~ Elena ~
I hated Dr. Marcus Hale with every tired bone in my body.
It was 2:17 a.m. again, and I was still in the nurses’ station, charting the last three patients while the rest on the night shift had gone home.
My feet burned inside my white sneakers.
My scrubs stuck to my back from sweat.
The hospital was quiet except for the low beep of monitors and the distant hum of the air conditioning.
Dr. Hale had done this to me for six straight months.
He was the top surgeon on the floor — tall, broad-shouldered, with sharp green eyes and a voice that could cut through steel.
Patients loved him, the hospital board loved him. But the nurses? We called him the Machine behind his back because he never left early. He never let us leave early either.
Every time a complicated case came
