Serafina answered immediately. "Hey."
There was a breath on the other end. Shallow. Careful.
"Hey," Aria said.
Her voice was hoarse. Not sick-hoarse, not congestion—it sounded strained. Thin. Like something was pressing on it from inside.
Serafina sat up straighter. "What's wrong?"
"Nothing," Aria said quickly. Too quickly. "I just wanted to check in."
Serafina closed her eyes for half a second and let the lie pass without comment.
"How are you doing," she said. Not a question. A prompt.
"I'm okay." Then, softer: "I think I just pushed it today."
"Pushed what."
A pause. Another careful breath.
The image came instantly, uninvited—the goitre pressing against her sister's throat, the thing they'd been monitoring for months while insurance appeals crawled through bureaucraticmachinery that moved at its own pace and answered to no one's urgency.
It had been stable. Benign. Annoying more than dangerous, according to the last update. Aria was in her third year of pharmacy school now, P3, and she'd insisted on staying enrolled while they waited. She didn't want to lose momentum, didn't want to defer unless she absolutely had to. Classes were manageable. The scholarship depended on progress.
Serafina had let it stand because Aria was an adult and because sometimes you had to let people make their own choices, even when those choices sat wrong in your gut.
Her grip tightened on the phone.
"It's gotten worse," she said.
Silence.
Then Aria exhaled, the sound shaky. "A little."
"How much."
Another pause, longer this time, and Serafina waited it out the way she'd wait out a witness who wasn't ready to talk—patient, quiet, making space for the truth to find its way out.
"I'm having trouble breathing," Aria said finally. "Not like, all the time. Just when I lie down. Or if I talk too much."
Serafina's jaw set.
"And swallowing," Aria added, barely audible.
"When did this start."
"A few weeks ago. I didn't want to freak you out."
"You didn't tell your doctor."
"I did. They said to monitor it."
Serafina leaned back in her chair, eyes drifting to the darkened bullpen. Her reflection stared back at her from the black glass of an unused monitor—flat expression, shoulders squared, already moving through the problem the way she moved through every problem. Assess. Prioritize. Act.
"Have you told him?" she asked.
There was a hesitation on the line, just long enough to be answer enough.
