5. Impossible Things
CHAPTER 5
Impossible Things
T he fluorescent lights buzzed like angry wasps in the on-call room while I picked apart my reflection like a case study. Dark circles that looked like bruises under my eyes. Right hand doing its best impression of a fault line. Heart hammering like I'd just run a code.
All perfectly logical shit for a trauma surgeon running on fumes and caffeine. Nothing to do with blue eyes that seemed to know every secret I'd ever tried to bury.
I splashed cold water on my face, letting the shock kick my brain back into doctor mode. The rational part of me - the part that had dragged me through med school, through losing Michael, through every fucking curveball life had thrown - started its familiar diagnostic dance:
Sleep: 4 hours in 36, basically running on spite and coffee.
Stress: Through the roof thanks to Vale's vulture act.
Trauma: Standard grief with a side of professional paranoia.
The door creaked like a B-horror movie as Sofia stepped in, armed with actual coffee instead of the burned battery acid the hospital called caffeine. Steam curled up from the cups like question marks.
Behind her serious expression, I caught something else - worry mixed with determination. She'd worn that same look when she found me in the ER after Michael's accident, still wearing his blood on my scrubs, refusing to believe what the monitors were telling me.
The coffee's warmth couldn't touch the ice forming in my chest whenever Alex's face flashed through my mind. Those eyes that seemed to see straight through six years of carefully constructed walls, straight to something I couldn't - wouldn't - name.
My wedding ring caught the shitty fluorescent light as I lifted the cup, the metal cool and solid against my skin. An anchor to reality. To what I knew was real. To what made sense.
Even if nothing made sense anymore.
Both our pagers screamed like banshees:
TRAUMA ALERT - MULTIPLE CASUALTIES - ETA 5 MIN.
Thank god. Work was safe. Work made sense. Work didn't come with impossible blue eyes and memories that couldn't exist.
“Incoming!” A nurse's voice cut through my spiral. “Two critical, three walking wounded. Construction site collapse.”
The words 'construction site' hit like a sucker punch, flashing me back to Michael's accident for half a second before I shoved it down. Not now. Not here.
“BP's in the basement!” Someone shouted. “70 over palp!”
Focus. Here. Now. Blood and bones and things I could fix. This was real. This was solid. This was?—
Sunlight streamed through the ER windows, throwing patterns across the trauma bay that looked exactly like Alex's fucking courtyard designs. For a moment, the shadows seemed to dance, showing me places I'd never been but knew like my own hands?—
“Doctor Monroe?” My resident's voice yanked me back, waiting for orders like a lifeline.
“Type and cross four units,” I barked, forcing myself into the present. “Trauma panel and get me another large-bore IV. ”
The familiar dance of emergency medicine took over - blood pressure readings, trauma assessments, the steady beep of monitors keeping time. But somewhere in the back of my head, Alex's voice echoed with impossible certainty.
“Some things are written in the stars, beloved.”
I'd never heard him say those words.
Had I?
My hands moved on autopilot, placing lines and calling orders, but my mind kept sliding sideways into spaces that shouldn't exist. A candlelit room where those same hands mixed paints instead of medications. A battlefield tent where they stitched wounds by torchlight. A smoky club where they danced across piano keys while blue eyes watched from the shadows.
“Doctor Monroe!” Sofia's sharp tone snapped me back. “OR Two's ready.”
Right. Here. Now. Blood and gauze and science. Not memories that couldn't be memories. Not eyes that seemed to know me better than I knew myself.
But as we rushed the patient toward surgery, the shadows kept dancing on the walls, showing me glimpses of other times, other places, other lives where those same blue eyes had found mine across centuries of forgetting.
Maybe I was finally losing it. Maybe grief and exhaustion had finally cracked something vital in my carefully ordered world.
The thought terrified me more than any trauma case ever had.
My vision blurred as I stared at the tablet screen, the patient notes swimming together like watercolors in rain. Thirty-six hours of fluorescent lights and trauma calls had turned my brain to static, each blink lasting a fraction too long. The headache drilling behind my eyes matched the rhythm of the distant monitors beeping their endless digital lullaby.
“You're coming with me. ”
Sofia's voice cut through the fog like a scalpel. She stood in my doorway, transformed from her usual scrubs into dark jeans and an oversized sweater that somehow made her look both softer and more determined. Her curls, finally freed from their tight bun, framed her face like a storm cloud ready to break.
I raised an eyebrow, trying to summon some resistance. “And where exactly are we going?”
“Out. Somewhere that doesn't reek of bleach and broken promises. Somewhere with actual fucking music instead of those goddamn monitors that've been haunting my dreams.” Her eyes softened slightly. “Somewhere you can stop being Doctor Monroe, Chief of Emergency Medicine, and just be... Eli.”
