Chapter 2 - THE WOMAN IN THE MUD
Dr. Clara Vance hated the rain. She hated it because it turned the unpaved auxiliary lanes of Holy Rude Cemetery into a swamp, she hated it because it leaked through the weather stripping of her 2011 Subaru Forester, and most of all, she hated it because it always seemed to fall on the exact anniversaries when she was forced to visit her grandmother’s resting place.
Clara pulled her yellow rain slicker tighter around her throat, holding a heavy metal flashlight in one hand and an old floral umbrella in the other.
She was thirty-two, though people usually guessed twenty-six due to her lack of makeup, practical brown hair tucked into a messy bun, and the perpetual smudge of blue ink staining the side of her right thumb. As an emergency trauma physician at Philadelphia General Hospital, Clara saw the worst of humanity on a nightly basis: gunshot wounds, drug overdoses, domestic carnage, and the high-speed wreckage of a city tearing itself apart.
She wasn't easily rattled.
Which was why, when the beam of her flashlight swept across a patch of churned mud and caught the glint of expensive chrome wheelchair wheels, she didn't run. She stopped, frowned, and muttered, "Are you kidding me?"
She marched through the puddles, her boots sinking two inches deep with every stride.
As the light climbed higher, illuminating the slumped, soaked figure of a man in a ruined black wool coat, her medical instincts kicked in instantly.
"Sir? Can you hear me?" Clara knelt right down into the mud, ignoring the way the cold water soaked through the knees of her jeans. She reached out, pressing two fingers firmly against the side of his throat.
The pulse was there, but it was dangerously slow and thready. Bradycardia setting in. Hypothermia.
She shined the light directly into his face.
Despite the dirt smeared across his cheekbones, the purple bruising under his eyes, and the blue tint of his lips, Clara froze for a fraction of a second. The bone structure was striking—sharp jawline, a high, straight nose that looked like it had been broken and reset by an expert, and dark, thick eyelashes stuck together by rain. Even half-conscious and dying of exposure, he looked like an aristocrat who had accidentally stumbled into a war zone.
"Hey. Open your eyes. Look at me," Clara commanded, her voice dropping into the steady, authoritative tone she used on trauma bays when a patient was crashing.
Elias forced his heavy eyelids open. Through a haze of water and exhaustion, he saw a face under a yellow hood. No expensive jewelry. No designer coat smelling of Chanel No. 5. Just a smear of mud on a cheek, sharp brown eyes burning with fierce intelligence, and hands that were already sliding beneath his arms to check his posture.
"Who... the hell..." Elias managed, his voice like grinding stones.
"Dr. Clara Vance, General ER," she rattled off briskly, already unzipping her own yellow slicker and wrapping it roughly around his shivering shoulders. "And you, my friend, are sliding rapidly into severe hypothermia with what looks like acute shock. What were you doing out here? Where's your party?"
"Gone," Elias whispered, the word tasting like ash.
"Cowards," Clara diagnosed instantly without missing a beat. She didn't ask for names or explanations. Her eyes scanned his body, noting the unnatural angle of his legs, the expensive fabric of his ruined clothes, and the distinct lack of movement below his waist. "Can you feel your toes?"
"No."
"Alright. We're not waiting for an ambulance; the dispatch lines are jammed because of the flooding on Broad Street, and my car is fifty yards away. Can you help me guide your weight at all, or am I dead-lifting a stubborn statue?"
Elias stared at her. For eighteen months, everyone—from high-priced physical therapists to Margot—had treated him like delicate glass. They spoke to him in hushed, trembling tones or looked away with uncomfortable pity.
This woman was looking at him like he was an inconvenient, heavy couch she needed to haul out of a burning room.
Something deep inside Elias—a spark of the cold, hard pride that had built the Baron empire—flared back to life.
"I'm no statue, Doc," he gritted out through blue lips.
"Prove it then," she challenged, hooking her strong arms securely under his shoulders. "On three. One... two... three!"
With a grunt that tore from the base of his lungs, Elias used his upper body strength, hauling his dead weight forward while Clara hoisted him upward. Pain exploded across his ribs again, making his vision flash white, but he gritted his teeth so hard he tasted copper.
He didn't let himself collapse back into the mud.
With a desperate, coordinated heave, Clara practically dragged and carried him across the slick grass, dumping him unceremoniously into the passenger seat of her sputtering Subaru Forester.
She slammed the door shut, sprinted around to the driver's side, threw herself inside, and cranked the ignition. The engine coughed, sputtered, and finally roared to life, shooting a plume of gray exhaust into the rainy night.
As she threw the gearshift into reverse and spun the car around, she glanced sideways at Elias, who was shivering violently, his wet head resting against the headrest.
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"For the record," Clara said, stepping hard on the gas pedal as the car fishtailed onto the paved road, "whoever left you out there is a complete monster. And if I ever meet them, I'm going to introduce them to a very heavy bedpan."
Elias, for the first time in eighteen months, let out a short, raspy sound that resembled a genuine laugh.
