medical bag beside the door and stood in the center of the chaos, still wearing her pristine white coat that felt more like a costume than professional attire. The silence pressed against her eardrums after twelve hours of hospital noise: monitors beeping, pages crackling overhead, the controlled chaos of medical professionals who belonged exactly where they were.
Unlike her.
Harper pulled off the white coat and hung it carefully on the back of a chair, as if treating it with respect could somehow undo the disaster of wearing it. The fabric still carried the antiseptic smell of the hospital, but now it felt contaminated with her own deception rather than purified by medical purpose.
Her phone buzzed against the kitchen counter. A text from Alice Knight, one of her fellow interns: “Drinks at Murphy's? Piper and I are comparing war stories from our first day. You looked like you needed a drink during lunch.”
Harper stared at the message until the screen went dark. Alice and Piper Barrett had been friendly during orientation, the kind of eager, accomplished women Harper recognized as her natural peer group. They'd probably spend the evening analyzing their supervising physicians, sharing amusing anecdotes about hospital politics, and bonding over the universal experience of being new surgical interns.
All things Harper desperately wanted and couldn't have.
She typed back: “Rain check? Exhausted and need to prep for tomorrow.”
The lie came as easily as breathing. Harper was becoming a virtuoso of small deceptions, each one building on the foundation of the massive lie that had started this whole disaster.
Her reflection in the bathroom mirror looked like a stranger wearing her face. The professional makeup she'd applied with such care this morning was still intact, but her eyes held a hollowness that cosmetics couldn't cover. She looked like someone who'd spent the day pretending to be someone else while watching the person she actually wanted to be slip further out of reach.
Under the scalding shower spray, Harper finally allowed herself to replay the worst moments of the day: Carmen's face when she'd seen Harper in the surgical prep area, that flash of something raw and wounded before professional composure snapped into place like armor, the careful way Carmen had addressed her as "Ms. Langston" that created formal distance where there had been breathless intimacy just three nights ago.
"Dr. Méndez," Harper whispered to the shower tiles, testing how the formal address felt on her tongue. The words felt foreign and wrong.
The worst part wasn't Carmen's anger or disappointment. It was the professional courtesy and the way Carmen had explained surgical procedures during the observation session with perfect clinical detachment, as if Harper were just another intern rather than the woman who'd made her laugh in the darkness and traced patterns on her bare skin.
Harper dressed in comfortable clothes: soft jeans and a sweater that made her feel like herself. Outside her window, Phoenix Ridge was settling into evening routines. Normal people having normal problems, none of them facing eight weeks of forced professional interaction with someone they'd lied to, slept with, and abandoned without explanation.
She opened her laptop and stared at the blank screen for twenty minutes before closing it again. She'd planned to research cardiac surgical techniques, but she couldn't focus on anything except the growing certainty that she needed advice from someone who might understand the complexity of her situation.
Someone who might have wisdom about love and lies and the mess she'd made of both.
Her phone buzzed again. Another text from Alice: “We're here if you change your mind. Piper says the trauma attending made her cry twice today.”
Harper smiled despite herself. If Dr. Parker had made Piper cry, maybe Harper's disaster wasn't the worst first day in medical history. But she still couldn't join them. She couldn't pretend to be normal when her world had tilted so far off its axis that she wasn't sure which way was up anymore.
Twenty minutes later, Harper found herself walking through Phoenix Ridge's winding streets as evening settled over the city.The familiar route to Lavender's felt different tonight—less like adventure, more like seeking safety. The harbor fog was rolling in early, wrapping the edges of buildings in soft white silence that made the rest of the world feel distant and muffled.
She passed couples walking hand-in-hand, their easy intimacy a reminder of what she'd lost before she'd even understood what she'd found. A woman helping her partner navigate the uneven cobblestones, their movements synchronized without thought. Two women at a coffee shop window, heads bent together over a shared tablet, one absently stroking the other's hair.
