Chapter 1
Zoey's POV:
My mom's lumbar condition flared up so bad she could barely get out of bed without screaming in pain.
I waited two whole weeks to get a hospital slot, then brought her all the way to New York for treatment.
There were no regular beds available, so she had to lie on a temporary extra bed in the hallway, with barely enough space to even roll over.
I grabbed my fiancé Ian Armstrong, the hospital's chief physician, by the arm.
"Doesn't the hospital keep emergency family beds on reserve? Can you squeeze my mom into a proper room? The draft in this hallway is brutal."
He furrowed his brows, his face icy as he shut me down immediately. "I hate people pulling strings to cut corners more than anything. There are dozens of patients way worse off than your mom waiting for beds. Why should she get special treatment?"
My mom, Mathilda Martin, was lying on that hard cot, cold sweat beading all over her forehead from the pain, but she forced a wobbly smile to smooth things over for him.
"Zoey, I'm not cold at all. The hallway's nice and breezy. Don't make things hard for Ian.”
I felt a sharp sting in my nose.
I rounded the corner to go get hot water, and ran straight into him pushing a wheelchair, escorting Vivian Cox's mother into the largest private single room on the ward.
I froze outside the door, and I heard him speaking to her in a soft, coaxing tone.
"Hey, don't panic. Your mom just twisted her ankle going down the stairs, no bone damage at all. Let her stay here as long as she needs, okay? I'll come by personally to change her dressing every single day."
All the while, I could still hear my mom's quiet, pained whimpers drifting from the drafty hallway behind me.
My fingers clamped around the plastic water jug so hard my knuckles turned white.
For three whole years, he'd hidden behind holier-than-thou principles to turn down every small favor I'd ever asked of him, but the second Vivian's family needed something, he handed them every last bit of his special consideration without a second thought.
Right then, this whole relationship suddenly felt like nothing but filthy garbage I couldn't stand to touch for one more second.
*****
I stood stock-still outside the ward door and drew in a long, shaky breath. I turned on my heel and headed for the chief physician's office.
I was going to beg him one more time. Even if I had to pay out of pocket, I'd get Mom a regular ward room first.
Through the half-closed blinds, I spotted Ian standing by his desk. He was carefully binding a stack of surgical literature manuscripts into a volume.
That was the blood, sweat, and tears I'd poured into two straight weeks of all-nighters, flipping through dozens of dictionaries.
I'd organized every page specifically for his associate chief physician promotion review.
My wrists were plastered full of tendonitis patches from typing up every single word of those notes.
But right then?
He was scrawling a name in the first author slot on the manuscript's cover.
Vivian Cox.
I slammed the door open with a sharp thud, strode over in three quick steps, and clamped my hand down on the manuscript.
I flipped open the title page, and it was covered edge to edge with my handwritten revision notes.
"I pulled back-to-back all-nighters to put this together. Why the hell is her name on it?" My voice shook, and the edges of the tendonitis patches on my wrists were already peeling up.
Ian frowned slightly. There wasn't a single flicker of panic in his eyes at being caught red-handed. He flipped open a file on his desk and tapped a line of text with his finger.
"This is the hospital's overseas training quota for this year. Candidates have to have a foreign-language paper published to qualify. Zoey Martin, you're just a teacher at the medical college.
"These cardiac surgery research materials are useless in your hands, they'll never amount to any real clinical value. Vivian is different. She needs this manuscript badly to get her foot in the door for the training program."
What a load of crap.
He genuinely saw nothing wrong with taking my life's work to pave his childhood sweetheart's career path, and even called it 'maximizing resources' like it was the only logical call.
The door creaked open. Vivian walked in and leaned against Ian's shoulder like it was the most natural thing in the world.
She darted a dismissive glance at my hand pressed flat against the manuscript and snickered out loud, "Zoey, that red-pen scribble of yours looks just like a high schooler's chalkboard notes."
With that, she gave a sharp yank, tearing the manuscript right out from under my hand and flipping through a couple of pages.
"Med school teachers are so dedicated, huh? You even formatted these academic papers like you were prepping lesson plans. Thanks for the help.
"It's great we've got you to do all this low-level admin busywork for us. Oh, next time, widen the line spacing a little, yeah? Ian gets headaches looking at cramped text."
Ian lifted a hand and tucked a stray strand of hair behind Vivian's ear. He slid a medical file over to her.
"Go home and memorize these two pages of patient notes. They'll test this stuff in the fellowship interview."
Ian turned to look at me, his face cold and unapologetic. "The hospital board is taking this fellowship really seriously. Don't make a fuss over this petty stuff. If your mom has any issues, just press the call button to get a nurse."
He grabbed Vivian's bag off the desk. The two of them walked out of the office together, not even sparing me a second glance.
I stared down at my knuckles, washed pale and raw from years of constant scrubbing. All to cater to his obsessive germaphobia.
For three whole years, I'd taken care of every single chore around the house, and I'd never once gotten a manicure.
I pulled my wrist, dotted with tendonitis patches, back to my side.
My fingers curled tight around the 20,000 dollars in cash I'd just withdrawn from the bank that morning, stashed in my bag to pay for a better room for Mom.
I walked straight to the self-service kiosk by the nurse's station. I tapped the screen to upgrade to a regular inpatient bed at my own expense.
A sharp beep blared from the kiosk, and a bright red error box popped up on the screen: Patient status locked by an attending physician. Bed transfer is not permitted.
Just then, a fellow patient from the hallway yelled at the top of their lungs.
"Nurse! That old lady just passed out from the pain!"
