Chapter 11: The Post

The post went up on Tuesday at six in the morning, on the staff-only message board that everyone at St. Brendan's pretended not to read.

By seven, forty people had screenshotted it.

By eight, Jody was standing in the surgical locker room with her phone held out.

"Don't look," she said. "Okay, look. I'll tell you if it's bad."

The title was, Baby Trap at the Top.

The poster was anonymous.

It called the intern a girl with "no family, no means and no scruples" who had trapped the chief with a baby.

The last line said a man like Dr. Gallagher deserved better.

Under the post, there were already two hundred comments.

Some of them were mine.

I mean they were about me.

They said my name.

I read it once, standing in my scrubs with the cold tile under my sneakers.

I did not feel humiliated.

What I felt was a clear, hard anger.

"Where is Bridget?" I asked.

"Cafeteria. She's got a fourth-floor lunch with the nurses." Jody hesitated. "Valeria, you have a patient at ten."

"It's nine-forty."

"Valeria."

"I'll be quick."

The hospital cafeteria on the ground floor smelled like boiled carrots and burnt coffee.

At that hour it was half full, mostly nurses on break and residents grabbing yogurt.

Bridget sat at a long table with six other women in navy scrubs.

She was laughing at something, her phone face-down by her tray.

I walked straight across the room and stopped at the end of her table.

The laughter wound down.

"Hi, Bridget."

"Valeria." She smiled brightly. "Isn't this nice? Sit down."

"I'd rather stand."

I took out my phone and held it up so the screen faced the table.

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