The Weight of Everything She Didn’t Say Novel – During my internship at the hospital, Valerie gave me a chance to practice by assigning me to stitch up a woman who had just undergone a C-section. But less than thirty minutes after I finished, the patient died from massive bleeding. The cause of death? Allegedly, I had been careless and left a needle inside her body.
I refused to accept that verdict. I filed multiple appeals, but no one believed me. Valerie forced me to resign. The patient’s family demanded my life in return. And the hospital ended up facing a wrongful death lawsuit. Every day, I watched my father, who was also the hospital director grow more gray-haired and haggard as he tried everything to protect me. In the end, I chose to end my own life. I jumped. But to my shock, when I opened my eyes again, I was back on the very same day Valerie asked me to stitch up the patient.
Snapping out of my daze, I suddenly grabbed a scalpel and slashed deep across my right hand. Bright red blood gushed out and dripped onto the floor, drop by drop. I raised my injured hand and looked at Head Nurse Valerie Hurst. “Sorry, I can’t do the stitching.” Everyone in the room froze. Especially Valerie, her face turned green with disbelief. “Cecilia, are you out of your mind?!” she shouted. “This was for your own training.
If you don’t appreciate the opportunity, fine, but what the hell is this supposed to be?” I kept my face calm. “Thank you, Valerie. But unfortunately, I’m just not worth that much. Probably not the right person to be appreciating anything. Maybe you should have your daughter, Erin Hurst, do the stitching instead. A training opportunity is a training opportunity, no?” Erin had just snapped out of her daze. Her expression instantly lit up with joy as she moved to grab a needle from the tray, but Valerie shot her a deadly glare and stopped her in her tracks.
So there was something fishy about this operation. Valerie turned back to me, eyes scanning, then let out a short, cold laugh. “Cecilia, is it because you know you’re not skilled enough? That’s why you’re backing out?” Hearing that, Erin quickly jumped in to add fuel to the fire. “Exactly! I bet she only got this internship because she’s dating Dr. Reed. Probably slipped in through the back door!” I couldn’t help but sneer inwardly.
Wow. Erin really was an idiot. This was the definition of a guilty conscience giving itself away. And that’s exactly why I’d never told them who my father was. If we’re talking about backdoor connections, mine are far bigger than they could even imagine. I blinked innocently and said with wide eyes, “Oh, really?” “I had no idea the hospital even had a backdoor recruitment process. How do you know about it, Erin? Please, pretty please, tell me!” Erin instantly realized she had just exposed herself.
Her face turned beet red as she glanced around in panic, unable to come up with a single word. Right then, Mason Reed, my boyfriend, walked over, frowning. He scanned the room and asked sharply, “Why hasn’t the patient been stitched up yet?” Valerie shot me a scornful look and scoffed, “Ask your ‘star intern.’ She’s so full of herself and her grades, you can’t even give her orders. Honestly, I have no idea what kind of score to put on her evaluation report anymore!” Mason looked over at me, then his pupils instantly contracted.
He rushed over, grabbed my hand, and asked anxiously, “What happened here?” Then he turned to Valerie, furious. “Her hand’s like this and you still expected her to stitch someone up? That’s irresponsible to the patient and to the intern! I’m taking her to get the wound treated. You take the rest of the interns and finish stitching the patient.” I was too stunned to resist as he pulled me away. Mason had always been like this.
He was gentle, thoughtful, always treating me with extra care. That’s probably why Erin hated me so much. It’s also why people accused me of getting into this hospital through connections. But I knew that I got into the best OB-GYN hospital in the entire state on my own merit. It had nothing to do with my father. It had nothing to do with Mason. So even though people constantly talked behind my back, I never blamed him.
I didn’t want to disappoint someone who truly cared about me. What I didn’t expect was that, in my past life, after I died, he immediately got into bed with Erin. He even trashed my reputation, claiming I was terrible in bed. Said that if I hadn’t been pretty and well-educated, he wouldn’t have been with me at all. Now, watching him gently bandage my wound with his head bowed, I asked him, “Am I really that bad in bed?” “Cough, cough!!” Mason choked violently, staring at me in shock.
He was just about to say something when a voice shouted from the operating room, “Something’s wrong! The patient’s bleeding out!”