Phantom: Her Ruthless Villain (Ruthless Triad 5)

And darn my polite southern upbringing, I just couldn’t bring myself to keep on ignoring her. I took out my AirPods and turned to politely answer her questions—

One moment she was there, smiling because she’d gotten my attention, and the next, she was whipping backward. She hovered horizontally in the air for a brief heart-stopping millisecond before gravity re-introduced itself most brutally.

Her upper body hit the tread, and her dentures went flying before the unfeeling machine ejected her unceremoniously onto the gym floor.

They always make it look so funny in movies and commercials when people fly off treadmills. But I can tell you right now, watching it happen in real life was one of the most horrific non-childbirth-related things I’d ever witnessed in my entire life.

Gasps went up all around us as I jabbed my finger into the treadmill’s emergency stop button.

“Call 9-1-1!” I yelled out before running to the little old lady’s aid.

2

Everything happened in a whirlwind after that.

“No! No!” the old lady cried out when I tried to move away after the paramedics arrived.

She didn’t speak much English beyond that, but she managed to make her feelings clear on the subject of me leaving her side. She held on to my hand with both of hers, her grip surprisingly strong despite her injuries. There were lacerations and friction burns all over her face. Blood and nasal discharge streamed from her nose. And we really couldn’t rule out a possible concussion.

Leaving her side agitated her and her wounds, so after finding out I was a doctor, the paramedics let me stay so that they could check her over without upsetting her too much. Then I somehow found myself running alongside the gurney as they rushed her toward the ambulance.

She still wouldn’t let go of me when they put her in the back of the emergency vehicle, so I ended up racing toward Chelsea Sinai with her, even though I didn’t have privileges there.

She didn’t have a phone on her—just a single gym membership card with her name. And unfortunately, she’d been with the gym so long her only emergency contact was for a husband who’d died over ten years ago.

One of the nurses who helped the paramedics and me transfer her from the stretcher to a hospital bed figured out that she was speaking Cantonese. And she called up a medical interpreter on an iPad.

Considering the little old lady didn’t speak a lick of English, you’d think she would have let me go when we managed to find someone who could communicate in her language.

But she continued to grip my hand tight as she went back and forth with the interpreter…

“She’s saying to tell you that her grandson isn’t a villain,” the interpreter told me after a few moments. “She says he looks like a villain, but he is a sweet boy underneath all that scary. She wants you to promise to stay until he arrives.”

I scrunched my forehead. “What? Why?”

“No idea,” the medical interpreter answered, looking just as baffled as me. “But she’s saying she won’t give us her grandson’s number unless you agree to stay until he gets here. She says it’s very important because she wants to uh…die?”

The interpreter’s tone went up with confusion, turning the last word into a question. And I blinked several times myself.

“Should we get psych down here?” I asked the nurse holding the iPad.

The nurse frowned. “Possibly…”

We both glanced over at the old woman, who didn’t look suicidal at all. She gave me a huge gummy smile as if she couldn’t even feel the pain from her wounds and surely broken nose.

“Either way, we need to get her grandson down here,” the nurse added. “Do you mind just agreeing with her so that she’ll give us the information we need?”

I glanced at my watch. The gala was about to start.

But the little Chinese widow was old and alone and in a hospital where she didn’t speak the language. I couldn’t just leave her here. So I agreed, “Sure, I’ll stay.”

And after they got her all patched up, I used my free hand to text Garrett.

Sorry, running late. Emergency at the hospital.

Garrett’s answer came back in an instant.

GARRETT: You can’t skip out on this. I already told my mother you’d be here, and you know how she gets.

Irritation flared because I was spending my birthday in a hospital with an old woman who refused to let go of my hand, trying to explain my tardiness to the fiancé who’d forgotten about it altogether.

But I tamped that anger down before it could rise to my texting thumbs. Garrett was right. I had promised, and the only thing I hated more than not keeping my word was being late.

I’m genuinely sorry. I’ll be there as soon as I can.

Dots filled up my screen, and I wondered if this would finally lead to the fight we’ve never had, not even the first time we broke up ten years ago.