Hey Doc,
Glad you made it back in one piece. Boiler’s fixed, heat’s good, but it’s quieter here now. Guess that’s how it goes when the storm passes.
Take care of yourself.
—Soren
She hovered over “Send.” For a second, she thought about adding more—You forgot your mug,orI miss you already,orCome back sometime.
But instead, she sent it just as it was. Simple. Bare. Honest enough.
The message whooshed away into the digital ether. She exhaled slowly and leaned back, the beer still cold in her hand. Outside, the last light faded from the sky, stars pricking through the thin haze above the peaks.
Soren turned off the radio, letting the silence return.
The loneliness was still there—but now, threaded through it, was something else. Something light. Something like possibility.
She glanced at the mug again, sitting quietly on the table, gleaming faintly in the starlight.
“See, Doc,” she murmured, half smiling, “you’re still here.”
And somehow, that felt like the beginning of something, not the end.
11
NIA
The hospital looked the same.
That was the first thing she noticed when she walked through the automatic doors—the same polished floors, the same hum of fluorescent lights, the same sterile chill of filtered air. Phoenix Ridge Hospital didn’t change for anyone.
Nia had thought she wanted that. Stability. Familiarity. Predictability.
But after days of woodsmoke, candlelight, and the sound of wind against glass, the air here felt too sharp, too cold.
“Dr. South, welcome back!”
The charge nurse’s bright voice jolted her. Nia forced a smile as she adjusted the strap of her bag. “Thank you, Clara. How’s the OR schedule looking?”
“Stacked,” Clara said cheerfully. “We had to reschedule three major cases while you were snowed in. You’re double-booked this week.”
“Of course I am.”
Clara laughed as she passed, leaving Nia standing in the hallway, surrounded by the rhythmic click of shoes and the beeping of monitors. She moved toward her office on autopilot,nodding at colleagues who greeted her like she’d been gone a day, not a lifetime.
Her office door opened with its usual soft click. The space was pristine—precisely as she’d left it. A stack of surgical journals on the desk, an untouched coffee mug, a framed certificate straightened to exact angles.
It should have been comforting. Instead, it felt like stepping back into a photograph.
Nia set her bag down and exhaled slowly. The city beyond her window gleamed beneath weak winter sunlight. No snowdrifts. No mountains. Just glass and motion.
She changed into scrubs and checked her schedule. Two surgeries, one consult, a department meeting. Her body knew the rhythm. Her mind lagged behind.
By the time she stepped into the OR, the mask of composure was back in place. The surgical lights flared to life, bright as interrogation lamps, and the room filled with the familiar symphony of suction, monitors, and murmured commands.
For the first twenty minutes, she lost herself in it—the way she always had. The incision, the precision, the quiet hum of competence that drowned everything else out.
But then, in a lull, she caught a glimpse of her reflection in the instrument tray—eyes too tired, mouth too tight—and for a split second she saw another reflection layered over it: candlelight flickering on rough wood, a smile that reached into her chest, the sound of a voice teasing,You don’t have to hold it together.
