Adrian walked out of St. Meridian with the kind of fatigue that didn’t sit in his muscles but somewhere deeper, a heaviness threaded along the ribs where breath should’ve lived. Morning light had already taken the sky, thin and cold, reflecting off the hospital’s glass panels in a way that made the whole building look awake while he felt anything but. His shift had stretched longer than intended—rounds, a consult he couldn’t delegate, a family that needed him to be steady—and the exhaustion settled in with the quiet insistence of something earned, unwanted, and familiar. He adjusted the strap of his bag on his shoulder as if the motion might anchor him, a small reminder that he could at least carry something without dropping it.

The parking lot was half-empty. A few nurses walking to night classes. An intern laughing too loudly into her phone. A janitor pushing a cart that squeaked with each turn. Ordinary sounds for an ordinary morning—yet for him, they felt distant, like someone else’s world brushing past. He unlocked his car and sat, letting the silence fold in around him. He didn't start the engine. Didn't reach for the radio. Just breathed in the leftover smell of antiseptic from his scrubs, the echo of machines, the phantom weight of a stethoscope he’d left hanging in his locker.

It was ridiculous, he told himself, that he could steady a code but not the simple tremor of coming down from it. Ridiculous that he could perform delicate grafts on a heart but felt his own pulse as if it belonged to someone he couldn't quite reach.

He drove home only when the cold finally seeped through the windshield.

The roads of Ardenvale were washed in early light, storefronts still shuttered. When the city was this quiet, it reminded him of the mornings after storms—where everything was technically fine but nothing felt ready to be touched. He kept one hand on the wheel, the other resting loosely over his thigh, fingers occasionally tightening when a stray thought pressed too close. Elara’s voice surfaced more than once, unbidden: *Try going home, Adrian.* Soft but firm. A suggestion that carried an undercurrent he didn’t dare name.

He parked outside his building. The brick façade looked the same as always— worn edges, ivy that refused to fully die even in winter—but stepping into the hallway felt like entering a space that hadn’t been lived in for months. Maybe because he hadn’t, not really. The last few weeks had been a revolving door of shifts, catnaps, and lingering in stairwells where he shouldn’t have found comfort but somehow did.

The apartment greeted him with stillness. He flicked the lights on but they hummed too loudly, so he turned them off and let the softer morning settle in. Shoes off. Bag down. Jacket over the chair. He paused there, hands braced against the backrest, waiting for his body to understand it was allowed to stop.

It didn’t.

He moved to the kitchen out of habit, filled the kettle though he wasn’t sure he wanted coffee. When it clicked on, the sound felt intrusive. He turned it off midway and leaned against the counter. The quiet returned. He welcomed it even as it pressed against the bruised edges inside him.

The truth was simple: he didn’t know what to do with himself when he wasn’t fixing someone else.

A soft buzz from his phone broke the silence. A message from an unknown number at first glance—but he recognized it by the cadence of the text more than the display name.

**Elara:**  

*Did you get home?*

He stared at the screen for a beat too long, breath suspended. She had no reason to check. No obligation. Yet the question landed with a precision that cut through him—because it implied she’d noticed the tremor he tried to hide in the stairwell, the way his voice had thinned at the edges during rounds.

His thumb hovered over the keyboard.

He typed: *Yes.*

Erased it.

Typed: *Just got in.*

Erased that too.

Finally:  

*Yeah. I’m home.*

He added nothing else. Didn’t mention the fatigue, or the quiet that felt heavier than it should, or the ridiculous pulse of warmth that came with her checking in. He locked the phone and set it face-down on the counter as if that could keep anything contained.

But it buzzed again.

**Elara:**  

*Good. Drink something warm. And sleep. Or try to.*

He exhaled. A slow, careful release.

He didn’t answer.

He didn’t dare.

Adrian pushed off the counter and headed for the shower, stripping down without thinking about the motions. Hot water hit his skin, steam rising around him in a way that made the edges of the morning blur. He braced his palms against the tile wall and let his head drop forward, water coursing down his spine. Muscles unclenched one by one. Not enough, but enough to remind him he was still in his own body.

And again—Elara’s voice slipped in. *Try going home.*  

He had, technically. But the part she meant—the part she couldn’t say—was harder.

He stayed there until the water turned tepid.

When he finally stepped out, the apartment felt slightly less foreign. He toweled off, pulled on a worn T-shirt, and sat at the edge of the bed. The room held the faint morning chill that his heater never seemed to fix. He rubbed a hand over his face, pressing into his eyes until darkness bloomed behind the lids.

He wasn’t expecting the phone to buzz again, but it did.

This time it was a missed call.  

From his brother, Daniel.

Adrian stared at the notification, jaw tightening. He knew what it meant—Daniel had sensed something, or heard something, or simply worried the way he always did. Adrian wasn’t ready. Not now. Not when everything inside him sat precariously balanced.

He didn’t call back.

He lay down instead, pulling the thin blanket over his legs. The ceiling blurred in that soft, drifting way that came right before sleep claimed him. Not rest—never quite that—but the closest thing he could manage.

His phone vibrated once more: a text from Daniel.

*Call me when you can. Just want to know you're okay.*

Adrian closed his eyes. The weight in his chest shifted—tightening, loosening, something between.

He didn’t reply.

Not yet.

Silence filled the apartment, unbroken except for the faint hum of the heater and the steady, tired rhythm of his own breath. For a moment, just before sleep pulled him under, he let himself imagine a different kind of morning—one where someone else sat in this quiet with him, where the weight wasn’t something he had to carry alone.

He didn’t let the thought stay.

He never did.

The room dimmed, warmth pooling unevenly across his skin, and the world slipped into a muted gray. Adrian let go, carefully, the way someone might lower a fragile object—slow enough to avoid shattering, but never slow enough to feel safe.

And finally, without telling anyone, he fell asleep.