The Surgeon Who Finds Me Crying: Midnight Confessions: Chapter 1

He wasn't supposed to see me break

The fluorescent lights hum overhead like dying insects.

I shouldn't be here. Not at two in the morning, not in this empty break room, not with tears streaming down my face like I'm some broken thing that can't hold water.

But here I am anyway.

The door clicks behind me. [footsteps]

"You're bleeding."

I spin around, wiping my face frantically. Dr. Gabriel Santos stands in the doorway, his dark hair mussed, surgical scrubs wrinkled from what must have been another twelve-hour shift.

He's not supposed to be here either.

"I'm fine." The lie tastes metallic, like the blood I can feel trickling from where I bit my lip too hard.

His gray eyes scan my face with the same intensity he probably uses to assess trauma patients. Clinical. Detached.

Except there's something else there. Something that makes my breath catch.

"No," he says quietly, stepping closer. "You're not."

Gabriel Santos is the hospital's ghost story. The brilliant trauma surgeon who appears when death is winning, performs miracles with steady hands, then vanishes back into the shadows. We've worked the same floors for eight months, but he's never spoken to me beyond necessary medical exchanges.

Until now.

He reaches into a cabinet, pulls out gauze and antiseptic. His movements are economical, practiced. Beautiful in their precision.

"Sit."

"I said I'm fine—"

"And I said you're bleeding." His voice is softer than I've ever heard it. "Please."

The please undoes me.

I sink into the plastic chair, and he kneels beside me. This close, I can smell his cologne—cedar and something darker. His fingers brush my chin, tilting my face toward the light.

"What happened?" he asks, dabbing the cut with gentle pressure.

"Nothing." Everything. "Just a bad night."

His thumb traces along my jawline, and I forget how to breathe.

"I know about bad nights," he murmurs.

There's something raw in his voice. A recognition that makes me look—really look—at him for the first time. The exhaustion carved into the lines around his eyes. The careful way he holds himself, like he's protecting something wounded.

"We all have scars," he says, so quietly I almost miss it.

But I don't miss the way his hand trembles, just slightly, against my skin.

Or the way he's looking at me like I'm the first real thing he's seen in a very long time.

The antiseptic stings, but I don't pull away. Neither does he.

"Why are you here so late?" I whisper.

His smile is small, sad. "Same reason you are, I think."

Running. Hiding. Bleeding in empty rooms where no one can see.

"I should go," I start to say, but his fingers are still on my face, and leaving feels impossible.

"Stay," he breathes.

And for the first time in months, I do.

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