The blood on my scrubs is still wet when my pager screams. I'm three steps out of OR-7, my hands trembling from the adrenaline crash of a successful emergency appendectomy, when I see the message: "URGENT. Room 347. Patient requesting Dr. Maya Chen specifically. Critical." Room 347. My mother's birthday is today. She would have been fifty-three. 347 was her lucky number—the address of her childhood home, the number she played in every lottery, the digits she'd trace on my palm when I couldn't sleep. Three years since cancer took her, and I still see that number everywhere, like she's leaving breadcrumbs from whatever comes after this. "Dr. Chen?" Nurse Patterson catches my elbow. "You okay? You just went pale." I blink hard, forcing myself back into my body. "I'm fine. What's in 347?" She frowns, consulting her tablet. "347? That's not even an active room right now. It's in the old wing we're renovating—" But I'm already moving. My sneakers squeak against linoleum as I navigate the maze of Seattle Grace Memorial's corridors. The old wing smells like paint and plastic sheeting. Construction equipment clutters the hallway. This doesn't make sense. We moved all patients out of this section two months ago. Unless it's an overflow situation. Unless someone's dying and they ran out of rooms and— I push through the door of 347. The lights are on. There's a hospital bed, freshly made. And standing beside it, holding his phone at the perfect angle to capture my panicked entrance, is Dominic Pierce. My ex-fiancé looks exactly like he did two years ago when I threw his ring at his chest: six-foot-two of tailored charcoal suit and practiced charm, dark hair swept back, that smile that used to make me forget my own name. Except now that smile has an edge that makes my stomach turn. "And... cut!" He lowers his phone with a flourish. "Gentlemen, I believe you owe me five hundred dollars each." Three men in expensive suits emerge from behind the privacy curtain, golf-clapping like I've just performed a trick. One of them—silver-haired, reeking of old money—actually pulls out his wallet. "I'll be damned," Silver Hair chuckles. "You were right, Dom. She really did come running." My brain is trying to catch up, but my body already knows. The way my hands have curled into fists. The way my jaw has locked. The way every instinct is screaming *danger* even though there's no emergency, no patient, no reason for me to be here except— "What the hell is this?" My voice comes out steadier than I feel. Dominic pockets his phone, and his expression shifts into something that might look like regret if you didn't know him. If you hadn't spent three years learning every microexpression, every calculated pause. "A social experiment," he says smoothly. "For Pierce Pharmaceutical's new training program. We're teaching our representatives how to identify and leverage the psychological profiles of medical professionals. You know—the bleeding hearts, the hero complex types. The ones who'll believe anything if you frame it as an emergency." The words hit me like physical blows. "I forged the page through our hospital liaison system," he continues, addressing his colleagues now, not me. "Used her mother's lucky number—deceased three years ago, cancer patient, very emotional trigger. Note how quickly Dr. Chen abandoned post-surgical protocol. Didn't even verify the page. That's the kind of exploitable compassion we're looking for in our target demographics." One of the suits is taking notes. I can't breathe. "The best part?" Dominic's eyes finally meet mine, and there's something in them I've never seen before. Something that makes the man I once loved feel like a stranger. "Maya here is the reason I developed this program. When she broke our engagement because I wouldn't tank my company's profit margins for 'ethical pricing'—" he actually does air quotes, "—I realized her type of naive idealism could be weaponized. Turned into a teaching opportunity." Silver Hair laughs. "Brilliant, Pierce. Absolutely brilliant." My pager is still in my hand. I look down at it, at the message that pulled me away from my post-op duties, that made my heart race with purpose and fear. Room 347. My mother's number. He used my dead mother to humiliate me. ---