The hallway outside the stairwell felt colder than it should have, as if the air hadn’t caught up to the fact that he’d stepped out of the one place where he’d let the world loosen its grip on him. Adrian walked without direction, not toward the OR, not toward his office, not even toward the exit. His mind was still unwinding from the stairwell—a slow, uneven release that left his legs moving out of habit more than intention.

By the time he reached the glass corridor that overlooked the ambulance bay, the sky outside had dimmed into the bruised color of a late autumn evening. Rain threatened the horizon, the kind that came in cold sheets this time of year. The headlights below blurred together like a steady pulse the city refused to lose.

He stopped walking only when he realized he’d been standing in the same spot for longer than a minute—long enough for the quiet to thicken again. Not the suffocating quiet from earlier, but the kind that filled the edges of his body with a dull ache. He exhaled through his nose, slow, like he was trying not to disturb anything that had settled inside him.

His phone buzzed once in his pocket.

He didn’t move. Not immediately.

Another buzz. A longer vibration this time.

Daniel.

Adrian closed his eyes, the exhaustion behind them flaring in a way that felt almost physical. He’d ignored three messages and one missed call today—each one sitting like a small weight he kept pushing deeper into his coat he wasn’t even wearing. He reached for the phone anyway, the gesture automatic, even if everything in him wanted to wait, or postpone, or just not touch it at all.

A message preview lit up the screen.

**Dan: “Saw the crash footage again. Just—tell me you’re okay.”**

His throat tightened. Not the painful kind. The familiar kind.

He stared at the words until they blurred slightly, as if his body were adjusting to the idea that someone was still waiting for an answer. Someone who had waited all day.

For a second, Adrian thought about putting the phone away. Not out of avoidance—at least that’s what he tried to tell himself—but because the right response didn’t exist. He wasn’t okay. But saying he wasn’t would make Daniel drive across the city. Saying he was fine would be another lie layered on years of carefully curated half-truths.

Behind him, footsteps approached—soft, measured, not urgent.

He didn’t need to turn to know who it was.

“Elara,” he said quietly, almost like an exhale that formed her name midair.

She came to stand beside him, not close enough to touch, but close enough that the warmth of her presence pushed against the cold pane of glass in front of them. Her hair was slightly damp at the ends, like she’d washed her face or run a hand through it one too many times during her shift.

“You left the stairwell fast,” she said. No accusation. No concern sharpened into something pointed. Just observation, soft and level.

“I needed air,” he replied.

“This isn’t exactly fresh air.” She nodded toward the gray sky outside.

“It’s enough.”

She didn’t argue. Elara looked at him briefly before turning her gaze to the ambulance bay below, where a new rig was pulling in, lights muted but still urgent. “They’re not done tonight,” she murmured.

“Neither are we,” he answered, though his voice lacked conviction.

Her attention drifted—subtle, not intrusive—to the phone in his hand. “Daniel?”

He didn’t ask how she knew. Her eyes had caught the preview earlier in his office, and she had catalogued the shape of his silence ever since.

“I should answer,” he said.

“Should,” she repeated gently, “but do you want to?”

That question landed deeper than it should, because wanting had nothing to do with any of this.

Adrian looked at the message again. His thumb hovered over the keyboard. The words he needed didn’t exist in clean, functional lines. They were messy, uncontained—the opposite of how he lived.

“I don’t know what to say,” he admitted.

“You don’t have to say the perfect thing.” Her voice dropped, steady as a hand bracing a fracture. “Just say something true.”

He inhaled slowly. Truth wasn’t something he gave easily—not to himself, not to anyone. But the stairwell had cracked something open, and Elara was standing here as if she’d been waiting for him to decide whether he was going to seal it back up or let a little more light through.

Adrian typed two words.

**“I’m here.”**

He didn’t send it yet. His thumb paused, suspended, his pulse picking up like a hesitation made visible.

Elara watched him, then looked away to give him space that somehow didn’t feel like distance. “He worries because he loves you,” she said. “That’s not something you have to fix.”

He swallowed. “I don’t know how to make it easier for him.”

“You don’t have to make it easier.” She tilted her head, just enough for him to see her expression. “You just have to stop disappearing.”

The quiet between them thickened again, but differently this time—less like pressure, more like a place where something could root.

Adrian looked back at the message. His hand steadied.

He hit send.

The moment the message went through, something inside him shifted—not release, not relief, but a loosening, as if a tightly drawn thread had eased by a fraction of an inch.

His phone buzzed almost immediately.

**Dan: “Okay. Okay. Thank you.”**

Adrian exhaled, longer than before.

Elara didn’t smile, but her shoulders softened, as if she’d been holding a piece of tension for him and could finally set it down. “See?” she murmured.

“It’s just a message,” he said.

“It’s a start.”

For the first time in hours, he let himself believe she might be right.

He didn’t step closer to her, but he didn’t step away either. The space between them held—quiet, steady, something almost warm.

Somewhere below, an ambulance door slammed, punctuating the moment with a sharp echo that faded into the predictable hum of the hospital night. And Adrian found himself breathing—not perfectly, not evenly, but without the earlier tremor.

It wasn’t control.

But it wasn’t collapse, either.