My jaw tenses as if I can physically lock the past back into place.
I turn back to my screen.
Halfway through the day, I pass Melissa at the nurses’ station. She’s angled toward Trudy, laughing softly about nothing important. Her posture is loose and easy, like her body doesn’t know what it is like to brace for impact.
Longing flares before I can stop it.
Then she glances up, and our eyes meet.
No warmth or invitation in them. She doesn’t show any softness, waiting for me to step into it. She looks away first. Not dramatically, not cruelly, just choosing not to offer what I refused to take.
The loss of that hits harder than I expected.
I keep walking anyway.
This is better, I tell myself. It’s safer, even if the tightness in my chest doesn’t ease.
After another visit with a patient, I step out into the hallway.
The hospital feels like it’s closing in on me.
Not physically—the corridors are the same width they’ve always been—but in the way my thoughts keep circling back to the same places, no matter how hard I redirect them. I’ve reviewed charts I could recite from memory. I’ve corrected residents on things they already know, just to hear my own voice doing anything useful.
I’m busy, but I’m not distracted, and that’s the problem.
I stop outside room 447 without meaning to.
My hand hovers near the door handle before my brain catches up and reminds me there’s no reason to go in. The name on the placard isn’t Frank’s. The patient inside is someone else entirely.
For a second, irritation flares at the fact that my body still expects him to be there.
I step back. Thisshouldn’tmatter.
Patients die. That’s the reality of oncology. I’ve built an entire career on accepting that truth without letting it hollow me out. I’ve told families hard things with a steady voice. I’ve watched people grieve and learned how to stand beside it without being pulled under.
So, why does this one feel different?
I know the answer.
Frank didn’t shrink or soften. He stayed present, sharp, and engaged, even when his body was failing him. He looked at me like he understood the art of hiding that I’d spent years perfecting.
And worse than that, he named it.
I retreat into my office and close the door, leaning back in my chair and staring at the blank wall across from me. There’s a familiar pressure building behind my ribs now, restless and unproductive. The urge to fix what can’t be fixed.
I hate that feeling.
It’s the same one I used to feel when pacing hospital hallways late at night, when the building smelled like old coffee and disinfectant and fear. The same restless energy that came with knowing I’d done everything right and it still wasn’t enough.
You can do everything right and still lose.
That lesson hardened into something useful. I built my life around it, like having no relationships that asked more of me than I could give.
Melissa disrupted that structure without even trying.
She didn’t demand anything, but I find myself wanting it. Wanting her and wanting what we had.
Her words surface again, unwanted and unrelenting.
