E L A R A

The call comes just past midnight.

I’m already pulling my sneakers on when Selene meets me in the corridor, her copper hair loose down her back, silk robe trailing like spilled moonlight. She’s barefoot, breath quick, eyes too wide for someone who usually glides through every crisis with a smile.

“It’s one of the younger guests,” she whispers, urgency edged in her soft voice. “He woke up burning and shivering. His mother’s frantic. I told her you’d come.”

Her trust is a weight I can’t shrug off, heavier than my medical bag. I nod once and follow, the soles of our shoes soundless on the villa’s marble floor. The hallway glows with muted lanterns, shadows stretching long and thin.

Selene pauses outside the suite, pressing her hand briefly to her chest. “He’s only seven,” she murmurs, her voice breaking on the number. “And his mother… She already lost one child. If she loses another..” She cuts herself off, throat tight.

I touch her wrist without thinking. Not brisk, not clinical, just steady. “We’ll do everything. I promise.”

Her gray-blue eyes flick up to mine, sheen of tears softening the polished heiress façade. For a moment, I see her not as Adrian’s sister or the poised Valcrosse daughter, but as a woman terrified for a child who isn’t even hers. That glimpse tugs something raw inside me.

I push open the door.

The villa air is too warm, heavy with the sour-sweet scent of fever. Curtains drawn. A lamp left low. The boy lies curled in soaked sheets, his small chest rising too fast, his face blotched with a flush that burns against pallid skin.

His mother hovers at the bedside, her fingers clenched white around his. The way she looks up at me, like I’m the only rope between her and the abyss makes my pulse lurch.

“Dr. Quinn,” she breathes. Relief and desperation tangle in her voice.

I set my bag down on the bed’s edge, forcing my own heartbeat calm. “Tell me everything. When did it start? Any vomiting? Coughing? Trouble breathing?”

Her answers tumble out, scattered, as I snap the thermometer across his forehead. The beep confirms what my hand already knew: 102.9. Too high, too fast.

Selene moves to the boy’s other side, smoothing damp strands of hair from his face, whispering reassurances in a voice so tender it makes me ache.

The boy stirs at the sound, lids fluttering open. Fever-glass eyes find mine, his lips cracking on a whisper that chills me more than the number on the screen.

“Don’t…” His throat rasps. “Don’t let me die.”

His whisper lodges under my skin like a shard of glass. No child should know those words, let alone say them.

I swallow hard and lower my voice to steady. “You’re not dying tonight, sweetheart. I’m here.”

I snap on gloves, swab his clammy forehead, and press the stethoscope to his chest. The rush of fevered lungs fills my ears, fast, shallow, but clear enough. No rattling yet. Relief catches, but doesn’t stay. I need to keep him here, anchored.

“Selene, hold this lamp closer.”

She obeys without hesitation, her manicured hands trembling as she angles the light across the boy’s flushed face. Gone is the polished heiress who floats through galas. She leans in like a sister, eyes shining with a compassion that pulls at me.

“He’s burning,” she whispers.

“Yes.” I draw a syringe, expel the air with a practiced flick. “We’ll bring it down. Fever’s the body fighting, but it needs help.”

The boy whimpers as I slide the needle into his thigh. His mother flinches, tears spilling over, but Selene takes her hand, steadying her.

“You’re not alone,” she murmurs to the woman, her voice low and even. “She’s the best doctor we could ever ask for.”

The mother’s shoulders sag, some of the terror bleeding out at Selene’s calm. I don’t miss the irony, that the woman who intimidates most of the island now whispers lullabies to a stranger’s child.

Minutes tick, sweat beading at the boy’s temples, his breathing easing fraction by fraction. I sponge his skin with cool cloths, checking his pulse, coaxing him to sip electrolyte solution in tiny sips.

“Good job,” I murmur when he swallows without choking. “Strong boy.”

Selene strokes his hair, whispering encouragement I can barely hear. Not rehearsed. Not elegant. Just real.

And I feel it, the sharp edges inside me easing, like I’ve been bracing against Selene all along without realizing it. She isn’t here for optics. She isn’t thinking about cameras, or Valcrosse pride. She’s just a woman terrified of loss, pouring tenderness into this boy as if that alone could keep him tethered.

My throat tightens. I don’t know if it’s the exhaustion, or the intimacy of watching her shed her armor, but for the first time, I let myself see Selene as more than Adrian’s sister.

The boy stirs again, lips cracking in a faint, pained smile as his fever dips a notch. His small fingers twitch, brushing Selene’s wrist.

“You’ll stay?” he croaks.

“Yes,” Selene says instantly, fierce and gentle at once. She glances at me. “We both will.”

And I nod, because there’s no other answer.

The minutes drag like hours. Fever breaks slowly, sweat soaking his sheets, his pulse thudding against my fingertips as I count each fragile beat. His breaths are still too quick, his skin still too hot, but we’re pulling him back inch by inch.

“His numbers are holding,” I murmur, checking his pulse again. “He’s stable for now.”

His mother exhales so sharply she nearly collapses into the mattress. Selene catches her, easing her back into the chair beside the bed. The way Selene steadies her hand firm on her shoulder, voice low reminds me of nurses I’ve worked beside, the ones who carried families when doctors couldn’t.

I exchange the damp cloth for a fresh one, running it along the boy’s brow, over his flushed cheeks, down to the small chest that rises under the light cotton. He shivers, murmuring something lost in fever.

I lean closer. “What is it, sweetheart?”

His eyes crack open, hazy but searching. They don’t find his mother. They don’t find Selene. They lock on me.

“Promise,” he whispers, lips trembling.

“Promise what?” I keep my voice soft, coaxing.

His hand jerks weakly, trying to grip mine. I catch it, let his hot fingers curl around my cooler ones. His skin feels fragile, paper-thin, as if the fever has burned him down to nothing.

“Don’t let me die.”

The words tear through me sharper than any scalpel. They’re not frantic, not dramatic just terrified, a child’s plea echoing in the dark.

His mother chokes on a sob, covering her mouth. Selene’s breath catches audibly beside me, her polished composure shattering as tears slip free.

My chest aches. For every patient I’ve lost, every code blue that ended with silence instead of breath, every time compassion was called weakness, this plea is the weight of all of it.

I squeeze his hand, firm and steady. “I won’t,” I vow, my throat thick. “You’re safe. I’m not going anywhere.”

Selene bends low, brushing the damp hair from his forehead, whispering fiercely, “We won’t let you go.”

But even as I promised him, my heart pounds with the truth I can’t voice aloud, that children die sometimes, even when you fight with everything you are. Sometimes, medicine isn’t enough.

His fever-bright eyes blink slowly, clinging to me, as if the weight of his life depends on my answer.

And I can’t look away.