Chapter 3
After finishing the last word, Morgan collapsed onto the couch, feeling utterly defeated, like every ounce of energy and spirit had been drained from him.
I walked over, picked up the papers still warm from his touch, blew gently on the ink to dry it, and said calmly, "Remember, you begged me for this.
"From now on, I'm not your wife anymore, Morgan.
"I'm the doctor you hired, with 31% of the Arthur Group and your father's life on the line. I'm Eileen Funk."
On the way to the hospital, Morgan was behind the wheel, driving so fast it felt like we were about to fly off the road.
The tension in the car was so thick you could cut it with a knife.
He opened his mouth to speak several times, but every time he caught sight of my frosty expression, he just clamped his lips shut.
He pulled a first aid kit from the glove compartment, trying to bandage my hands, which were still bleeding.
"Let me take care of it..." he said.
But as soon as his hand reached for mine, I jerked away, letting my blood smear across his leather seat, leaving a glaring red mark.
"Don't touch me," I said coldly. "You're dirty."
His hand hung awkwardly in the air, humiliation and pain flashing across his face.
It was dirty.
Wasn't it him who called my hands filthy?
I was handing that insult right back to him, just as it was.
When we arrived at the hospital, the emergency entrance was already cleared out. Gavin was there, waiting anxiously at the door with the rest of the department's top doctors.
When they saw me being helped out of the car by Morgan, everyone sucked in a sharp breath.
But when they caught sight of my hands, wrapped haphazardly in bloodstained gauze, every doctor's face went pale.
"Eileen!" Gavin was the first to rush over. When he saw how bad I looked, his usually gentle eyes turned red with worry. "Your hands... What happened?"
I didn't answer him, didn't even spare him a glance.
I swept my gaze over the doctors around me, ignoring their looks of shock, sympathy, or the ones who seemed secretly glad, and gave my orders.
My voice wasn't loud, but everyone in the room heard me.
"Get the top-tier OR ready immediately. All vital signs need to be projected in real-time onto the big screen in the observation room.
"Gavin, you're my first assistant.
"Now."
Everyone was awed into silence by my commanding presence.
Morgan instinctively tried to stop me. "Your hands..."
I shot him a look, and he fell silent.
He couldn't get another word out.
I was wheeled away by the nurses, heading down the surgical corridor, with everyone's eyes fixed on me.
Morgan was left standing there alone, clutching the agreement in his hand, an agreement that could bankrupt him and ruin his name for good.
He knew that from the moment I stepped into the hospital, the rules of this cruel game he started had been completely rewritten.
The surgical lights overhead were blindingly bright.
The air was thick with the cold, sterile scent of disinfectant mixed with the metallic tang of blood.
I wasn't in scrubs, just sitting in a wheelchair in the corner, my hands immobilized with simple splints by the nurses, resting limply on my lap.
It was humiliating, sitting there like that.
To a surgeon, a life without the operating table, without the scalpel in hand, was a life not worth living.
On the huge electronic screen, the operating table was shown in sharp detail, along with Adam Arthur's vital signs. Those pulsing lines and numbers used to be like old friends to me.
At the main surgeon's spot stood Gavin, my junior colleague.
He was in deep green scrubs, mask and gloves on, but I could still spot the tension in his shoulders and the way his hands trembled ever so slightly.
This surgery was the stuff of nightmares, brutally difficult, even for the best.
"The heart had been pierced by glass, shards lodged deep in the muscle, right next to the aorta. One tiny slip, and the artery would rupture — the patient would bleed out in seconds.
"
No one in the entire department, or even across the city, had the guts to take this on. Except me.
"Eileen... I..." Gavin's voice came through the mic, hesitant and unsure.
In the observation room, hospital administrators, all the top cardiologists, and professors were glued to the screen, the tension so thick you could cut it with a knife.
I closed my eyes, forcing down all my emotions. When I opened them again, only icy calm and laser focus remained.
I spoke into the microphone at my ear.
My voice wasn't loud, but it carried clearly through the speakers, reaching every corner of the operating room.
"Gavin, don't look at me. Watch the monitors," I said.
"Now, take a number 15 blade. Make a 15-centimeter incision at the third intercostal space below the xiphoid process."
There was an uncanny steadiness in my voice, and Gavin's nerves settled instantly.
He collected himself and began to work with surgical precision, just as I told him.
"Open the chest," I said.