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“I know,” she whispered. “I’m . . . fine.” I studied her for a long moment, weighing whether to push, whether to ask the question we had been trained to ask.

Is anyone hurting you?

“Okay,” I said finally, softer, letting my hands fall to my sides. “If anything changes, or if you want to talk . . . I mean it.”

Her eyes cautiously met mine. She nodded quickly, almost imperceptibly.

“Thanks, Cali,” she said, disappearing down the hall toward the locker room.

I leaned against the supply closet wall, watching the hallway long after she’d disappeared. The ER slipped into one of those rare quiet stretches. Patients stabilized or moved; monitors beeped softly, the distant hum of the overhead lights keeping time with my thoughts. The bruise wouldn’t leave me alone. I hadn’t said it out loud, but my mind had drawn the outline anyway. How long had it been like that? How often had she hidden it, smiled through it, pretended it wasn’t there?

Faces surfaced without invitation—patients who’d smiled around split lips, laughed through broken ribs, insisted they’d walked into a door. Different stories. Same practiced smile. I’d learned to recognize that pattern. Every instinct urged me to ask. My training warned me that pushing too soon could drive her further away. I couldn’t push. Not yet. I would watch. I would wait. But I couldn’t let it go. Not while the marks existed, not while her eyes betrayed worry she wouldn’t voice. Because that bruise wasn’t just a mark; it was a signal. And I couldn’t ignore it. Maybe I couldn’t help Lacy today, but I’d be there when she was ready.

And maybe that was the hardest part—waiting. Knowing something was wrong and not being able to fix it. I hated that feeling. The helplessness. The uncertainty. The waiting for someone else to decide when it was time to let me in. It was the same feeling I’d carried since Grandpa’s appointment.

His CT results sat heavily in the back of my mind. The scan had confirmed a traumatic brain injury, but the findings from the neurological workup afterward were what I couldn’t stop thinking about. The cognitive testing, the imaging, the markers they were watching for—all of it pointed toward a possibility I wasn’t ready to accept.

Alzheimer’s. The word felt too heavy, even silently.

Grandpa was the person who remembered everything. Every birthday. Every story. Every little detail everyone else forgot. The thought of those memories slipping away from him felt impossible.

I couldn’t sit with the fear, not tonight. A text to Landry sat half written before my thumb finally pressed send.

Me: Hey. Want to run later?

Almost immediately, her reply came back.

Landry: Yeah, sounds good! Meet me at Jonah’s gym? There’s a great outdoor track!

Jonah, her brother, was quiet and stoic. He’d been Lane’s friend for as long as I could remember. Always watching from the sidelines at football games, measuring more than anyone realized. Just because it was at his gym didn’t mean Lane would be there.

Me: Perfect! See you then.

I typed, trying to keep my tone casual. Landry Gaines and I didn’t hang out, but everyone deserved a second chance, and in the grand scheme of things, she had never done anything directly to me. Landry was much younger in school, but her father, the local reverend, had made it clear on more than one occasion Jonah should keep his distance from me.

Sixteen

Cali

The evening sun had begun to slip behind the buildings as I walked across the parking lot toward the gym. The historic brick building came into view, transformed by black steel, industrial lighting, and broad glass doors that caught the gold glow of the sun.

I pulled my hair back into a loose braid, tightening it once, when the first twist loosened. My running watch sat cold against my wrist as I checked the time for the third time. Lacy’s bruised arm flashed through my mind. Then Grandpa’s overdue bills and test results. Problems that would still wait for me no matter how far I ran.

Landry was already there when I arrived, stretching against the wall, long legs folding neatly, sneakers tapping against the rubber mats over concrete. “Hey,” she said, smiling, though her eyes flicked toward the door as if she expected someone else.

“Hey,” I said, forcing my shoulders to loosen. “Ready to run?”

She nodded. “Yeah, but I wanted to introduce you to Sawyer before we hit the track. She’s going to run with us.”

A blonde rounded the corner, long waves pulled into a ponytail. Her eyes found mine, and the breath left her in a sharp, ragged gasp.

“Cali?” she breathed. We both froze as the past slammed into us like a freight train. A little girl with terrified eyes. A scream I hadn’t heard in years but somehow never forgot.

The water bottle slipped from her fingers and clattered across the floor.

“Hey,” I said slowly, palms open, keeping my voice soft. “It’s me. I’m—”

“No!” she shrieked suddenly, her voice breaking as her hands flew to cover her face. Her body jerked as she stumbled backward, tripping slightly over a dumbbell, and the fear in her eyes made my stomach drop.