Chapter 4
Chapter Four
Sawyer
I DRIVE BACK with my hands clenched around the steering wheel, knuckles white. I force myself to let go, draw in a deep breath, and slowly pull into the driveway.
I cut the engine and sit in silence, staring at the house. The front door is still slightly ajar from earlier. The grass shimmers in the sunlight. The porch, still sagging. Everything is unchanged.
And I am exhausted.
I climb out of the car, my legs threatening to buckle. The boulder is back, lodged at the center of my chest, pressing down until it’s hard to draw a full breath. I lift my bags from the back seat and carry them inside.
In the kitchen, I set them on the counter, the sound too loud in the quiet. I put the milk and half-and-half in the fridge. They sit next to a lonely yellow box of baking soda, like strangers on a train who were never meant to meet.
I slide the cereal into a cupboard, then stop, remembering I need to eat. I pull a bowl from the hutch by the screen door and pour some in, add milk, then sit at the harvest table by the window.
Outside, the lake sparkles. It’s late morning now, the sun high and warm. A handful of boats crisscross the water. I spot one—low, sleek, fast. A skier cuts across the waves behind it, carving a wide arc in the still-cold water.
It’s too early in the season for that. The lake has to be frigid.
But maybe the cold doesn’t matter. Maybe the joy of movement, of speed, of something is worth it. I understand that. The desperate desire to feel anything but stuck.
I finish my cereal without tasting it, rinse the bowl and spoon, leave them on the counter. Then I go upstairs and pull on a pair of shorts and an old Clemson T-shirt. I don’t bother with shoes.
Outside, the grass is cool beneath my feet. I follow the familiar slope of the yard down toward the dock. Two wooden chairs wait at the edge, faded, weathered, somehow still standing.
I sit in one and stretch my legs out in front of me. The sun warms my face, my shoulders. A breeze skims across the lake, brushing against my skin. I close my eyes and let myself rest there, in the quiet.
And for the first time in weeks, maybe months, I don’t feel the sharp, electric edge of fear. That knife in my nerves, always waiting, always ready. It’s gone.
What’s left?
I try to name the feeling. Numbness? Emptiness?
No—this is something different.
Maybe not a feeling at all. Maybe the absence of feeling.
I try to remember what used to fill me. What gave me purpose. What made me feel full.
Hope.
Yes—there was hope.
Hope for healing. Hope that when someone walks into the ER, I might be the person who could help set things right. That no matter how terrifying their detour, we could patch them up, stabilize them, and send them back out into the world to pick up where they left off.
Back then, I believed in that version of normal.
But does that word even apply anymore?
Can there be normal again?
In the rational part of my mind, I know the world will eventually find its rhythm again.
Humanity has weathered worse and gone on.
Wars. Famine. Disease outbreaks. People will return to their lives.
Children will go to school. Restaurants will reopen.
The virus will shrink into something we can manage instead of something managing us.
Probably.
But I don’t know if I’ll be part of that world.
Will I go back? Will I return to the hospital, put the scrubs back on, walk through those doors with the same resolve I once carried?
I want to say yes.
But deep down, I know the truth. The ache of the ER lives in my bones, but the fire that once fed it is gone.
No. I won’t go back.
The realization lands quietly, like a final puzzle piece sliding into place. I open my eyes and stare at the shimmering waves of the lake. The sunlight reflects hard off the surface, glinting like a spotlight on this moment of clarity.
I can’t go back.
That version of me—the one who thrived in crisis, who believed in her tools, her training, her willpower—she’s gone.
I don’t know when exactly I lost her.
But I did.
Maybe it was the day I stood outside Michael’s ICU room and realized once and for all that I was powerless. Maybe it was the night I walked out of the hospital and didn’t go back. Or it could have been slower than that—a quiet crumbling over weeks on end, a soul ground down grain by grain.
Whatever the moment was, I missed it.
And now I’m left with what remains.
A shell. Brittle. Fragile.
One sharp breath away from snapping in two.
Jake’s face flashes through my mind, standing beside my car, his voice soft, eyes filled with sympathy. The memory carries the faint scent of gasoline and sunlight, the sound of wind off the lake mixing with his low, steady tone. That look alone nearly shattered me.
Because with Jake came something else.
Not just kindness.
But memory. The part of my past I’ve worked for years to bury.
And Tommy. My brother. Whose death I couldn’t process. The one no one talked about after it happened. Jake was there for all of it, and seeing him brought it roaring back.
But I can’t go there now. I don’t have the strength to unpack that grief on top of this one.
All I know is that while I’m here at the lake, the safest thing I can do, for myself, for him, is keep my distance. Whatever once existed between us, whatever memories we share… they aren’t healing. Not now.
We don’t owe each other more pain.
And in a world already steeped in it, the kindest thing I can give either of us is distance.