He'd dismissed it then. Megan, for all her no-nonsense nurse training, could be ridiculously dramatic at times.
But standing here, watching Lily shake her head at him like he was a particularly stubborn math problem, Alex felt something uncomfortable twist in his chest.
What if she was right?
What if his sister was right?
What if the distancing he'd built to protect his work had become a prison he'd forgotten he was living in?
The thought was too big, too destabilizing. He shoved it away.
"I think I'll stick to my original plan and get my work done," he said, grabbing his equipment.
"I'm going to check the tide pools," he added, his voice clipped. "I'll be back... later. Don't?—"
"Touch anything, I got it. Geesh, you're like a broken record," Lily said, rolling her eyes. "Bring me back a mango or something while you're out and about."
"Eat a banana," he quipped before walking out the door.
"If I eat one more banana, I'll turn into a monkey!" she countered, her voice trailing him and coaxing a reluctant grin out of him.
The tide pools were exactly as he'd left them yesterday—teeming, predictable, indifferent to his personal chaos.
Alex crouched at the edge of the formation he'd come halfway around the world to study.
Two years. Two years of permit applications, budget reviews, and increasingly desperate emails to SPECA administrators who treated his requests like junk mail. Two years of staring at archival survey photoson his laptop at 2 AM, memorizing every branch and crevice of this specific staghorn colony like a man studying the face of someone he hadn't met yet.
Reef Site 7, Eastern Shore.That's what the survey labeled it. Just another site marker in a sea of markers that no one seemed to care about.
But Alex had seen something in those grainy images—a resilience in the growth patterns, an unusual density that suggested this particular formation had found a way to thrive when others struggled. He'd built half his grant proposal around studying it. He'd told his thesis advisor it could be a model for coral restoration across the Pacific.
He'd waited two years to see it in person.
And now, finally kneeling at its edge with the morning sun warm on his shoulders, he saw what the archival photos hadn't shown him.
Pale patches. Faint, but unmistakable. Creeping across the staghorn branches like frost on a window.
His stomach dropped.
No. Not yet.
He grabbed his waterproof camera, hands slightly unsteady as he documented what he was seeing. Early-stage bleaching. Not fatal—not yet—but present. Spreading.
The rational part of his brain kicked into gear:Water temps have been elevated. This is within expected parameters. Recovery is possible if conditions improve.
But the other part—the part he didn't like to acknowledge—felt something heavier settle in his chest.
He'd waited too long.
Two years of bureaucratic bullshit, and the reef hadn't waited for him. It had started struggling while he filled out forms in triplicate and begged for funding from people who couldn't find the South Pacific on a map.
Alex lowered the camera.
This was the job. You studied things you couldn't control. You documented decline and hoped the data mattered to someone eventually. You didn't get attached, because attachment was just another word for future grief.
His mother had taught him that. Not intentionally—she'd never meant to teach him anything about loss. But cancer didn't care about intentions any more than coral cared about permits.
Some things just happen,she'd said, her hand cool in his, her voice thin as tissue paper.You can do everything right, sweetheart, and still lose.
