Sweet Romance13 min read
Moonlight and Small Things
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The breakup happened just now.
I saw them through the slightly ajar door: Brady Zimmermann and Iliana Persson, lost in a kiss that was the same mouth that had kissed me ten minutes before.
I stood at the threshold and watched until my phone rang. The sound cut through the hush and startled them. Brady looked up. His eyes were still soft, like he had been born to look that way; Iliana turned toward me with a smile that was almost a dare.
"Kaylie," Iliana said lightly, like we were at a family barbecue.
I nodded once, very small. I took my phone from Brady’s hand without a tremor, closed the door for them, and walked away. I had a surgery scheduled. I don't waste time on things that will not help a patient breathe easier.
The operation finished at ten p.m. Brady came into the changing room with a cup of coffee. He handed it to me in a slow, practiced way.
"Next time knock," I said without looking up.
He set the cup on the counter and sat across from me like nothing had happened.
"Iliana left already," he said, trying to sound casual.
"Mm." I put my phone down and watched him. "She’s staying at your place for now?"
"Her hotel was messy," he said. "She doesn't like staying alone."
"You can tell her my address next time," I said, and picked at the band on my finger that's been there since we started dating. "Your place feels more her home than mine."
He reached for his coffee as if he might say something else. I waited.
When we drove down to the lobby, he offered to walk me to my car. My car was in the shop. He wanted to give me a ride. I accepted the seat without gratitude.
"Did you sleep at all?" he asked, passing me a mint from the glove box.
I didn't take it. "I had surgery today."
"That was tough," Brady said. "You were amazing."
I looked at him in the streetlight. He had the same boyish face he’d had when he first told me he loved me. Once, that confession made my heart trip. Now it felt like a hollow echo.
"You and Iliana dated in college," I said quietly. "You never hid that."
"It's in the past," he said. "She left for study; we broke up."
"But she was your screen saver last year," I said. "And I found her in your album."
"Old photos," he answered. He fumbled. "Kaylie… can we talk? Not about last night—about us."
"Break up," I said before he could find a better way to ask me. "If that’s what you want, fine. I won't make you lie."
He stared at me as if I had said something private. The car was silent. Then he tried again, voice small, "Can we keep it quiet? Don't make this hard for Iliana."
I laughed, and the sound surprised me. "You want me to keep it quiet for the woman you just kissed?"
He flinched. "I didn't mean—"
"Ignore me," I said. "I have work."
I took my things, went up to his apartment to pick the handful of things I had left, and found Iliana smiling in his living room as if she belonged there, like she had the whole time. They sat close on the couch, and for the first time I felt the weight of being an outsider.
"Stay here," Iliana said to me with that polished sweetness. "It's late. You can sleep on the couch."
I set my keys on the entry table and left with two coats, a tablet, and a travel mug. That was my inventory after four years. They watched me with their small domestic tableau intact. I wanted to laugh at the absurdity of it.
I went to a bar with Mallory Gonzalez and let the music and the sharp bright lime in my drink blur the edges of the night. I spotted Bodhi Chaney across the room, the man I'd once seen at the edge of a memory, and my breath found a different rhythm for a moment. He had the fox-like eyes I remembered—sharp, dark, unreadable. He looked older now, a lawyer whose name shows up on every big case.
"Don't dig at it tonight," Mallory said. "You have rounds in the morning."
"Rounds," I repeated, and felt the word steady me. "You're right."
The next days were a rhythm of hospital lights and sleep that fell in small compromised pieces. Mallory kept up a steady stream of commentary about Iliana. She had observed one surgery where Iliana had made a mistake. "She messed up the vascular clamp and you had to fix it," Mallory told me. "And she cried when you scolded her. She likes drama."
"You mean she cried in front of peers and a patient," I said. "That's not the same as hurting intentionally, Mallory."
"Still," she said, emphatic. "If she treats a patient badly, I will not let her be a doctor."
I threw away the small cactus Brady had given me on our first anniversary. It had never grown. It was a symbol of effort that never reached its own potential.
"Kaylie?" Brady called once when I was in the staff lounge. He had learned to look for me around the hospital.
"Please stop calling me that," I said. "Professor Mendoza is fine."
He frowned. "I meant no disrespect."
"You broke up with me," I said. "Not because you found someone better; because you found someone you knew."
"I love you," he blurted in the hallway that day. "I always have."
"You said that before," I said. "Words that don't match actions mean nothing."
He looked like a child being told a truth that hurt. I didn't comfort him. I had no strength left for sentimental training wheels.
