Chapter 5 The warning

Heaven Wilson arrived at Library Conference Room 3B at exactly 5:58 AM, two minutes earlier than yesterday, which was her way of establishing that punctuality was not negotiable.

She'd spent the sleepless hours between 3:17 and 5:30 AM reviewing pharmacology protocols, partly to prepare for the tutoring session and partly to avoid thinking about the conversation she'd overheard between her parents after midnight. Her father's voice had carried through the thin walls: "She thinks she's better than us now, Margaret. Too good for her own family."

The words had followed her to the hospital like shadows, but here in the sterile quiet of the library, surrounded by medical textbooks and the promise of academic precision, Heaven could breathe again. Here, she was in control.

She arranged her materials with surgical precision-notebook open to a fresh page, pens organized by color, pharmacology reference guides stacked in order of complexity. The morning sun streamed through the conference room windows, casting everything in the kind of honest light that made pretense impossible.

At exactly 6:00 AM, Draven Callahan knocked on the door.

"Come in," Heaven called, not looking up from her notes.

He entered carrying significantly fewer books than yesterday and what appeared to be two cups of coffee. His hair was still damp from a recent shower, and his scrubs looked like they'd actually seen an iron. The improvement was noted and filed away under 'marginally encouraging progress.'

"Good morning, Heaven," he said, setting one of the coffee cups near her elbow. "I brought peace offerings in liquid form."

Heaven glanced at the cup-expensive coffee shop logo, the kind that cost more than her family spent on groceries in a day. "I don't drink coffee," she said, returning to her notes.

"Everyone drinks coffee in medical school. It's like the fifth food group."

"I don't." Heaven's tone suggested the conversation was over, but Draven seemed determined to ignore social cues.

"Hot chocolate then? Tea? I could probably find some orange juice if you-"

"Mr. Callahan." Heaven looked up, her dark eyes meeting his with the kind of directness that made people nervous. "We have thirty minutes. I suggest we use them productively."

"Right. Of course." Draven settled into the chair across from her, but instead of opening his textbook, he leaned back slightly and smiled-the kind of smile that had probably gotten him out of trouble his entire life. "Though I have to say, you look particularly sharp this morning. Did you do something different with your hair?"

Heaven's pen stopped moving across the page. She raised her eyes slowly, studying Draven's face with the clinical precision she usually reserved for identifying symptoms. "Excuse me?"

"Your hair," Draven said, apparently oblivious to the warning signs. "It's usually pulled back so severely it could be used as a weapon, but today it's... softer somehow. More touchable."

The silence that followed was so complete it seemed to absorb sound from adjacent rooms. Heaven set down her pen with the careful control of someone defusing a bomb.

"Mr. Callahan," she said, her voice carrying the temperature of liquid nitrogen, "are you attempting to flirt with me?"

Something in her tone finally penetrated Draven's confidence. His smile faltered slightly, but he pressed on with the kind of determination that had probably served him well at cocktail parties and considerably less well in academic settings.

"Would it be working if I was?" he asked, leaning forward slightly. "Because I have to admit, there's something incredibly attractive about a woman who can diagnose rare diseases before breakfast and looks like she stepped out of a medical journal cover shoot."

Heaven stood so abruptly that her chair scraped against the floor with a sound like fingernails on a chalkboard. Draven blinked, finally seeming to realize that his charm offensive had not only failed but had actively backfired.

"Let me be absolutely clear," Heaven said, her voice low and precise as a scalpel cut. "I am here to help you understand pharmacokinetics, not to serve as entertainment for your adolescent fantasies about what medical school should be like."

"Heaven, I didn't mean-"

"You didn't mean what, exactly?" She moved around the table with predatory grace, and Draven had the sudden, uncomfortable realization that he was trapped in a small room with someone who could probably kill him with a pen if she put her mind to it. "You didn't mean to comment on my appearance like I'm some kind of specimen to be evaluated? You didn't mean to suggest that my professional competence is somehow connected to how 'touchable' my hair looks?"

Draven opened his mouth, then closed it again. In the harsh morning light, Heaven Wilson looked like an avenging angel-all sharp angles and controlled fury, her dark eyes blazing with the kind of intelligence that could dissect a person's weaknesses with surgical precision.

"You want to know what I see when I look at you, Mr. Callahan?" Heaven continued, her voice never rising but somehow filling the small room with its intensity. "I see someone who thinks medical school is an extension of prep school, where charm and family connections matter more than competence. I see someone who shows up late, unprepared, and expects to coast on personality while other people do the actual work."

