Not some unclaimed inheritance or a relative impatiently waiting for the chance to demand ownership.
I continued to work. But thoughts kept drifting back to Mireya's face when she said she couldn't be indebted to me. The fear hiding behind those words stayed with me.
I left her my card but my phone remained silent. No calls. No messages.
She wasn't going to change her mind. I knew that without needing confirmation. She was the type who would rather break than bend, rather face homelessness than accept help that felt too close to charity.
I'd been that person once.
In many ways, I still was.
The rest of the afternoon blurred into rounds and consultations. I checked on Arthur Graves in the ICU, reviewed his chart, and monitored his recovery. His vital signs looked stable and his progress was exactly where it should be. His wife, Rebecca, thanked me again, her eyes swollen but bright with relief. I nodded politely and moved on before she could say more.
Gratitude always made me uncomfortable. Especially when I felt like I was only doing what was expected of me.
By the time I made it home, the city was a grid of light forty floors below.
The elevator opened into the foyer and I stood there for a moment the way I sometimes did, letting the quiet settle around me. It was a particular kind of quiet that only existed up here, above the noise and the traffic and the rest of it. The penthouse had cost more than I had spent on anything that wasn't a medical education, and most nights I barely noticed it. The windows. The skyline. The way the city looked from this height like something that could almost be peaceful.
Then the music reached me from the living room. Upbeat. Pop. Completely unrecognizable.
Emma.
I followed the sound and found my sister sprawled across the couch, textbook open on her lap, colored highlighters scattered across the coffee table. She hummed along to the music while marking passages, wearing one of my old sweatshirts that hung past her knees, her dark hair twisted into a messy knot on top of her head.
"You're home." She looked up with a bright smile. "I ordered Chinese."
"Emma, you don't have to feed me."
"I know I don't have to." She turned a page without looking up. "I wanted dumplings and I wasn't going to order dumplings for one like some kind of sad person. You're welcome."
I sat down across from her. "How was your day?"
"Productive." She closed her textbook and studied my face with that quiet attention that always made me feel slightly transparent. "How was yours?"
"Busy."
"You always say that." Her head tilted slightly. "Tonight it looks different though. You have that look.”
I frowned. “What look?”
"The one where you're thinking about something you refuse to discuss. It's your default setting, but tonight it seems worse."
I sat down, leaving careful space between us. Emma had always been unnervingly perceptive, even when she'd been too weak to stand without assistance.
“It was just a long day,” I deflected.
"Mm-hmm." She was clearly unconvinced.
The doorbell saved me from further interrogation. Emma bounced up to grab the delivery while I cleared her study materials from the table. We ate straight from the containers, Emma absorbed in some cooking competition show while I pushed unanswered questions from my mind.
“There’s a nurse at the hospital,” I said casually between bites.
Emma looked up, eyebrows lifting. “Okay?”
“She collapsed today from exhaustion. She has been pushing herself too hard trying to pay bills.”
“That’s terrible." Emma's face fell. "Is she alright?"