Later, in the emergency department, I noticed Bodhi Chaney sitting in a chair. He had come in to visit a patient—his tone gentle in a way lawyers are not expected to be gentle.
"You shouldn't be here," I said.
He smiled faintly. "You looked like you needed someone to stop you from throwing your cactus away."
I laughed before I could stop myself. "That cactus never grew. It was a bad metaphor."
"Sometimes you have to stop trying to force things," he said. "Plant something else. Let it have different soil."
He had a way of saying simple things like they were revelations. It softened me. A small, dangerous thing tugged at my chest when he looked at me.
Those days were the first of the small, electric moments that would matter later.
"Do you ever think about mistakes you couldn't undo?" he asked one morning as rain ran down the window.
"All the time," I said. "Surgeries are risk and regret in equal measure."
He took a breath. "My mother used to watch the moon and say it keeps secrets. She told me to learn to say sorry to the moon if you couldn't say it to people."
"Did you?" I asked.
"Every time there's a bad ruling, I visit her. I still do." He returned to his usual reserve, but his voice had been softer than usual. I felt the pressure behind his eyes.
The next week, Brady fainted and landed in my care. A blood clot had pressed near his visual cortex; he had ignored symptoms for days. He was pale when I entered the ER.
"Did you faint before?" I asked him in the ward.
"A few times," he said. "I thought it would pass."
"You can die of that," I said. "You could lose your sight."
"I—" He swallowed. "I'm sorry for what I did."
He looked raw, and there was genuine fear there, but fear doesn't erase betrayal. I did what any decent surgeon would: I told him the plan, calmed him, and prepared for surgery. After the operation I left him to rest and walked straight into Bodhi standing at the door.
"You did well," he said to me.
"He's stable," I answered. "Thanks."
His presence was steady, like a hand at the small of my back when the ground gives way. He began to appear in small ways: a thermos left at my desk with fresh coffee; an extra blanket draped over the on-call chair; a text that read, "You should sleep—I'll call if anything changes." He didn't say much; he didn't need to.
"You keep doing this," I said once, tapping my phone where he'd sent an article about a lawsuit he'd just won.
"I'm good at sticking with things I decide are worth it," he said.
One night, when the hospital quieted, a different kind of noise broke through: a rumor spreading across the staff. Messages—screenshots and a shaky, incriminating video—found their way into my hands. Someone had recorded Brady and Iliana in a kiss in the corridor months earlier. Brady had lied about when things began. Iliana had been calling me "table-–" sorry, "dear" to my face. The images were clear. They had kept the secret and watched me believe.
Anger moved through me like a physical thing. I set the file down and did something I had never done: I arranged a departmental meeting.
I invited everyone: doctors, nurses, administrators, donors who had supported our clinic. I told no one the full reason. I told Brady and Iliana to attend as well, citing "a routine professional update."
The auditorium hummed when it filled. I stood at the front, buttoning my coat like a calm skin over a boiling core. Bodhi stood in the second row, unreadable, and Mallory sat nearby, fists clenched.
"Thank you for coming on short notice," I began. "I wanted to talk about accountability, about integrity in the small things."
Brady shifted in his seat. Iliana smiled like a porcelain figure, flawless and glossy.
"I'm going to show some evidence," I said. "Not to shame, but to be honest. We are a profession that depends on truth. When we break that trust, it affects patients."
I tapped the remote. The lights dimmed. On the screen: the corridor footage, Brady and Iliana kissing. Then a series of messages—Iliana asking for favors, Brady answering with casual cruelty. The room went very quiet.
"Why are you showing this?" Brady whispered, color draining.
"Because truth is a public thing here," I said. "You both betrayed me. You both betrayed the idea of honesty that we teach our trainees."
A murmur traveled the rows. Nurses exchanged looks. Someone whispered, "Unprofessional." A clerk took out their phone. A donor from the back sat up straighter. The director's face tightened.
"Kaylie," Iliana stammered. "This is private."
"Private?" I repeated. "You staged it as private, but you left a trail. You left it where a patient might have seen it. You left it in the hands of colleagues who now know you put your needs above the people we care for."
"Kaylie, please," Brady said, voice breaking. "I didn't mean—"
"You kissed my face and then kissed her minutes after," I said. "You called me love, but your actions said otherwise. This isn't a misunderstanding. This is a pattern."
I let the silence press. Then I pulled out the list of complaints filed in the last year. Iliana's name appeared beside an incident where a clamp had been misplaced during a chest operation and the attending had almost lost a vessel. The case had been written off as "inexperience" because she was new. A senior nurse raised a hand.
