27. -26- #2
“That’s what I am?” I lifted a brow, feigning offense. “Background noise?”
“Oh, don’t get sensitive.” She flashed me a wicked grin that suggested it was exactly the reaction she hoped for. She stretched her legs and crossed them at the ankles, glancing at the monitors. “Why are you here? Are you expecting trouble?”
“No.” I shook my head, crossing my arms over my chest. “I promised to be here when she wakes up.”
“The man who laughed at me when I slept in the patient room to keep him company,” she teased, nudging me with her elbow playfully.
“Your patient was in a coma,” I reminded her, rolling my eyes.
“He had no one.” She shrugged, looking away, but I still noticed the emotion in her voice. She got attached quickly, and while I always kept my distance from my patients, something about Aryna felt different. I couldn’t name it. I just needed to know she would be okay.
“It seems like she doesn’t have anyone either,” I said quietly, sadness seeping into my voice. My heart clenched as the bitter truth left my mouth. “Her foster parents haven’t called. Social services won’t arrive until tomorrow, and right now, no one is waiting for her to wake up.”
“Such a beautiful, brave kid already alone in the world,” Melody whispered, mindlessly stirring her coffee with a plastic spoon.
“She’s not alone.”
The words came out harder than I expected.
I hadn’t planned to say them like that, hadn’t even planned to say them at all, but once they were out, there was no pulling them back.
I stared at Aryna’s small chest rising and falling under the white blanket, the monitor's regular beep suddenly feeling personal.
Melody tilted her head, studying me like I was a complicated scan.
“She got under your skin.”
I shifted in the chair, bracing my forearms on my thighs, fingers lacing together just to give them something to do. Surgeons liked control. This was me trying to grab some.
“It’s an observation,” I replied, quieter now. “Not a declaration.”
She hummed thoughtfully.
“Funny. Most of your observations don’t come with that tone.”
Melody knew me almost as well as my brothers. She was my closest friend outside my family, one of the rare people who saw the real me and still knew how to keep me grounded.
“You did everything humanly possible.” She disturbed the flow of my thoughts. “Her life outside this room isn’t your responsibility.”
I finally looked away from Aryna’s face.
“I didn’t say it was.”
I was painfully aware of how close I sat to the bed, of the fact that I hadn’t moved more than two feet away since we brought Aryna up from recovery.
“Then stop glaring at the monitors like they’re personally responsible for the numbers,” Melody continued her light mocking of my unusual behavior.
“Sometimes, I glare at everything,” I pointed out dryly. “It’s a personality flaw.”
“Dorian.” She placed her hand on my shoulder. “You can’t save everyone.”
I knew that. I’d known it since my first loss, since the first time I’d washed blood off my hands knowing it hadn’t been enough, since Caroline…
My teeth clenched, shutting down the voice in my head.
“I’m not trying to save everyone,” I whispered under my breath. “Just her.”
Melody watched me for a long moment. I felt her eyes burning holes into my skull, but I refused to look at her. She would see behind the mask, at the chaos I couldn’t explain. Eventually, she rose to her feet with a deep sigh.
“God help the world if you ever decide you want kids,” she said with a smile, taking an empty cup from me.
“Don’t start,” I huffed out a laugh. “I’m barely qualified to keep houseplants alive.”
“And yet.” She shrugged, gesturing toward the bed. “Here you are, keeping promises to a six-year-old you met seven hours ago.”
I stared at her back as she left me alone with too many hours to analyze the masked villainess haunting my thoughts and the unfamiliar protectiveness Aryna had awakened in me.
I sat there long after the door closed, listening to the soft rhythm of the monitor and wondering at what exact point my life had turned into a poorly organized waiting room.
On one side, a six-year-old girl stitched back together with skill and hope, sleeping like the world hadn’t almost ended for her.
On the other, a masked villainess living rent-free in my head, armed with secrets, audacity, and an alarming ability to make my chest tighten at the worst possible moments.
I tried to sort the feelings into neat categories as I did with injuries, but they refused to cooperate. Concern bled into obsession, protectiveness tangled with desire, and somewhere in between, I realized I was spectacularly unequipped for whatever the hell this was.
If this were a patient, I’d call it a complicated case with multiple overlapping pathologies and no clear treatment plan. Unfortunately, I couldn’t sedate myself, stitch my thoughts shut, or order imaging to find where exactly everything went wrong.
So I stayed where I was, too close to the bed, staring at numbers and pretending I had control, while fully aware that I was drowning in chaos with a polite smile and no idea how to swim back to shore.