Page 62 of Doctor Bossy

He’s thinking of her, I thought. I wasn’t sure how, but I knew he was picturing Heather here in this bed and not me. This whole thing was likely reminding him of what he had gone through with her. He’s still thinking about her.

"Griffin.” I put my hand on his chest and felt his thundering heartbeat. “I’m fine, alright. The doctor says I’m fine. I just need to rest. I promise.”

However, the panicked look did not clear from his face. He didn’t look like he believed me, but I wasn’t ready to talk about what I had just found out yet.

Did I want him to know?

Was it better to know your father and know he had never loved you, and you would only be a shadow of something he might have had with Heather? Was it selfish of me not to tell him?

Regardless, I didn’t get the chance to decide.

Because Griffin only stared at me for a few more seconds, shook his head, and then walked right out.

* * *

I didn’t seeGriffin for the rest of the day. Even when I went back to the office, he was nowhere to be found. There was something else going on, though. I could tell from the men standing in the lobby of Griffin’s office.

One of them was the ever unpleasant Dr. Robinson, who frowned even deeper when he saw me. They wear wearing suits and had severe expressions on their faces as they spoke to a heckled-looking Willa, who kept repeating, “He’s not here, alright. I don’t know what else to tell you.”

“Don’t tell me your boss is out hiding,” one of them snarled.

“He’s not hiding. He’s just not here!”

Leila and Marco stood to the side, and I approached them. “What’s going on?”

Marco glanced at me. “These men are the Director of the Biochemistry Department and the university president. They’re saying they noted some irregularities and something about an email and want to question Griffin about it. They think he did something so the higher-ups would get the drug to pass the IRB.”

“He wouldn’t do that,” I said automatically, incensed at the thought. Griffin was a man who did everything by the book and was nothing if not honorable.

However, I thought more about it. About how desperate he had been for the drug to pass, everything he had told me about his wife’s sickness, and how he regretted not being able to help her.

He was capable of it.

But then, weren’t we all?

He had already lost enough and perhaps thought he could save people if only he could get the drug to the market on time. And he would have, if not for me.

Before I knew it, my body moved forward.

“It was me,” I announced, and all conversation ceased. Everyone was now looking at me. “I did it.”

28

GRIFFIN

She was lying.

I knew she was lying about whatever the doctor told her, but I walked out anyway. I couldn’t stay there because it felt like the walls were closing in on me at that moment, and the scenes were beginning to blend together.

I found out about Heather’s disease under similar conditions. She had been complaining of headaches for a couple of days, and I hadn’t taken it too seriously until suddenly, she passed out one night during dinner. I rushed her to the emergency room myself and anxiously waited outside for the result. I thought about the cause, thought maybe she’d been working too hard on the fundraiser she’d been planning or perhaps had come down with the stomach flu. Or maybe she was pregnant again. I would have been overjoyed at the last one. We always planned to have a lot of children but had been unable to conceive after James. I’d made my peace with it, but if a miracle were happening right now, I would have loved it.

But the minute I walked into the hospital room, I knew that wasn’t the case.

The look on her face as she turned to me at that moment would forever be imprinted on my brain—a trauma that still appears in my nightmares sometimes.

“I’m dying,” she had said.

And that was the beginning of the nightmare.

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