Semua Bab Captain Fiancé Cheated With His First Officer, I Left: Bab 1 - Bab 10

At seven that evening, the reception was held in the top-floor ballroom of the airport hotel. The floor-to-ceiling windows faced the runways of Boston's airport, planes taxiing one after another through the night, their wingtip lights like drifting stars. The ballroom was full of pilots, lead flight attendants, airline management, and their families. Everyone was polished, everyone spoke with restraint, even the toasts and small talk seemed rehearsed.Ethan stood beside me. Dark suit, silver-gray tie, shoulders straight. Even out of uniform he looked like a man ready to step into a cockpit at any moment. Precise, calm, no wasted motion. I stood next to him holding a glass of soda water, like a proper fiancée, at least in everyone else's eyes."Ethan." A woman's clear voice carried over from the other side of the crowd.Claire came over. A sharply tailored uniform skirt, blond hair pinned back, clean makeup, a bright smile. When she saw me, she offered a polite smile. "Emma, so nice to

Packing went faster than I expected. Because in this apartment I'd lived in for five years, very little actually belonged to me. The bookshelf was all Ethan's flight manuals, his uniform jacket hung by the entryway, flight cases and model planes were piled in the corner of the living room. Even the fridge door had his roster taped to it. My things were just a few pieces of clothing, a medical notebook, a first-aid kit, and my mother's journal. I put them into the suitcase one by one.Then I went to the top shelf of the closet, pulled over a chair, and took down the moisture-proof box. I opened it. Inside lay an old epaulet and a photocopy of an early flight logbook, the one Ethan had swapped out when he first passed his captain's exam. Back then he was still just a first officer, so stressed he'd go whole nights without sleep. I sat with him while he memorized procedures, organized his route materials, ran through oral checks over and over. Sometimes he'd fall asleep facedown on the de

On my third day in Seattle, Ethan came looking for me.That morning I was doing a project handover at the center. The conference room was small, maps of medical transport routes across the West Coast states on the walls, each line marked with airports, diversion points, partner hospitals, and average transport times. The first time I sat at that table, I felt calm inside. No one asked whether I was some captain's fiancée; no one treated my judgment as emotion. They asked, "Dr. Reed, if a pediatric patient's blood pressure drops sharply twenty minutes after takeoff, what's your first course of action?" I answered, and they nodded and took notes. It was so simple it felt foreign to me.When the meeting ended and I walked out with my files, the receptionist looked up at me. "Dr. Reed, there's someone here to see you."I followed her gaze. Beyond the glass door stood Ethan, in a black trench coat, cold rain settling on his shoulders. He was thinner than the day I'd left, shadows under his

The car accident on an island near Seattle happened the night before a rainstorm. When the emergency call reached the center, everyone stopped what they were doing: a critically ill child needed urgent transport, ground traffic was blocked, the nearest children's hospital was on the far side of the state, and the time window was narrow. I put on an emergency vest and boarded with the team, with Noah flying.A medical transport plane is much smaller than a commercial jet. There was nothing decorative in the cabin, only equipment, medications, monitors, and a light so white it hurt the eyes. When the child was carried in, his blood pressure was already unstable. He was so small, the oxygen mask covering most of his face, leaving only a pale forehead and a thin little wrist showing. His mother stood at the bottom of the boarding stairs, her eyes red and swollen, asking us over and over, "Will he be okay?" I didn't give her a false promise. I only said, "We'll do everything we can."The ca

Once Seattle entered its rainy season, transport missions rose noticeably. Early that morning the center took in an interstate pediatric organ transport: the child was in critical condition, the organ had a limited preservation time, and the takeoff, landing, and handoff had to happen within a set window; any delay along the way could undo all the effort that came before. When I got to the center Noah was already in the conference room, route maps, weather charts, and the hospital handoff procedures spread across the table. When he saw me he handed over the mission tablet. "You lead the medical procedures.""Flight risk?""The weather isn't ideal, but it's flyable. If anything changes en route, I'll notify you right away."I nodded. Exchanges like this were short, but they put me at ease, because we were each in our own position, and neither of us needed to overrule the other.Before boarding, I saw Ethan at the edge of the tarmac. The rain had just stopped, and there was standing wate