Chapter 36
Chapter Thirty-Six
Colton
The hospital feels louder without Frank.
Not in any way I can point to. The monitors still beep, phones still ring, shoes still squeak on tiles, but in the way an absence can fill a space until it presses against your ribs. Like the building is daring me to notice what I’m trying not to.
So, I do what I always do—I keep working.
I come in earlier than I need to. I set my coffee down on my desk and forget to drink it. I open charts and start working like the act of reviewing numbers can keep everything else contained.
This is what I’m good at.
Work makes sense. It has rules. It doesn’t ask questions I can’t answer. It doesn’t stand in front of me with wet eyes and a trembling mouth and demand I be human when all I know how to be is competent.
Frank’s chart is still flagged in the system. Closed, technically, but the notification sits there like an accusation.
I don’t open it. I delete it.
The second I do, something tightens in my chest. It’s the familiar clamp of discomfort, the kind that used to come with certain dates on the calendar, certain hallways, certain smells. I breathe through it, shallow and controlled, and keep going.
This is no different from any other patient.
That’s what I tell myself while I answer resident questions, sign orders, check consults, correct a note that doesn’t actually need correcting. My voice is steady. My face is calm. My hands do not shake.
No one would look at me and think I’m unraveling … because I’m not.
I’m simply narrowing my world to what I can control.
I can feel it happening. The way my world compresses until it’s only tasks, treatment plans, and what’s medically necessary. How my thoughts become sharp-edged and purposeful. It’s a survival instinct. It always has been.
The problem is, Frank wasn’t just a patient. He was a person who insisted on taking up space. A person who noticed patterns and called them out like he had the right.
He shouldn’t have had the right, but he did it anyway.
You don’t get to close yourself off and call it strength.
The words flicker through my mind uninvited, and I shove them down so hard that I taste bitterness.
I pass a sink in the hallway, and the scent of antiseptic hits me wrong—too sharp, too familiar—and for a second, I’m somewhere else entirely.
A different corridor with much older paint, a vending machine that never worked, and a chair that dug into the backs of my legs because I’d been sitting there too long, watching numbers I couldn’t control.
I don’t let the memory form fully. I don’t let it sharpen into details. I blink once, ground myself in the present, and keep walking.
There are memories I don’t touch for a reason.
In the back of my mind, I’m aware that Melissa’s message sits unanswered in my phone. I read it once in my office earlier, then again in the elevator when I should’ve been paying attention to the doors opening and closing.
I know you’re hurting. But I need someone who stays.
It isn’t a demand, and she isn’t angry. That’s what makes it dangerous.
It’s reasonable and fair.
I set my phone face down on my desk, like hiding the screen will hide the meaning.
This is why I don’t do relationships.
Not because I’m incapable of feeling, but because I feel too much, and I learned the hard way what that costs. Closeness loosens things I keep sealed when grief doesn’t stay neatly contained once you crack the door open.
I don’t think her name.
I never do, not consciously. I’ve trained myself not to.
But there are nights when the hospital is too quiet, I’m too tired, and something slips. A phantom ache that’s lived inside me for years. A hospital room. A too-bright morning. A doctor’s voice that sounded calm while mine turned to static.
My jaw tenses as if I can physically lock the past back into place.
I turn back to my screen.
Halfway through the day, I pass Melissa at the nurses’ station. She’s angled toward Trudy, laughing softly about nothing important. Her posture is loose and easy, like her body doesn’t know what it is like to brace for impact.
Longing flares before I can stop it.
Then she glances up, and our eyes meet.
No warmth or invitation in them. She doesn’t show any softness, waiting for me to step into it. She looks away first. Not dramatically, not cruelly, just choosing not to offer what I refused to take.
The loss of that hits harder than I expected.
I keep walking anyway.
This is better, I tell myself. It’s safer, even if the tightness in my chest doesn’t ease.
After another visit with a patient, I step out into the hallway.
The hospital feels like it’s closing in on me.
Not physically—the corridors are the same width they’ve always been—but in the way my thoughts keep circling back to the same places, no matter how hard I redirect them.
I’ve reviewed charts I could recite from memory.
I’ve corrected residents on things they already know, just to hear my own voice doing anything useful.
I’m busy, but I’m not distracted, and that’s the problem.
