The Consultant's Rules

Nadia Bèl scrubs operating theatres at four in the morning to pay her way through a degree she cannot afford. She has been rejected from medical school twice. She will not be rejected three times. Dr. Alasdair Muir has spent thirty years in that theatre and has never once noticed the person who cleans it. Until he sees that every instrument has, for six months, been going back onto the tray in the exact order a right-handed surgeon needs it. The man who did not notice her then will not stop noticing her now. He gets her a past paper. He gets her an interview. He gets her investigated by the hospital, and her name in a room she has not earned, and everything she has ever wanted, handed to someone else's version of her. Nadia will take the career. She will not take the pity. A year later, when she is finally the doctor he thought she could be, Alasdair Muir will have to ask her whether she wants him at all — and this time, she has all the power.