Twisted Hate (Twisted, 3)

“You forgot to ask about their allergies,” I snapped. “How am I supposed to treat a patient properly if I don’t have all the relevant information? This is the ER, Lucy. We can’t afford any kind of fuckups.”

Lucy shrank back from my harsh tone.

I usually had a great working relationship with the nurses, but I was too irritated by the sting of antiseptic in the air, the clicks of the keyboard at the nurses’ station, the squeak of shoes against the linoleum floors…basically everything.

I ignored the heat of Clara’s glare from several feet away. It wasn’t my fault if people were incompetent.

“I’m sorry,” Lucy said, her face pale. “I’ll make sure to remember next time.”

“Good.” I turned on my heel and left, not bothering to say goodbye.

“Don’t stress about it,” I heard Clara say behind me. “It was your first mistake since you started working here. You’ve been doing a great job.”

She caught up with me a minute later, her irritation as sharp as the one running through my veins. “Doctor, can I speak with you? Alone.”

“I’m busy.”

“You can make time.” Clara yanked me into the nearest side hallway. Doctors and nurses rushed past us, too caught up in their own work to pay us much attention. “What the hell is wrong with you?”

Her eyes bore into mine, equal parts concerned and annoyed.

“Nothing is wrong with me. I’m doing my job. Or I would be, if someone wasn’t holding me up.” I leveled her with a pointed stare.

“Does your job include alienating every person in the ER? If so, you’re the Employee of the Month,” Clara said coolly. “I don’t know what’s wrong, but you’ve been acting like a boor for the past week. So here’s my advice, both as a nurse and your friend. Cut that shit out, or you’ll ruin everything you’ve worked for the past three years. No one likes an asshole doctor.” She jabbed her finger at my chest. “Next patient. Room four. We don’t have time for your moodiness right now, so I suggest you set whatever the fuck is bothering you aside and stop making it harder on everyone else around you. You want to do your job? Then do your job.”

She stalked off and disappeared around the corner.

I stood there for several stunned seconds before I released a sharp exhale.

Clara was right. I’d been acting like a grade-A ass. What happened last week had messed me up, and I’d been taking it out on everyone around me.

My jaw flexed when I remembered my breakup with Jules, but I didn’t have time to dwell on that right now.

I had a job to do, and I’d already wasted valuable time.

I checked the patient’s information in the hospital’s online system before entering the room. She was female, aged twenty-four, named…

My skin chilled right as the words sharpened onscreen.

Jules Ambrose.

You’ve gotta be shitting me.

It had to be another Jules Ambrose. The universe wouldn’t have that fucked up of a sense of humor.

But when I pushed open the door to room four with a shaking hand, there she was, looking like she’d stepped right out of my most beautiful nightmare.

She stared back at me, her eyes wide with shock. A nasty cut slashed across the corner of her forehead and hit me like a punch in the gut.

Jules. Hurt.

Time slowed into one endless, painful beat. It was so quiet I could count each individual thud of my pulse.

One. Two. Three.

You’d think a week would be long enough to blunt the serrated edges of my pain, but you’d be wrong. They raked against my insides, making me bleed all over again, but they were nothing compared to the worry raging in my gut.

How the hell did Jules get that cut? What if it was infected? What if she—

Jules shifted, and the soft squeak of leather finally dragged me out of my trance.

In this room, we weren’t exes.

She was a patient; I was her doctor. This wasn’t the time to wallow in our personal history or freak out over one small cut…no matter how much the sight of her blood made my heart twist.

“I’m Dr. Chen.” I spoke in a clipped, professional tone, thankful none of my inner turmoil bled through.

I would treat Jules like I would any other patient—one I didn’t know.

The more distance I placed between us, the better.

“Hi, Dr. Chen. I’m Jules.” The tiniest of tentative smiles played on her mouth and stole the breath right out of my fucking lungs.

Focus.

Thank God my attending physician wasn’t here. As a third-year resident, I usually started the patient encounter before telling my attending, who’ll see the patient on his own after I gave him the pertinent information.

