Page 48 of The Ripple Effect

And there she is, drifting up to the professor, her cheeks round with a huge smile.

Renee Garner. That is Renee Garner, who screwed us by pulling her people out of our course at the last minute, apparently so she could join forces with the person whose lies made our company look bad in the first place. The other team must be able to handle her security when we couldn’t—yes, there’s a boat full of earpiece-wearing goons in an eddy.

It’s too much. Instead of doing one of the few things Lyle’s ever really needed from me, I float there, stunned. Fisher has our idea, and our location, and our fucking celebrity endorsement. I’d bet my boat he’s got a generous research grant. No wonder people are backing out of the Love Boat. He’s probably stealing our guests, too.

Renee turns her big smile our way. “Great day on the water! Are you all having the best time, too? Oh!” She takes a surprised breath. “Dr. McHugh. So nice to run into you.”

I let out a high, disbelieving laugh just as a familiar voice says, “Stellar?”

My heart drops through my body like a rock. I wish I could sink to the bottom of the river with it.

“Kat,” I say hoarsely to the person bobbing in a solo kayak. “It’s been a while.”

She looks the same as the last time I saw her at Grey Tusk General. Better, even. I’d shared my investigation with her; she’d promised to have my back in the departmental meeting. But every time I spoke up, she said nothing. Over and over, I tried to catch her eye as the painful realization bloomed like a bloodstain: she was looking away on purpose, protecting herself while I hung my ass out to the breeze.

I want to help Lyle, but Kat knows things about me that could do a lot of damage if she said them in front of Fisher. I kick away from the boats, drawing her with me.

“You’re doing… the same thing we are?” she asks, bitingher lip. “I’m the team doctor for the River of Love. Are you the doc with your crew, too?”

“Seems like it,” I say grimly.

“Oh, that’s good. That’s great,” she gushes. “I heard you were working for… you know what, it doesn’t matter. I’m glad to see you’re back in medicine.”

I feel the tug of my old life like there’s a suture knotted around my breastbone, and Kat has the long tail wrapped around her fist.

And the worst of it is, I want what she’s got. Everything I loved and lost: belonging, fellowship, the secret language of medicine. Colleagues excited to share an impossible blood gas result or the subtlest triangular whisper on a chest X-ray, almost missed—a bad diagnosis caught in the nick of time.

“Thanks.” I can’t trust myself to say more.

“Do you need help?” She looks around, clearly uncertain whether she should do her job or mine.

No way am I getting in her debt, now or ever. “This is actually a planned exercise,” I lie. “The whole point is not to help them. So thanks, but no thanks.”

She blinks at the sawn-off barrel of my refusal, her smile faltering. Guilt nips at my conscience. What happened with the milk wasn’t her fault, and of the two of us, I could argue she was smarter. She kept her head down and kept her job, while I exiled myself to Brittle Rock to finish burning out.

I want to get back to Lyle. He’s probably refusing to defend himself against the professor. He needs someone angry and quick on her feet who’ll say the things he can’t.

“I should g—”

“You never answered my email,” Kat interrupts.

“I never got an email from you.” The department deactivated my work email the day I left. A few months later, I blockedthe hospital domain on my personal email. My therapist said it was better for me not to see that no one had reached out to sayHiorHow are youorWe miss you, not even the nurses. Sometimes I’d get fury-inducing donation requests from the hospital’s charitable foundation, or an announcement about someone’s promotion that brought a toxic flood of longing and shame.

“I’ll resend. Things have changed since you retired from the department,” she says brightly, as if I chose to leave and they threw me a nice party. “I’m the head of human resources now. It’s a whole new ER. Clean slate.”

The sting of it, especially coming from Kat. She should know onlysomepeople get their slates wiped clean.

“Kat, I can’t—I have to go.”

“Check your junk folder!” she calls, paddling off after the rest of her crew.

I swim back to Lyle, who’s floating on his own, Babe worriedly licking sunscreen off his cheek. “Hey. Let’s regroup and reset. Take lunch, maybe.”

He watches Fisher and Renee skim away, saying nothing.

On shore, Sloane’s stripped down to her sports bra, wringing half a river out of her sun shirt. Brent limps dramatically out of the water, one shoe in his hand. Trevor and Petra have made it back to the group, but they’re unhelpfully gesticulating to where their canoe is drifting toward a sieve—a downed tree whose branches dip dangerously into the current.

We look bad. We look weak. Like they can push us up against a locker and take our lunch money anytime they want it. Like they alreadydidtake our lunch money.

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