LITMIR.BIZ

       CHAPTER ONE

      NURSE PRACTITIONER YSABELLE SABETTA signed the last page of her employment paperwork and slid the bundle back across the desk.

      No matter how many times she did it, her first day in a new facility always filled Belle with a mix of excitement and anxiety. She did it a lot, in fact, since she had only worked in contracted, short-term positions since she’d been accredited, first at home in Arizona, and then in neighboring southwestern states. This time the process was different: she’d taken the position straight out, and still wasn’t sure why she’d done that. Once the signings were complete, she’d be a full-time employee of a Manhattan hospital.

      Her sister would’ve approved of this move, living in New York, a city they’d always felt linked to by their grandmother, who’d been born and raised in Queens, but followed to Arizona the injured soldier she’d fallen for while tending him in Korea during the war.

      After a lifetime of Nanna’s stories about magical New York Christmases, the girls had vowed to make it there for the Christmas season so many times, but Belle had only made it after Noelle died.

      She was never supposed to be there alone. But she was. She’d been there three days and although she was able to keep clear-headed most of the time, sometimes the world around her seemed to have sped up or she’d slowed down, as if she was out of pace with not only the city, but reality. The world didn’t spin, but the sensation was there deep in her chest, as if her inner gyroscope were broken and everything around her were spinning.

      Nothing good could come from dwelling on it right now. Not on her first day. Really not on her first day in the biggest city she’d ever visited, let alone moved to—a place that might be too big for her, too much for her.

      She had no idea what she might encounter, aside from the sort of situations depicted in horror-story documentaries about life in the ER, and sexy television medical dramas. Which narrowed expectations down to removing some bizarre item from a place it should’ve never been stuck, and a sexy rendezvous in the supply room with an arrogant ladies’ man who saved lives in between supply-room romps.

      Or maybe she’d be taken hostage by an injured criminal who somehow had gotten a disposed syringe from the sharps container, filled with a mysterious cleaning fluid, and stabbed her in the neck while threatening to fill her carotid with something caustic and deadly if they didn’t give him a helicopter and a million dollars in untraceable bills. Anything was possible.

      What curdled this morning’s coffee was more terror-tinged anxiety than excitement, mixed with the nitroglycerin-like certainty that she’d made a terrible mistake. That New York was too big for her, even outside work. She’d always been the timid twin—Noelle could stare down a dragon and Belle had once been cowed by a grumpy chihuahua.

      “I hope you’ll enjoy your time at Sutcliffe Memorial, Ms. Sabetta.” The woman handling her paperwork smiled, showing no teeth and no warmth. A smile with too much knowing in it to inspire confidence, as if she could read anxiety in Belle’s penmanship.

      She peered at her signature, half convinced she’d see the same shakiness that had seeped into Nanna’s penmanship near the end.

      Once again, Ms. Masterson went over the guidelines of the probationary period, delineating the date where she’d become officially an employee of Sutcliffe, and the restrictions. Belle initialed where appropriate, and kept up the polite conversation expected of her. “I’ll look forward to that date and...”

      Muffled alarm bounced off the closed office door, stalling her words and kicking her pulse up a notch.

      Raised voices.

      A woman’s voice. Maybe the assistant who’d seen her in earlier. What had she said?

      She twisted to look at the door, muscles tense, ready to run one way or another, then turned again to Masterson. It was her office. If she should be alarmed by the commotion, as the prickling sensation on the back of Belle’s neck argued, Masterson would show it.

      People shouted in hospitals more than one would think. People in pain couldn’t be faulted, but that wasn’t the only reason people lost control. Emotions ran high where life-and-death decisions happened. People got angry. Sometimes people were delusional and not capable of controlling outbursts. Sometimes, even more sadly, outbursts were prompted by mind-altering substances.

      But this office was nowhere near treatment facilities. It was an office at the end of a hallway packed with other offices.

      Masterson’s calm, slow head tilt didn’t clarify whether Belle’s alarm was unfounded, but the shift of her gaze over Belle’s shoulder to the door behind her said enough. Paying extra attention to a commotion? A distinct reason for alarm.

      Unable to help herself, as the voices continued—now with a deep, clipped masculine voice breaking through—Belle twisted back to watch the door in case a madman burst in.

      “Should we check?”

      The sudden swing of the door, combined with that hyper-alert prickling of her skin, launched her from the chair. She whirled to face the coming danger, every muscle balled and ready to do...something.

      A tall, broad-shouldered man in scrubs strode in, a sheet of paper held in one hand—not a weapon. He glanced at her, but she clearly wasn’t who he’d come to see, as his glacial blue eyes returned to Masterson, still in her chair, far more at ease than Belle.

      Past him, she could see the assistant hovering in the doorway, looking apologetic and worried.

      “I’m not doing it,” the man said without preamble, giving the paper a flick to send it fluttering onto Masterson’s desk. “I’ve told you twice, I’ll not be dragged into this holiday madness. I’m not my brother—he can be Administration’s puppet.”

      He had an accent, there but slight, and the man projected such unpleasantness, she didn’t want the little thrill his accent stirred. Didn’t want to examine it.

      It reminded her of a person who’d spent their first ten years in another country but moved early enough to nearly lose their original accent. However, the clipped, perfectly enunciated words were like another language entirely; fluent irritation was the strongest accent she heard, strong enough it was impossible to miss.

      “Your brother isn’t a puppet, Dr. McKeag,” Masterson said, reaching for the paper to read it.

      The fact that Belle had leaped from her seat as one might a burning building went blessedly unacknowledged, but that did nothing to diminish the creeping sense of foolishness inching down her spine. Still standing out of the way of an irritated, paper-wielding doctor? All remnants of

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