44. Lance
Lance
I’m checking midday meds, ticking boxes with one hand while balancing charts against my hip.
It’s Tuesday morning, five days into January, and the unit has finally dropped back into its normal rhythm now that the holidays are over and everyone’s collective emotional damage has been packed away with the decorations.
Everybody’s back to pretending they’ve got their shit together, like me.
I’m thinking about heading down to the cafeteria for coffee when Valerie appears beside me holding out a cup.
“For you,” she says brightly.
“Oh. Thanks.” I take it automatically, already half-reading a chart before I glance down properly.
My name is written on the side. Same handwriting.
My stomach immediately does something deeply disturbing.
I take a sip, and sure enough, it’s the same fucking coffee with oat milk and cardamom.
Jesus fucking Christ.
A flicker stirs under my ribs, and it has nothing to do with the caffeine.
I’ve been doing better these last few days. Eating real food again instead of surviving on crackers from the staff room. Sleeping more than four or five hours at a stretch. Making it through a full shift without feeling like I’m dragging my feet through mud.
I’ve started settling in here too. I know people’s names now. I’ve got coworkers who wait for me before lunch and text me memes during overnight shifts. Seattle still doesn’t fully feel like mine, but at least it stopped feeling like punishment all the time.
The George situation has been shoved far enough into the back of my brain that I can function without randomly wanting to lie face-down on the floor.
Mostly.
Fine, I’m still not at “mostly” but I’m not about to let one stupidly specific coffee order wreck all that progress.
I look up the corridor and see Valerie getting ready for a wound dressing in Bay four.
Passing by a stretch of windows along the wall that looks out over the parking lot, the glass doors leading to this floor just beyond it, I walk towards her to ask where she got this coffee.
Through the strip of windows, my eyes catch some movement outside.
George is standing on the other side of the glass.
For a moment, I don’t move. My brain registers the impossible, that I’m possibly deteriorating and making this shit up.
I know I’ve been having a rough few months, but not to a point where I’ll start hallucinating people into existence.
Even if I were, my brain would probably have the decency to pick a less inconvenient time.
I blink hard once. He’s still there.
Hands shoved into his jacket pockets. Broad shoulders, looking through the glass like he belongs here.
It’s not the memory-version George—it’s the real one, bigger in person than he’s been in my head these last few months.
Then the details start registering one by one. Beard trimmed shorter. Hair longer on top now, pushed back. Dark jacket and worn boots. He looks cold.
He also looks unfairly fucking good.
My body reacts instantly before my brain can get involved, heat flashing through me so fast it’s almost dizzying before it leaves behind this hollow, tight ache under my ribs that makes me want to start a fistfight with God.
I catch the faintest lift of his chin. He’s looking.
And then our eyes lock properly for the first time in almost three months.
All that distance, and I still haven’t managed to kill this thing off inside me. I’ve just been carving pieces out slowly and calling it progress. Teaching myself how to get through a day without constantly reaching for him in my head like muscle memory.
And now he’s just standing there outside the clinic like none of that happened.
I force every expression off my face immediately. Lock it all down tight.
I break eye contact first and walk down the corridor before my body can do something stupidly humiliating, like run after him.
One hand jams deep into my scrub pocket because I suddenly need somewhere to hide the fist clenching hard enough to hurt. The other grips the coffee cup so tightly it buckles slightly near the lid.
I reach the nurses’ station sink, stare at the cup for one long second, then dump the whole thing straight down the drain.
I watch the coffee disappear.
I don’t look back to see if he’s still there. I grab the next chart and keep moving. No way am I going to stand in the middle of the ward trying to figure out what the hell George is doing in Seattle, thousands of miles from where he belongs.
The third run-in with the fucking past hits at the end of a brutal night shift.
I’m running on fumes—twelve hours of barely-there sleep and the last scraps of professionalism I have left.
I push through the main doors of the clinic, expecting nothing but the cold and the emptiness of the parking lot.
George is standing just a few feet away under the glow of a building light, breath fogging in the freezing air. There’s some sort of bag in his hand. He looks up as I step outside.
“Fuck,” I say before I can stop myself.
A woman with a staff badge walks past, clutching a huge tumbler. She gives me a look like she’s trying to decide whether to dodge a lunatic or step in. I flash her a tight half-smile, irritation mixed with apology, and shake my head.
“Really?” I mutter, loud enough for him to hear.
George doesn’t answer right away. He just tilts his head slightly, eyes locked on mine like he’s trying to read every thought I’m not saying out loud.
“Is this what we’re doing now?” My voice comes out dry and brittle.
I start walking toward my car anyway, keys already in my hand like ending this conversation is still an option. George falls into step a few feet behind me, keeping his distance like he already knows pushing too hard will make me bolt.
My eyes drop to the black tote bag. It’s not greasy takeout. Through the opening, I can see the clear lid of one of those heavy glass containers he always used at home. It’s something homemade. The realization hits like a slap.
The bastard cooked for me.
A sharp spike of disbelief and anger shoots through me. He has the nerve to show up here, digging straight for the old memories he must fucking know still hurt.
George swallows once. “You must have skipped dinner again.”
I bark out a laugh. “Jesus Christ.”
“I wasn’t—”
“You weren’t what?” I cut in, voice rising. “What is this? Some kind of divorced dad visitation schedule? Tuesdays and Thursdays you show up at my job with food like some kind of penance?”
The joke dies instantly between us.
