Chapter 7: Scarlett Fox

Scarlett's POV 

"Talk me through what you're seeing."

Silence from the observation gallery above. The kind that meant the residents up there was deciding between answering wrong or not answering at all. I kept my hands exactly where they were, the mitral valve exposed, posterior leaflet repairs, annulus reshaped and holding, and waited with the patience of someone who had learned that silence was its own kind of pressure.

"The.... the repair looks symmetrical," a voice finally said. A female in her third year. The one who'd spent the last two hours taking notes instead of watching until I'd quietly pointed out that no exam would ever ask her to describe what a valve looked like from a gallery.

"Looks symmetrical," I said. "Or is symmetrical?"

"It is symmetrical." She said after a while. "The movement on both sides is matching which means the tension is even."

"And why does it matter to you at 3 AM when this patient is back in your ICU and something feels wrong?"

"Because uneven tension means one side is compensating." She said hesitantly. "Over time that creates new stress points and...."

"New failure." I placed the final suture. "You're not here to watch surgery. You're here to understand what happens when surgery goes wrong. Keep that distinction." I stepped back. "Close for me, Dr. Miller."

My first assistant moved in without a word. Eight hours in and he still worked like it was the first hour, focused , clean, no wasted movement. It had taken me fourteen months to build that out of him and he'd hated twelve of those. Last week he'd thanked me in the corridor and I'd accepted it without making it into something it wasn't.

I stripped off my outer gloves and walked out while the monitors held their steady rhythm behind me. The patient was stable and the vitals were strong. Another successful surgery.

The scrub room was empty. I turned the water as hot as it could go, the one thing I allowed myself after a long surgery, because my lower back had developed strong opinions about eight hours of standing and those opinions were loud and entirely mine to manage in private.

I turned the tap off and reached for a towel, I caught my reflection. The surgical cap still on, I pulled the cap off slowly, then the mask, and the face in the mirror was thirty-seven and certain in a way that twenty-seven had never managed.

I changed out of my scrubs and the scar appeared the way it always did. Low on my stomach and horizontal. The physical record of thirty-five weeks of a pregnancy that should've killed me, two babies who came into this world early and furious, and a delivery that had gone long enough that everyone in that room had been praying to something.

I pressed two fingers against and the memories came flooding in, sudden and unwanted.

Spencer had slid the documents across the bed. I'd looked at the name for a long time. Scarlett Fox. I thought it would fit. He'd said and I hadn't answered. I'd just looked at the name until it started feeling less like a stranger's and more like something I could survive being.

My back made its complaint when I straighten. I adjusted without thinking about it, it was the same small correction I'd been making for ten years.

The door opened.

"You've been in for eight hours." Lauren Oxford walked in carrying two cups of coffee, which meant she wanted to make a point because Lauren never brought coffee unless the point required reinforcement. "Carter briefed me, said the patient's stable."

"Then you don't need a report from me." I took the cup.

"The third-year are calling you something." She leaned against the counter.

"They're always calling me something." I said, unbothered.

"Ice Queen." The corner of her mouth curved slightly. "Apparently it's official now, they even made a vote."

Something shifted in my chest. "I've been called worse."

Lauren looked at me for a moment, then she set her cup down. "I guess the name fits."

"hey've learned more in my OR this rotation than any other and you have the assessment scores to confirm that." I drank the coffee. "Fear is just respect with better posture."

Lauren looked at me for a moment with the expression she reserved for things she decided not to argue about.

"Go home," she said. "The notes will wait."

"The...."

"Dr. Miller can submit the post-op." She took the coffee cup back with the authority of someone removing a reason to stay. "You have kids. Go be their mother for twelve hours. The hospital will still be here tomorrow, unfortunately."

I didn't argue, I just left.

The parking garage was quiet. I dropped into the driver's seat and felt my back make its opinion known ome more time before settling into something manageable. I pulled out the building and my phone connected to the car before I'd made it half a block. It rang immediately and I answered.

"Hello..."

"MOM." Aiden's voice came through the speaker at a volume that suggested he'd been holding it in too long. "Okay so first of all Val is completely wrong about the soccer thing and I need you to know that before she gets to talk because she's going to make it sound like I'm the problem but I'm not the problem...."

"Aiden...."

"... second uncle Spencer made pasta which was good but Val added something to it without telling anyone and now it tastes like a garden, it wasn't bad, just unexpected, and I got my math test, it was totally fine, but I want to discuss the grading system because I think..."

"Aiden." I said again, quiet and firm.

"Yeah?"

"One thing at a time." I said gently.

He paused. "Right, okay. The soccer thing."

"Let me talk to your sister."

A brief dramatic silence, then shuffling. Then Valeria's voice and the temperature in the car dropped ten degrees in the best possible way.

"Hi Mom." Val's voice settled over the car, calm and ordered. The voice of someone who had never once sent a text without punctuation. "Homework is done. Both of us, before you ask. Dinner was pasta with lemon and capers, which is an actual recipe from an actual cookbook, not weird. Aiden's math test was an A minus which is being dramatic about."

"I wasn't being dramatic...." Aiden said in the background.

"You cried." Val said sharply.

"I did NOT...." Aiden tone was defensive."I had something in my eyes..."

"In both eyes? At the same time?"

Spencer's voice came through, cutting over both of them with the practiced ease of someone who had been doing this for nine years. "Okay, phone's mine now." A beat of quiet. "Sorry about that, I thought it would be a normal conversation."

"When has it ever been a normal conversation?" I asked with a small smile.

"True." I could hear the smile in it. "Surgery went okay?"

"The patient's stable."

"Expected." He said it the way he always said it. "Saturday I'll take them by nine. You sleep."

"Spence..."

"You did an eight-hour surgery on four hours of sleep." He paused. "Drive home safely, Scarlett."

The call ended. I was still smiling, that helpless smile that only those three could produce.

A red light came up and I stopped, and looked up.

CRUZ FOUNDATION ANNUAL GALA: AN EVENING OF EXCELLENCE 

It had gold letters on black. The name sat on a billboard in my city like it had always been there.

The light turned green and I drove.

I turned onto my street and didn't think about it at all.