Star Crossed

Eva’s POV

The human heart is surprisingly small. You would think the organ responsible for keeping a person tethered to the earth would be gigantic, but it’s just a tight, heavy muscle roughly the size of a fist.

I spend about forty hours a week holding other people's hearts in my hands.

Literally. I cut through their breastbones, crack their ribs open with a steel retractor, and reach inside the chest cavity.

You would think it feels holy, that saving a life feels like some kind of spiritual awakening every single time. It doesn't. To me, a human heart just feels like a tiny, warm piece of raw steak that someone left out on the counter too long. It’s slippery and frantic when it’s failing.

Right now, the frantic fist in front of me belongs to a twenty-four-year-old guy who decided texting his girlfriend was more important than watching the red lights. His Jeep rolled three times. His chest cavity is a ruined mess of jagged ribs and torn tissue. It looks exactly like a pomegranate busted open on a concrete sidewalk.

He is also, inconveniently, still alive.

His blood is coating my surgical gloves, warm and sticky. The operating room is freezing. They keep it exactly at sixty-two degrees to slow down bacterial growth, but I secretly think they do it just to keep us awake. Either way, my toes are completely numb inside my clogs.

I suction then say, “Get me the 3-0 Vicryl.” My voice doesn't sound like mine. It sounds like a machine - Cold, level, utterly devoid of panic.

Theresa places it in my hand before I even finish speaking. We’ve worked together long enough that I sometimes think she can hear my thoughts before they leave my mouth.

A stray bead of dark blood sprays onto my clear plastic face shield. It hits right in front of my left eye, mimicking the pattern of a tiny, dark red constellation. I don't blink. If I blink, this man dies on my table.

"He's throwing PVCs," the anesthesiologist calls out.

Sometimes, when I’m holding a beating heart in my palms, I realize how terrifyingly fragile we are; just a little too much pressure from my fingers and this man's story ends forever. It’s scary how much power I have. It’s even scarier how little that power bothers me.

The monitor is screaming. It’s a high, rhythmic beep that makes everyone else in the operating room sweat.

I don't sweat. My mother cured me of sweating when I was twelve. If you sweat, it means you lost control. And in the Windsor family, losing control is the ultimate sin. 

I think there’s a strange kind of peace in this room. Not calm. Peace is the wrong word, maybe. Control. This is the only place in my life where entropy has rules. Here, a crushed artery can be repaired. A severed bowel can be reconnected. A body can be held together by skill and timing and the refusal to quit. When I’m in this room, holding someone’s life between my thumb and forefinger, the world makes perfect sense. Vessel is ruptured? You clamp it, suture it, and then you close the wound. There’s a beginning, a middle, and an end. There is no messy gray area. You either fix the heart, or it stops beating.

I wish my own life could be clamped and sutured so easily.

“Vitals?” I ask.

“BP’s holding at ninety over fifty-eight,” another nurse says. “He’s not thrilled with us.”

“That makes two of us.”

A couple of the nurses let out soft, tired huffs that pass for laughter in a room like this. I don’t smile. Not because I do not want to. Because if I start, I may lose concentration, and I’m still two steps away from closing this chest and calling it done.

"Hold steady," I mutter, my fingers navigating the torn, wet muscle of his aorta. "I have it."

My fingers keep moving. Clean, precise, automatic. I was always good with my hands. On the ranch, that used to mean rope knots and reins and the delicate work of keeping calm horses still. In medicine, it means stitching together the worst day of someone else’s life and making it look survivable.

I clamp the vessel. The monitor slows down. The rhythm stabilizes into a beautiful, boring, steady bounce.

Just like that, I bring him back. I patch the leak in his soul and stitch his flesh back together.

Theresa looks up at me as I pull off my bloody outer gloves, tossing them into the biohazard bin. "Beautiful work, Dr. Windsor. You're really amachine."

"Thanks," I say.

I take it as a compliment. In fact, it is the nicest thing anyone can say to me. Machines don't have memories. Machines don't have bloodlines. And machines definitely don't have hearts of their own to break.

Ten minutes later, I’m sitting in the locker room, staring at my left hand.

The skin on my ring finger is pale. There’s a big, flawless diamond engagement ring sitting in a small plastic medicine cup on the bench beside me. Underneath where the band rests, if you look really closely under these harsh fluorescent lights, there’s a shadow; a faint, blurry ghost of old ink that didn't quite disappear, even after four rounds of expensive laser treatments.

It looks like a permanent smudge of dirt. I keep it covered because it’s easier than answering questions. It’s my deepest, darkest secret, a remnant of a girl I killed off a long time ago.

