Chapter Seven
THE FIRST THING I NOTICED when I walked into the kitchen, hair a bird’s nest and eyelids barely cooperating, was the smell. Coffee. Fresh, strong, just the way I liked it, with that espresso punch that made me believe I might actually survive another workday.
The machine was already humming on its warming plate, steam curling up like a ribbon in the cool morning air. Beside it, a plate sat on the island, covered neatly with foil. A sticky note was stuck to the top, the handwriting angled:
Eat this.
I frowned at it, mostly in confusion with a layer of suspicion spread thinly on top, and peeled the foil back. There were crispy hashbrowns, scrambled eggs—soft, not overcooked, flecked with herbs—and toast with a ridiculous amount of butter glistening in the dim light.
For a second, I just stood there, staring at it like the plate might explain itself.
Half on autopilot, I crossed to the fridge and opened it. Inside, sitting square in the center of the shelf, was a packed lunch bag. Another sticky note clung stubbornly to its zipper:
Lunch for work.
I jammed my lips together to keep from smiling. Khalifa had cooked the night before, sure, but this...this was weird. Then my eyes landed on a tall glass of green smoothie that looked like it could jump-start a spaceship. A third note was attached to it, predictably controlling:
Drink this.
I sniffed it cautiously. It smelled...healthy.
Disturbingly so. One sip confirmed it—spinach, kale, and the distinct aftertaste of regret.
I gagged, clutching the counter for moral support, and turned toward the sink with full intent to dump the thing when I saw another sticky note, slapped right onto the tap handle.
I said drink it, Lillian.
I glared at it for a long moment, jaw dropped, before muttering, “Bossy,” under my breath. Then, sighing like a woman facing her fate, I pinched my nose and took another sip—because apparently, marriage came in the form of unsolicited vegetable mush and passive-aggressive Post-its.
I sat down and jabbed a fork into the eggs, still warm. My chest tightened against my will when I realized they were perfect—the exact kind of creamy-salt balance I could never manage myself.
I ate slowly, because rushing through food like this felt wrong, and tried not to think about what it meant that my husband—my fake husband—had gotten up early enough to play domestic ghost with one functioning hand.
By the time I left the apartment, coffee thermos in hand, the notes stuffed in my purse, I couldn’t decide if I was annoyed at the intrusion or touched by it. Maybe both.
At my office, the chaos didn’t wait for me to settle in.
Charts piled on my desk, two residents hovered outside my door like nervous bees, and Kevin, my medical receptionist/personal assistant/occasional life coach, was already perched in my chair, spinning languidly like a villain in a swivel-throne.
He held out a large to-go cup with a flourish. “For you, my queen. One oat milk latte, extra shot, two pumps vanilla, because I’m nothing if not consistent.”
I looked at the one I’d brought from home. “Oh. Um.”
His eyes narrowed. “Why do you already have coffee?”
“Because,” I said, setting my bag down and reaching for the stack of charts, “there was coffee waiting for me this morning.”
“Waiting for you where?” His voice went high with drama. “The last time you made coffee, the machine literally smoked. I thought the building was going to evacuate.”
I rolled my eyes. “It wasn’t that bad.”
“It was that bad,” he said, clutching his own cup to his chest. “I saw sparks, Dr. T. Sparks. Now tell me—who made you coffee?”
“Don’t you have phone calls to answer or appointments to set?”
He gasped. “You’re dodging, which means I’m right. Who was it? Don’t tell me, Mr. Short-and-Brooding?”
“Who?”
“Your husband,” he said, as though it were obvious. “The one none of us have met. The one who may or may not exist. The man of myth and legend. Did he finally reveal himself as a functioning human who knows how to work a coffeemaker?”
“You’re being annoying.”
“That’s a yes.” He leaned back, victorious. “What’s next? Is he going to show up with flowers? Write you poetry? Oh, wait, I know—he’ll actually talk to you like a normal spouse.”
“Kevin,” I warned.
“Fine, I’ll stop. For now. But when you start smiling at your phone later, I’ll know who it’s from.”
I smirked despite myself and shoved him out of my chair. “Go do your actual job before I make Robert replace you.”
He groaned theatrically but stood, wagging his pen at me. “This conversation isn’t over, Dr. T.”
“It never is.”
He almost made it to the door when he turned back, holding out a thick folder. “Oh, before I forget—he wanted me to give you this.” He set it on my desk. “The annual Miracle Mothers Charity Gala. They’re inviting proposals for community initiatives this year. You’d be perfect for it.”
“Pass,” I said automatically. “I’ve only been an attending for a few years. Half the board still thinks I need supervision tying my own shoes.”
“Exactly why you should do it. Prove them wrong.”
“I’ll think about it.” Which, in hospital-speak, meant absolutely not.
But after he left, the folder sat there like an accusation.
