Chapter Fifty-Four: The Hospital Carousel
The morning sun sliced through the floor-to-ceiling windows, a merciless spotlight on Amaya's humiliation. She awoke on the vast sofa, her body stiff, her mouth tasting of stale wine and regret. The memories of the previous night flooded back in a sickening, high-definition reel: the blonde woman laughing, the champagne, the broken bottle, the pavement, the… kiss.
She squeezed her eyes shut, a low groan escaping her. She had to get out. She had to get to the hospital, bury herself in work, and pray that the world—and most specifically, Aris Rowon—had forgotten she existed.
But the world had other plans.
She found a set of soft, expensive-looking grey sweatpants and a matching hoodie, clearly belonging to him, neatly folded on the armchair beside her. Next to them was a new pair of slip-on shoes in her size and a note in his precise, spartan script: The guest bathroom is stocked. Your ankle will bear minimal weight. Be ready in thirty minutes.
It wasn't a suggestion. It was a directive in the aftermath of her self-immolation. She obeyed, moving like an automaton through a shower that felt like penance, dressing in his clothes that smelled faintly of his detergent. She looked like a ghost wrapped in his shadow.
He drove her to the hospital in silence. The tension in the car was a physical entity, thick with the memory of her disastrous advance and his cold rebuff. He didn't look at her. He didn't speak. He was Dr. Rowon again, impenetrable.
He dropped her at the staff entrance. "Your first appointment is in forty-seven minutes. Ensure you are prepared." The window rolled up, and he drove away to the consultants' parking lot, leaving her standing there, feeling small and painfully visible in his oversized clothes.
She crutched her way inside, head down, aiming for the relative safety of the psychology intern's lounge. But safety was an illusion.
She felt it the moment she entered the main corridor. The usual morning bustle had a different texture—a hushed, eager undercurrent. Heads turned as she passed. Whispers bloomed in her wake like poisonous flowers.
"That's her…"
"…saw them leaving together last night after the gala…"
"…heard she was a mess, completely wasted…"
"…and those are his clothes, aren't they? The grey set he wears to the gym…"
"…with her fiancé right there in the hotel… scandalous…"
The words weren't loud, but they were clear. The story had metastasized overnight, fed by the hotel staff, by other doctors who'd seen her leave the ballroom distraught, by the gossip mill that thrived in the sterile halls of Victoria Hospital. The narrative was irresistible: the unstable intern, caught between her wealthy fiancé and her brooding, powerful supervisor, having a public breakdown.
Chloe intercepted her before she could reach the lounge, pulling her into a supply closet. Her face was pale with worry. "Amaya. Oh my god. Are you okay? I heard… people are saying…" She trailed off, taking in Amaya's borrowed clothes, the haunted look in her eyes. "What happened last night? After you saw Richard?"
Amaya shook her head, tears of sheer, powerless frustration welling up. "I fell apart, Chloe. Publicly. And then… he found me." She didn't need to specify who. "He took me to his place. Nothing happened. I made a total fool of myself, and he… handled it. Clinically." The memory of the kiss, of his push, burned like a brand. "And now…"
"Now the whole hospital thinks you're having an affair with Dr. Ice Cube," Chloe finished grimly. "And that you dumped your fiancé for him in a drunken rage. Your professional reputation is currently doing CPR on itself in a gutter."
A fresh wave of nausea hit Amaya. This was what Richard had warned about—appearances. And she had obliterated them. Not with an affair, but with a spectacle of such profound personal collapse that the assumption of an affair was the kinder interpretation.
The day was a gauntlet. In the cafeteria, conversations died as she approached the line. In the charting room, colleagues she'd worked alongside for months suddenly found urgent reasons to be elsewhere. During a case conference, her contributions were met with strained silence, then quickly moved past by the senior psychologist leading it.
The judgment was a palpable force. She saw it in the averted gazes of the nursing staff on the child psych ward, who had once smiled at her. She heard it in the overly polite, distant tone of the unit secretary. She was no longer Dr. Snow, the promising intern who'd helped Lina Cho. She was that intern. The messy one. The one who couldn't keep her personal life from splashing all over the hospital's pristine floors.
The worst was the look from Dr. Elna. Not condemnation, but a deep, weary disappointment. "My office, Snow. End of the day."
When Amaya finally hobbled into Elna's office, she felt like a student summoned to the principal. Elna didn't offer her a seat.
"I am not going to ask you for the details of last night," Elna began, her voice quiet but firm. "What you do in your personal time is your business. However, when your personal time creates a seismic disturbance in your professional environment, it becomes mine."
"I know," Amaya whispered, staring at the floor.
"Do you? The Cho family donation has put this department in the spotlight. That spotlight is now, unfortunately, also on you. The rumors are… damaging. To you, and to Dr. Rowon's standing as a supervisor. The board is asking questions."
Amaya's head snapped up. "Dr. Rowon didn't do anything wrong. He helped me. I was the one who—"
"I don't care about the truth right now, Amaya!" Elna's composure cracked, revealing the stress underneath. "I care about perception. And the perception is that a senior consultant and his intern are entangled in a way that compromises professional boundaries. Dr. Vance is livid. She staked her reputation on bringing Rowon here, and on your potential. This… situation… makes her look bad."
The walls were closing in. Her career, the one thing she had left, was crumbling because she'd had the audacity to have a heart and for it to break in public.
"What do I do?" Amaya asked, her voice hollow.
Elna sighed, rubbing her temples. "For now, you keep your head down. You do your work flawlessly. You avoid Dr. Rowon outside of absolutely necessary, supervised interactions. And you pray this blows over." She fixed Amaya with a hard look. "And you need to resolve your personal situation. Quickly and quietly. The hospital cannot be your stage for personal dramas."
Dismissed, Amaya walked back through the corridors, the whispers now feeling like physical blows. She was a pariah. A scandal. A cautionary tale.
She turned a corner and nearly collided with him.
Aris stood outside the door to the psychopharmacology lab, talking with Dr. Vance. Vance's face was like thunder. As Amaya froze, Vance's gaze swept over her, taking in Aris's clothes, and her expression hardened into something resembling disgust. She said something sharp to Aris, then turned and stalked away.
Aris's eyes met Amaya's. There was no warmth there, but there was no apology either. Just that same, unnerving intensity. He saw the shame, the fear, the crumbling resolve on her face. He took a step towards her.
Instinctively, she took a step back, shaking her head. A silent plea. Don't. Don't make it worse.
He stopped. His jaw tightened. For a second, she thought she saw something flash in his eyes—not anger at her retreat, but anger at the circumstances forcing it. Then he gave a single, curt nod, turned, and entered the lab, closing the door firmly behind him.
He had heard the whispers. He had felt the judgment. And he had just been reprimanded by Vance, likely because of her.
She had not only destroyed her own standing. She had, with her spectacular crash, begun to tarnish his. The one man who had, for reasons she couldn't fathom, kept catching her when she fell.
The weight of it was suffocating. She wasn't just the girl who cried on the sidewalk anymore. She was the scandal that was infecting Victoria Hospital. And there was no one to catch her from this.