Back in her office, the screens glowed with unread messages. She clicked through them with methodical efficiency, answering with single-line responses and no unnecessary pleasantries. The surgical board report, the committee meeting notes, a procurement issue with the new imaging unit. Evelyn would be pissed.
Good.
Let her be.
She typed furiously, correcting figures and rewording phrasing she found inadequate. One hand absently rubbed at her temple. The caffeine hadn’t touched the pounding headache brewing at the back of her skull.
There was a knock at the door. She didn’t look up.
“It’s open,” she said sharply.
Dr. Greene poked his head in. “Just checking if you had a minute. There’s a new paper on cardiac grafts I thought you’d want to see.”
“I’ll read it when I have time.”
“Sure. No rush. Just thought you might want?—”
“Is there anything else?”
He hesitated. “No. Sorry. I’ll email it.”
The door clicked softly closed behind him.
Her fingers returned to the keyboard, striking the keys harder than necessary. The words on the screen started to blur slightly. She blinked. Once. Twice.
No tears. Just exhaustion. Just?—
Her phone buzzed.
Again.
She didn’t even have to look. She knew it was Sloane.
That woman had a talent for intruding, even from a distance. There was a constant hum in Catherine’s body now, like static under her skin.
She didn’t open it.
She didn’t delete it either.
Instead, she shoved the phone into the drawer and slammed it shut, startling herself with the force of it.
She closed her eyes, just for a second.And in the dark behind her lids, she saw Sloane’s fingers smudged with paint. The way she’d looked at her like she was worth looking at.
Stop it.
She stood abruptly, pulled her lab coat off the chair, and marched toward the OR wing again.
There was always another surgery.
Another distraction.
Another way to drown out the ache.
The silence hadn’t followed her here. It had buried itself inside her—quiet and cold and deep.
The scan in front of her was a familiar mess of grayscale shadows and subtle distinctions, an image she could read like a secondlanguage. The small aneurysm behind the aortic root wasn't obvious to anyone else, but Catherine had already spotted it, marked it, and drafted a plan in her mind before the resident even walked it into the lounge.
She preferred reviewing scans here, away from the distraction of her office. It was early afternoon, and the lounge was quiet, save for the soft hum of the fridge and the occasional clink of someone making tea in the kitchenette. The silence helped her think.