"She was reckless in that case," the nurse said. "We fixed it because Dr. Mendoza was there."
"Thank you," I said. "This isn't only about personal betrayal. It's about who we trust our patients with."
The senior administrator stood up. "Iliana Persson, as a candidate for a full surgery residency, you are under review effective immediately. We will conduct a full investigation into all your operations."
The words landed like a cold bath. Iliana's composed face broke into a mask. Her eyes darted around the room and found no harbor.
"What about Brady?" someone asked.
"You will be removed from active on-call duties pending review," the director said. "You work with vulnerable people. We cannot risk that with your current judgment."
Brady made a sound between a choke and a laugh. "You can't do this," he whispered.
"We can and we will," the director said. "The hospital can't tolerate that behavior impacting trust. You should have thought of the consequences."
The audience's reaction shifted from surprise to acknowledgment. A few people clapped softly—approval. Others frowned; some were already composing social posts. One of the junior residents stepped forward.
"Patients talk," she said. "They notice when a team isn't cohesive. We can't afford that."
Iliana tried to speak. Her voice lost to the swirl. She took a step toward me. "Kaylie, you could have handled this privately. You could have—"
"I handled it," I said. "Here. Where people who will be affected can see it. Where people who need to know can know."
Her lips trembled. "Please," she begged. The room heard the plea. Cameras took her face. Smartphones raised.
Brady's face had gone pale. He looked like a child being corrected in front of strangers. "I'm sorry," he whispered. His apologies were small things falling short of reparation.
"You should be," I said quietly. "And you will be sorry."
People began to murmur about ethics hearings and credential reviews. Donors shifted in their seats. The medical board's liaison member, who had been at the meeting, rose slowly.
"We will convene an emergency review board," she said. "This behavior, coupled with clinical concerns, is grounds for immediate actions."
By the time the meeting ended, Iliana had been asked to step out and not return until the investigation concluded. Brady was escorted to a private administrative room. Outside, the hospital corridors felt less benign than before, full of whispers.
They had both been dismantled by the one place that had held me worth more than a boyfriend: my professional life. I watched them walk away—one bright, humiliating exposure followed by the slow, grinding machine of institutional response.
The aftermath lasted weeks. Iliana's residency application went on hold. The board interviewed staff and reviewed footage. Brady was placed on leave. Ward gossip became a public chorus: "He loved her, but kissed you." "She always smiled like a threat."
They reacted in stages. First denial. Iliana posted a carefully worded statement about personal growth and private matters. Brady begged privately. The hospital notice board posted a summary of actions taken. The public, once keyholes were opened, fed on the drama. Social feeds reran his old posts praising Iliana, and the contrast stung.
They had once thought me the wronged woman who would fold. Instead they found themselves the subject of an ethical audit. They had wanted a private favor from me—my silence—and found instead the opposite: a refusal to let a betrayal stay small when it touched people in my life and patients’ care.
Bodhi rarely spoke about the meeting. He sat beside me after the storm. "You did right," he said once, placing a thermos in my palm. "Not every wound needs to be hidden."
"I didn't want to ruin anybody's life," I said, honest as a scalpel. "I wanted them to own it."
"You made them own it." He smiled, small. "Sometimes owning it is the start of change."
At night, when the hospital finally quieted, Bodhi sat with me on the loading dock steps. "You throw a lot away," he said, nodding at the small broken cactus on my desk that I had finally trashed. "You don't have to be hard all the time."
"I don't want to be soft with people who take advantage," I replied.
"You can be both," he said. He reached out and brushed a stray hair from my face. "You can be kind and you can close a door."
That touch—so small—made something in me tilt.
Our friendship turned into a careful dance. He would keep me coffee in the morning, and I would show him a new patient scan and explain the part of the brain it touched. He would listen like an apprentice.
"Why do you care so much?" I asked him on a late-winter night when snow dusted the street and he drove me home after a long case.
He looked at me from the steering wheel, his profile lit by streetlight. "I was lucky," he said. "I had someone tell me, once, that if love becomes a list of conveniences, it is not love. I wasn't his lover then. He was my father, and he left marks."
"Is that why you became a lawyer?" I asked.
"Partly," he admitted. "People hurt people. I wanted to make sure the hurt had a way to answer back."
His honesty stayed between us like a shared blanket. It softened me more than any of his quiet gestures.
There were heart-stealing moments, small but significant.
He smiled at me across a crowded ward when a resident praised my technique. He slipped off his own coat to drape it over my shoulders one cold shift. Once, when my hands shook after a tense operation, he simply wrapped his fingers around mine and said, "You're not alone."
