I need someone who stays.
I exhale slowly. Staying sounds simple, but it never has been.
There are things in my past I don’t think about on purpose. Certain rooms. Certain days. Certain sounds that can still knock the air out of my lungs if I let them sharpen into detail. I learned early that memory was a slippery slope. One thought leads to another, and suddenly, you’restanding somewhere you promised yourself you’d never go again.
So, I don’t go there. I compartmentalize in order to survive.
A knock at my door pulls me back into the present. A resident asks about lab values, concern flickering behind professional politeness. I answer automatically, my tone calm, my explanation clear.
This is where I excel.
When the door closes again, the quiet feels heavier than before.
I check my phone without meaning to.
No new messages.
I shouldn’t feel disappointed, but my chest aches.
The realization irritates me more than it should. I set the phone down harder than necessary and pull up another chart, then another, then another. None of it sticks. The words blur together, clinical language losing its usual grounding effect.
I close the file abruptly, pushing my chair back and standing too fast. The room spins for half a second before settling.
I can’t do this here. I grab my coat and leave my office without looking back, the ache in my chest unresolved and growing.
Avoidance used to work. Now it feels like postponement.
I don’t even remember the walk to the garage. But I hear the city humming. Evidence of life continuing all around me like it always does.
I’ve been telling myself the same thing for years.This is the job. This is the cost. You don’t get to carry everyone with you. You don’t get attached. You don’t let yourself feel something that might make you hesitate when hesitation costs lives.
That logic has kept me functional, but it’s never made me peaceful.
Frank’s face rises unbidden. This time, it’s not sick or afraid, but amused. Knowing. Like he clocked me from the start and decided not to let me hide behind credentials and clipped responses.
“You don’t fool me,” he would say.
The look in his eyes that day was almost fond. Like he recognized something in me he’d once carried himself.
I press my forehead briefly against the steering wheel, my jaw tight enough to ache.
This is why I pulled away from Melissa.
Because grief doesn’t exist in isolation. It bleeds. It spreads. Once it surfaces, it drags other things with it, like memories I keep buried, losses I refuse to examine too closely.
If I let myself feel this fully, the past won’t stay quiet.
I start the car.
The drive home is muscle memory. Familiar turns, familiar lights, my body navigating the city while my mind stays trapped in the same loop. Frank’s chart. Melissa’s message. The look on her face in the locker room when I chose distance instead of comfort.
I didn’t mean to hurt her.
When I step into my apartment, the silence hits harder than it should. The space is too clean, too orderly … a reflection of the life I’ve built to keep everything contained. I set my keys down with more force than necessary and exhale, slow and controlled.
This isn’t working. The thought lands without drama, without panic.
Just truth.