George doesn’t smile. His face folds in on itself, like every sharp word out of my mouth is something he believes he deserves. It makes me want to scream.
“I made too much,” he says softly.
That breaks something in me.
George never made too much. He measured rice with the precision of a surgeon. Timed sauces down to the second. He cooked like feeding someone was sacred. There was never any “too much” by accident.
My throat closes up. I look away, eyes burning.
We reach my car and George takes one careful step closer as I stop beside the driver’s door, moving like I’m something wounded enough to spook. “Lance—”
“No.”
His jaw flexes. He pushes his luck. “Can you just listen to me for a minute?”
I laugh again, softer this time, meaner. “That’s rich coming from you.”
Raw and unguarded pain flashes across his face.
“You decided there was nothing left to say, remember?” I say. “You made that call for both of us.”
“I know.”
“You don’t get to show up here in Seattle months later acting like bringing me home-cooked meals changes anything.”
“I know it doesn’t.”
“Then what are you doing here?”
George looks exhausted suddenly. It’s not something you fix with sleep, coffee or whatever self-inflicted nonsense he’s been running on lately.
“You won’t answer my texts or calls.”
“That usually happens when someone doesn’t want to talk to you.”
For a second, he just looks at me. The wind cuts through the space between us. His fingers tighten around the bag.
“I’m trying to tell you I’m sorry.”
The parking lot feels too wide open, too bright, like every ugly thing between us is suddenly on display.
George doesn’t really do apologies, not when it would mean admitting there’s something he can’t undo. And that’s making it worse, like the words are less a gift and more a crack opening in something that was already held together by force alone.
I wait for the rest—any excuse, defense, or carefully worded reason that would make me hate him a little less.
It never comes.
“I was wrong,” he roughly says. The hurt in his eyes is unmistakable.
Something ugly and painful twists hard in my chest.
“I know you’re angry.”
“I don’t think you know me anymore.” I almost don’t have the strength to even say the words.
His expression finally cracks at that. There it is—the first real bleed.
“I know enough,” he says, his eyes starting to well up, but he keeps going. “I know you still skip meals when you’re exhausted. I know you work too many night shifts back-to-back when you’re upset because you think if you stop moving, you’ll fall apart.”
I go completely still.
“You don’t get to stand here and say that to me,” I whisper, the anger barely holding the rest of it back.
George’s eyes fill for one terrible second before he looks away.
“That’s the problem,” he says, voice breaking. “I did know you, better than anyone. And I still hurt you anyway.”
I hate how much those words soften something inside me. I hate it so much I want to scream.
“You looked at everything we had and decided it wasn’t enough for me to stay.”
George flinches like I slapped him.
“What are you even doing here in Seattle?” I ask, voice cracking anyway, no matter how hard I try to clamp it down. “You think cooking one meal and bringing me coffee at work like it’s some throwback to the old days fixes anything?”
“No,” he says immediately, his voice breaks on the word.
“Then what’s the fucking point of you doing all this?”
He looks at me then—fully. No walls left.
“Because every single day since you left,” he says, “I’ve had to live with the fact that I’m the reason you look at me like this now. And that’s okay. I accept that. I just want you…to eat.”
My throat burns. A tear slips free before I can stop it. I wipe it away viciously.
“Made some spicy beef noodle soup,” he says after a long silence, almost like he hates himself for it. “Extra chili oil—the way you like it after rough shifts.”
The memory crashes into me so hard my knees nearly buckle.
Half-past seven in the morning at George’s tiny kitchen.
He was half-asleep, shoving a steaming bowl into my hands because I’d been too busy that night at work I couldn’t even have a break to eat.
Muttering at me for living on just caffeine.
Pressing a kiss to my temple while I stood there leaning against the counter, devouring his noodle soup like a man who hadn’t eaten in days—no manners or restraint, just pure gratitude with every sloppy bite.
Home.
George had brought me a piece of it in a bag.
Tears spill over before I can stop them. I turn away fast, wiping at my face like it burns.
“You really don’t get it,” I whisper, sighing. “The second you decided there was no way around the things we couldn’t control…the first thing you chose to give up was me.”
George goes still. And I give him the same words he once said to me on that rainy night at the ridge.
“There’s nothing for you here.”
At that, his face empties out carefully, bracing himself for the blow and trying not to let it show.
He nods once. There’s no fight or argument back—just this heavy, resigned surrender, some pain he thinks he owes me.
George steps forward slowly and sets the bag on the hood of my car.
“Yell at me. Kick me out. Tell me to fuck off.” He exhales, long and raw. “I’ll keep showing up until you can look at me the way you used to.”
“I know even that’s asking for a fuck-ton, and I’ve got no goddamn right to want anything more than that. But I still do. I’m still fucking stupid enough to want more than just your friendship.”
I can’t speak. The tears won’t stop falling no matter how hard I wipe at them.
George’s eyes shine with unshed tears under the parking lot lights. His jaw shifts, refusing to let them fall. He blows out a shaky breath toward the sky. One tear slips free anyway, trailing slowly down his cheek. He quickly wipes it away with his thumb, pretending he’s just scratching his face.
It’s such a small, masculine crack in his armor. The last time I saw anything close to tears on this man’s face was the day he buried his dad.
He lingers for a while, taking in every bit of pain and anger on my face like he’s memorizing it. Then, before I can find something cruel enough to protect myself with, he turns and walks away into the cold.