Chapter 18: stay away from me
Enzo’s POV
My off day was officially over. The moment my foot touched the pavement outside the hospital, a heaviness settled over me. The bus hissed behind me as it pulled away, but I barely noticed. My hands were clenched into fists inside my pockets, and I couldn’t ignore the way my stomach twisted into knots at the thought of stepping back into that building, the same building the man who tried to rape me was in right now.
Doc Olivier.
Just the thought of him made my chest tighten like a vice. My lungs refused to cooperate, and for a moment, I stood frozen on the sidewalk outside the hospital, trying to remember how to breathe. Inhale. Exhale. Again. I needed to ground myself before the memories swept me away like a riptide. He wasn’t going to ruin this for me—again. This job, this life I’d rebuilt from the ground up, wasn’t his to destroy.
"I can do this," I murmured under my breath, the words dissolving into the chilly morning air like fragile mist.
But even as I said it, my feet stayed rooted in place. Every nerve in my body screamed at me to turn back, to run, to protect myself. But I didn’t move. I couldn’t let fear win. I forced my legs to move, one step at a time, until the automatic doors whooshed open and swallowed me whole. The hospital stood tall and sterile, familiar and foreign all at once, a place of healing laced with ghosts I’d tried to forget.
Inside, fluorescent lights buzzed overhead, too bright, too harsh. The smell of antiseptic hit me immediately—clean, sharp, clinical. I headed straight to the reception desk and signed in, pretending the tremor in my hand wasn’t there. My name looked like a stranger’s, a shaky scrawl on the clipboard. I kept my head down, avoiding eye contact, not ready to explain the storm I was carrying inside.
In the staff lounge, I dropped off my bag in my usual locker. The clink of the metal echoed louder than it should have. I swapped my sneakers for the worn, ugly crocs every nurse knew too well. They were hideous, sure—but they were a symbol. Of long shifts, aching feet, adrenaline, and heartbeats that stopped and started again. Of control. I clung to that.
I thought maybe—just maybe—I’d get a minute to collect myself. A second to pull my pieces together. But no. Of course not.