I slide the diamond back over the scar. It fits perfectly.

Tonight is a celebration dinner. My mother is in the city. She flew in from Montana this morning for a corporate agriculture gala, and she expects me to show up at Le Petit Chateaux looking like the daughter of an empire, not a tired fellow who just spent six hours massaging a stranger's vascular system.

I change out of my sweat-soaked scrubs and pull on an emerald green silk dress. It matches my eyes. Mom always says green is my best color because it makes me look wealthy instead of exhausted.

I apply a fresh layer of concealer over the purple bruises under my eyes. I bite the inside of my cheek until I taste the sharp, metallic tang of pennies. It’s an old habit. A nervous tic I never quite managed to kill.

***

The ambient noise of the restaurant literally sounds like money. It’s a symphony of clinking crystal, hushed voices, and the soft scrape of silver forks against expensive porcelain.

Matt, my fiancé is already there. He’s sitting at a corner table, looking so handsome it almost hurts to look directly at him. He’s beautiful. That is really the only word for him. He has gorgeous styled dark hair, a jawline that looks like it was sculpted by a very patient artist, and has the kindest brown eyes I have ever seen. He’s brilliant, wealthy, and he looks at me like I’m the only woman in the planet. He is everything a woman could possibly ask for.

When he sees me, his face lights up. He stands up and kisses my cheek.

"You look stunning, El," he whispers, pulling out my chair.

He calls me El. Nobody else in the world calls me that. It feels like a jacket that is one size too small, but I wear it anyway because he loves me. He’s a good man. He’s an orthopedic surgeon from one of the oldest, wealthiest families in San Francisco. He’s everything a sane woman could ever want.

"Thanks. It was a long shift," I say, settling into the plush leather. "Aorta repair. He made it."

Matt smiles, his eyes warm and proud. "Of course he did. You're the best trauma fellow this city has seen in a decade. Your mother is already inside the restroom, by the way. She should be out in a second."

Right on cue, Elizabeth Windsor walks through the dining room.

She doesn't walk, really. She glides. She’s fifty-eight, but she looks forty-five, her silver-streaked hair pulled back into a knot so tight it lifts the corners of her eyes. She’s wearing a tailored cream suit. There isn't a speck of dust on her.

"Evangeline," she says, leaning down to press her dry, cool cheek against mine. She smells like Chanel No. 5 and cold wind. "You're late. I thought we agreed on seven."

"Surgery ran over, Mom," I say, keeping my voice smooth and placating. "The patient was bleeding out."

Elizabeth sighs, adjusting her gold bracelet. "Well, you're here now. Matthew, dear, tell me you ordered the Bordeaux. This city has dreadful air, but their cellars are passable."

"Already taken care of, Elizabeth," Matt says with an easy, practiced smile.

He’s great with her. He knows exactly how to handle powerful, terrifying women because he grew up around them.

We order our meals. Matt orders first, something involving fish and vegetables and a word I cannot pronounce. Elizabeth asks about the chef’s recommendations, then rejects them again and demands a customized modification to a dish that isn't even on the menu.

When it’s my turn, I order the Chilean sea bass because it is the safest thing on the menu and because making decisions all day has left me with very little appetite for further complexity. 

"I was speaking with the board of Johns Hopkins yesterday," Elizabeth says, cutting a microscopic piece of her salad. "They are incredibly impressed with your recent research output, Evangeline. Dr. Bing mentions you at every country club dinner. You are exactly where you belong."

"Thank you, Mom," I say.

I reach for my wine glass. My hand is steady, but inside my chest, my throat feels incredibly tight. It feels like someone is wrapping a cold piece of medical gauze around my trachea, squeezing slowly.

"You really have the perfect life, El," Matt says. He reaches across the white tablecloth to squeeze my hand. His fingers are warm and soft. "A beautiful apartment, a brilliant career, and me. Well, the me part is negotiable, but I like to think I'm a decent perk."

Elizabeth’s mouth tightens in what would probably be called a smile if you were generous. "He’s right, Evangeline. You have earned this safety. It’s a far cry from the valley. You don't know how lucky you are to be away from the dirt."

There is that word she loves. Safety. To my mother, safety means concrete, glass, high-yield investment portfolios, and men with Ivy League degrees. To her, safety is the complete absence of unpredictability.

"How’s Daddy?" I ask.

The question slips out before I can stop it. I don't talk about the ranch often. It hurts too much. It feels like touching an exposed nerve with a metal spoon.

