Chapter 3 - The Night Adrian DiedThe ballroom disappeared from Jenna’s mind.

For one breath, she was back beneath the white trauma lights of St. Catherine’s emergency department.

Rain had hammered the hospital windows that night.

The unidentified patient arrived without a wallet, phone, or emergency contact. His vehicle had been crushed beneath a delivery truck, and paramedics had barely found a pulse.

Jenna remembered cutting through his expensive white shirt.

She remembered blood spreading beneath his back.

The attending physician initially believed the bleeding came from his visible injuries.

Jenna disagreed.

His pressure continued collapsing despite transfusions. One side of his chest sounded different from the other. His abdomen had become rigid.

“There’s more bleeding,” she had warned.

A senior resident dismissed her.

Jenna repeated herself.

Louder.

She insisted they call the trauma surgeon back before transferring him for imaging.

Seconds later, the patient’s heart stopped.

The room exploded into motion.

Jenna climbed onto the side of the stretcher and continued compressions while the team rushed him toward surgery.

At the doors, the surgeon found the hidden rupture Jenna had suspected.

Adrian survived because someone had noticed what everyone else nearly missed.

Silas remembered more.

He remembered Jenna returning after her shift had technically ended.

She had sat outside surgery because no family member had been identified yet.

When Silas arrived, soaked from the storm and half-mad with fear, Jenna was the first person to speak to him without offering false hope.

“Your son is still fighting,” she had said. “So we keep fighting too.”

Now Silas repeated those words in the ballroom.

Adrian gripped the edge of the head table.

“That was you?”

Jenna looked at him carefully.

She saw the faint scar above his collar.

Recognition settled between them.

“I was part of the team,” she said. “A lot of people saved you.”

Silas shook his head.

“You were the person who made them look again.”

Felicity suddenly raised the microphone.

“This is ridiculous. Jenna tells dramatic hospital stories all the time.”

Jenna turned toward her stepsister.

Felicity’s face no longer showed cruelty.

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