I stop outside room 447 without meaning to.
My hand hovers near the door handle before my brain catches up and reminds me there’s no reason to go in. The name on the placard isn’t Frank’s. The patient inside is someone else entirely.
For a second, irritation flares at the fact that my body still expects him to be there.
I step back. This shouldn’t matter.
Patients die. That’s the reality of oncology. I’ve built an entire career on accepting that truth without letting it hollow me out. I’ve told families hard things with a steady voice. I’ve watched people grieve and learned how to stand beside it without being pulled under.
So, why does this one feel different?
I know the answer.
Frank didn’t shrink or soften. He stayed present, sharp, and engaged, even when his body was failing him. He looked at me like he understood the art of hiding that I’d spent years perfecting.
And worse than that, he named it.
I retreat into my office and close the door, leaning back in my chair and staring at the blank wall across from me. There’s a familiar pressure building behind my ribs now, restless and unproductive. The urge to fix what can’t be fixed.
I hate that feeling.
It’s the same one I used to feel when pacing hospital hallways late at night, when the building smelled like old coffee and disinfectant and fear. The same restless energy that came with knowing I’d done everything right and it still wasn’t enough.
You can do everything right and still lose.
That lesson hardened into something useful. I built my life around it, like having no relationships that asked more of me than I could give.
Melissa disrupted that structure without even trying.
She didn’t demand anything, but I find myself wanting it. Wanting her and wanting what we had.
Her words surface again, unwanted and unrelenting.
I need someone who stays.
I exhale slowly. Staying sounds simple, but it never has been.
There are things in my past I don’t think about on purpose.
Certain rooms. Certain days. Certain sounds that can still knock the air out of my lungs if I let them sharpen into detail.
I learned early that memory was a slippery slope.
One thought leads to another, and suddenly, you’re standing somewhere you promised yourself you’d never go again.
So, I don’t go there. I compartmentalize in order to survive.
A knock at my door pulls me back into the present. A resident asks about lab values, concern flickering behind professional politeness. I answer automatically, my tone calm, my explanation clear.
This is where I excel.
When the door closes again, the quiet feels heavier than before.
I check my phone without meaning to.
No new messages.
I shouldn’t feel disappointed, but my chest aches.
The realization irritates me more than it should. I set the phone down harder than necessary and pull up another chart, then another, then another. None of it sticks. The words blur together, clinical language losing its usual grounding effect.
I close the file abruptly, pushing my chair back and standing too fast. The room spins for half a second before settling.
I can’t do this here. I grab my coat and leave my office without looking back, the ache in my chest unresolved and growing.
Avoidance used to work. Now it feels like postponement.
I don’t even remember the walk to the garage. But I hear the city humming. Evidence of life continuing all around me like it always does.
I’ve been telling myself the same thing for years. This is the job. This is the cost. You don’t get to carry everyone with you. You don’t get attached. You don’t let yourself feel something that might make you hesitate when hesitation costs lives.
That logic has kept me functional, but it’s never made me peaceful.
Frank’s face rises unbidden. This time, it’s not sick or afraid, but amused. Knowing. Like he clocked me from the start and decided not to let me hide behind credentials and clipped responses.
“You don’t fool me,” he would say.
The look in his eyes that day was almost fond. Like he recognized something in me he’d once carried himself.
I press my forehead briefly against the steering wheel, my jaw tight enough to ache.
This is why I pulled away from Melissa.
Because grief doesn’t exist in isolation. It bleeds. It spreads. Once it surfaces, it drags other things with it, like memories I keep buried, losses I refuse to examine too closely.
If I let myself feel this fully, the past won’t stay quiet.
I start the car.
The drive home is muscle memory. Familiar turns, familiar lights, my body navigating the city while my mind stays trapped in the same loop. Frank’s chart. Melissa’s message. The look on her face in the locker room when I chose distance instead of comfort.
I didn’t mean to hurt her.
When I step into my apartment, the silence hits harder than it should. The space is too clean, too orderly … a reflection of the life I’ve built to keep everything contained. I set my keys down with more force than necessary and exhale, slow and controlled.
This isn’t working. The thought lands without drama, without panic.
Just truth.
Avoidance isn’t protecting me.
It’s isolating me.