“Sofia, I don't think?—“
“No excuses.” She crossed her arms, channeling every resident who'd ever faced down an attending's bullshit. The look in her eyes told me she was seeing past my careful walls, past the pressed white coat and perfect posture, straight to the cracks I pretended weren't there.
Twenty minutes later, I found myself in a bar that straddled the line between hipster haven and comfortable decay. Exposed brick walls held decades of stories, while Edison bulbs cast shadows that danced like memories across worn wooden tables. The music – some indie rock band I was probably too old to recognize – throbbed just loud enough to drown out the echoes of flatlines and grieving families that usually followed me home.
Sofia slid a whiskey across the table. The amber liquid caught the light, transforming it into something ancient and familiar, like sunlight through stained glass windows I'd never actually seen. My chest tightened as fragments of impossible memories tried to surface.
“To surviving another day,” Sofia said, her glass hovering in the space between us like an offering.
“To surviving,” I echoed, the words tasting like ash and old regrets.
The bar's ambient noise washed over us – glasses clinking, scattered laughter, the percussion of life continuing despite everything. But my traitor mind kept slipping sideways into other sounds: paintbrushes whispering across canvas, feet pounding against stone that had crumbled centuries ago, music that existed only in dreams that felt more real than my waking hours.
“You didn't deny it,” Sofia said finally, her dark eyes reflecting the warm light like she could see straight through to my soul.
“Deny what?”
“That there's something about Rothschild.”
The whiskey burned going down, but it couldn't touch the cold that spread through my chest at Alex's name. “It's nothing,” I lied, each word leaving frost on my tongue.
“Bullshit.” She leaned forward, voice pitched low enough that only I could hear the steel beneath her concern. “You've been walking around like a ghost since the tour. And I saw your face when Vale started questioning your judgment today.”
Frustration bubbled up like blood from a wound I couldn't close. “Sofia, I don't even know how to explain it. It's like...” My fingers traced patterns in the condensation on my glass, drawing symbols I shouldn't recognize. “It's like he sees parts of me I don't even recognize.”
“Maybe he does.” Sofia's expression shifted to something ancient and knowing that made my skin prickle. “Eli, maybe it's time to stop running from the things you can't explain. Not everything fits into your neat little boxes of diagnosis and treatment.”
“I'm not running,” I said, but my hand betrayed me, going to the wedding ring that felt simultaneously too heavy and too much a part of me to remove. “I'm being practical. Professional.”
“You're hiding,” she corrected, the truth in her words sharper than any surgical blade. “Behind your grief, behind those ridiculous hours you work, behind all those walls you built after Michael died. And now something—someone—is threatening those walls, and it scares the shit out of you. ”
The truth hit harder than the whiskey burning in my gut. “You make it sound so simple.”
“Simple?” A laugh like broken glass. “Nothing about you has ever been simple, Eli Monroe. Not in all the years I've known you.”
Vale slid into our booth like a shadow made flesh, his suit still perfect despite the late hour. His smile carried the same predatory edge it had in the hospital corridors, but here, away from the fluorescent lights and professional pretense, it looked almost inhuman.
“Doctor Monroe. Doctor Martinez. What a... pleasant surprise.”
The temperature seemed to drop several degrees, and old instincts I didn't understand screamed danger. Sofia's spine straightened like a sword being drawn, her protective energy almost visible in the dim light.
“Doctor Vale. This is unexpected.”
“Is it?” His grey eyes was fixed on me. “I often find the most interesting conversations happen outside hospital walls. Away from professional constraints.”
Something about his presence felt wrong, like a shadow falling across sacred ground. The bar's warm light seemed to dim around him, and memories that couldn't possibly be mine tried to surface.
“If you'll excuse us,” Sofia's voice cut through the fog of unreality, “we were in the middle of a private conversation.”
“Of course.” Vale's smile never wavered, but his eyes held centuries of secrets. “I simply wanted to ensure our Chief of Emergency Medicine was taking proper care of himself. Stress can do such strange things to the mind, can't it? Make us see things that aren't there. Remember things that never happened.”
“I think you should leave.” Sofia said
Vale raised his hands in mock surrender, but his eyes never left mine. “Just looking out for a colleague's wellbeing. After all, we wouldn't want anything to cloud your judgment regarding the development project, would we?”
Vale slithered from the booth with the liquid grace of a cobra, but paused, venom still dripping from his smile. “Oh, and Doctor Monroe? Do be careful with your new associations. Some connections are better left unexplored.”
The crowd seemed to part around him like oil on water as he disappeared into the bar's shadows. My skin crawled where his gaze had lingered. Sofia's hand found mine across the sticky table surface, her warmth cutting through the chill he'd left behind.
“Eli...”
“Don't.” I yanked away, fumbling for my coat like armor. “Just... don't.”
“Mind if I join you?”
That voice. That fucking voice . It hit me like a shot of adrenaline straight to the heart, and suddenly I couldn't remember how to breathe. Alex stood before our booth, the dim bar lights catching his perfectly tailored suit like he was the star of some impossibly expensive film. He didn't just occupy the space – he owned it, claimed it, made it seem like the whole damn bar had been built around him.
