Page 35 of The Clinch
The attending steps back and gives me the bay. My hands are steady. My voice is calm. I don’t flinch when the patient screams. I’ve done this a thousand times.
The glass comes out easily. Sixteen pieces, ranging from splinters to a shard the size of my thumb. No major nerve damage. No arterial bleeding. Clean extractions, one by one.
The attending checks the wound. “Nice work, Adler.”
I move to the next bay.
Here, I’m not ornamental. I’m necessary.
A drunk patient tries to fight a nurse in bay three. Security handles it. A teenager comes in crying because her boyfriend broke up with her over text. I let her cry into my shoulder while I chart her sprained ankle.
A woman arrives later with a fractured wrist and a story that doesn’t line up. She says she slipped on the stairs. Her eyes say something else.
I chart what she tells me. I don’t push. I’ve learned pushing costs more than it gives.
But I slip her a card for a domestic violence hotline on my way out.
She palms it without looking at me.
Some things you can’t save people from. You can only leave the door open.
I earned this. Every double shift. Every exam retaken. Every choice that didn’t look like the brochure version of becoming a doctor.
I quit pre-med when Travis got violent. Ran. Rebuilt. Came back through nursing because it was the fastest way back into medicine.
Hospitals don’t care why you left. Only whether you can handle what’s in front of you now.
And I can.
Here, no one cares what your last name used to be, or why you flinch when a man’s hand closes too fast around your arm. The monitors beep. The charts stack. The work keeps moving.
Everyone bleeds the same.
It’s the only place I’ve ever felt fully safe in my own skin.
Tonight, I’ll be decorative. His. For the cameras and sponsors and everyone asking why the U.S. heavyweight champion swung his fists in a Brooklyn club.
My mind shifts to survival mode.
Six weeks.
Long enough for Jessica to bury the story. Long enough for Travis to disappear back into whatever hole he crawled out of. Long enough for Leo’s career to stay intact.
After that?—
I stop myself.
I don’t make plans yet. I just keep breathing.
If I leave too soon, Leo pays the price. Not just PR. The commission. The title. Everything that keeps his life whole.
He wouldn’t be in this position if Travis hadn’t put his hands on me.
And Eden. My best friend. My roommate. If Leo gets burned because of me, it doesn’t just hit him, it hits her. Her brother. Her family.
So I’ll stay long enough to stabilize the optics.
Not because I owe him.
