E L A R A

By the time I get back to my apartment above the clinic, the island has gone still in that eerie, breath-between-storms way. No tourists. No laughter. Just the hum of the fridge and the faraway hiss of the tide.

My phone buzzes on the counter, face down. I let it ring once, twice, before flipping it over.
Adrian.

The board wants a morning briefing. You don’t have to come.

That’s it. No goodnight. No, are you okay. Just the kind of sentence you send when you’re trying not to show you care.

I stare at the screen too long, thumb hovering over the keyboard.
What I want to say: Don’t protect me from my own damn life.
What I actually type: nothing.

The message light fades. The silence after feels heavy enough to tip the whole room sideways. Outside, the wind picks up, sliding through the palms like a whisper I can almost understand.

Something’s coming. I can feel it under my skin, the same prickling sense that hits before every bad shift in the ER. Too quiet, too still, the air holding its breath before everything goes wrong.

I press my palms to the counter until the tremor leaves them. “Whatever it is, I can handle it,” I say out loud, just to make it true. Then I turn back to my laptop.

The inbox pings. Just one sound, soft, harmless, but it lands like a blow.
Subject line: Fellowship Reinstatement – Mount Sinai.
Sender: Dr. Nathan Hale.

For a second I honestly think it’s a mistake. My name looks wrong next to his, like a scar that shouldn’t still be there. I click before I can stop myself.

Elara,
After review, the department has agreed to reinstate your position for July. We’d be glad to have you back. I trust you’ve had your break. — N.

Break. He means burnout. The humiliation. The months I spent trying to breathe around the word weak.

My throat goes dry. I can smell the bleach from that hospital hallway again, hear the alarms, the crash-cart wheels that didn’t move fast enough. His voice cutting through the noise: You care too much. It clouds your judgment.

I scroll down, just once. There’s an attachment, some glossy photo from the fellowship dinner two years ago. I’m there in black satin, smiling like I belong, his hand on my back like he owns every breath in me.

I shut the laptop fast enough that the sound cracks the air.

My pulse won’t slow. It’s ridiculous, an email, a few sentences, and suddenly my whole body is back in that fluorescent nightmare.

I stand, pacing the narrow room. My reflection in the clinic window looks like a stranger, barefoot, hair loose, eyes too bright. My hands won’t stop shaking.

This was supposed to be a clean slate. The island. The sea air. The quiet.
No one said the ghosts could be followed by Wi-Fi.

I press a hand to my chest, feel my heartbeat hammering, too fast, too human. Nathan used to say empathy was a liability, that a good doctor learned to tune it out. He said compassion would eat me alive.

Maybe it did. Maybe it made me strong enough to crawl out here anyway.

I drop into the chair, pull the laptop back toward me. My cursor hovers over “Reply.”
I can almost hear his voice again, steady and smug: Come home, Elara. We’ll forget it ever happened.

Forget the patient who died because he didn’t listen. Forget the night I refused to lie on his report. Forget the way he called me weak when I cried over the chart.

The shaking stops. My fingers go still.

I think about Adrian in the cave, his hands, his voice, the way he asked for consent like it was sacred. Say no, I stop. Say slow, I slow.
Nathan never asked anything. He just took control and called it leadership.

The difference between them hits me like a lungful of air after drowning. Adrian’s arrogance is armor; Nathan’s was a weapon.

I looked around this tiny clinic, the one everyone called a vanity project until I made it matter. Asha’s laughter still echoes faintly from the hall earlier. There’s a list on the wall, my list taped there in permanent marker: Crash cart. EpiPens. Night staff. Training.

This is real medicine. Messy, loud, alive medicine.

Nathan thinks he’s offering me redemption.
He doesn’t know I already found it.

I open the email again, just long enough to hit Delete.
The screen asks, Are you sure?

“Yes,” I whisper. “I’m sure.”

The email disappears. The cursor blinks in an empty inbox.

The silence after is louder than the surf. I sat there for a long time, watching the inbox refresh itself like it might change its mind. It doesn’t.

I should feel lighter. I mostly feel hollow.

I close the laptop and rest my forehead against my hands. Forgiveness is just another way of letting someone else name your survival.

Outside, a gust rattles the window. The sea is all shadow now, the kind that hides everything it can’t fix. Lanterns drift out near the bay, tiny orange hearts, half drowned. I wonder how many are wishes for things that were never meant to be saved.

Nathan would hate this place. And maybe that’s why I love it.

My pulse finally evens. The hollow starts to feel like space, room for something new.

“It’s over,” I whisper.

My phone lights again. Not an email this time. Just a low reflection of my face in the glass.

I unlock it and stare at the blank text bar, the cursor blinking like a dare.

To: Me.

Stop calling me weak.

I hover over send, then leave it.
It isn’t for anyone else to read. It’s for me to see, here, in the quiet.

Those words used to feel like chains. Now they look like a promise. A reminder that softness and strength were never opposites.

I added another line beneath it.

Start calling me alive.

I save the draft and set the phone down. The screen glows beside the mug ring on the counter.

Outside, a door slams down the boardwalk, maybe a drunk guest, maybe Adrian pacing his suite. Maybe both.

I think of his message again. You don’t have to come.
And how it sounds so much like you don’t have to fight.
And how I’m done letting anyone decide when I stop fighting.

The knock is soft, two taps on the glass. I almost pretend I didn’t hear it, but I know that rhythm.

“Come in,” I say.

Adrian steps inside, sleeves rolled, tie gone, eyes rimmed with exhaustion. The man who faces the cameras is all in control. This one just looks human.

“You’re supposed to be asleep,” I say.

“So are you.” He glances at the dark laptop, the mug, the phone still face-down. “Long day?”

“Long month.”

He nods. “They’re trying to buy the clinic,” he says quietly. “I found the paperwork. I stopped it, for now.”

The words hit like cold water. “Why the clinic?”

“Because they can. Because it’s leverage.” His eyes meet mine. “I should’ve seen it coming.”

“Of course they’d go for the one thing I actually built.”

“I came to tell you before it hits the board. You deserve to know first.”

“You didn’t have to.”

“Yeah,” he says. “I did.”

Silence stretches, full of everything we don’t say. He notices my hands. “You’re shaking.”

“I deleted an email,” I admit. “From Nathan.”

His jaw tightens. “Good.”

“Don’t say it like that,” I snapped. “Like I finally did something brave.”

He flinches. “I’m not proud, Elara. I’m relieved.”

“Same thing.”

He moves closer, close enough that I feel the heat off his skin. “You think I see you as fragile,” he says.

“Don’t I?”

He exhales. “You scare the hell out of me. You keep standing when everyone else would break. That’s not a weakness. That’s fire.”

The words hit deeper than I want them to. “Then stop acting like I’ll burn out.”

He brushes a strand of hair behind my ear. “Not burn out,” he says. “Burn through.”

For a second, everything stills, just his breath, mine, the faint hum of the clinic.

“I should go,” he says finally. “Before I forget where the lines are.”

“Too late,” I whisper.

His eyes flick to my mouth, then away. He nods once and leaves.

The door clicks shut. The room feels larger, lonelier.

I pick up my phone. The draft waits:

Stop calling me weak.
Start calling me alive.

I read it again until the words feel like a heartbeat.

Outside, footsteps fade down the boardwalk, his, maybe. I almost follow. Instead, I set the phone face-down.

Strength isn’t chasing. It’s standing still.

The tide hushes against the glass, steady and calm. I turn off the lights, leaving the monitors’ soft glow.

Tomorrow the board will circle, the island will wake. But tonight, there’s only the ocean’s breath and the proof that I’m still here.

“Never again,” I whisper.