Those moments were like warm places on winter teeth: bright, immediate, and surprising.
We spent evenings arguing about case law and the ethics of patient privacy, and then finding common ground in stupid movies and late-night coffee. Each time he was steady, a presence that asked little but offered much.
Everything shifted, though, the night he was hit by a car.
The crash was sudden. He was brought into my ER on a cold, rainy night. The team worked hard. He was alive but needed surgery. I scrubbed in to assist. When we closed him in recovery, his hand in mine was the only steady thing I could touch. He woke with confusion and bruises. He asked for me by name, and I answered softly.
Later, in the quiet after days of monitoring, he confessed something that made me inhale in horror.
"It wasn't random," he said, the anger in his voice low and certain. "They wanted me gone because of a case. But I..." He stopped.
"You set it up?" I asked. The world narrowed to the syllable.
"No," he said quickly. "Not like that. I rigged a scare. I wanted them to know I wouldn't be pushed. I didn't expect to get hurt."
"What did you expect?" I demanded. "To frighten people and walk away? You could have died."
"I know," he said. "I miscalculated. I'm sorry."
I stared at him, at the bandage on his temple, at the spit of blood near his ear. The man who would stage violence as a message and then stand before me trembling with regret was both terrible and achingly human. His admission didn't tidy things. But it was real.
"You hurt me enough already," I said. "Please don't put me in the middle of your wars."
"I won't," he promised. "Only—only you have to believe I'm trying to be better."
I did not say yes immediately. I did not know if trust could be rebuilt in such messy soil. But I stayed in the days after as he recovered. He brought me porridge that tasted like safety. He read me a badly translated poem and laughed when I corrected him.
"You're stubborn," he said once, when I caught him reading a sleep study report for fun.
"You're worse," I said.
"No," he insisted. "I'm kinder."
"That's still debatable."
He reached for my hand and held it like a promise.
We fell together slowly. He didn't burst into a house of roses. He made coffee when I forgot to eat. He came to my small celebrations—no fanfare—and sat as if he had always been part of the furniture. People noticed. Mallory teased me. The staff looked from our desks to us and smiled when we smiled.
As for Brady and Iliana, the hospital's investigation changed their trajectories. Iliana's residency was paused. She moved back to her family town, teaching anatomy at a smaller school where the gossip could not reach. She sent polite emails that smelled of regret. Brady, stripped of on-call duties, found himself with free time he hadn't anticipated. Patients he had charmed away from his list. He tried to apologize in the hospital corridors and once followed me into a supply closet to beg forgiveness. I left him crouched among boxes of gloves. Humiliation had hollowed out his confident posture.
"Do you feel good about what you did?" Iliana asked once, in a video call after the suspension.
"It was right," I said. "You put us at risk by putting your drama before your training."
She hung up.
Months later, at a small departmental gathering that celebrated the year’s survival rates, I found Brady sitting alone, and his face had shrunk into an unfamiliar shape. He avoided my eyes. Around him people murmured about integrity. It was not a punishment staged for spectacle; it was a life rerouted, a privilege withheld, the slow collapse that comes from choosing the easy wrong.
With Bodhi, there was no grand finale. We grew into each other like careful gardeners. Sometimes we disagreed. Sometimes we argued. Mostly, we picked at the little things: a plant that refused to grow, a mug that had been chipped, an old coin he found in a library book. Once, after a hard week, he brought a new small cactus to my office and set it beside the dead one I had thrown away.
"One more try?" he asked.
I smiled—soft and tired. "One more."
That night I wrote a small note and tucked it under its pot. It read, simply, "Start again." I put the pot on the sill where moonlight hit it every night.
We had hard conversations—the kind that reopen the places you thought had sealed over—but each time I found him steady at the other side, hands ready.
When we finally stood at the edge of the year, the hospital quieter and my life rearranged, I walked into my office and found his thermos, my favorite mug, and the cactus blooming, tiny and surprising.
"Do you remember the cactus?" I asked.
He smiled. "I remember everything, Kaylie."
I put my palm on the pot. Moonlight came through the window and fell on the soil.
I had once been the woman who watered a plant that never grew. I had once loved a man whose love was small. Now, with the little ounce of courage in my chest and a man who quietly held me through the worst, I could see that small things—like a cactus, like a cup of porridge, like a recorded confession—could change everything.
"Look," Bodhi said that evening, holding my fingers. "It found the light."
I let the moonlight rest on our hands and on the tiny cactus, and I believed it.
The End
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