My Commander Ex Divorced Me Then I Became Out of His League Chapter 06

My Commander Ex Divorced Me Then I Became Out of His League Chapter 06

The exam was held in the hospital’s lecture hall.

I sat in the third row and tore open the test booklet.

The written portion took me an hour and a half.

The practical exam was a full cholecystectomy on a simulation model.

When I stepped up to the operating table, someone on the examiner panel murmured, “This one’s

too young. Doesn’t look like she has the experience.”

I ignored him.

Pulled on gloves. Picked up the blade.

Twenty-six minutes.

A complete gallbladder removal.

Blood loss controlled to under thirty milliliters.

Suture spacing even. Not a single wasted stitch.

The examiner panel went dead silent.

Three days later, the hiring list was posted.

My name was at the very top.

The night I got the offer, I sat alone on the windowsill in my dorm room and looked out at the

Crestwood skyline.

A few scattered lights in the distance, like flecks of gold on black velvet.

I suddenly remembered the woman I was in my last life,

Fifty years old, sitting in the yard of the base house, staring up at the stars, In my hands, a sweater

I’d been knitting forever and would never finish.

That sweater was for Gavin Whitmore.

He never wore it.

I pulled my gaze back and took a deep breath. You finally walked out, Sloane. You finally made it.

After I started at Crestwood General, I worked my way up from the bottom as a first-year resident.

Night shifts. Charts. Bed management. Scrubbing in on surgeries.

Other residents complained about how brutal and exhausting it was. I didn’t say a word.

In my last life, I’d swallowed thirty years of bitter.

This was nothing.

My department chief was Lawrence Hayes. A surgeon in his late fifties with a volcanic temper. He chewed people out without an ounce of mercy.

My first day on rounds, he threw my patient charts back at me three times.

“What the hell is this? Rewrite it.”

“Chief complaint’s a mess. History of present illness reads like a novel. You here to be a doctor or

write fiction?”

“Sloane Ashford, if I see this kind of work from you tomorrow, don’t bother coming back.”

I stayed late that night and worked until three in the morning. I rewrote all twelve charts.

The next day, I handed them in. Chief Hayes read through them and said nothing.

The day after that, on rounds, he pulled out my charts and announced to the entire department:

“Take a look at what Sloane Ashford wrote. This is how you chart. Some of you have been at this

four, five years, and you still can’t hold a candle to what she turned around in one night.”

The room went silent for a beat.

Then every pair of eyes turned to me.

Some were shocked. Some were resentful. Some were jealous.

I kept my head down and pretended to organize paperwork.

Three months later, I scrubbed in on my first solo surgery.

It was an emergency. Car accident. Splenic rupture. Massive hemorrhage.

By the time they wheeled the patient in, his BP had crashed to 60/40. He was circling the drain.

Chief Hayes was off-site that day. The other attending on call was hesitating.

I stood at the entrance to the OR, watching the numbers jump on the monitor.

“Let me take it.”

The attending stared at me. “You’re a resident. What the hell are you talking about?”

“I’ve watched Professor Harrison Shaw perform a splenectomy. I know the full protocol. I can do

this.”

“Are you out of your mind-”

“He doesn’t have time. Ten more minutes, and he’s gone.”

The attending looked at the monitor, then at me. He clenched his jaw.

“Do it. If anything goes wrong, I’ll take the heat.”