Chapter Two
Sawyer
THE WHITE PAINT on the front door is chipped and peeling. The porch swing hangs crooked on rusted chains, and a few floorboards have warped upward like curled pages in an old book.
I stand there for a long moment, trying to absorb the energy of the place I once loved. Waiting for something to rise in me, nostalgia, comfort, familiarity.
But there’s nothing. No warmth. No welcome.
It’s as if the house has been empty for too long to remember how to offer comfort.
Or maybe it’s me who’s been empty for too long to receive it.
I dig out my key and unlock the door, shoulder aching under the weight of my suitcase. The air inside smells like the windows haven’t been opened in years. I switch on the lights, surprised they still work, then begin opening windows one by one, trying to coax the house to breathe again.
Outside, a breeze rustles in through the screens, lifting the faded blue curtains in the living room. I inhale deeply. The scent of spring is faint but there, the sweetness of honeysuckle blooms drifting in from the vines along the driveway fence.
For the first time in months, I breathe without fear.
In New York, it felt as if I counted every inhale. Wondered what I was pulling into my lungs. Wondered if it would be the thing that finally undid me. Every breath a gamble.
Here, the air just feels like air. Clean. Familiar. And I want to cry from the relief of it—until the relief turns cruel, reminding me of everyone who’ll never breathe this easily again.
But the relief is brief, and what follows is heavier—guilt, thick and immediate. It settles over me like a lead apron. My legs buckle beneath it, and I drop onto the old leather sofa by the picture window.
The cushions sigh beneath me. So do the curtains, caught in the shifting wind.
Every part of my body feels impossibly heavy. My chest aches as if something large and immovable is sitting on it, and for a moment, I want to give in. Let the weight of survivor’s guilt flatten me. Take me under.
The thought doesn’t scare me. It actually comforts me.
Because maybe if I disappeared, if I slipped away into nothingness, I could stop remembering the ones I couldn’t save.
Maybe I wouldn’t have to keep seeing Michael’s face in his final hours, the panic in his eyes. Or hear his voice telling me he wasn’t ready to go.
If I vanished, would it be like none of it happened?
Or would it just be another selfish escape?
Either way, it wouldn’t matter. My failure would remain, documented in my therapist’s notes, recorded in hospital reports, carved quietly into my colleagues’
silence.
And worse: it would remain in me.
I can’t even remember the last time I ate. Maybe yesterday? Maybe not at all during the drive. I know I had water, sipped at it like it was medicine, but I can’t recall food. And yet my stomach doesn’t protest. It’s grown quiet lately, as if it understood there was no point in asking.
I think about the last time I stepped on a scale. Twelve pounds gone. As though the weight slipped off me when I wasn’t looking. As if part of me had already started leaving before I even realized it, my clothes hanging looser, fabric brushing bone instead of skin.
I should go out. Find food. Find… something.
But the thought of it feels impossible. Right now, even standing feels impossible.
Eventually, I force myself upright. I lock the front door and leave the lights on, unwilling to let the house fall entirely into darkness. My legs are unsteady as I climb the stairs, my luggage pulling at my shoulder again.
I walk straight to the room at the end of the hall. My childhood bedroom, where I read the Hardy Boys and Jane Austen. I open the door, half-expecting it to look different. But it’s mostly the same. A little dustier. A little dimmer. But untouched in the ways that matter.
I flip on the dresser lamp and scan the room, checking corners, under the bed, behind the door. I don’t know what I’m looking for. Mice? Memories?
I kick off my shoes, leave my clothes on, and collapse onto the bed. The quilt at the foot is still folded neatly. I pull it up and wrap myself inside it, cocooning until only my face remains uncovered.
The mattress yields beneath me. The ceiling fan hums.
And for one fleeting moment, I feel something that resembles safety.
Why should I be safe? Why should I be the one who made it through? I tested negative before I left New York. And yet Michael is dead.
What’s fair about that?
Nothing, of course. Life isn’t fair. It’s random. Chaotic. Cruel.
We move through our days thinking we have some control. That if we’re smart enough, careful enough, good enough, we’ll be spared. But that’s not how it works.
A missed step. A mistimed breath. A wrong turn. A stranger’s cough.
That’s all it takes.
I used to believe I was in control of my life. That if I worked hard and studied hard and stayed focused, I could bend life to my will. I actually believed I had that ability. That I had purpose.
Now I know the truth.
I control nothing. I never did.
It took an invisible enemy to teach me that.
Everything I thought I had, knowledge, skill, intuition, it failed me when it mattered most. All those years of memorizing symptoms and protocols. All the nights I spent sleepless in residency, building my endurance, proving my worth. All of it came up short.
Because when it was Michael…I couldn’t save him.
And what kind of doctor can’t save the person she loves?
Maybe I was never really one at all.
By degree, yes. By title, yes.
But in truth?
Doctors fight. They show up. They stay. I ran.
I’m not a doctor. Not anymore.
I’m just a woman curled under a childhood quilt, hiding from everything I couldn’t fix.