The night shift settled over St. Meridian with the kind of heaviness that didn’t announce itself so much as seep into everything—the hallways, the walls, the quiet beneath the machines. Adrian had stayed longer than he needed to after sending the message to Daniel, not because of work, but because leaving the hospital suddenly felt harder than staying.

There was a comfort to the hum of fluorescent lights, to the distant alarms and the muted conversations at the nurses’ station. It was a language he understood better than whatever waited for him in the silence outside these walls.

He made it as far as the main atrium before realizing he had stopped again. The building’s large glass panes reflected back an image he only half-recognized: tired, coatless, shoulders slightly drawn in like someone bracing for weather he couldn’t see yet.

The reflection shifted.

He didn’t need to turn. That soft, almost imperceptible presence in his periphery—he knew it by now.

“You’re still here,” Elara said as she walked up beside him. Her voice carried the rasp of a long shift, and something gentler threaded underneath.

“So are you,” he replied.

“I had a consult. And a resident who almost fainted on me.” She rubbed her forehead. “Long day.”

He didn’t ask if she was okay. The answer would’ve been no. And she wouldn’t have said it.

Elara followed his gaze to the glass and the dark sky beyond. “You were going to go home.”

“I was,” he said. “I just… stopped.”

“Because you’re tired?”

“Because I didn’t want to think,” he answered, the honesty sliding out before he could review it.

She didn’t move, but something in her posture shifted—like she’d parked herself quietly in the place where his guard had thinned. “Thinking isn’t the enemy,” she said.

“It is when it doesn’t stop.”

He expected that to end the conversation. Instead, Elara turned slightly, enough to study his expression without cornering him. “Do you want to stay a little longer? Or do you want someone to make sure you actually leave?”

He almost laughed. Not out loud, but something in his chest lifted, barely.

“I don’t need an escort.”

“That wasn’t the question.”

Adrian glanced at her, and for a moment the air between them carried the same fragile quiet as the stairwell—less exposed, but no less real. He wasn’t used to someone asking what he wanted rather than what he was capable of.

“I should go,” he said at last.

“But you’re not ready,” she murmured.

He didn’t deny it.

A page came through overhead, sharp and brief—trauma team request, bay two. Elara’s head lifted immediately, instincts firing before thought.

“I have to go,” she said.

“I know.”

She took one step backward, then paused. “You don’t have to walk out alone. You can wait. I’ll be back as soon as I can.”

It wasn’t a plea. It wasn’t an order. It was simply offered.

He didn’t know why that made something in his chest constrict.

“I’ll stay,” he heard himself say.

She nodded once, grateful but not surprised, and then broke into a run toward the trauma bay.

Adrian stayed where he was.

Minutes turned into more minutes. The atrium felt larger than usual, a vast hollow lit by cold lights and the soft echo of passing footsteps. He leaned against the rail near the empty reception desk, arms folded loosely—not defensive, just tired.

People moved around him: a transport nurse pushing a gurney, a security guard walking a slow circuit, two residents whispering over a chart. None of it touched him. None of it jarred him loose.

His phone buzzed again.  

Daniel.

Not a text—this time, a call.

Adrian stared at the screen, pulse ticking upward, not fast but deep. He let it ring twice before answering.

“Hey,” Daniel said, breathless in a way that wasn’t quite anxiety, but adjacent. “I didn’t think you’d pick up.”

“I’m still at the hospital,” Adrian said, voice even.

“I figured.” A pause. “You sound… not great. Are you—”

“Don’t ask me if I’m okay.”

That came out sharper than he intended. Daniel went quiet for a second, but didn’t retreat.

“Alright,” his brother said softly. “Then tell me what you can.”

Adrian closed his eyes, head lowering slightly. He could lie. He could deflect. He could give the clean professional summary he’d mastered over the years.

But the stairwell still echoed inside him. And Elara’s words were still too close.

“There was too much today,” he said finally. “More than I had room for.”

Daniel inhaled, shaky but controlled. “Okay. Thank you for telling me.”

“I didn’t say it well.”

“You didn’t have to,” Daniel said. “You said it.”

For a moment, neither of them spoke. The connection held—thin, imperfect, but unbroken.

Then footsteps came fast from down the corridor—light but urgent.

Elara.

She slowed when she reached him, breath uneven, eyes searching his. “He’s stable,” she said quickly. “Teenager. Internal bleed but we caught it.”

Adrian nodded. Relief came in a muted wave, steady, grounding.

Daniel’s voice crackled through the phone. “Is someone there?”

“Yes,” Adrian said before he could consider the implications. “It’s… Elara.”

There was a beat of silence, then Daniel’s tone shifted—lighter, curious, something dangerously close to hopeful. “Oh. Okay. I—uh. I’ll let you go then.”

“Dan—”

“It’s fine,” his brother said. “Really. Talk later.”

The call ended before Adrian could answer.

He lowered the phone slowly. Elara raised an eyebrow, but didn’t press.

Everything around them dimmed into the kind of quiet that held more than it admitted—exhaustion, remnants of fear, the aftershocks of a day stretched too thin.

“Everything alright?” she asked.

“No,” he said. “But it’s… manageable.”

Her expression softened, a shift so small most people would’ve missed it. “Good.”

He didn’t move. Neither did she.

The atrium felt less empty now.

Something in the space between them settled—not closure, not certainty, but the simple, undeniable fact that neither of them was standing here alone.

And for Adrian, that was enough for tonight.