Her name was Celeste.
She was stunningly beautiful, draped in a staggering, expensive white silk gown. She was walking toward Nolan to join him on the stage, but her eyes suddenly locked onto the dark corner where I was standing.
More specifically, her eyes locked onto the gold northwestern medical ring resting against my glass of water.
She stopped dead in her tracks.
The elegant mask of the perfect society bride shattered. All the color drained from her beautiful face.
She broke away from the designated path, marching directly toward me, her hands trembling with massive intensity.
“Oh my god,” Celeste gasped, her voice breathy and desperate. “It is you. It is really you.”
The heavy luxurious chatter in our immediate radius abruptly died.
I looked down at this woman, stripping away the makeup and the expensive silk in my mind. The sterile lights of Trauma Bay for instantly flashed in my memory.
3 years ago, a devastating catastrophic high-speed collision, a shattered skull, a frantic 9-hour emergency cranottomy where I literally held this woman’s heavily bleeding brain in my steady hands.
“Hello Celeste,” I said, my voice cold and calm. “It is deeply good to see you walking.”
Tears of sheer immense gratitude flooded her eyes.
Before she could speak another word, Nolan materialized beside her, his face a mask of sudden panic.
He grabbed her arm with a heavy, forceful grip, trying to physically pull her away from my shadow.
“Celeste, darling, what are you doing?” Nolan hissed, his voice strained. “Come away from him. He is nobody. He just does low-level administrative sweeping at some clinic.”
Celeste ripped her arm out of his grasp, her eyes blazing with an immense sudden fury.
She looked from Nolan to me and then back to the golden boy.
“Administrative?” Celeste repeated, her voice rising to a dangerous carrying pitch. “Nolan, this man literally put my brain back together. This is Dr. Quinton Fairbanks. He is the neurosurgeon who saved my life when I was given a 1% chance of survival.”
The silence that fell over the immediate area was absolute.
Nolan’s face crumbled.
He looked like a trapped animal, desperately looking for an exit.
I watched him deeply carefully.
Something was profoundly wrong.