Chapter Fourteen: Her Crumbling Control

The operating room was her cathedral.

Bright light. Stainless steel. The soft hiss of ventilators and the steady pulse of the monitor. Sarah had lived half her life inside this rhythm, her hands the instruments of order where chaos reigned.

“Scalpel.”

The nurse placed the blade in her palm, handle first, like a sacred offering. Sarah inhaled, steady, as she made the first incision. Skin parted cleanly beneath her hand, the line precise, measured. She was known for that precision, the elegance of her cuts, the unshakable calm she carried into every surgery.

But today, her body betrayed her.

Her fingers trembled ever so slightly as the scalpel glided down, not enough for the scrub tech to notice, but enough that Sarah felt the quake ripple through her bones. She blinked hard, forcing her mind into the here and now.

You are in control. Focus.

But the flash came anyway, Liam’s chest under her palm, the quiver of his abs as he moaned, that shameless curl of his toes beneath the hospital sheet.

Her pulse stumbled.

“Retractor,” she said quickly, masking the falter in her breath.

The assistant slid it into the incision, opening the field. The patient’s ribs gleamed wetly under the lights, the delicate cage that guarded the heart. Sarah leaned closer, hands lifting with instinctive grace.

“Bypass ready?”

“Ready, Doctor.”

The perfusionist’s voice was steady, the machine primed. Sarah nodded, sliding seamlessly into the rhythm she knew better than her own heartbeat. Clamp. Cut. Suction. Suture. The patient’s chest opened to her like a puzzle she had solved a thousand times.

But her hands wouldn’t stop trembling.

Just enough to make the needle hesitate. Just enough to make the assistant glance at her, brow faintly furrowed.

Her chest tightened as she guided the suture through the delicate vessel. The thread slipped once, barely grazing the tissue before she corrected it. A mistake so small no one would write it in the chart. But in her world, her world of flawless reputation and surgical legend, it was a crack in the marble.

Her assistant’s eyes flickered to hers. She caught it. The subtle shift. He had seen.

Sarah swallowed hard. “Hemostat,” she ordered, voice clipped.

The tool was pressed into her palm. She worked faster, sharper, burying herself in the mechanics. But the intrusive thought clawed back, merciless.

Careful, Doctor. Your hands are trembling again.

Liam’s voice, velvet and lethal, cut through her skull.

Her pulse spiked, sweat prickling under her cap. She could almost feel him standing behind her, watching the quake in her fingers, smirking as though her entire body existed for his torment.

Her jaw locked. She forced another suture through, tighter this time. But the tremor worsened.

And then, the needle bent.

It was nothing. A disposable piece of steel. But in her hand, it felt like failure. A clean bend at the tip from too much pressure. The scrub nurse quickly replaced it, no words spoken, but Sarah’s stomach plummeted.

This wasn’t her. She never bent needles.

Her hands were supposed to be steady enough to stitch the wings of a hummingbird. But now, now they shook like a first-year resident’s.

She forced the rest of the graft closed, sealing it with stubborn precision, her breath shallow beneath the mask. Every motion was correct. Every step was by the book. But her body betrayed her with its trembling, her own skin foreign and untrustworthy.

At last, the heart beat strong under her repair. The monitors steadied. The operation was a success.

The patient would live.

But Sarah felt ruined.

She stripped her gloves with a snap, tossing them into the bin, her chest heaving under the sterile gown. The OR lights buzzed faintly above her, too hot, too bright. Her team moved efficiently, closing, cleaning, resetting for the next case. No one spoke of her slip. But she could feel their eyes.

She pressed her palms against the scrub sink, water cascading over trembling fingers. She watched them shake beneath the spray, her reflection in the steel faucet fractured and weak.

For the first time in twenty years, Sarah Smith doubted her own hands.

“Not as in control as you thought, are you?”

The voice came low, velvet, unmistakable.

Her breath froze.

She turned slowly, water dripping from her fingers, her heart jackhammering against her ribs.

And there he was.

Liam Hamilton, leaning against the tiled wall outside the scrub area, immaculate in a tailored suit, eyes dark and predatory. He looked like sin dressed in silk, his lips curved in that knowing smirk.

Watching her crumble.

The water still ran, splashing against porcelain, masking the silence that thickened between them.

Sarah’s pulse thundered. Her trembling hands curled into fists.

But Liam only tilted his head, eyes devouring her as though he could see every crack in her armor.

“You can stitch a heart,” he murmured, low and devastating. “But you can’t stitch yourself back together, can you?”