Chapter 3 - The Ghost at the Bedside
"Don't move," Nia said, her voice dropping into her professional, neutral tone as she leaned forward, pressing two fingers against his radial artery to feel the strength of his pulse. "You have an endotracheal tube in your throat. If you pull against it, you'll tear your vocal cords."
Daniel’s eyes locked onto hers. The confusion that usually accompanied a patient waking from a drug-induced coma vanished almost instantly, replaced by a dark, intense focus that swept over her face, taking in every line, every shadow under her eyes, every strand of dark hair pulled back into her tight surgical bun.
He reached up slowly, his fingers heavy with muscle weakness, and touched the edge of her wrist where her pulse was jumping wildly under her skin.
"Nia..." the mechanical tube muffled his voice into a low, wheezing breath, but the weight behind it was unmistakable.
"Save your breath, Daniel," she said, gently but firmly lifting his hand off her arm and placing it back on the bed. "You were dead twenty minutes ago. You're in Lakeshore Metro ICU. You were poisoned with a concentrated dose of digitalis glycoside at your wedding."
His dark eyebrows pulled together. Memory seemed to return to him in sharp, painful fragments. His chest rose and fell rapidly against the ventilator’s rhythm, causing the machine to emit an alarm.
"Breathe slowly," Nia commanded, leaning over him, her face inches from his. "Match my count. In... two... three. Out... two... three. Do it now, Daniel."
He looked into her eyes and obeyed. Slowly, the alarm quieted down.
"Good," she said, standing back up and adjusting the IV drip rate on the infuser pump. "The antidote is working, but your heart muscle is irritable. If you agitate yourself, you could go back into lethal arrhythmia, and I really don't feel like performing another forty minutes of chest compressions on you tonight."
Daniel closed his eyes for a long moment, letting out a rough, ragged sigh through the ventilation tube. When he opened them again, he tapped his finger against his throat, signaling that he wanted the tube removed.
"Not yet," Nia said coldness. "Your airway is still unstable."
He shook his head once—a small, stubborn movement that was so characteristically Daniel it made her stomach tighten with a sharp, unwanted ache. He grabbed the bed rail, pulling himself up an inch, his eyes burning with an urgency that left no room for argument.
Nia stared at him for five seconds, then grabbed a suction tube and an extubation kit from the wall unit. "Fine. But if you start suffocating, I'm putting it back in, and I won't be gentle about it."
She unclasped the tape holding the plastic tube in place. "Cough on three. One... two... three."
Daniel coughed heavily as she smoothly pulled the ten-inch tube from his trachea. He slumped back against the pillows, clutching his throat, his chest heaving as he breathed raw, unassisted ICU air. Nia immediately placed a high-flow oxygen mask over his nose and mouth.
For two full minutes, the only sound was his ragged breathing.
"Why..." Daniel rasped, his voice raw and gravelly, barely louder than a whisper beneath the plastic mask. "Why are you... here?"
"Because I was the attending on shift in Trauma Bay One when your body guards dragged you in like a sack of concrete," Nia said, picking up her clipboard and writing down his vital signs with cold precision. "It was bad luck, Daniel. If you had collapsed five minutes later, you would have been taken to Northwestern, and you’d be in a morgue drawer right now."
Daniel looked up at her through his dark lashes. "Nia..."
"Don't," she interrupted, pointing her pen at him. "Do not say my name like we're two old friends catching up over coffee. You are a patient under my care. I am saving your life because I took an oath when I graduated from Johns Hopkins, not because you mean anything to me."
A look of deep, ancient pain flickered across Daniel’s sharp features, but it vanished as quickly as it had come, replaced by the hard, unyielding mask of the man who ran the Chicago underbelly.
"Julianna..." he muttered, his throat dry. "Where is she?"
"Outside," Nia said, her tone perfectly flat. "Screaming at my security staff and demanding to see her fiancé. She looked very concerned about your sudden inability to complete your marriage vows."
Daniel’s hand tightened into a fist against the sheet. "She shouldn't be here."
"Well, she is," Nia said. "Along with Dominic Vane and four men who look like they carry unregistered firearms under their tuxedos. The police are downstairs wanting to question everyone, but your legal team is currently holding them off in the lobby."
Daniel closed his eyes, his breathing growing shallow again. "The wine..."
Nia looked at him sharply. "What about the wine?"
"The toast," Daniel whispered, opening his eyes to look at her. "The ceremonial cup... was passed to me by her father. Marcus Vance."
Nia felt a cold trickle of ice run down her spine. "Your father-in-law poisoned you?"
"Not father-in-law yet," Daniel said, a dark, dangerous smile pulling at the corner of his cracked lips. "The merger... was a trap. Vance didn't want an alliance. He wanted Han Holdings... without me at the head of the table."
"And he used his daughter to do it?"
"Julianna... didn't know," Daniel said, though his voice sounded uncertain. "Or maybe she did. It doesn't matter. Nia... you need to leave this room."
Nia blinked. "What?"
"If Vance finds out... that you saved me—that you neutralized the toxin he took six months to procure—you become a target," Daniel said, his voice gaining strength as fear for her pushed through his physical weakness. He reached out, his hand locking around her wrist with surprising force. "Get off this floor, Nia. Transfer my care to another doctor. Go home."
Nia looked down at his heavy hand on her wrist, then up into his dark, desperate eyes.
Slowly, deliberately, she reached down with her free hand and peeled his fingers off her skin one by one.
"Four years ago, Daniel, you made the decision to step out of my life and run back to your blood-soaked empire," she said, her voice dropping to a whisper that cut deeper than any knife. "You don't get to tell me what to do anymore. You don't get to protect me, you don't get to command me, and you certainly don't get to tell me how to run my ICU."
"Nia, please—"
"I am staying right here," she said, leaning over his bed until she was looking directly into his soul. "Not for you. But because no one—not Marcus Vance, not your guards, and not your fake bride—is going to kill a patient under my watch."
The heavy door to ICU Room 412 clicked open.
May you like
Nia turned her head slowly.
Standing in the doorway was Julianna Vance, her silk gown rustling against the doorframe, her eyes locked on Nia’s hand resting near Daniel’s chest. Behind her stood two men in black suits whose hands were buried deep inside their coats.
