My gaze settled on his face, the memories from last night crashing over me again.
I knew what he wanted to say, but he couldn’t. Not anymore.
He had already made his choice.
“Why are you here?” I asked.
He closed his eyes, his hands folded over his stomach. “I don’t know.”
“Cameron...”
“Yeah, I know. I shouldn’t be here.”
“How did you know I was here?”
“I was looking for you,” he said, opening his eyes to meet mine. “In the past, this was where I usually found you.”
“But you never came closer.”
“No.” He shook his head. “I just watched you from afar.”
“So why did you come now?”
His voice went quieter when he answered, “Like I said, I don’t know.”
I didn’t ask again, because deep down, we both knew the answer.
But it was too painful to say it now, and no longer ours to say.
And maybe it was better left unsaid.
I pressed play on my phone, letting the music fill my ears again.
Then, quietly, I reached beneath my coat, slipped a hand into the pocket of my top, and pulled out a small bottle.
I set it gently on his folded hands.
It was a bottle of diluted peppermint oil.
For him.
After the song ended, I rose to my feet and began the walk back to the hospital.
Cameron stayed behind, still seated, saying nothing.
The quiet of the park vanished the moment I stepped into the hospital. Noise returned all at once: rushed footsteps, distant voices, the steady hum of machines. Urgency pressed in—decisions waiting to be made in seconds, patients looking at me with eyes full of hope, pleading with me to take their pain away.
The stillness I’d clung to slipped from my grasp as the pace of work wrapped itself around me.
I tried not to think too much.
Of the memories.
And heartbreak.
Of why Cameron was in that park.
And for a while, it seemed to work.
