Page 21 of His Orders

A nurse appears, kind-eyed and calm, and she murmurs something about rest, about hydration, about needing to stay still a little longer. I try to ask what happened, why I’m here, but my voice catches somewhere in the back of my mouth. She adjusts the IV in my arm and pats my hand with the care of someone who’s done this a hundred times. I don’t even know her name.

“I’ll get your attending,” she says gently. “We’ve notified your emergency contact. You had a bit of a scare, but your vitals are coming up. Just breathe.”

I nod faintly, more out of politeness than understanding because I haven’t caught up to the moment yet. She begins flipping through my chart, humming quietly to herself, and then she says it, so offhandedly that it takes a moment to register.

“We’ll be keeping you for observation, given the pregnancy, but everything looks normal so far.”

One word sticks out, and I stare at her, mouth open in a helplessO.

Pregnancy?

I blink. I must have misheard. Maybe she meant something else. Maybe I’m still half-dreaming, half-floating in whatever fevered haze brought me here. I had been on the pill for years, religiously. I never skipped. Never forgot. I took it every morning with the same glass of water, as much a habit as brushing my teeth. But I remembered what the doctor once told me, almost like an afterthought at the end of the appointment. No method was perfect. Antibiotics, stress, illness, even something as simple as a stomach virus could interfere. And lately, everything in my life had been unraveling. Missed meals, missed sleep, anxiety so sharp it made my head throb.

Maybe my body hadn’t absorbed it properly. Maybe I’d taken it late one too many times. Maybe it had just failed. It happened, even if no one ever believed it would happen to them.

But before I can ask, before I can make sense of the last sentence or even confirm I’m not imagining it, a shadow shifts on theother side of the curtain. Footsteps. A presence. Someone large, steady, and heartbreakingly familiar.

And then the curtain yanks open.

Of course it’s Ethan. He’s still in his coat, half-buttoned like he hasn’t been here long, like he just walked in from the cold. His hair is damp near the temples, his collar askew, and his eyes are locked on mine.

I can tell by his expression that he wasn’t looking for me. He must have been heading to another room, another case, maybe even just passing through—but now he’s frozen at the foot of my bed, as still as the quiet before a storm.

I can’t breathe.

He sees me. And he doesn’t look away.

His gaze sweeps down my body in that familiar, infuriatingly clinical way of his, like he’s already scanning for signs of trauma. I see the moment his hand twitches, the instinct to reach out, to check my wrist or feel my forehead. But he doesn’t touch me. He stops just short of that line.

“What the hell happened?”

His voice is muted, and he doesn’t sound angry yet. Just tight, caught somewhere between concern and something darker. Something I don’t know how to name.

I try to speak. I try to smile, to lie, to pretend this is a fluke.I’m fine. It’s nothing. Just a little dizzy spell.But nothing about this moment lets me reach for a lie that will stick. The nurse is still there, still holding the chart, and for a second I think maybe she won’t say anything else, maybe I still have a chance to?—

“Dr. Cross,” she says briskly, barely glancing at him as she continues flipping pages, “the patient’s vitals are stabilizing, but given her pregnancy, we should keep her for observation.”

Silence folds around us.

Ethan doesn’t move. Doesn’t blink. His face is unreadable. But I see it. I see the exact second the words reach him. The moment he understands what he just heard.

His gaze drops to my stomach, and then back to my face.

“You’re pregnant?”

He isn’t asking. There’s nothing uncertain in his tone, no trace of doubt lingering behind the question. This is him assembling the facts, lining them up in that sharp, surgical mind of his and finding the one truth that fits. I can almost see it happening, the slow, calculated burn of realization behind his eyes.

His expression doesn’t crack, but quiet fury settles over him, tightening every line in his face, drawing shadows along the curve of his cheekbone and locking his mouth. His eyes stay on me, a deeper green now, the color sharpened by restraint. I remember that voice. How it always dropped when he was angry. Low, smooth, dangerously quiet—never for show, never raised. Ethan’s anger bears none of the loudness of Daniel. His doesn’t need volume to cut through bone.

He’s furious now, and somehow, that makes him look impossibly more composed. More beautiful, like a storm has settled just beneath the surface of him, held there by sheer will, waiting to break.

I part my lips to answer, but nothing comes out.

He steps closer, just once, like the room isn’t wide enough to hold the space between us anymore. His jaw tightens, and his eyes darken into something I’m not prepared for.

And then the nurse speaks again, too quickly, too obliviously.

“Yes, about eight weeks along?—”

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