Chapter 24 The Ghost In The Machine

• The ride to SoHo was a silent, pressurized capsule. Vance drove, her focus on the road and the constant, low-stream of updates from her team. I sat in the passenger seat, watching the rain-slicked streets of New York blur past, feeling the ghost of every ache my body had ever known.
• Each throb in my knees, a familiar echo of the anemia that had plagued me for years, was a memory. Not just of physical pain, but of the countless indignities. The days I’d hidden in hospital supply closets, injecting myself with B12 just to stay upright through a double shift, terrified someone would see the “unstable” doctor self-medicating. The nights on that cold, unforgiving floor of Alexander’s penthouse, not just because he denied me a bed, but because some nights, the pain and exhaustion made the effort of getting up onto the expensive couch seem like climbing a mountain. I’d curl into a ball, shivering, and pray for sleep to steal the ache from my joints, the humiliation from my heart.
• He’d seen it. He’d just admitted he’d seen it. And he’d chosen to believe it was a performance. That my pain was a costume I wore to manipulate him.