Elizabeth's fork pauses in mid-air. Her eyes soften for a second before she resumes her perfect, rigid posture. "Stubborn as the day I married him. He refuses to listen to the doctors about his blood pressure, and he insists on riding out with the hands every morning. The ranch is suffering because of it. He thinks the entire valley will collapse if he doesn't personally inspect every fence line. He doesn’t want to admit it to himself, but he simply cannot manage the hands or the acreage the way he used to."

An ugly pang of guilt twists in my stomach. My father. The weathered, quiet man who used to carry me on his shoulders through the high valley grass. He’s breaking down, and I am a thousand miles away, fixing the hearts of strangers instead of his.

"And the ranch?" I ask quietly.

Elizabeth lets out a short, bitter breath. She sets her fork down entirely. "The valley is changing, Evangeline. It isn't the place you remember. Beckham is trying his best, but your brother is completely out of his depth. He doesn't understand the corporate side of livestock management. He thinks you can still run forty thousand acres on sweat and good intentions."

"Is it that bad?"

"It’s complicated," Elizabeth says, her voice dropping into that low, dangerous register she uses when she is discussing business rivals. "Some massive new livestock conglomerate moved into the county three years from Denver: Vanguard Agri-Group. They started quietly buying up all the failing acreage along the borders and now they’re aggressively expanding. They have modern equipment and seemingly endless capital. They bought out the Cooper property and the old Sherperds place within six months."

I stiffen.

"They are trying to choke us out," Elizabeth continues, her eyes narrowing. "They’re cornering the water rights and outbidding us on winter feed. Your father is too old-school to fight them properly. He wants to negotiate but can’t negotiate with corporate sharks. They want our land, the south pasture. And they are just waiting for the right moment so they can sweep in and take it. They have already made four blind offers through proxy attorneys. I’m sure your grandfather’s generation would have called them vultures.”

"The south pasture?"

My heart stops. The gauze around my throat tightens until I can barely swallow my wine.

The south pasture is where the old orchard is. It’s where the cottonwood tree stands, its leaves turning bright, blinding gold every autumn. It’s where the treehouse sits, rotting quietly under the Montana snow.

"We won't sell, will we?" I ask. My voice sounds smaller now. Less like a brilliant surgeon, more like a terrified seventeen-year-old girl hiding in the dark.

"Beckham is panicking," Elizabeth says coldly. "He has two children to feed and a mountain of debt your father accumulated by refusing to modernize. If Vanguard makes another offer, your brother might not have a choice. It’s a business, Evangeline. Sentimentality is a luxury for people who can afford to starve. Your brother is doing everything he can to manage the accounts, but Beckham is..." She trails off, pressing her lips together. She doesn’t need to finish the sentence. Beck is reckless. He always has been.

I nod as if I’m listening to a lecture instead of hearing the bones of my childhood rattled in someone else’s hand.

Matt looks between us, clearly feeling out of his depth. He laughs a little, trying to lighten the heavy atmosphere. "Well, thank God El doesn't have to worry about cattle prices anymore. The only thing she needs to manage is her surgical schedule."

"Exactly," Elizabeth says, reaching for my hand across the table, and I let her take it because refusing would be a conversation I do not have the energy for. "You chose the right path, sweetie. You left all that chaos behind. Look at you, you’re safe. You just focus on your wedding. Leave the valley and the cattle to us.”

I look at my mother. She’s already calculating her next defensive move, forever protecting her precious empire of land and legacy.

And then I look at myself in the distorted reflection of my polished butter knife.

My world is spotless. I have achieved every single goal I was told to accomplish. I have the ring, I have the title, I have the respect.

So why do I feel like I’m drowning?

Why do I want to take my crystal wine glass, shatter it against the edge of the table, and scream until my vocal cords bleed?

"Excuse me," I whisper. "I need to use the restroom."

I stand up before either of them can say a word. I walk across the restaurant, keeping my spine perfectly straight. I smile politely at a waiter who steps out of my way. I don’t run. Windsor women do not run.

I push through the wooden door of the women's restroom and lock myself inside the largest stall. The marble walls are freezing.

I sink down onto the closed toilet seat and bury my face in my trembling hands.

I’m a trauma surgeon. I literally restart stopped hearts for a living. But my own heart stopped beating ten years ago, and I have no idea how to bring it back to life.

I do not cry. I never cry anymore. I just sit there under the harsh bathroom lights and let the total, suffocating emptiness swallow me whole. I’m twenty-seven years old. I have everything I ever fought for.

And I have never felt more dead in my entire life.