Chapter 11 #2
The scan in front of her was a familiar mess of grayscale shadows and subtle distinctions, an image she could read like a second language.
The small aneurysm behind the aortic root wasn't obvious to anyone else, but Catherine had already spotted it, marked it, and drafted a plan in her mind before the resident even walked it into the lounge.
She preferred reviewing scans here, away from the distraction of her office. It was early afternoon, and the lounge was quiet, save for the soft hum of the fridge and the occasional clink of someone making tea in the kitchenette. The silence helped her think.
Or it should have.
“You know,” Roz’s voice cut across the room like a scalpel, “if you stare at that scan any harder, it might start blushing.”
Catherine didn’t look up. “Don’t you have someone’s brain to poke around in?”
Roz dropped into the chair across from her, legs crossed, a smug smile playing at her mouth. She peeled the foil off the top of a yogurt cup with exaggerated slowness. “Just finished. Flawless craniotomy. But let’s talk about your extracurriculars.”
Catherine shifted the scan slightly, feigning focus. “I’m not in the mood.”
Roz spooned yogurt into her mouth, undeterred. “You’ve been glowing, you know. Ever since that gala. Your little artist friend must be very good with her hands.”
At that, Catherine did glance up, her expression cold and sharp. “Is there a point to this?”
Roz smiled. “Plenty. But mostly I’m just enjoying watching you pretend nothing’s happening while it obviously is. That’s always been your speciality: pretending.”
“Don’t be juvenile,” Catherine snapped.
Roz leaned back, hands up. “Fine. No teasing. But for the record, it’s not a bad thing, you know. Letting someone in.”
Catherine didn’t answer. Just turned her eyes back to the scan and willed Roz to vanish.
Mercifully, Roz got up to toss her yogurt cup. “You’ll tell someone eventually. Probably Olivia. She’s nicer than me.” With that, she gave a lazy wave and disappeared down the hallway.
Catherine barely exhaled before Olivia slipped in through the door.
Her younger sister had the kind of presence that never felt disruptive, even when she entered mid-sentence. She held two coffees—hers with cream, Catherine’s black. She always remembered.
“I saw Roz in the hall,” Olivia said quietly, setting the cup beside Catherine without ceremony. “She said you were in here terrorizing innocent scans.”
“I’m fine,” Catherine said, almost automatically.
Olivia didn’t sit. She hovered, uncertain, her gaze soft. “I’m worried about you.”
Catherine took a slow sip of the coffee. It was hot, bitter, and grounding. “There’s nothing to worry about.”
“You’re quieter than usual.”
“I didn’t realize there was a baseline,” Catherine replied dryly.
Olivia smiled gently but didn’t let her off the hook. “You haven’t been answering calls. You left Sunday lunch early last week. And I heard from Clara that you skipped the board dinner.”
Catherine stiffened slightly. “I had a procedure.”
“You always have a procedure.”
Silence pressed between them. Catherine set the scan aside and finally met her sister’s gaze. Olivia’s eyes were too kind. Too knowing.
“You don’t have to do everything alone,” Olivia said.
“I’m not,” Catherine said, sharper than she meant. “I have work.”
Olivia looked at her for a long moment, like she could see everything Catherine was holding back, how exhausted and frayed she was. How the smile Roz teased her about had vanished the second she walked out of Sloane’s bed.
“Work’s not a person,” Olivia said quietly. “It doesn’t keep you warm.”
Catherine didn’t reply. Her throat was tight.
There were so many things she wanted to say.
That she didn’t know how to need people without resenting them for it.
That the moment Sloane touched her, she’d wanted more than she was capable of asking for.
That she was terrified she’d already ruined something that hadn’t even had the chance to begin.
But instead, she said nothing.
And Olivia, ever graceful, didn’t push.
She reached over, brushed a crumb from the table near Catherine’s hand, then gave a small smile.
“Well, if you change your mind, I’m here.”
And then she left, her absence quieter than Roz’s, but far more painful.
Catherine stared down at her coffee. It had gone cold.
The door clicked shut behind her with a soft, final thud.
Catherine set her keys in the glass bowl by the entry table, her movements automatic. The hallway light flickered on by motion sensor, casting clean, cool light across the pristine wood floors of her condo. Everything was exactly as she left it.
She toed off her shoes, walked barefoot across the quiet space. Her heels echoed in her mind even after they were gone, as if the sound had lingered behind her like a ghost.
The living room was still.
The kitchen gleamed.
The silence was absolute.
She opened the fridge. There was a single bottle of white wine, unopened, and a glass carafe of filtered water. A few yogurt cups sat at the back, precisely aligned on the middle shelf. No meals. No leftovers. No signs of anyone else ever having stood in this kitchen.
She closed the door without taking anything.
Wine wouldn’t help. Water wouldn’t fix it.
Not tonight.
Her hand reached, without thinking, for her phone on the counter. She picked it up and stared at the screen. No messages. No calls.
Just the soft glow of the time: 10:47.
She hesitated, her thumb hovering above Sloane’s name in her recent contacts.
A single tap and the call would begin.
But she didn’t.
She locked the phone, dropped it face-down on the counter.
Instead, she walked over to her work bag and pulled out a file from the hospital, some donor paperwork she’d already reviewed twice but hadn’t yet annotated. She took it to the dining table, sat down in the exact center chair, and began to flip through it.
The silence swelled around her like water.
She read the same sentence three times. They didn’t land.
From the corner of her eye, something caught her attention: the small leather journal.
It sat quietly on the edge of her bookshelf, where she had placed it days ago after the market. Still unopened. Still untouched.
She stared at it for a long moment. She didn’t move.
Catherine had never kept a journal. What would she write? Notes? Sketches? Secrets?
Sloane had smiled as she handed it to her, her eyes gleaming with mischief and softness.
“A challenge,” she’d said. “Fill it with something that isn’t hospital notes. Thoughts. Doodles. I don’t care.”
Catherine reached out, brushing her fingers against the cover.
And then she pulled her hand back.
She didn’t open it.
Instead, she turned back to the file, picked up her pen, and resumed annotating in precise, sharp script.
“She’s not what I need,” Catherine told herself, eyes on the page but not reading. “I don’t need anyone. I’ve made it this far alone.”
But the room didn’t agree with her.
It was too quiet. Too still.
Her condo had always been like this—silent, clean, undisturbed. A reflection of her. And that had been fine.
Until now.
Until she had heard the hum of music playing softly from Sloane’s speakers while morning sunlight touched their skin.
Until she had laughed, actually laughed, while tangled in paint-streaked sheets.
Until she had let herself believe she might not have to spend her entire life behind walls no one ever reached.
And now, every inch of her home felt sharper, colder. As if her solitude had grown teeth.
No one would text to check in.
No one would knock at the door.
No one knew how to reach her, because she had never let them.
Her chest ached with a dull, unfamiliar pressure.
Not pain. Not yet.
But the shape of what might become pain, if she let herself feel too much.
The pen slipped from her hand. She didn’t bother picking it up.
She leaned back in the chair and looked around.
Everything was where it should be.
And yet she had never felt more out of place.
The silence wrapped around her like a vice, and for the first time in a very long time, Catherine Harrington didn’t feel powerful in her solitude.
She felt alone.
Utterly, unmistakably alone.