Chapter 4

The fallout was swift and brutal.

Olivia, armed with the traffic footage and Brooke' s chilling confession (which Ethan, numbly, had recorded on his phone), went to the police.

Brooke Hayes was arrested in her hospital room. Obstruction of justice. Conspiracy. Manslaughter charges were being considered.

She didn' t cry. She didn' t scream. She just gave Ethan a look of pure hatred as they led her away.

"You'll regret this, Ethan. You were supposed to protect me."

Her final words to him.

Then came the lawsuit. Ava Miller vs. Mount Sinai West and Dr. Ethan Hayes.

Medical malpractice. Wrongful death.

Olivia led the charge, a warrior avenging her sister and her unborn niece or nephew.

The hospital, fearing a PR nightmare and presented with irrefutable evidence of Ethan' s gross negligence, settled quickly. A large sum. Blood money.

It didn' t bring me back.

Ethan' s career was in ruins.

The board demoted him. No longer Chief Resident. No longer even a surgical resident.

He was shunted to a research role, a non-clinical position. His surgical ambitions, his talent, all ashes.

Dr. Thorne called him into his office.

"You had a gift, Hayes," Thorne said, his voice devoid of its usual stoicism, filled instead with a weary disappointment. "A brilliant surgeon died. A life, two lives, were lost because you put your personal feelings, your blind spot, above your medical judgment."

Ethan just stood there, taking it. He had no defense.

"You'll live with that," Thorne concluded. "Every single day."

And I knew he would. I, his constant, invisible companion, would make sure of it.

Weeks turned into months. The raw grief began to settle into a permanent ache for Ethan.

He moved through his days like a ghost, much like me.

His small, windowless research office became his cell.

Then, the delivery came.

A long, wooden crate addressed to the Orthopedics Department.

I knew what it was before they even opened it.

Our pact.

Years ago, after a particularly grueling shift where we' d lost a young patient, we' d sat in our tiny apartment, drinking cheap wine.

"If we die," I' d said, a little drunk, "let' s donate our bodies to science. Imagine, students learning from us even after we' re gone."

Ethan had smiled, that rare, genuine smile I' d loved. "Okay, but my magnificent orthopedic structure goes to Ortho. Yours can go to the ER, show them how it' s done."

We' d signed the papers the next week, a slightly morbid but deeply romantic gesture, in our idealistic minds.

Now, my meticulously prepared skeleton, cleaned and articulated, was being unpacked.

Due to some administrative quirk, and his new research-focused, non-surgical role within Orthopedics, it ended up in his office.

My bones. In his space.

He stared at it, his face unreadable.

Then, slowly, he reached out and touched the skull.

"Ava," he whispered.

He draped his old white coat, the one with 'Ethan Hayes, MD, Orthopedic Surgery' embroidered on it, over the skeleton' s shoulders. My shoulders.

He started talking to it. To me.

Apologies. Regrets. Questions that had no answers.

His obsession began.

He tried to work. His new role involved surgical simulations on computers, analyzing data.

But the sight of surgical tools on the screen, even virtual ones, triggered him.

The beep of a simulated heart monitor sent him into a cold sweat.

Flashbacks. My face in the ambulance. His own dismissive words. The flatline.

The bones in his office, my bones, were a constant, silent accusation.

He couldn' t do it. He couldn' t even simulate surgery.

The scalpel felt like a brand in his hand.

His hands, once so steady and skilled, now trembled uncontrollably.

He was crippled by guilt, by PTSD.

The unraveling of Dr. Ethan Hayes, once a promising surgeon, was complete.

He could no longer function in the world he had once mastered.