NICK

I didn’t yell. I didn’t have to. I took him apart. I used my words like a blade, cutting through every assumption he had about his own intelligence.

I laid out his failure in cold, simple terms, stripping away his pride until there was nothing left but the sound of the heart monitor.

It wasn’t personal. It was worse. It was a complete deconstruction of his worth as a doctor, delivered without a single flicker of emotion on my face.

The room stayed silent for a long time. No one breathed.

Harlow didn’t say a word. He just stared at the floor.

I continued the surgery as if nothing had happened. Because for me, it hadn’t. I was a professional.

But thirty seconds later, the realization hit me. I had overreacted. By my own standards, I had used a sledgehammer to kill a fly. I understood it and redirected the anger back inward.

Lila called me four times before noon. I watched the screen glow on the desk, her name flashing like a warning light.

I didn’t answer. The fifth call came while I was in a consult. I watched it go to voicemail without a second thought.

Lila apparently thought that being persistent was the same thing as having something worth saying. She was wrong about that, too.

I told myself I was going to see Cassian because I had professional oversight. The attending doctor was junior; a second set of eyes was just good practice. It was a logical, clinical decision.

The truth was that I had checked in on him every day at the same time. And it had nothing to do with him.

Cassian was still unconscious, lying there with that same dramatic commitment he brought to everything. Even in a coma, the man was an event.

Noah was in the chair beside the bed. It was the same chair he sat in every day. He looked like he was trying to solve a math problem that had no answer.

He also looked like he had been subtracting sleep from a total that had run out a long time ago.

He looked terrible. He looked like someone who was crumbling because the person he loved was absent.

I didn’t allow myself to think that I knew how that felt. I didn’t allow myself to feel any sympathy.

I stood in the doorway, not fully entering the room. "You look like you haven’t slept," I said. I made the words sound like a weapon, sharp and cold. "I don’t need another patient in this wing. Go home and sleep."

I meant for him to take care of himself. I meant that he was the only one left to watch over his boss and he couldn’t afford to break.

But the way I said it made it sound like he was just a nuisance I wanted out of my sight.

Noah said something, but I didn’t wait to hear it. I was already looking at the chart. My eyes were on the medical data, but my peripheral vision was doing that traitorous thing again.

Scanning the room. Scanning the hallway. Looking for pink. Looking for purple eyes.

I stayed for four minutes. It was longer than I needed to be there, but I couldn’t admit why I was lingering.

When I left, the hallway scanner in my brain stayed on. Every elevator door that opened, every person in a waiting area, every figure at the end of a long corridor... I looked at them all.

I didn’t find what I wasn’t looking for.

I walked into the break room for a second cup of coffee. I needed the caffeine to keep the shaking in my hands at bay.

There were two doctors by the sink. They were mid-sentence when I opened the door.

"—completely snapped at Harlow, in front of everyone—" one of them whispered.

"—I’ve never seen him like that," the other replied. "He’s been weird these days. It’s like he’s not even—"

They saw me. The silence that followed was thick and awkward. They looked at each other, trying to decide if they should pretend they weren’t just talking about me.

I didn’t look at them. I walked to the pot, poured my coffee, and grabbed a small packet of biscuits from the shelf. My face didn’t change. I didn’t give them the satisfaction of a reaction.

Riveting, I thought. The hospital’s gossip circle has noticed a change in the weather. I’m sure they feel very clever for spotting the obvious. They aren’t.

I left without saying a word. It was colder than any insult. I ate the biscuit in the hallway, but I didn’t taste it. My mind was already miles away, drifting back to that empty couch.

By the afternoon, the headache had upgraded itself. It was no longer a dull throb; it was a pulsing, rhythmic beat behind my eyes.

I knew what it was. Stress, lack of sleep, and high blood pressure. My body was finally starting to scream because I wouldn’t let it speak.

I felt a slight fever burning in my cheeks. My joints felt heavy and sore, the way they do right before you get sick. But I wasn’t... Not yet at least.

I took two ibuprofen from the bottle in my pocket. I noticed the bottle was almost empty. I had been taking them like candy for three days.

During an afternoon consult with a patient’s family, I was explaining a surgical plan. Three sentences in, my mind simply walked out of the room.

It didn’t go to the surgery. It didn’t go to the patient. It went to a color. That irritating, bright shade of pink.

It went to a pair of eyes that caught the light in a way that was medically unnecessary and yet, somehow, burned into my memory.

I recovered mid-sentence. I smoothed over the pause so quickly that the family didn’t even notice.

But I noticed. I noticed that I had just spaced out in the middle of my own professional life.

Excellent, I sneered at myself. Now I’m losing my mind in front of witnesses. This is what progress looks like.

Late in the day, after a long procedure, I stood in the scrub room. I held my hands out in front of me. They were trembling. Just a little. A fine, high-frequency vibration that I couldn’t stop.

I stared at them for eight seconds. Then I turned on the tap and let the cold water drown them out.