I Confirmed the Deployment That Broke Him Chapter 01

I Confirmed the Deployment That Broke Him Chapter 01

On the eve of my promotion to attending physician, my boyfriend submitted a deployment application in my name without telling me. I asked him why.

He barely looked up. “Chloe was on my computer yesterday and accidentally submitted it for you. It was just a prank. Isn’t there a confirmation step? You can just cancel it.”

I knew that name. Chloe Shaw.

She was the new intern Leo Vance had taken on that year, young, pretty, and somehow always orbiting around him.

He knew perfectly well that any unchallenged application would be automatically approved after twenty-four hours, and a warzone posting meant at least three years in a combat zone.

My career and my life, all of it was a joke to him. Whatever warmth I had left went cold.

***

The email from the Frontline Medical Corps popped up on my screen, and for half a second I went completely still. Then the anger hit.

The paperwork I’d handed Leo the day before was for my attending promotion.

My phone buzzed — a message from someone in HR.

[Dr. Lane — did you submit the wrong paperwork? There’s a 24-hour withdrawal window for high-risk missions. You can still pull it back.]

Leo and I had been together for seven years. We were both veterans of the Frontline Medical Corps, having just returned from a warzone rotation only three months ago. Everyone knew we were planning a wedding for next year, and house-hunting in the meantime.

My hands wouldn’t stop shaking.

I called him with the sharp smell of antiseptic still in my nose. “I got the deployment confirmation. Leo — why?”

He picked up on the second ring, his voice easy and unhurried. “Oh. That.”

“Chloe stopped by my office yesterday to go over some data and saw me working through your file. She said frontline units need trauma specialists like you, so she submitted it. Just as a joke.”

He paused, sounding as casual as if he were deciding what to order for lunch. “She just got out of med school. She gets carried away sometimes. It was a prank — she didn’t mean anything by it.”

“There’s a twenty-four-hour withdrawal window for this kind of thing. Just withdraw it.”

Chloe was the newest research assistant on Leo’s epidemiology team, young, effortlessly pretty, and the way she looked at Leo gave her away completely.

He knew perfectly well that any unchallenged application would be automatically approved after twenty-four hours, and a confirmed warzone posting meant at least two years.

“If I hadn’t caught this email, that transfer would’ve gone through.” My voice came out thin and strained.

He exhaled slowly, impatient, like I was the one wasting his time. “Stella, why are you making such a big deal out of this?”

“It was a joke. Chloe was going to tell you today anyway. Even if you’d missed the window, she would’ve fixed it by tomorrow.”

“You want to go to HR? Go ahead and report me too — I’m the one who gave her access to your files.”

He hung up.

I stood at the corridor window and looked out at the empty street below, the city quiet in the early morning. Seven years, and suddenly I wasn’t sure I’d ever known him at all.

All I had to do was reply to the email.

Instead, I pulled up the warzone medical database and started pulling files — epidemiology reports, trauma protocols, maps of the armed factions operating in the region.

My finger hovered over the withdrawal button, and then I took my hand away.

A colleague knocked on the on-call room door. “Dr. Lane, someone’s here asking for you at the front.”

Chloe was in the lobby, standing beneath a blood drive poster with two coffees in her hands. The moment she saw me, she crossed over with a wide smile.

“Dr. Lane.” She held out a cup.

“I just got off the phone with Dr. Vance. He’s putting together a team for a medical outreach trip in the Briarwood Mountains this weekend — do you think I should go?”

Her expression was open, her tone earnest, as though she genuinely wanted my opinion. It had been three months.

From the day this honors graduate from Aethelgard University joined Leo’s team, she’d been pushing boundaries over and over with that same innocent look on her face.

I took the coffee but didn’t drink it.

“What do you think?” I asked.

Chloe tucked a strand of hair behind her ear. “Honestly, I’m not sure. Dr. Vance says the program is really important, but I’d hate for you to get the wrong idea — you two are together, after all.”

“Then don’t go.”

She froze.

“Didn’t you come to ask my opinion?” I set the coffee down on the front desk. “There it is. Don’t go.”

Chloe’s expression shifted, but before she could say a word, the elevator opened. Leo stepped out, and his face tightened the second he saw us.

“Chloe, I told you to wait in the car. Why are you in here?”

“I wanted to check in with Dr. Lane. I didn’t want her feeling excluded.” Chloe lowered her head, injecting just enough hurt in her voice to make it land.

Leo patted her shoulder. “Don’t be ridiculous. Why would you ask her? I don’t need anyone’s permission to pick my own staff.”

He turned to me, worn out and impatient in equal measure. “She’s trying this hard to be considerate of you, and this is how you act?”

“Are you seriously still upset about the deployment thing?” Leo asked.

I pointed at Chloe. “She cares about my feelings? For three months she’s been bringing you breakfast and leaving those little notes — right in front of me.”

“She always finds a way to sit next to you in every meeting and keeps posting those pictures online. Who do you think she’s putting on that act for?”

“I’m your girlfriend. She’s throwing herself at you right in front of my face.”

“She plays the wide-eyed fangirl every single day. Doesn’t that make your skin crawl?”

“She calls me Dr. Lane to my face, but all she really wants is to step into my shoes and get her hands on everything yours.”

The color drained from Chloe’s face.

Leo looked at me like he didn’t recognize me. “Are you done? When did you get like this?”

“Chloe is on my team, and mentoring her is my job. Why do you have to twist everything into something dirty?”

“How does a normal mentorship turn into something this ugly in your head? Chloe’s not petty like that — she’s not going to hold this against you.”

“Apologize to her, and we can move past this,” Leo said firmly.

A laugh slipped out of me — sharp and humorless. “Are you out of your mind? Me, apologize to her? Not a chance in hell.”

“Stella, don’t push me.”

That word yanked me somewhere else — a field hospital in the Republic of Serevia, seven years ago, a stray bullet tearing through the canvas of the tent beside ours.

He’d pressed himself against me, shaking, and said, “Stella, you’re my lifeline.”

That lifeline wasn’t me anymore.

“Then we’re done.”

Leo sneered. “Fine. Don’t call me in the middle of the night when you change your mind.”

He grabbed Chloe by the arm and walked away. I could hear him saying to her as they went,

“Forget her. You’re coming with me to the outreach program this weekend.”