“The Miracle Mothers Charity Gala,” I said, kneeling to rescue a stack of neon Post-its before they met their end under his foot. “I’m proposing a community initiative—Maternal Wellness. Postpartum counseling, nurse visits, peer groups, maybe even a hotline.”
He nodded slowly. “And this is your idea of fun?”
“Some people do yoga,” I said, gesturing at the organized whirlwind. “I color-code trauma statistics.”
“So...all of this is for a ten-minute presentation?”
“Yes.”
“Isn’t that a little much?”
My spine straightened. “Excuse me?”
“I just mean—” He pointed vaguely at the explosion of color and paper. “You’ve turned the living room into a command center. Are you sure you’re not just trying to prove a point? That you can win?”
The words landed with the sting of lemon juice in a paper cut. Probably because he was right. But I wasn’t about to let him know that.
“What?” I said, my voice coming out too fast. “You don’t think I could actually care about this?”
“That’s not—”
“Because I do,” I snapped. “I care about helping people. I didn’t spend half my life memorizing anatomy and missing social events just to prove a point.”
He lifted his hands in surrender. “That’s not what I meant.”
The fight in me drained all at once, leaving only the vacant echo of it behind. I folded my arms, looking anywhere but at him. The room felt too loud in its silence—papers breathing softly under the fan, the faint hum of the refrigerator, the pulse in my own throat.
My gaze landed on the floor, on the mayhem I’d made of my ideas—highlighters, data sheets, fragments of gusto scattered like confetti after a parade no one came to.
Finally, I said, “You know they didn’t even come to my white coat ceremony.”
“Who didn’t?”
“Myparents,” I spat. “They didn’t come to a single graduation, they refused to spend a dime on my education—despite being the first and only person in my family to get accepted into university. Half the time they didn’t even believe I’d make it this far, and when I did, they didn’t care.”
“Your dad didn’t go either?”
I let out a weak snort. “My dad...” I shook my head. “He wasn’t like my mom. He wasn’t cruel, or mean, or criticizing every inch of my existence.” My voice sagged. “He wasquiet. And somehow that was worse. Because it just meant I wasn’t worth defending.”
He didn’t say anything. The absence of noise stretched, full and heavy.
“Is it so terrible,” I continued, “to want to prove myself? To want to be...enough?”
He stared at me for a beat too long, like he was weighing every possible version of the truth before choosing one. “Yes, it is terrible. You don’t need to prove yourself to anyone, Lillian. You’re a doctor. You’re successful. You already are enough. Youalwayswere. Who cares what they think?”
He said it like it was simple math, like the proof of my worth was right there in the degrees on the wall. “Ido,” I said. “Icare.”
His brow furrowed, but my word vomit barreled right over him before he got the chance to respond.
“Sometimes I just want to dump all of me out,” I admitted quietly. “I just want to get rid of everything—the whole sloppy, insufferable version of myself that made me so difficult to keep—and start over as someone new. Someone who would’ve been easier to love in the first place.”
“Well,” he said softly, like the answer had always been there, waiting for me to catch up to it, “even if you managed to do that...I think you’d accidentally find your way back to being you.”
I huffed out a small, uneven laugh, but it didn’t quite land. “That’s not very encouraging.”
His gaze didn’t waver. “It is,” he murmured. “Because there’s nothing about you that needs replacing.”
The vulnerability in the loft was pressing down on me, so instead of drowning in it, I did the only logical thing a spiraling adult woman could do.