I tried to ignore it. I answered emails, dictated notes, checked the clock. Eventually, my eyes found it again—the bold header reading Miracle Mothers Charity Gala: Community Initiative Proposals.
It wasn’t like I didn’t have an idea, or an issue I felt passionate about finding a solution for.
I thought of the women whose babies I’d delivered—the ones who cried after everyone left, when the room smelled faintly of amniotic fluid and new beginnings.
The ones who smiled for photos and then never came back for their six-week checkups.
The ones who did, hollow-eyed and apologetic, whispering that they should feel happy but didn’t.
I thought of how often I’d placed a perfect newborn into trembling arms only to see the mother’s face collapse under the weight of it—joy and fear, love and guilt, tangled into something she couldn’t name.
I’d watch them leave the hospital with a pink or blue bundle and a stack of discharge instructions, and I’d wonder if anyone would notice when the exhaustion turned into despair.
They deserved better—more than routine checkups and polite smiles. They deserved follow-ups, support, someone to look them in the eye and say, You’re not broken.
My gaze drifted to the framed diplomas on the wall—three neat rectangles of validation. People saw them and saw brilliance, determination, purpose. I saw noise. The echo of every argument, every slammed door, every bitter “you’ll never succeed” that had fueled me all the way through medical school.
When Khalifa had asked me last night why I became a doctor, I’d told him the easy version. Because I liked seeing a mother hold her child for the first time.
And it wasn’t a lie. I loved what I did—at least, I told myself I did.
There was something breathtaking in those first few seconds when a woman who had endured hours of pain and fear suddenly became someone’s whole world.
The way the room seemed to still, as if the universe itself paused to witness creation.
But even that answer had always felt...tainted.
Selfish. Because somewhere deep down, I believed that if I witnessed enough beginnings, maybe I could overwrite my own.
Because beneath the beauty of it, beneath the delight, there was an uglier truth I never said out loud: I liked those moments because they gave me something I never got to have.
Every time I watched a mother cradle her newborn, whisper something soft and trembling and full of love, I imagined mine.
I imagined what her face looked like the day I was born, the hushed resentment of realizing the baby in her arms wasn’t the son she wanted, if she even smiled at all, or if disappointment had been my first lullaby.
The thought left a heaviness in my chest, one that no stethoscope could measure.
And with that came the guilt. Because if that was the real reason I’d become a doctor—to rewrite a moment that had never belonged to me—then what did that make me? A healer, or a thief? A costume I’d put on to convince the world I was someone I wasn’t? Someone deserving?
The question had followed me into every operating room, every ward, every award ceremony.
I wore my success like a bulletproof vest, but underneath, I was still waiting to be found out.
Waiting for someone to realize that I didn’t belong here, that my oath to save lives was really a crime of opportunity.
What if I hadn’t become a doctor out of purpose, but out of rebellion?
What if all of this—my degrees, my title, my carefully constructed competence—was just the longest, most expensive act of defiance in history?
What if I didn’t love medicine enough to deserve it?
What if my success didn’t belong to me at all, but to the battle she started, and I never stopped fighting?
What if every life I brought into the world was just a symptom of my own need to fix what couldn’t be fixed?
The shame came in vehement waves that were impossible to banish.
I couldn’t shake the feeling that my entire career was built on that first moment of rejection, that I’d spent decades trying to prove I was worth keeping.
Even after every patient who thanked me, every colleague who called me exceptional, every time I put on my scrubs, I wondered if I had earned it, or if it was just another reminder of the war I’d spent my whole life sparring.
And if that war had molded me, then who was I without it?
The forms were still sitting where Kevin had left them, a plain manilla thing with a paperclip that had already bitten through the top corner. Maybe that was why the folder scared me. Because it was a chance to build something that had nothing to do with her.
If I did this—if I created something meaningful, something that mattered because I believed in it, not because I needed to prove anything—maybe I could finally reclaim myself from the wreckage. Maybe I could stop wondering whose dream I was living.
I stared at the folder until the air felt too thick to breathe, then reached for it before I could talk myself out of it. The paper was smooth beneath my fingers, almost warm. For a moment, I just held it there, feeling the weight of it—the weight of everything I’d been carrying for years.
Maybe this could be mine. My first real beginning.
And if I failed—if I poured myself into it and came up short—that would be an answer, too.
Because failure would tell me what success never could: whether I’d built this life out of purpose or defiance, whether the fight was the only thing keeping me going.
It would strip everything down to what was real.
Because if I tried—truly tried—and it still wasn’t enough, at least I’d know. At least I’d have chosen something for myself, not because it hurt her, not because it proved anything, but because I wanted it.
The thought was terrifying and oddly freeing, like standing on the rim of something vast and realizing you could jump or stay, and either way the sky would keep existing.
I smoothed the corner of the folder and whispered to no one, “All right.”
Then I opened it.