An SUV pulled quickly into the lot, and a short man in semiprofessional dress emerged from the driver’s seat. I only had to take one look at him to know this had to be one of the residency’s attendings. He wore a bow tie and carried a leather briefcase with the Hippocratic symbol. It wouldn’t surprise me if he was a great teacher. I personally never had a bad experience with an attending who wore a bow tie.
When he spotted the guy in handcuffs, the bowtie man’s expression morphed from confusion to shock. Shouting a name that sounded like “Ty,” he rushed over to him but was quickly intercepted by an officer.
Oh,shit.
If bowtie man was an attending here, and he knew handcuffed guy . . .
My mouth went dry as my stomach lurched. I literally had a bad feeling about this.
“Wait here, ma’am,” my police officer ordered, then walked over to bowtie man and his police partner.
After a few minutes of talking, they let bowtie man approach handcuffed guy. Bowtie man immediately crouched down and put his hand on handcuffed guy’s shoulder.
Of course. Yep. They knew each other.
Crap on a stick.
Hoping against hope that the handcuffed guy was still some local vagabond that everyone knew, I endured an almost unbearable minute of not looking at the group, when finally, I had to look over my shoulder and take a peek.
Everyone was looking at my car: the bowtie man curiously, the police dubiously, and the handcuffed guyfuriously. Then, one of the police officers and the bowtie man went into the building while my cop made his way back to me. The guy handcuffed on the curb was doing his level best to melt me and my car with his eyes through my rear-view mirror.
Cold, hard dread made its way through my veins.
“Thank you for waiting, miss. The man in question said he was a resident here. He doesn’t have ID with him, but we were able to find his picture on the website, so we are waiting to see if the program director here can give us the necessary ID from the clinic before releasing him. We have your contact information, so you’re free to go.”
As he walked away, my apprehension swiftly turned into panic, and my palms began to sweat.
A resident. In this program here.And I just tried to have him arrested.
Putting my head in my hands, I debated driving away when my alarm rang to alert me that it was 8:35 a.m.
Time to go in.
What should I do? Drive away? No—I couldn’tnotshow up!? What if they called my medical school? What if they called other residency programs? I could get blacklisted! I’d never get into residency here, much less anywhere else!
Oh, God. That meant Ihadto go in. I began to get my things together despite my swarming thoughts. Grabbing my phone, it automatically unlocked, and I glanced down to see what I’d been reading before all of this happened. The Jerzeck family article. My eyes caught on a picture of a young man on a volleyball court in a ready position, slim-fitting white shirt, mouth in a determined firm line, eyes blue and piercing. My heart started to hammer in my chest as I scrolled down to read the caption.
Eli Jerzeck, youngest son of Dr(s) James and Constance Jerzeck, played Men’s Volleyball for Boston University.
The sinking feeling in my stomach intensified, punching through the ground on its path to the core of the Earth.
Because the person in that picture, Eli Jerzeck, was the same person as the guy in handcuffs.
Which meant that I just tried to have the most prestigious resident to come through the program in years, arrested.
To quote one of my favorite books as a kid,
“Are you there, God? It’s me, Millicent.”
Hippocratic Foes is coming Fall 2025!
Want more Green Valley? Read on for a sneak peek of the Green Valley Heroes series withForrest For the Treesby Kilby Blades!
Sneak PeekForrest For the Treesby Kilby Blades, book #1 in the Green Valley Heroes series
“Oh, I have earned the hell out of my cupcake," Sierra said out loud, thinking ahead to the s’mores cupcake she’d had Joy set aside for her at Donner Bakery. She always earned her end-of-day treats. So much exercise that she never had to count calories was one of the many perks of being a national park ranger. As was permission to talk to herself. Because who was listening, except the trees?
But she rarely earned her dessert and the bourbon drink she liked to have at the end of a long day before she crested the hill that overlooked Bluebell Fields, the name she'd made up for the picturesque wildflower meadow she passed near the end of her route. That usually came at around 16,000 steps, according to her pedometer. But it was barely noon on a Tuesday—not even her busiest day of the week—and she’d already passed 12,000.