"That's not-"

"I see someone," Heaven pressed on relentlessly, "who thinks that because he's attractive and comes from money, he can treat serious academic discussion like speed dating. Someone who fundamentally doesn't understand that people's lives will literally depend on his knowledge, not his ability to deliver pickup lines."

Draven felt something twist in his chest-part shame, part recognition, part something else he couldn't identify. Heaven Wilson was dismantling him with words, but her criticism hit so close to his own fears that it felt less like an attack and more like a diagnosis.

"You're right," he said quietly.

Heaven paused mid-sentence, clearly not expecting agreement. "What?"

"You're right. About all of it." Draven ran a hand through his hair, destroying whatever careful styling he'd achieved that morning. "I do treat everything like it's some kind of social experiment. I do rely on charm because it's easier than actually being good at things. And I did just spend the last five minutes proving that I'm exactly the kind of entitled idiot you assumed I was."

The confession seemed to deflate some of Heaven's anger, but her expression remained wary. She studied his face with the intensity of someone looking for signs of deception.

"Is this another performance?" she asked. "The contrite rich boy act?"

"No," Draven said, and was surprised to realize he meant it. "This is me finally admitting that maybe the reason I can't remember drug interactions isn't because I'm stupid, but because I've never actually tried to learn anything that couldn't be solved with the right smile or the right last name."

Heaven remained standing, but some of the tension left her shoulders. "And what exactly do you expect me to do with that information?"

"I expect," Draven said carefully, "that you're going to tell me this was a waste of both our time and that I should find someone else to tutor me. Someone who doesn't mind being treated like a potential conquest instead of a medical professional."

Heaven was quiet for a long moment, studying him with those dark eyes that seemed to see everything. When she finally spoke, her voice had lost its cutting edge but retained its steel core.

"You're half right," she said. "This was a waste of time. But I'm not going to tell you to find someone else."

Draven looked up, hope flickering in his chest like a candle in wind.

"Instead," Heaven continued, returning to her seat with deliberate precision, "I'm going to give you a choice. You can leave right now, go back to charming your way through medical school, and we'll pretend this conversation never happened. Or you can sit down, open your pathophysiology textbook to chapter twelve, and spend the next twenty-three minutes learning about cardiac glycosides like you actually give a damn about becoming a doctor."

She leaned forward, her gaze locking with his. "But if you choose to stay, understand this: I am not your friend, your potential girlfriend, or your entertainment. I am your tutor, and this is your first and only warning. The next time you treat me like anything other than a medical professional, this arrangement ends permanently. Are we clear?"

Draven felt the weight of her words settle over him like a diagnosis. Final, unappealable, and somehow exactly what he needed to hear.

"Crystal clear," he said, reaching for his textbook. "Chapter twelve. Cardiac glycosides."

"Good." Heaven opened her notebook, her movements crisp and efficient. "Digitalis derivatives. Mechanism of action involves inhibition of the sodium-potassium ATPase pump. Can you tell me why this increases cardiac contractility?"

As Draven fumbled for an answer, he caught a glimpse of himself in the conference room window-hair disheveled, expression serious, actually thinking about medicine instead of thinking about how to be charming. It was perhaps the most honest he'd looked in years.

Heaven Wilson had just delivered the most thorough professional dressing-down of his life, and somehow, he'd never respected anyone more.

The next twenty-three minutes were brutal. Heaven's teaching style was like her personality-precise, uncompromising, and absolutely merciless when it came to sloppy thinking. She didn't accept half-answers or charming deflections. When Draven tried to guess his way through a drug interaction, she made him start over until he could explain the mechanism step by step.

When thirty minutes had elapsed, Heaven closed her notebook with the finality of a judge's gavel. "That's time."

Draven blinked, surprised at how quickly the session had passed. "Already?"

"Punctuality applies to endings as well as beginnings, Mr. Callahan." Heaven gathered her materials with practiced efficiency. "Same time tomorrow, if you're interested in continuing."

"I am," Draven said quickly. "Definitely interested in continuing."

Heaven paused in her packing, studying his face one more time. Whatever she saw there must have satisfied her, because she nodded curtly.

"Then I suggest you spend tonight actually reading and revising instead of whatever it is you usually do with your evenings."

She headed for the door, then paused with her hand on the handle. "And Mr. Callahan? The coffee was unnecessary, instead come with the attitude which actually shows you are interested."

With that, she was gone, leaving Draven alone in the conference room with his textbooks and the lingering scent of her perfume-something clean and understated that probably cost less than his coffee but somehow seemed infinitely more sophisticated.