If my attending were here, he would not have approved of how distracted I was. He could always tell when my head wasn’t in the game.

Clara had already checked Jules’s ABC’s—airway, breathing, and circulation—so I jumped straight into the questions, hoping they’d ground me.

“What happened?” I stared at my clipboard like it was the most fascinating thing I’d ever seen. The less I looked at her, the less likely I was to cave like a cheap umbrella during a thunderstorm. I was still pissed at her. One injury didn’t change that.

She’s fine. It’s just a cut.

“I fell down the stairs,” she said quietly.

My hand stilled for a fraction of a second before I continued my notes. My heart thumped so loud it almost drowned out my next words. “How many stairs were there?”

“Maybe a dozen? I’m not sure.”

Fuck. Sweat coated my skin at the mental image of Jules crumpled at the bottom of a flight of stairs. I almost reached for her the way I would’ve had we still been dating, but I forced my personal feelings aside and examined her extremities for injuries.

I couldn’t find any physical wounds except for the cut on her forehead and a couple of bruises, but that didn’t mean she was in the clear.

The sweat intensified as the worst-case scenarios for all possible internal injuries flashed through my mind.

Stop. She’s your patient. That’s it. 

“Did you hit your head?” It was an obvious question, given the cut, but I had to ask.

Jules nodded.

“Did you pass out?”

“Yes.”

I swallowed the lump in my throat and ran through the rest of my questions.

Are you taking any blood thinners? No.

Is there any chance you’re pregnant? No.

“Are you hurting anywhere in particular right now?”

My question hung between us, thick with unspoken meaning.

Despite everything that happened between us, the thought of Jules hurt made it so fucking hard to breathe.

“My head, shoulder, and lower back.”

“What about your neck?” I felt along her C-spine and breathed a silent sigh of relief when she didn’t flinch. “Does it hurt?”

Jules shook her head. “No. It’s just the places I mentioned. Physically, anyway,” she added softly.

The air thinned while the ache in my chest intensified.

She was so close I could hear her breathing.

I’d forgotten how much I loved that sound—the sound of her just existing, reminding me that no matter how fucked up the world got, there was at least one good thing in it.

At least, there used to be.

I set my jaw and finished the physical examination as quickly as possible. “Right. I’ll order a CT scan, just in case.” My crisp words bounced through the fluorescent-lit room, erasing any hint of softness. “How did you fall down the stairs?”

A long silence passed before she answered. “Someone pushed me.”

I stared at her, sure I’d heard wrong. “Someone pushed you.”

Jules nodded, her lips tight. “I was walking down the stairs after my bar exam. I was distracted, so I wasn’t paying much attention to my surroundings. The person…surprised me, and they pushed me when I tried to get away. I hit my head and passed out. When I woke up, I was in the back of a taxi with a woman, someone I recognized from the testing site. She said she’d just entered the stairwell when she heard me fall, but she didn’t see anyone else. She dropped me off at the hospital and, well, here I am.”

She relayed what happened in a matter-of-fact manner, but the slight shake in her voice told me the incident freaked her out more than she let on.

Slow, poisonous rage oozed into my bloodstream.

I wasn’t a stranger to anger, but I’d never felt like this before.

Like I wanted to hunt down the person responsible and rip them apart with my bare fucking hands.

“Who?” My calm voice belied the violence brewing in my stomach. “Who did this to you?”

She said the person surprised her. Judging from her tone, it was someone she knew.

I guessed the answer before she told me.

“Max.” Apprehension crept into Jules’s eyes, like she was afraid of how I’d react to the name, and for good fucking reason.

Max. The guy who had a sex tape of her. Who blackmailed her into stealing from me. Who put his fucking hands on her and destroyed the only beautiful thing in my life…us.

My rage deepened, tinting my world a bloody crimson.

“I see.” I betrayed none of the emotion roaring through my chest. “I’m going to make some arrangements for your CT scan. I’ll be right back.”

I left the room and pulled out my phone. It took me less than two seconds to shoot Alex a text.

Me: I need you to find someone for me.