Chapter 6—A GHOST FROM HER PAST?

ALEXANDER KNOX

“Please, Doctor! Somebody help my son!”

The desperate cry reached me from across the reception area just as I was finishing a conversation with one of the hospital administrators. I turned instinctively toward the commotion, my attention immediately drawn to the man who had rushed through the entrance carrying an unconscious child in his arms.

The hospital lobby had been relatively calm only moments earlier, but everything changed as soon as the man's voice tore through the air. Nurses abandoned their conversations and hurried toward him, while several doctors emerged from the nearby corridors to see what was happening. The child's head was bleeding heavily, and there was enough blood staining his father's clothes to make even the most experienced physician uneasy.

I took a step forward, prepared to intervene if necessary, but then I saw Brea pushing through the crowd.

She moved with the calm efficiency I had come to recognize since joining the hospital. Her expression was focused, her posture straight, and there was no hesitation like I had seen in her the previous day when she had rejected our mate bond. Whatever complicated emotions existed between us, Brea was an excellent surgeon, and when a patient needed her, she never allowed anything to interfere with her work.

She reached the child and immediately began examining him, asking questions while the nurses prepared a trolley. From where I stood, I couldn't hear everything she was saying, but I could tell she had already taken control of the situation.

Then something changed.

I noticed it almost immediately.

Brea looked up.

Her eyes landed on the child's father.

And she stopped.

At first, I assumed she had noticed something medically significant. Perhaps she recognized the father's description of the accident, or perhaps she had seen something in the child's condition that concerned her. I waited for her to give another instruction.

She didn't.

She simply stared at the man and he stared back.

The distance between them wasn't great, yet the expression on both their faces made it seem as though they were standing on opposite sides of an enormous divide.

I frowned.

What the hell was going on?

I couldn't hear their conversation because the nurses surrounding them had begun speaking over one another, but the man's lips moved.

“...Brea?”

My attention sharpened.

He knew her.

Brea didn't answer.

Instead, she took a slow step backward.

A nurse noticed her strange behavior and approached cautiously.

“Doctor Brea, we need to move the patient to imaging. His pupils are reacting slowly, and his condition appears to be worsening.”

Brea didn't respond.

The nurse glanced toward Amelia, who was standing nearby and then back at Brea.

“Doctor Anderson?”

Still nothing.

I watched Brea's face carefully.

She had gone completely pale.

Her hands hung at her sides, but I could see them trembling from where I stood.

The father looked equally shaken, although his attention kept returning to his son.

“Doctor, please,” he said, his voice breaking as he looked toward Brea. “Whatever is wrong, please put it aside. My son needs help.”

She still didn't move.

I felt something tighten in my chest.

This wasn't Brea.

The woman I had met yesterday might have been guarded and stubborn, but she had been composed. Even when she rejected me, she had looked me directly in the eyes and told me exactly where she stood.

This woman looked as though she had been transported somewhere else entirely.

“Doctor Brea,” another nurse pleaded. “Please. We need you to make a decision.”

Her lips finally moved.

“I can't.”

The nurse stared at her.

“What?”

“I can't do this.”

The words were barely audible, but I heard them.

I immediately started walking toward them.

A surgeon could not freeze in the middle of an emergency.

Not when a child's life was hanging in the balance.

“What is happening?” I asked as I reached the group.

One of the nurses turned toward me.

“Doctor Knox, we don't know. Doctor Brea was examining the boy and then she suddenly stopped. She hasn't responded to us properly, and she refuses to continue treating him.”

I looked at Brea.

She wasn't even looking at me.

Her eyes remained fixed on the child's father.

I followed her gaze and noticed the man was still staring at her too.

There was something deeply personal in the way they looked at each other, something that made me feel as though I had walked into the middle of a conversation that had started years before I ever met either of them.

I didn't have time to figure it out.

The boy's condition came first.

I stepped toward Brea.

“Doctor Anderson, move aside.”

She didn't respond.

I tried again, keeping my voice firm.

“Brea, whatever is happening to you can wait. The child cannot.”

Her eyes finally moved toward mine.

There was so much pain in them that for a brief second, my anger disappeared.

I had never seen her look like that.

“Sir...” she whispered.

“I know you're upset, but I need you to step aside.”

She shook her head slowly.

“I can't.”

“Then get out of the way.”

The words came out harsher than I intended.

Her eyes widened.

I immediately regretted the tone, but the child's shallow breathing pulled my attention back to the trolley.

I moved around her, took hold of the trolley, and pulled the unconscious boy toward me.

“Amelia, you're coming with me.”

She immediately nodded.

“I'll get the surgical team ready.”

“Good. Tell anesthesia we're dealing with a serious head injury, and have radiology send the scans directly to the theater as soon as they're available. I want blood prepared as well. If this child has intracranial bleeding, we're not wasting a second.”

The nurses moved immediately.

“Let's go!”

The trolley began rolling toward the surgical wing.

I walked alongside it, giving rapid instructions as we moved, but my mind kept returning to Brea.

I glanced over my shoulder.

She hadn't moved.

She stood exactly where I had left her, staring after us as though she had just watched something disappear from her life.

I slowed for half a second.

I shouldn't have shouted at her.

Whatever had happened, she was clearly struggling with something far beyond a routine workplace disagreement.

But then my eyes landed on the child's father who was still standing in front of her.

And he was looking at her as though he had seen a ghost.

I narrowed my eyes.

Who was this man?

More importantly, why did Brea look as though his presence had ripped open a wound she had spent years trying to close?

I stopped near the entrance to the surgical wing and turned toward one of the nurses.

“Who is the child's guardian?”

She looked back toward the reception area.

“His father. The man who brought him in.”

“Call him.”

She hesitated.

“Doctor Knox?”

“I want him here. If we're taking his son into emergency surgery, I need the guardian available.”

“Yes, Doctor.”

The nurse hurried away.

I watched her approach the man, who seemed reluctant to leave Brea.

“Sir, Doctor Knox needs you in the surgical waiting area.”

He looked at her as though he hadn't heard.

“My son?”

“They're preparing him for surgery. Doctor Knox wants to speak with you.”

His eyes immediately shifted toward the operating wing.

Then, slowly, they returned to Brea.

For a moment, I wondered if he was going to ignore the nurse completely.

Instead, he finally nodded.

“Alright.”

He followed her.

I turned back toward the operating room.

The doors opened, and the surgical team wheeled the child inside.

“Let's save this boy.”

I scrubbed in with Amelia beside me, forcing every question about Brea out of my mind.

But as the doors closed behind us, one thought refused to disappear.

The man's reaction hadn't been that of a stranger.

He hadn't looked at Brea like a doctor.

He had looked at her like a man who had once known her intimately.

And whatever had happened between them...

It had nearly cost his son his life.