Chapter 11
NIA
The hospital looked the same.
That was the first thing she noticed when she walked through the automatic doors—the same polished floors, the same hum of fluorescent lights, the same sterile chill of filtered air. Phoenix Ridge Hospital didn’t change for anyone.
Nia had thought she wanted that. Stability. Familiarity. Predictability.
But after days of woodsmoke, candlelight, and the sound of wind against glass, the air here felt too sharp, too cold.
“Dr. South, welcome back!”
The charge nurse’s bright voice jolted her. Nia forced a smile as she adjusted the strap of her bag. “Thank you, Clara. How’s the OR schedule looking?”
“Stacked,” Clara said cheerfully. “We had to reschedule three major cases while you were snowed in. You’re double-booked this week.”
“Of course I am.”
Clara laughed as she passed, leaving Nia standing in the hallway, surrounded by the rhythmic click of shoes and the beeping of monitors. She moved toward her office on autopilot, nodding at colleagues who greeted her like she’d been gone a day, not a lifetime.
Her office door opened with its usual soft click. The space was pristine—precisely as she’d left it. A stack of surgical journals on the desk, an untouched coffee mug, a framed certificate straightened to exact angles.
It should have been comforting. Instead, it felt like stepping back into a photograph.
Nia set her bag down and exhaled slowly. The city beyond her window gleamed beneath weak winter sunlight. No snowdrifts. No mountains. Just glass and motion.
She changed into scrubs and checked her schedule. Two surgeries, one consult, a department meeting. Her body knew the rhythm. Her mind lagged behind.
By the time she stepped into the OR, the mask of composure was back in place. The surgical lights flared to life, bright as interrogation lamps, and the room filled with the familiar symphony of suction, monitors, and murmured commands.
For the first twenty minutes, she lost herself in it—the way she always had. The incision, the precision, the quiet hum of competence that drowned everything else out.
But then, in a lull, she caught a glimpse of her reflection in the instrument tray—eyes too tired, mouth too tight—and for a split second she saw another reflection layered over it: candlelight flickering on rough wood, a smile that reached into her chest, the sound of a voice teasing, You don’t have to hold it together.
Her hand hesitated. Just for a breath. Enough for the scrub nurse to look up, eyes questioning.
Nia steadied her voice. “Clamp, please.”
The moment passed. The surgery went flawlessly.
But when she stripped off her gloves afterward, her pulse was still uneven.
She went through the motions—dictating notes, reviewing labs, answering pages—but the more she pushed, the emptier it felt. The walls seemed to hum with fluorescent light, every sound too bright, every movement too fast.
At one point, she passed Julia in the corridor. Her ex-wife was talking to another surgeon, laughing at something she said. When her gaze brushed Nia’s, it was polite and distant, the way colleagues acknowledged one another out of habit.
Nia’s chest tightened. Not with jealousy, not even with regret—just with the dull realization that she felt nothing.
By the end of her shift, she was exhausted in a way surgery couldn’t fix.
She sat at her desk long after the hospital quieted, staring at the dark screen of her phone. Her reflection looked back at her—calm, perfect, hollow.
Outside, the city lights glittered against the glass. Inside, all she could think about was the sound of snow falling and the taste of coffee too strong and the way Soren had said her name like it meant something.
She rubbed a hand over her eyes and whispered to the empty room, “You’re ridiculous.”
But even as she said it, she knew it wasn’t true.
She wasn’t ridiculous.
She was lonely.
And for the first time in a long, long while, she didn’t want to be.
The hospital cafeteria was nearly empty when Nia sat down with her untouched sandwich.
It was late—past nine—and most of the staff had gone home to families, warm houses, or Christmas trees waiting to be decorated.
Outside, the city gleamed under frost, festive and sterile all at once.
Strings of white lights lined the entrance, blinking in perfect rhythm.
Even the holiday cheer felt rehearsed here.
Her phone buzzed on the table, a single vibration against the laminate.
A new email.
From: Soren Stevenson
Subject: — none —
Her breath caught before she even opened it. She’d half convinced herself that the mountain, the snow, Soren herself, had been some strange dream—a fever that melted with the thaw. But there it was. Her name, real and solid on the screen.
Hey Doc,
Glad you made it back in one piece. Boiler’s fixed, heat’s good, but it’s quieter here now. Guess that’s how it goes when the storm passes.
Take care of yourself.
—Soren
That was all. Simple. Bare. And somehow it hit harder than any love letter could have.
Nia’s throat tightened. She reread it three times, fingers hovering over the reply icon.
She wanted to write back. God, she wanted to.
I miss you.
Life feels wrong without you.
I don’t know what to do with myself anymore.
But every version sounded impossible—too personal, too raw, too much like the truth.
She sat there, staring at the small, glowing screen until the letters blurred. Around her, the cafeteria hummed with the soft, mechanical buzz of vending machines. The night staff filtered through—nurses grabbing coffee, a janitor whistling a carol under his breath.
The world was moving on. She was supposed to move with it.
Instead, she was stuck in the quiet between heartbeats, haunted by snowlight and a voice saying, You don’t always have to hold it together.
Her fingers moved almost without permission, typing:
I haven’t stopped thinking about you.
She stared at the words. They pulsed on the screen, small and damning and perfect.
Then she deleted them.
She replaced them with something safer:
Glad the lodge is warm again. Stay well, Soren.
She read it back, jaw tight, then deleted that too.
The cursor blinked, waiting.
But she couldn’t do it.
Because sending a message would mean admitting that what happened up there mattered—that she mattered to someone outside the world she’d built. And if she let herself believe that, even for a second, everything here—the control, the structure, the perfection—would fall apart.
She locked her phone and slid it back into her coat pocket.
Her reflection in the dark cafeteria window looked pale, almost unfamiliar. Behind it, the city lights blurred into streaks of gold and red, a world that kept spinning no matter who stayed or left.
Somewhere beyond that horizon, a mountain slept under snow.
Nia swallowed hard, pressing her fingers against the bridge of her nose. “Enough,” she whispered. “You’re tired, that’s all.”
She rose, dumped the untouched sandwich, and left the cafeteria. Her footsteps echoed down the corridor, steady and sure, the same as always.
But she couldn’t stop hearing Soren’s voice in her head, quiet and certain:
You make it harder to leave.
When she stepped outside, the cold hit her instantly, sharp enough to sting. The air smelled faintly of pine from the hospital’s decorated wreaths. Above her, the sky was clear—bright, glittering stars over a city that didn’t believe in silence.
She stood there for a long time, breath fogging in the air, until the chill finally forced her back inside.
In her office, she sat at her desk, staring at the blank computer screen. Her fingers hovered over the keyboard, but she didn’t type. She couldn’t.
It was almost Christmas.
She had everything she’d ever worked for—success, respect, control.
And she had never felt so completely, utterly alone.