Chapter 346
[ 500 words ]
Chapter 346:
Caroline ignored them. She focused on changing her shoes, pulling on her comfortable nursing clogs, determined not to engage.
Corbett’s voice, dripping with fake sympathy, cut through the silence. “Oh look, the grieving daughter is back.”
The aide giggled on cue. “I heard she took weeks off. Must be nice to have a rich husband who can pull strings so you can skip work whenever you feel like it.”
Caroline’s hands froze on her locker door. Her knuckles turned white. She took a slow, deep breath, channeling the cold control she’d seen in Jarrod. She would not let them break her. She would not give them the satisfaction.
She continued to change, her silence a deliberate act of defiance.
Her composure irritated Corbett, who had clearly hoped to provoke a reaction and cement her status among the gossip-hungry staff. She stepped closer, lowering her voice to a vicious whisper meant only for Caroline.
𝘞𝗵𝖺𝘵 е𝘷ery𝗈n𝗲 i𝗌 re𝖺𝖽𝗶𝗻𝗴 o𝗇 𝗴а𝗹𝗇о𝗏е𝘭𝗌.сo𝗆
“I heard your mother’s accident was gruesome,” Corbett hissed. “A semi-truck, wasn’t it? They had to scrape her off the pavement. Must be hard, knowing she died alone in the ICU while you were off playing soldier’s wife.”
The line was crossed.
The insult was so vile, so personal, it shattered Caroline’s control completely. All the grief for her mother, the hours in the morgue, the funeral arrangements, the cold, empty house, the stress of Jarrod’s deployment, the fear and loneliness of the past week: it all culminated into a single point of white-hot rage.
She turned around slowly. Her face was a blank mask, her eyes devoid of all emotion.
The sudden, chilling emptiness in her expression made the aide take a half-step back.
Corbett, however, misread the calm as surrender. She smirked triumphantly. “What’s wrong, Thompson? Cat got your tongue?”
In a movement too fast for the human eye to track, Caroline closed the distance between them.
There was a sharp, cracking sound that echoed through the tiled locker room.
Corbett’s head snapped to the side, a bright red handprint blooming on her cheek.
The other nurses in the room froze, their mouths agape in stunned silence.
Caroline stood over the shocked woman, her hand still slightly raised, her eyes burning with a cold, terrifying fire.
Corbett stumbled back, clutching her stinging cheek, her eyes wide with a mixture of disbelief and fury.
“You hit me!” she shrieked, her voice cracking. “You actually hit me!”
She lunged forward, her manicured nails aiming for Caroline’s face. But before she could make contact, Caroline moved again. Her actions were no longer the flailing of an angry nurse; they were precise, economical, and brutally efficient.
She grabbed the front of Corbett’s expensive scrubs, the fabric bunching in her fist, and yanked her forward, throwing her completely off balance.
With a surge of controlled strength, she slammed Corbett hard against the row of metal lockers. The impact rattled the entire row with a deafening clang, making the other nurses flinch as if they’d been struck themselves.
The aide, seeing her ally assaulted, finally reacted. She grabbed Caroline’s arm from behind, trying to pull her off.
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