They picked up immediately, as if they’d been waiting for her call.

  “It’s from the hospital,” she began, as usual. “The patient gave me this number…”

  “What hospital?” a man's voice cut her off.

  “Saint Pio. He—”

  But the man wasn’t listening.

  “Which department?”

  “Surgery.”

  He turned away from the phone, shouted something in a commanding tone, then turned back to Abigail.

  “Who are you?”

  “I am a doctor.”

  “Your name.”

  “Abigail Martinez… Why?”

  “All right. I’ve got it.”

  And he hung up.

  Abigail looked at the receiver before returning it to its cradle. Whoever he was, this man had no sense of good manners. She just wondered whether her patient was of the same kind.

  She tried to remember his face, but all that came to mind were a few sharp lines outlining his profile and an attentive, intense gaze—the gaze of someone looking for a chink in the armour. As she tried to remember, her nostrils twitched involuntarily. The clearest memory of the man was the scent of his blood.

  She shook her head, dispelling the illusion. Blood doesn’t smell. At least, not to a doctor.

  Her shift in the emergency department was starting in half an hour, so she went downstairs and stepped into the main hall. Something was unusual here. She saw a group of the hospital’s security guards talking with a man in tense voices. The man was followed by another group of people dressed in identical suits. They wore civilian clothes, but on them they looked like uniforms.

  The dispute apparently ended in favor of the men in plain clothes. The man said something to his people, and they scattered in different directions and soon disappeared from view. Two of his men stayed with him. Accompanied by them, he moved toward the elevators.

  Abigail, along with several other members of the medical staff, watched this scene unfold as if it were a film.

  “Who’s our VIP this time?” she asked one of her colleagues from the ER. “Mister President? Or some Hollywood star?”

  The colleague laughed.

  “It isn’t actually us who got him,” she answered. “Whoever he is, he isn’t our emergency patient.”

  “Yeah. Until he gets drunk at some party in his honour or crashes his Lamborghini.”

  So, laughing, Abigail headed for her workplace.

  It was just another day at the emergency department. A lot of paperwork, a lot of hard talks with frustrating, panicking, or aggressive relatives, and some ambulance calls.

  She had just returned from the scene of a car accident when she was summoned to the head of the department’s office. When she arrived, Dr. Smithy, the head of the department, met her at the door with an angry question:

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  “What the hell is going on, Martinez?”

  Abigail looked at her, puzzled. Dr. Smithy was a quick-tempered woman like Abigail herself. But unlike Abigail, she did not mince her words with either her superiors or her subordinates. Abigail knew very well that Dr. Smithy was never rude without reason. However, no matter how hard she tried, Abigail could not remember doing anything wrong.

  “I was called from above,” Dr. Smithy said, pointing her finger upward. “They told me that today is your last working day in the hospital. Why?”

  She shouted the last word.

  “And why am I only finding out about this today? Couldn’t you have warned me earlier? What’s going on with you?”

  Abigail silently opened and closed her mouth. She had no answer to any of these questions.

  “They can’t,” she forced out. “I am an intern. They can’t fire me before my internship is over.”

  “Is that so? But they clearly told me that you are fired.”

  For some time, the head looked at Abigail’s bewildered face.

  “Oh, you’re surprised too, aren’t you?” she murmured.

  Abigail nodded.

  “Go.” The head pointed her finger toward the door. “You should sort it out quickly. This is fucking nonsense. Go!” she shouted.

  “But… I am on duty… If there’s some emergency…”

  “I’ll cover for you. But don’t be long. And tell them they’re fucking idiots.” She coughed and patted Abigail on the shoulder. “Well, girl, don’t tell them that. I’ll tell them myself.”

  As Abigail ran through the corridors, her confusion vanished and was replaced by intense anger. She did not know what she would do or what she would say at the hospital headquarters. Maybe something in Dr. Smithy’s style. But when she was almost at her destination, she was suddenly intercepted by Dr. Colbert.

  “Ah, Abigail! I had been searching for you, but they said you were out on an ambulance call…”

  But she cut him off.

  “Tell me, doctor. Am I kicked off the internship?”

  “No, you are not. Why?”

  “They kicked me out of the hospital. It is my last day. And I was informed ten minutes ago.”

  “Yeah, I heard,” Dr. Colbert grimaced irritably.

  “But my internship will be finished in two weeks!” she shouted desperately. “How could they? I work so hard…”

  She suddenly fell silent, as if the words were stuck in her throat.

  It doesn’t matter how hard you work if you’re doing it in the wrong place, at the wrong time, or with the wrong people. That’s what Charlie had once told her.

  Dr. Colbert stroked her arm reassuringly.

  “Don’t worry, it’s all right with your internship. It was in my power to sort it out. Actually, your internship is over.”

  “How could that be?” Abigail asked in surprise.

  “You worked extra hours in surgery. And your performance has been excellent. I sent your papers to the Healthcare Department. Bureaucratic procedures will take some time, but in about a week, I believe you will have your license.”

  Abigail kept silent for a moment and then asked, as if she couldn’t believe it:

  “So, am I a doctor now? A real medical doctor?”

  Dr. Colbert nodded.

  “Congratulations, Dr. Martinez.”

  She laughed happily. But her laughter stopped immediately.

  “How I wish Charlie could hear this.”

  “Who knows, maybe he can hear you and is proud of you,” Dr. Colbert said.

  Abigail smiled sadly. Dr. Colbert patted her shoulder sympathetically.

  “You’ll make an excellent doctor, Abigail. It’s a shame that there’s no place for you at this hospital. But you know what…”

  He glanced back at the door, as if to make sure no one was listening.

  “When you get your papers, give me a call. I’ll give you a recommendation.”

  On the way back to the emergency room, she didn’t know whether to cry or laugh. So she laughed and cried, taking turns.

  “I’m a doctor,” she repeated to herself happily. “I did it.”

  It had been her childhood dream. Her mother had laughed at her. She constantly repeated that only rich kids could study to become doctors, that she didn’t have the money for medical education, and that even if she did, she would spend it on the poor, not on the silly fantasies of a silly girl. Charlie paid her tuition fees—secretly, so that her mother wouldn’t find out, as she had strictly forbidden her to take money from him.

  Technically, she didn’t break the ban—she didn’t take money from Charlie. The university did. And how terribly unfair it was that Charlie didn’t live to see the day when she achieved her goal. Their common goal.

  Now she was a doctor.

  But… an unemployed doctor with no money. And in a few hours, she had to tell her mother that she had lost her job at the hospital.

  Her mother was pretty sure that Abigail had finished a public college and worked as a caregiver. Whenever she had to tell her mother something about her work, she was afraid of revealing the secret that she actually was a doctor, not just a caregiver. She hated lying to her mother, but what could she do? If she spoke the truth, her mother would never have allowed her to study at Charlie’s expense.

  The lie had grown huge over the years, but now, when she was a doctor and Charlie was dead, she was determined to finally tell her mother the truth. Winners don’t get judged, Abigail repeatedly told herself.

  She doubted that her mother would agree with that.