Adrian didn’t remember the walk from the atrium to the staff locker corridor, only the moment when the world snapped back into focus—cold tile under his shoes, the hum of old vents overhead, the faint sterile scent that lived in the seams of the hospital. He had followed the familiar path without thinking, like muscle memory had taken the wheel while his mind lagged a few steps behind.

A shift change was in motion. Half-tired nurses moved past him in small clusters, their conversations low and blurred. A resident leaned against the wall, eyes glazed, clearly calculating whether he could stand upright for ten more seconds. Adrian kept walking. The noise washed around him without sticking.

When he reached the locker alcove, he didn’t open his own. He simply sat down on the bench in front of it, elbows resting lightly on his knees, his head angled forward just enough that no one would mistake the posture for collapse. He wasn’t falling apart. Not exactly. He was… stalled. Suspended between motion and the memory of the stairwell, where everything had felt dangerously close to breaking and somehow steadier at the same time.

His phone rested loosely in his hand. Daniel hadn’t sent another message, and the quiet that followed their call wasn’t haunting—just weight, familiar and lingering.

“Adrian?”

He lifted his head.

Elara stood in the doorway of the alcove, scrubs wrinkled, a faint line from her mask still pressed across her cheek. She looked like she had run her entire shift twice, and still she was here, watching him with the kind of focus usually reserved for unstable vitals.

“I thought you went home,” she said.

He shook his head. “Not yet.”

She stepped inside, letting the curtain of fluorescent light settle around them. The hallway outside continued its muted chaos, but here—tucked between steel lockers and the padded bench—the air felt almost still.

“You look pale,” she said quietly.

“I’m fine.”

Her brow lifted. He didn’t retract the word, but he didn’t defend it either.

Elara glanced toward the bench, silently asking permission. Adrian shifted slightly—not a full invitation, but enough. She sat beside him, leaving a few inches of space that felt intentional rather than distant.

Neither spoke.

Silence wasn’t unusual between them, but tonight it carried something different—an undercurrent of aftershocks, the kind that arrived hours after the crisis, subtle but unavoidable.

Adrian pressed a hand briefly against his sternum, fingertips grazing the edge of his ID badge. A habit. A grounding motion.

Elara noticed. “Chest tight?”

“Not exactly.”

“Then what?”

He hesitated. Not to hide, but to find the right shape of the truth.

“My body still thinks the day isn’t over,” he said. “Even though the emergencies are.”

She nodded, slow, as if the words were familiar to her bones. “That happens when you don’t catch up to yourself.”

He exhaled. “It shouldn’t be this loud inside my head. Not hours later.”

“Bodies remember differently than minds,” she said. “Sometimes faster. Sometimes slower. Sometimes… against your will.”

Her voice dipped into something edged with experience, something she didn’t name but he could feel the weight of.

He turned his head slightly. “It happens to you?”

“It used to.” She paused. “Sometimes still.”

The words weren’t meant as comfort. They were offered like parallel lines—close enough to see, never overlapping.

Adrian let the quiet settle again, the locker vents filling the spaces between breaths. He leaned back against the cool metal, feeling its steadiness press lightly against his spine.

A sharp sound cracked through the corridor—a dropped chart, paper scattering. Elara startled first, a quick jolt through her shoulders before she controlled it. Adrian saw it. The fraction of a flinch. The way her hand closed into a fist and then slowly released.

He didn’t comment.

But he did sit a little more upright.

“You okay?” he asked, echoing her own earlier tone.

Elara blinked once, clearing the moment away. “Yeah. Just a noise.”

He knew better than to push.

Still, something shifted between them—an unspoken recognition that both their bodies held stories they hadn’t told each other yet.

She inhaled once, steadying. “You don’t have to stay here alone,” she said. “Not if you’re… stuck.”

He studied the floor, then the lockers, then the space between them. “I don’t know if being alone is the problem.”

“What is it, then?”

He let his fingers rub the edge of his phone. “Stopping.”

Her eyes softened. “Stopping isn’t the same as falling.”

“It feels close.”

“It only feels that way,” she said, “when you never let yourself rest.”

He didn’t argue. It was too accurate.

They sat in that tucked-away alcove long enough for the shift change to finish, long enough for the hallway noise to take on a lighter rhythm, long enough that the pressure behind Adrian’s ribs eased just slightly—like something inside him had finally unclenched one finger, then another.

When her pager buzzed, she didn’t move immediately. She checked it, then looked at him.

“I need to check on the teenager from earlier,” she said. “You can come with me if you want.”

He didn’t trust himself to answer right away. Following her meant stepping back into the fluorescent world where he was Dr. Cole again, the surgeon with answers and control. Staying here meant sitting with the remnants of everything he’d been holding back.

But going with her also meant he wouldn’t be walking alone.

“Alright,” he said finally.

Elara stood, waiting for him to match her pace. When he rose, he didn’t sway—barely—but she noticed. Her hand hovered for half a second near his elbow, a gesture so small he wasn’t sure if it was instinct or intention.

She didn’t touch him.

But she stayed close enough that he could feel the outline of her presence as they stepped back into the hallway together.

For the first time that night, Adrian didn’t brace for the noise.