Chapter 4

Before the locker room drama could wrap up, my emergency pager screamed to life, followed by a frantic call from the ER.

"Dr. Lin! Stat! Mr. Vance suffered a massive hemorrhagic stroke! His condition is critical—he specifically requested you as the lead surgeon!"

Harrison Vance. The titan behind a multi-billion-dollar tech conglomerate, a living legend in the industry.

And the very whale Logan’s company had been desperately begging to partner with for years.

I forced the pain in my back down, instantly snapping into surgeon mode: "Prep OR One. I'm on my way."

Inside the operating room, the atmosphere was suffocatingly tense.

Piper, who happened to be on rotation as the circulating nurse, had also been assigned to the room.

Her eyes were red and swollen from her earlier performance, her mind clearly miles away from the sterile field.

The surgery reached its most dangerous, delicate phase.

Mr. Vance's intracranial pressure spiked violently, blood obscuring the operative field.

"Hemostat! Now!" I barked, extending my gloved palm without looking away from the microscope.

Piper had been lurking in the corner, secretly texting Logan on her phone. Startled by my shout, she panicked, snatched an instrument off the tray, and shoved it toward my hand.

The moment my fingers closed around it, the weight was wrong.

A vascular clamp, not a hemostat!

In a field where fractions of a millimeter mean the difference between life and brain death, an amateur mistake like this was lethal.

"Are you blind?! I said hemostat!" I snapped fiercely.

Rattled by my shout, her hands shook violently.

She knocked the sterile instrument tray over, sending surgical steel clattering and crashing across the tiled floor.

Worse, her unsterile forearm brushed right against the sterile drape—contaminating the entire operative field!

*Beep—Beep—BEEP—!*

The vitals monitor wailed a shrill alarm.

Vance's blood pressure plummeted off a cliff; his heart rate spiked uncontrollably.

The anesthesiologist shouted, "Patient is in V-Fib! Charge the paddles!"

Piper stood paralyzed, shivering in terror, babbling like an idiot: "It wasn't me... I didn't do it..."

"Get the hell out of my OR!"

I shoved her aside and instantly barked out backup protocols.

"Swap out the sterile field! Re-drape immediately! Charge defibrillator to 200 joules, clear!"

I forced my heart rate down, my mind calculating at lightning speed.

Relying on the muscle memory and sheer instinct forged over thousands of grueling neurosurgeries, I literally fought Death with my bare hands.

Every suture, every cauterization was executed with clinical, pinpoint precision.

Sweat poured down my forehead, stinging my eyes like acid, but I didn't dare blink.

Finally, after three agonizing hours.

The jagged lines on the monitor smoothed into a steady, rhythmic sinus rhythm.

I collapsed into a stool, my hands trembling ever so slightly with adrenaline.

Harrison Vance’s life was officially saved.

I had barely stepped out of the OR, still soaked in sweat under my scrubs, when Logan stepped out of the corridor shadows, flanked by several people.

Alongside him stood the hospital director, as well as several high-ranking executives from Logan's tech firm.

"Director, she’s the one!"

Logan pointed an accusatory finger at me. "Chloe Lin let her personal grudges cloud her professional judgment! She intentionally harassed and bullied Piper White during a critical procedure, nearly causing a catastrophic medical failure!"

"If she hadn't lost her temper like a lunatic, how could Mr. Vance have nearly coded on the table?!"

Piper stood beside him, weeping pathetically, holding up a smartphone playing an audio clip.

It was the recording from the locker room earlier—viciously spliced and edited to make it sound like I was an unhinged, abusive bully terrorizing a junior nurse.

The hospital director’s face was dark as thunder. "Dr. Lin, do you have any idea who Mr. Vance is?! How could you bring your petty domestic drama into a sterile operating room?!"

"This is a massive clinical safety violation! Logan’s firm is a major philanthropic partner of this facility—we demand an immediate explanation!"

Swayed by the multi-million-dollar tech grant Logan's firm had recently dangled before the board, the director actually had the gall to hint that I should accept a suspension and issue a formal public apology to Piper.

Logan shot me a smug, triumphant grin. He leaned in close to my ear, his voice a venomous whisper:

"Babe, just sign over your neural-link research patent to me, and I'll smooth things over with the director."

"Otherwise, your surgical career is over. You'll take the fall for near-fatal malpractice, and you might even end up in a federal penitentiary."

I stared at his twisted, greedy face.

Suddenly, I burst out laughing.

It was a bright, dazzling, utterly amused laugh.

"Logan, did you really think you won?"

I slipped my phone from my scrub pocket and, in front of the entire stunned crowd, dialed a private number.

It belonged directly to Harrison Vance’s chief of staff.

The line clicked open, and I tapped the speakerphone button.

"Hello, Mr. Sterling. Is Mr. Vance awake yet?"

"Someone just tried to kill him on my table. Oh, and about that hundred-million-dollar infrastructure contract? I really don't think his family should hand it over to Logan’s company."

"Also, be sure to inform Mr. Vance that the surgeon who just dragged him back from the grave is currently being ordered to drop to her knees and apologize to the side piece who tried to flatline him."