Heaven Wilson is a fourth-year medical student-brilliant, silent, and unapproachable. With a disciplined mind and a guarded heart, she keeps her life in strict order, balancing academic pressure with a stormy home life. Draven Callahan is a first-year student with a magnetic charm and a name that carries weight. Behind his flirtatious smile lies a deep desire to break free from the suffocating control of his powerful, manipulative parents. When a suspicious death at the hospital sparks whispers and cover-ups, Heaven and Draven are pulled into a mystery far more dangerous than either of them expects. Bound by secrets and undeniable chemistry, they're forced to trust each other - whether they like it or not. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- "Say it," he whispered, his breath brushing her jaw, "say you don't feel this." Heaven's fingers curled into the fabric of his coat, knuckles white. "I can't afford to feel anything," she said, but her voice cracked-just enough. Draven leaned in, closer than he should have. "Then lie to me, Heaven. Lie like you don't want me."
The human heart weighs approximately eleven ounces.
Heaven Wilson knew this fact the same way she knew that coffee had exactly 47 minutes to kick in before her hands would steady enough for sutures, that her father's temper peaked at 11:23 PM every night, and that silence was always safer than speaking.
She stood in Operating Theater 3, her spine rigid as a scalpel's edge, watching Dr. Martinez's hands move with the precision of a conductor leading a symphony. The patient-a forty-three-year-old male with a perforated bowel-lay splayed open beneath the harsh surgical lights, his life balanced on the knife's edge of expertise and circumstance.
"Wilson." Dr. Martinez's voice cut through the sterile air without looking up. "What's the next step?"
Heaven's response came without hesitation, her voice steady as a metronome. "Irrigation and debridement of the peritoneal cavity, followed by primary repair of the perforation using interrupted sutures with 3-0 silk."
"And if the tissue is too friable?"
"Resection and anastomosis. Remove the compromised section and reconnect healthy bowel."
Dr. Martinez finally glanced up, his eyes crinkling above his surgical mask in what might have been approval. Around the table, the other medical students shifted uncomfortably. Heaven Wilson had that effect-making everyone else feel slightly inadequate simply by existing.
She'd earned her reputation the hard way. While her classmates stumbled through differential diagnoses, Heaven dissected problems with surgical precision. While they fumbled with patient interactions, she delivered news-good or bad-with the kind of controlled compassion that came from years of practice hiding her own pain.
The surgery concluded without complications. As the team dispersed, Heaven remained behind, studying the suture lines with the intensity of someone reading sacred text. Each stitch was perfect, uniform, necessary. Control made manifest in silk and flesh.
Her phone buzzed against her hip. A text from her younger brother Marcus: Dad's asking about your grades again. Might want to call.
Heaven's jaw tightened imperceptibly. She deleted the message without responding, then methodically stripped off her gloves, gown, and mask. In the hallway mirror, her reflection stared back-angular cheekbones sharp enough to cut glass, dark eyes that revealed nothing, black hair pulled into a bun so severe it could have been carved from marble.
She looked exactly like what she was: untouchable.
Heaven gathered her belongings with the same precision she applied to everything else. Her notebook lay open to pages of meticulous notes, each diagram labeled in handwriting so perfect it could have been printed. She closed it, secured it in her bag, and walked toward the hospital's main corridor with the measured pace of someone who had never been late, never been unprepared, never been anything less than exactly what was expected.
The heart weighs eleven ounces, she reminded herself. But some days, hers felt heavy enough to drag her straight through the floor.
Draven Callahan had always believed that life was too short for uncomfortable shoes, bitter coffee, or taking himself too seriously.
Which was why, at precisely 8:47 AM on a Tuesday that promised to be aggressively ordinary, he found himself balanced precariously on the back of a bench in the hospital's main lobby, trying to retrieve a paper airplane that had somehow lodged itself in the decorative ficus tree.
"You know," he called down to his audience-three first-year nursing students who had stopped to watch the spectacle-"in my defense, I was aiming for the trash can. The tree was completely innocent in all this."
"Maybe try throwing things that aren't made of paper?" suggested the blonde nursing student, whose name tag read 'Jenny' and whose smile suggested she was enjoying the show.
"Where's the artistry in that?" Draven grinned, stretching toward the offending airplane. "Anyone can throw away trash. It takes real skill to accidentally redecorate hospital foliage."
His fingers finally made contact with the paper, but as he tugged it free, his foot slipped on the bench's smooth surface. For a moment that felt suspended in amber, Draven Callahan-heir to a pharmaceutical empire, future doctor, and generally smooth operator-windmilled his arms frantically in a desperate attempt to maintain his dignity.
He failed spectacularly.
The crash was loud enough to echo through the lobby and attract the attention of approximately half the hospital staff. Draven found himself sprawled on the marble floor, the paper airplane clutched triumphantly in his fist, his dark hair falling across his forehead in what his mother would have called "that deliberately disheveled look you spend far too much time perfecting."
"Ta-da!" He raised the airplane like a trophy, flashing the kind of grin that had gotten him out of trouble since kindergarten. "And the crowd goes wild."
The nursing students were indeed going wild-with laughter. Even a few of the doctors had paused to watch, their expressions ranging from amused to exasperated. Draven leveraged himself to his feet with the fluid grace of someone who had made falling down look intentional, brushing imaginary dust from his perfectly pressed scrubs.
"Ladies and gentlemen," he announced to his impromptu audience, "for my next trick, I'll actually manage to throw something away without requiring a search and rescue operation."
"Callahan." The voice that cut through his performance was dry as desert sand and twice as cutting. Dr. Richardson, the chief of internal medicine, stood in the lobby entrance with the expression of a man who had just watched his faith in humanity take another small but significant hit. "Don't you have a lecture to attend?"
"Absolutely." Draven straightened his scrubs and shot Dr. Richardson a smile that was all charm and zero apology. "I was just providing some impromptu entertainment for our hardworking nursing staff. Community service, you might say."
"I might say a lot of things, Callahan. Most of them would require me to visit confession afterward." Dr. Richardson's tone suggested he was only half-joking. "Get to class."
"On my way." Draven pocketed the paper airplane-waste not, want not-and headed toward the elevator bank. As he walked, he could feel the weight of his last name like a stone in his chest. Callahan. The name that opened doors and closed others, that came with expectations heavy as lead blankets.
His parents would have been mortified by the lobby performance. His father would have delivered a lecture about "appropriate behavior befitting our family's position." His mother would have reminded him that people were always watching, always judging, always ready to find fault with the Callahan legacy.
But here, in this moment, surrounded by the controlled chaos of the hospital, Draven felt something his parents' carefully orchestrated world had never provided: the freedom to be magnificently, unapologetically human.
The elevator arrived with a soft ding. As the doors slid open, Draven caught a glimpse of his reflection in the polished steel-hair disheveled from his dramatic fall, eyes bright with mischief, smile still playing at the corners of his mouth.
He looked exactly like what he was: trouble.
And for the first time in weeks, that felt like exactly the right thing to be.
The elevator doors closed, carrying him toward whatever came next. Behind him, the hospital lobby slowly returned to its normal rhythm, but the echo of laughter lingered in the air like the ghost of something joyful.
Some days, Draven thought, even spectacular failures could feel like victories.
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