So, I do what I always do—I keep working.
I come in earlier than I need to. I set my coffee down on my desk and forget to drink it. I open charts and start working like the act of reviewing numbers can keep everything else contained.
This is what I’m good at.
Work makes sense. It has rules. It doesn’t ask questions I can’t answer. It doesn’t stand in front of me with wet eyes and a trembling mouth and demand I be human when all I know how to be is competent.
Frank’s chart is still flagged in the system. Closed, technically, but the notification sits there like an accusation.
I don’t open it. I delete it.
The second I do, something tightens in my chest. It’s the familiar clamp of discomfort, the kind that used to come with certain dates on the calendar, certain hallways, certain smells. I breathe through it, shallow and controlled, and keep going.
This is no different from any other patient.
That’s what I tell myself while I answer resident questions, sign orders, check consults, correct a note that doesn’t actually need correcting. My voice is steady. My face is calm. My hands do not shake.
No one would look at me and think I’m unraveling … because I’m not.
I’m simply narrowing my world to what I can control.
I can feel it happening. The way my world compresses until it’s only tasks, treatment plans, and what’s medically necessary. How my thoughts become sharp-edged and purposeful. It’s a survival instinct. It always has been.
The problem is, Frank wasn’t just a patient. He was a person who insisted on taking up space. A person who noticed patterns and called them out like he had the right.
He shouldn’t have had the right, but he did it anyway.
You don’t get to close yourself off and call it strength.
The words flicker through my mind uninvited, and I shove them down so hard that I taste bitterness.
I pass a sink in the hallway, and the scent of antiseptic hits me wrong—too sharp, too familiar—and for a second, I’m somewhere else entirely.
A different corridor with much older paint, a vending machine that never worked, and a chair that dug into the backs of my legs because I’d been sitting there too long, watching numbers I couldn’t control.
I don’t let the memory form fully. I don’t let it sharpen into details. I blink once, ground myself in the present, and keep walking.
There are memories I don’t touch for a reason.
In the back of my mind, I’m aware that Melissa’s message sits unanswered in my phone. I read it once in my office earlier, then again in the elevator when I should’ve been paying attention to the doors opening and closing.
I know you’re hurting. But I need someone who stays.
It isn’t a demand, and she isn’t angry. That’s what makes it dangerous.
It’s reasonable and fair.
I set my phone face down on my desk, like hiding the screen will hide the meaning.
This is why I don’t do relationships.
Not because I’m incapable of feeling, but because I feel too much, and I learned the hard way what that costs. Closeness loosens things I keep sealed when grief doesn’t stay neatly contained once you crack the door open.
I don’t think her name.
I never do, not consciously. I’ve trained myself not to.
But there are nights when the hospital is too quiet, I’m too tired, and something slips. A phantom ache that’s lived inside me for years. A hospital room. A too-bright morning. A doctor’s voice that sounded calm while mine turned to static.