My pulse hammered against my ribs as our eyes met, that same electric current of knowing crackling between us like summer lightning. “What are you doing here?” I forced the words past the desert in my throat, grateful for the solid glass under my trembling fingers.
“I was in the neighborhood.” His casual tone was a thin veneer over something deeper, darker, hungrier. “Thought I'd stop by and say hello.”
Sofia's gaze darted between us like she was watching some ancient play unfold. Something shifted in her expression – recognition or resignation, I couldn't tell which. “I'll leave you two to... catch up,” she said, sliding from the booth with deliberate grace. When I shot her my best 'don't you dare leave me' glare, she just smiled like she knew secrets the universe hadn't learned yet. “Don't stay out too late, Eli. We both have early rounds.”
The air grew thick as Alex claimed her abandoned seat, moving with that fluid grace that belonged in Renaissance paintings or ancient temples. He settled into the cracked vinyl like it was a throne, and somehow made it look like one. The same presence that had dominated my hospital office now filled the small booth until it was hard to breathe.
“You've been avoiding me,” he said, voice dancing on the edge between playful and accusing.
“I've been busy.” The words came out sharp enough to cut.
“Busy running,” he countered, his gentleness more devastating than any attack.
My fingers strangled my glass, knuckles bleaching white. “What do you want from me, Rothschild?”
“Alex,” he corrected, the same way he had in my office, like he was trying to strip away layers of professional distance. “And what I want...” Something cracked in his perfect facade, letting raw need shine through. “I want to help you understand. You deserve answers, Eli. And whether you realize it or not, you've been searching for them your whole life.”
The memories hit like fever dreams – paint-stained hands guiding mine across canvas, ancient stone warm beneath our feet as we ran, music wrapping around us like silk in a smoky club.
“You don't know anything about me.” The protest sounded weak even to my own ears.
“Don't I? I know you dream of places you've never been. I know you remember skills you've never learned. I know you feel something when we're together that defies your precious scientific understanding.”
Each word landed like a physical blow because they were true. All of it was true. The dreams that had haunted me since his arrival, the way my hands had known exactly how to modify his architectural plans, the magnetic pull I felt toward him that defied every rational explanation.
“Stop.” My voice shattered on the word. “Whatever game this is?—“
“It's not a game.” He leaned in close enough that his cologne wrapped around me – sandalwood and something older, something that pulled at the threads of memories that couldn't possibly be mine. “You know that. Deep down, your soul knows exactly what this is.”
“My soul?” The laugh that escaped sounded like breaking glass. “Is that what this is about? Some mystical connection you think we have?”
“Think? No, Eli. I don't think. I know . Just as you know, even if you're not ready to admit it.”
“You're insane.” But the words tasted like lies on my tongue, because something deep in my bones recognized the truth he offered.
“When you're ready to stop running,” he said quietly, rising from the booth with that impossible grace, “you know where to find me.”
He paused, one last truth hanging between us. “Some things are written in the stars, beloved. Some connections transcend time itself.”
Then he was gone, leaving me alone with my half-empty whiskey and the terrifying possibility that Alexander Rothschild might be the key to everything I'd been trying so desperately to deny.
The bar's ambient noise faded to white static, drowned out by the thunder of my pulse. His words echoed like bells in an empty cathedral, mixing with fragments of dreams and memories that couldn't possibly belong to me:.
His voice carrying across a torch-lit chamber. Our hands entwined beneath a Renaissance sky. His eyes finding mine through centuries of searching.
Michael. I should be thinking about Michael, about our life together, about the future that death had stolen. Not about impossible connections and past lives and a man who looked at me like he'd spent centuries memorizing my face.
The fresh whiskey arrived without my asking, amber depths promising answers it couldn't possibly deliver. Because Alex was right about one thing – I had been running. From the dreams, from the memories, from the magnetic pull I felt toward him that defied every rational explanation I'd built my life around.
But some things couldn't be outrun forever. Some truths burned through every defense, every careful wall, every rational explanation until all that remained was raw, terrifying possibility.
The night pressed against the bar's windows like a living thing, full of shadows and secrets I couldn't begin to understand. But for the first time since Michael's death, since I'd buried my heart alongside his body, I felt something crack open in my chest – something wild and ancient and alive. And that terrified me more than all of Vale's threats combined.
Because feeling alive meant I could be hurt again. Feeling alive meant facing the impossible truth that Alex represented. Feeling alive meant admitting that maybe, just maybe, science couldn't explain everything that lived in the spaces between heartbeats.
The whiskey burned going down, but it couldn't touch the fire that Alex's words had ignited. Something was coming – something bigger than hospital politics or development projects or carefully maintained grief. The only question was: would I be strong enough to face it when it did?