THE HAND OF VENGEANCE

Chapter 1 — The Public Diagnosis

A voice cut through the chatter of interns. “Frank, you just don’t get it, do you?”

Lisa’s heels clicked against the stone, her tone sharp enough to slice through the drizzle. He turned. “Get what?”

“That you’re finished here.” She folded her arms, flawless beneath the white coat she hadn’t earned half as hard as he had. “You embarrassed me in front of everyone, again. You can’t just break protocol because you think you’re smarter than the system.”

Frank exhaled slowly. “The patient would’ve died if I’d waited for the CT approval.”

“Rules exist for a reason.” Her friends, three residents and the rich new hire, Dr. Evan Roth, hovered behind her like spectators waiting for a punchline.

Roth smirked. “Some people never learn when to quit playing hero.”

“I wasn’t playing,” Frank said. “I was saving a life.”

Lisa’s laugh was brittle. “You’re impossible. You think being reckless makes you noble? No, it makes you a liability.”

“I’m a surgeon,” he said quietly. “You used to believe in that.”

“I used to believe in you.” Her voice rose. “Now everyone sees what I see, someone too obsessed with being right to see he’s wrong.”

The group shifted; nurses coming off shift slowed to watch. A courier paused with a stack of files. The courtyard filled with the soft hum of gossip. Frank tried to lower his voice. “Lisa, not here.”

“Why not?” she shot back. “You never cared who you humiliated with your little stunts. Maybe it’s your turn.”

Roth’s smirk widened. “Come on, Mercer. Admit it. You’re not some misunderstood genius, you’re just a burnout who got lucky a few times.”

Frank’s jaw clenched. “Luck doesn’t suture an artery with one hand.”

“See?” Lisa said, turning to the crowd. “He actually believes he’s special. God complex, table for one.”

Laughter rippled through the interns. Frank’s pulse thudded in his ears. “I never asked to be worshiped,” he said. “Just trusted.”

Lisa stepped closer, eyes bright with frustration and the need to end this. “Trusted? You almost cost the hospital a lawsuit. You cost me my reputation. You’re toxic, Frank.”

He stared at her, at the woman who once called his intuition “magic.”

Now she looked at him like he was a stain she couldn’t scrub out. “I thought we were partners,” he whispered.

“We were, until you made it impossible.” She glanced at Roth, then back at Frank. “Evan’s been offered a position in neurosurgery. I’m going with him. At least he understands ambition.”

The words hit harder than any blow could have. Around them, someone muttered, “Damn.” Another laughed under their breath.

Frank swallowed, fighting the tremor in his voice. “Ambition isn’t the same as conscience.”

Roth stepped forward, chin high. “Conscience doesn’t pay the bills, buddy. Enjoy unemployment.”

Lisa turned away as if closing a door. “Frank… it’s over. For good.”

The silence afterward was thick and wet with rain. Frank’s hands shook, not from anger but from the need to do something, fix something, the way he did in surgery.

He pressed his fingers together, steadying them as if holding invisible instruments. Behind him, the hospital doors hissed open. His supervisor’s voice echoed: “Dr. Mercer, security will escort you out. HR wants your ID.”

He nodded once, still facing Lisa. “You’re right about one thing,” he said. “It is over.”

She blinked, caught by the calm in his tone. “Good. Finally.”

“No,” Frank said, turning away. “It’s over for all of you.”

The words were soft enough to be mistaken for exhaustion, yet something in them made even Roth stop smiling.

Frank walked down the steps, rain beginning to fall in thin, steady lines. Behind him, voices resumed, nervous laughter, whispers, the sound of a reputation collapsing.

He reached the sidewalk and paused under the awning of a closed café. The city stretched ahead in gray reflections. A bus rumbled by, splashing water across his shoes. He didn’t move.

Inside his pocket, the hospital ID felt heavy, useless plastic. He flipped it once, twice, then clenched it until the edges dug into his palm. A thin crack appeared in the laminate.

“Mercer!” someone called from behind. It was Dr. Davenport, one of the few who’d ever defended him. “They’re saying you falsified a chart. Tell me it’s not true.”

“It’s not,” Frank said. “But it doesn’t matter. Truth’s irrelevant when the system’s sick.”

Davenport frowned. “You should appeal.”

“Maybe,” Frank murmured. “Or maybe I should let it die.”

The older man studied him. “Whatever you’re thinking, don’t do anything stupid.”

Frank offered a tired half-smile. “Stupid is what got me here, remember?”

He turned and walked into the rain. Later that night

The streets around the hospital were slick and empty. Frank sat on a bench near the river, coat soaked, eyes unfocused. Across the water, city lights bled through the mist.

He replayed the scene over and over, the laughter, Lisa’s voice, Roth’s grin. Every word had cut deeper than a scalpel.

A car screeched nearby; someone shouted; the world kept moving. Frank didn’t. He pressed his palms together again, the way he always did when thinking, feeling the steadiness return to his fingers.

Whatever else was broken, his hands were not. He opened his phone; the screen blinked with a dozen missed calls from HR, one from his landlord, and a final text from Lisa: Don’t contact me again. I need to move on.

Frank typed a reply, stared at it, deleted it. Then he whispered, “So do I.”

Thunder cracked over the river. For the first time in years, he didn’t feel like a doctor at all. He felt like a problem looking for a cure.

Behind him, ambulance sirens rose and fell, a haunting, rhythmic reminder of the world he’d just lost. He watched them fade, eyes dark with something new and dangerous forming in the silence.

The rain blurred the city lights into long streaks of red and white, like veins under skin.