I Lost Our Baby While He Danced With Her Chapter 04

I Lost Our Baby While He Danced With Her Chapter 04

The smile died on Grant’s face like a severed nerve

“What did you just say?”

I turned the laptop toward him. Petition for Dissolution of Marriage: Ward v. Caldwell. Every clause in his favor The house,

The stock, his. The reputation, intact. All I’d written under my own name was one word: free.
“Sign it,” I said, “and you never have to explain a lipstick stain again.”

For a moment, the most controlled surgeon on the East Coast forgot how to breathe.

Then he sat down across from me, slowly, the way he approached a hemorrhage “Throwing a tantrum is one thing. Dragging it out stops being cute. You’re not a girl who can act up and still be adorable, Sienna.”

Of course I’m not. The only person he found adorable was currently posting gala selfies.

“Relax,” I said. “I don’t have the energy to fight you.”

He flipped through the printed copy with surgeon’s hands, and I watched his expression travel somewhere I’d never seen I go. The terms were a gift. There was nothing to hesitate over. Yet he slammed it down.

I’ve told you a thousand times-don’t bring personal emotions into work.”

“It’s lunch,” I said calmly. “Off the clock. Personal hours, personal matters.”

His prepared lecture died in his throat. For the first time in five years, I watched Grant Caldwell look embarrassed. Funny- e hadn’t looked embarrassed the first time I caught him with Bree.

It took him a long moment to find a new angle. “This document is emotional Sloppy. Unprofessional. You call this legal vork? Grow up, Janice- he caught himself, -Sienna.”

He couldn’t even keep my name straight while destroying my marriage.

He confiscated the agreement His words a document this unprofessional would never be ‘allowed to circulate” As if my reedom were a typo he could redline out of existence

Back at my desk, I didn’t sit idle If he wanted to grade my paperwork, fine-let him grade this.

I drafted a resignation letter and emailed it directly. His inbox drowned in correspondence daily, I assumed I had two daye of peace.

It took him ninety seconds

His office door swung open hard enough to rattle the glass. He stood in the doorway, and the entire trauma department stopped breathing

“Dr. Ward. In here. Now

Renee leaned over, whispering, “Did he swallow gunpowder? Blink twice and I’ll fake a code blue to rescue you.”

I shook my head, grateful, and walked in. The door slammed behind me. I winced for the glass.

“What exactly are you trying to pull?”

I swept the room with my eyes. Bree’s perfume still hung in the air. Two empty antihistamine blisters in the trash. Faint red plotches climbing his neck-he was literally allergic to his own affair and still wouldn’t open a window.

“You said it yourself,” I told him. “Don’t bring emotions into work. So what exactly are you doing right now?”

His composure cracked clean down the middle. And then he said the words I’d been waiting five years to hear.

“If you don’t want to work, then get out. Get out of my hospital.”

I’d been waiting for exactly that. I smiled-really smiled-said “Okay,” and went to pack my desk.

For the first time in years, my whole body felt light.

No one dared ask what happened. I was the boss’s protégé, as far as they knew; his cruelty toward me had always been ead as mentorship. Only Renee’s keyboard sparked in our chat window-a wall of exclamation marks and one question: Do

ou need help?

She didn’t know who I was to him. She just knew that Grant Caldwell’s reach covered every hospital in this state, and that vhatever I’d done, no department head would risk his wrath to hire me.

I checked into a hotel and slept twelve dreamless hours.

By morning, it was done. He’d announced it personally: Dr. Ward is no longer permitted on Caldwell Memorial property.

ban. Within a week, the whispers crossed state lines-what could she possibly have done to make Grant Caldwell that

urious?

Bad news travels a thousand miles. Every résumé I sent came back as silence.

Every one-except the last.

The interview invitation came from the one hospital I’d applied to as a joke.

Pierce Memorial.

Owned by Dr. Nolan Pierce-the only man alive who hated Grant Caldwell more than I did.

And the only man who’d spent ten years telling anyone who’d listen that I was a doormat beyond saving.