Page 16 of Yours to Keep

I kept scrolling, but it didn’t seem to stop. Already, there were thousands of comments, shares, and even memes. Someone had put a little party hat on my head with cartoon tears flying from my eyes and someone else had made a caricature, Grinch version of me.

My jaw clenched and my ears were ringing, but by the time I slammed the laptop shut, I knew exactly who was behind this. Liana opened my door before I could stand up to go find Bree, her phone in her hand and laughing so hard she had to brace herself against the doorframe.

“Oh my God,” she said. “You’re trending.”

“I am not trending,” I snapped.

She held up her phone. “You absolutely are. Look, someone Photoshopped you holding a balloon that says, ‘NO FUN.’”

I pinched the bridge of my nose. “This hospital is full of children.”

“Correction,” she said lightly. “This hospital is full of people, and you yelled at them for singing happy birthday.”

“I did not yell.” She raised an eyebrow and I sighed. “Fine. I didn’t yell much.”

She finally came in, perching herself on the edge of the table and smiling at me. “For what it’s worth, I think it’s kind of funny.”

“I don’t.”

“I know,” she said. “That’s why it’s funny. It’s ‘cause it’s true, big brother.”

I leaned back in my chair. “She did this.”

“Who?” Liana asked.

“Bree Bennett.”

Liana grinned. “I knew I liked her.”

“This is not amusing,” I said sharply. “It’s a fucking PR nightmare and it’s happening at the worst possible time.”

“You’ve had a rocky start here at the hospital,” she said gently. “You always think you know better than anyone else, but is it possible that maybe you were just a little wrong here?”

“The hospital isn’t the problem,” I said. “It’s one employee.”

She studied me for a long moment. “Maybe, but have you considered that you might be in over your head with this one?”

I hummed a noncommittal sound that Liana took for the dismissal it was. She slid her phone back into her pocket and left, and once she was gone, I got up, slid open the old filing cabinet in the corner, and pulled out a bottle of scotch.

I poured myself a drink. Two fingers. Neat. Then I sat alone in the conference room with the glow of my laptop reflecting off the glass walls and scrolled through all the many jokes being made at my expense.

This was a hiccup I had not anticipated, but as aggravating as it was, I wouldn’t let a simple nurse throw a wrench into my grand plans for the fifth floor. Even if she had a talent for lighting fires wherever she went.

My journey to get as far as I had hadn’t always been smooth sailing. Crowne Medical hadn’t been handed to me on a silver platter merely by virtue of my birth. I had clawed my way to where I was, becoming Sullivan Crowne, a man who wasn’t about to lie down or roll over just because some keyboard warriors were making fun of me.

Let them think whatever they wanted. At the end of the day, my bank account spoke for itself, and so did the advancements my company made. It was all fun and games until someone got sick, and I was going to make this the premier medical destination to come to when that happened. No joke, meme, or caricature could ever speak louder than that.

7

BREE

I’d checked on all my patients. Joyce was gas-free and appropriately remorseful about the chili dogs. Mr. Alvarez had finally agreed to take the walker instead of pretending his hip wasn’t about to crumble into dust.

Emily, who’d had her birthday party so rudely interrupted even after so far putting in twenty years at Saint Raphael’s and being a saint in scrubs, was settled in for the night shift with a cup of coffee. My charts were updated and my notes were clean, so finally, I clocked out.

But I didn’t go home. Instead, I detoured to an empty workstation, logged in, and printed twenty-seven identical flyers.

They were simple, a stock photo of a slice of cake with a red circle around it and a diagonal line slashed through the middle. Beneath it, in very official-looking font, I’d typed the words: