My mind betrays me anyway. My father’s face, pale against the wet road. His chest not rising, no matter how hard I pressed. My mother’s scream tearing through the air, through me, through everything.
“Focus,” I growl under my breath. “Again.”
We work on him for a long time. Longer than protocol suggests. I know it, and the nurses know it. No one says anything. Finally, a nurse meets my eyes and gives the smallest shake of his head.
I stop.
Time of death is called, recorded, and filed away like a data point and not a man with a life that ended under my hands.
I step back from the table. My chest feels tight, like there’s something lodged in my throat that won’t move.
The room begins to clear with soft voices and efficient cleanup. The quiet choreography of loss.
Someone touches my arm gently. “Beckett.”
I nod, not trusting myself to speak.
I breathe in.
Out.
Again.
It doesn’t help.
My father’s face is everywhere now. In the lines of Dan’s jaw. In the age listed on his chart. In the way I reassured his wife last month that he was strong and that he’d be fine.
I slide down the wall until I’m sitting on the floor, my scrubs damp with sweat. My hands curl into fists, pressing against my thighs.
I did everything right. I know that intellectually, butknowing doesn’t quiet the voice that whispers anyway.
If you were better, he’d still be alive. If you were faster. Smarter.
I close my eyes, and for a second I’m nineteen again, kneeling on the roadside, begging a body to come back. The past doesn’t care that I’m a doctor now. It doesn’t care that I’ve saved hundreds since. It only remembers the ones I couldn’t.
I don’t know how long I sit there, but it’s long enough for my legs to go numb and the adrenaline to drain, leaving only bone-deep exhaustion. Eventually, I push myself up.
There are forms to sign and a family to speak to. This is always the worst part.
I find Dan’s wife in the consultation room. She looks up when I enter, searching my face. She knows. They always know. I sit across from her and choose my words carefully.
“I’m so sorry.”
Her face collapses. I stay until she doesn’t want me there anymore, until my presence becomes part of the pain instead of the explanation. When I leave, her sobs follow me down the hall, lodged deep in my chest.
Forty-Six
Madison
The treadmill starts up just before two in the morning.
I know because I’m still awake.
I’ve been staring at the ceiling for almost an hour, counting the rhythm of my own pulse.
Normally, the treadmill is background noise. Annoying, sure, but persistent. It’s become familiar enough that it usually feels like a tether. A reminder that I’m not the only one awake and restless in this building.
Tonight, it’s different.
