The rest of the day passed in a blur. Maggie moved through her responsibilities with mechanical precision. Rounded on patients. Supervised procedures. Answered pages.
She didn’t see Evie again.
By 6 PM, her inbox had a new email:
Subject: Transfer Request - APPROVED
Dr. Laurel,
Your request to transfer Dr. Brooks to Dr. Patel’s service has been approved effective Monday, October 16th.
Dr. Patel has been notified and will integrate Dr. Brooks into her team beginning next week.
Thank you for your attention to maintaining appropriate professional boundaries.
Karen Walsh, HR Director
Maggie read it once. Closed her email.
She should have felt relief. Should have felt like she’d done the right thing.
Instead, she felt hollowed out.
Her phone buzzed.
Text from Evie:Got the transfer notification. Hope it was worth it.
Maggie stared at the message for a long time. Started to respond a dozen different ways.
Finally typed:I’m sorry.
Sent it knowing it wasn’t enough. Knowing nothing she could say would be enough.
The dots appeared. Stayed for several minutes.
Then disappeared without a response.
That night, Maggie sat in her apartment with Sarah’s journal open on her lap. The entry from two months before Sarah died—the one she’d read dozens of times but never really absorbed.
“If I could tell her anything, it would be this: Let go. When I’m gone, let go of the guilt. Let go of the fight. Let yourself live without me. Because that’s the only thing that would break my heart—knowing she stopped living too.”
Maggie traced the words with her finger.
Let go.
Let yourself live.
But living meant risking. And risking meant losing. And Maggie had lost so much already that the thought of losing more—losing Evie, losing her career, losing the fragile stability she’d built—felt impossible to bear.
So she’d chosen safety.
She’d chosen distance.
She’d chosen survival.
And it felt like dying anyway.
Maggie closed the journal. Set it aside. Pulled out her laptop one more time.
