Chapter 1

My wife's intern accidentally removed a patient's healthy uterus instead of her appendix during surgery. When the woman woke up and learned the truth, she jumped from the hospital roof in grief.

Terrified of the fallout for her precious intern, my wife conspired with the circulating nurse to forge the surgical log, naming me as the lead surgeon.

The patient's family believed it was my fatal malpractice and sued me for wrongful death.

The entire city cursed my name, branding me a monster unfit to be a chief attending surgeon.

An angry mob stormed the hospital, demanding that the chief fire me immediately.

Broken and desperate, I confronted my wife, but she merely brushed it off.

"Jesse is just starting out and cannot handle a scandal like this. You have a stellar track record, so you can easily weather a little bad press."

Catching a glimpse of her leaning intimately against the intern in her office, I let out a bitter laugh.

This time, I finally decided to let go.

1.

"Why are you acting like this? Once the thirty-day divorce cooling-off period passes, you will just come crawling back to beg for a reconciliation."

"You only took the fall for a rookie so the department could move on. Everyone in the hospital knows the score anyway."

"You are a chief attending professor. If you cannot even handle some gossip, how do you expect to lead the department?"

Stepping out of the courthouse, Audrey looked at me with cold indifference.

She could not see the deep exhaustion from carrying a manslaughter lawsuit, nor could she see the shattered look in my eyes.

"Do not worry, that will never happen. I will see you right here in thirty days to finalize everything."

Holding the signed preliminary divorce decree, I felt an unburdened lightness in my chest for the first time in years.

Audrey frowned, opening her mouth to snap back, but her phone suddenly rang.

Jesse's panicked voice echoed through the speaker.

"Audrey, what should I do? I think I prescribed a lethal overdose to a patient, and the family is storming the ward right now!"

"Are they going to come after me the way they went after Sean?"

Audrey immediately softened her voice into a soothing murmur.

"Do not panic, Jesse. I will take care of it. Just tell them Sean instructed you to write that dosage."

"Sean already took the fall for me once... If we pin this on him too, he is going to hate me forever..."

Audrey glanced at me, her gentle tone vanishing instantly.

"He is a veteran surgeon. It is his duty to give newcomers room to learn and make mistakes."

"Besides, after the last incident, he has the experience to handle the heat."

I grabbed her wrist, my voice trembling with disgust.

"Audrey, you are letting him play with human lives just to protect his resume! Where the hell is your medical ethics? Do you even have a conscience left?"

Sniffling and pathetic apologies drifted through the phone, grating on my raw nerves.

Audrey spoke a few sweet words of comfort to Jesse before glaring coldly at me.

"It was an honest mistake! Jesse needs hands-on opportunities to learn."

"You walked this exact path years ago, so where is your empathy?"

"My empathy?"

What a sick joke.

It took me twelve grueling years of residency, fellowships, and endless shifts to climb from an intern to a chief professor.

I was once celebrated in the media as a surgical prodigy, yet my entire life had been destroyed by a single botched operation I never even touched.

Ever since Jesse entered the hospital, Audrey had systematically covered for his incompetence. Whenever he wrote the wrong prescription, she signed my name as the supervising doctor and blamed me for failing to review it.

When he overslept and missed critical morning rounds, she told the director that I had forced him to work a brutal night shift.

No matter what disaster he caused, she never hesitated to throw me under the bus to shield him.

"I already took the blame for a patient's death because of him. I will not take the fall for another one."

Audrey scoffed, pulling out her phone to dial the charge nurse on duty.

"Yes, change the prescribing physician's name to Sean Mercer. His reputation is already in the gutter anyway, so the hospital has nothing left to lose by putting it on him."

She hung up without giving me a single second to protest.

"Check your attitude, Sean. Right now, I am the only person in this entire hospital willing to protect you."

"In thirty days, you will be on your knees begging me to take you back. Until then, do not burn through the little patience I have left for you."