Later, after the room has been cleared and the next patient is already on their way in, I find myself standing at the sink again, scrubbing my hands until the skin burns. The water runs too hot, scalding my palms, turning them red and raw. My reflection in the mirror looks pale, my eyes too bright, the storm-gray irises reflecting the fluorescent lights overhead. Dark circles shadow the skin beneath, exhaustion etched into every line of my face.
Lila appears beside me, leaning her hip against the counter. She studies my face in silence for a moment before speaking, her expression concerned. “That one rattled you.”
I huff out a breath that's half a laugh, the sound bitter and hollow. “You noticed.”
She bumps my shoulder gently. “Your hands were shaking.”
I swallow, nodding once. The admission tastes like failure. “It's been a week.”
“Since the alley,” she supplies softly, her voice dropping to a near whisper.
I glance at her, surprised. I hadn't told her the details. Just that something happened. Something that got under my skin. But of course, she knows. Lila has always been able to read me better than anyone.
She gives me a look, one eyebrow arching. “You don't think I could tell? You've been wound tight since you came back.”
I turn back to the sink, watching the water swirl down the drain, carrying away soap and imagined blood. “He grabbed my wrist,” I murmur quietly, the memory pressing in with uncomfortable clarity. “Just like... like the man the other night.”
Lila's expression softens, tightening with worry. She reaches over and shuts off the water, then takes the towel from the dispenser and presses it into my hands. “Trauma has a way of echoing,” she offers. “Your brain is just trying to make sense of it.”
I nod, even though unease coils tighter in my stomach, a snake curling around itself. “The things he said didn't make sense. Names. Warnings. It felt...” I trail off, unsure how to finish the thought without sounding paranoid.
“Like unfinished business,” Lila finishes for me.
My eyes snap to hers. She shrugs lightly, her curls bouncing against her shoulders. “I've seen that look on your face before. When something doesn't sit right with you.”
I let out a slow breath, my chest loosening just a fraction. “I don't want to read into it.”
“Then don't,” she replies easily, giving my arm a squeeze. Her fingers are warm through my scrub sleeve. “You did your job. You listened. That matters but now let it go.”
I cling to that as the rest of the shift drags on. But the unease doesn't fade. It lodges in my chest, a persistent pressure that refuses to ease. The parallels stack up in my mind despite my efforts to dismiss them. The grip on my wrist. The urgency in hisvoice. The sense that he was trying to pass something on before it was too late. Names I don’t recognize, pieces of a puzzle I don't want to solve.
And then there's the other man. The one in the alley. I hadn't let myself think too hard about him in the days since it happened. I was too afraid of where my thoughts might lead. But now the memory crashes back with force. His body braced against the brick wall, solid and heavy despite the blood loss. The heat of his blood soaked through my scarf, warm and sticky against my palms. The way his eyes held mine even as his body failed him. Dark brown ringed with green, pupils blown wide with pain but still aware.
Someone important.
The realization comes together slowly, clicking into place with uncomfortable certainty. The men who came for him weren't panicked strangers or opportunistic criminals. They moved with purpose and reverence. They surrounded him as if he were irreplaceable, lifting him with care that bordered on worship.
He belongs to a world I don't touch. A criminal one. The thought sends a chill through me, raising goosebumps on my arms despite the hospital's warmth. Even as another instinct rises beneath it, louder and more insistent.
Unfinished business.
I don't know what it means yet. I don't know how the pieces fit together, or how a dying man in an alley and a patient in my trauma bay connect. All I know is that something has started moving, gears turning somewhere just out of sight. The air feels charged, electric with energy that has nowhere to go.
When my shift finally ends, I walk through the hospital atrium alone, the wide glass space washed in late afternoon light. The sun slants through the windows, shadows rippling across the marble floor. Footsteps echo off the high ceiling, bouncing back distorted and strange. Ordinary conversations drift around me. A family clusters near the information desk, voices low and worried. A man in scrubs hurries past, his phone pressed to his ear. An elderly woman sits on a bench, her hands folded in her lap, staring at nothing. And still, the hairs on the back of my neck lift.
The sensation creeps over me slowly, prickling across my skin like static electricity. I keep walking, resisting the urge to look over my shoulder, my reflection gliding alongside me on the polished floor. The feeling intensifies, pressure building at the base of my skull. Someone is watching. I'm sure of it now.
By the time I reach the doors, I understand one undeniable truth. I am no longer alone in my own life.
4
KIREN
Grief doesn’t come the way stories promise. There are no tears. No hollow wail. No collapse beneath the pressure of loss. There’s only inevitability, the same cold acceptance I’ve carried since I was old enough to understand what my father's world demanded.
He taught me early that love was leverage. That attachment invited weakness. That survival demanded distance. He wasn’t gentle, but he was precise. He shaped me into a weapon because that was the only inheritance he believed worth leaving behind.
I honor him by accepting the world as it is. By accepting what must be done. I don’t rage or mourn publicly. I allow myself exactly one private moment, lying alone in a reinforced room with my body stitched together by violence and necessity.
