E L A R A

The board will vote in the morning and Marina will spin the headlines, will feed, and the empire will bleed slowly. But right now, it’s just me, barefoot in the clinic’s dark office, watching the cursor blink over a resignation letter I swore I’d never write. The wind outside sounds like the sea is dragging its nails across the glass. The power flickers once, then steadies but I don’t. My hands still shake from the conference, from watching Adrian give up everything I told him not to. I can still hear him saying, I’m not trying to save you, I’m standing next to you. The words feel too big for the room, too heavy for my chest.

The clinic smells like antiseptic and rain, my stethoscope lies coiled on the desk like something dead. I should be sleeping, or at least pretending to, but every time I close my eyes, I see his face when Marina says succession. That flicker shock, then quiet, then acceptance, like he’d rehearsed losing everything.

I keep telling myself I didn’t make him do it, but that’s a lie I can’t hold steady. He stood there because of me, because I asked for honesty, because I made him see patients instead of numbers, because I reminded him what compassion costs, and now the price has a name, a vote and a headline.

The cursor blinks again, accusing. The page is empty except for my name.
Dr. Elara Quinn.

It looks wrong so I delete it, then retype it, slower, like that will make it mean something different.  The storm outside hisses against the glass, wind tearing at the palms, thunder rolling far off over the lagoon. Somewhere down the hallway, a machine beeps, steady, loyal, indifferent.

“Maybe you were right, Nathan,” I whisper to the dark. “Maybe compassion is weakness.” The words taste like salt and I hate that his ghost still lingers when everything in me knows better.

I used to believe medicine was pure: you save people, you fix things, you do no harm. Then the system showed me what happens when budgets matter more than breath. I left that life behind and I came here to start over, but Seraphine is just the same, prettier lies wrapped in lantern light.

I rub my eyes hard. “You should’ve stayed gone,” I tell the past, but the past never listens, I start typing because not typing feels worse.

To the Board of Valcrosse Luxe Resorts:
Effective immediately, I hereby resign from my position as Lead Medical Director of Isla Seraphine.

I hesitate but the words appear tidy, polished, and corporate, like a formal death notice masked as professionalism. I continue:

This decision is made in consideration of recent events and the need to preserve the integrity of patient care.

Integrity.. What a lie,  I’m not resigning for integrity, I’m running again, same as New York. same as before. My throat burns and I delete integrity and replace it with safety, then I delete that too, every word feels like betrayal dressed in white.

The screen reflection catches my face, eyes swollen, lips cracked, salt tracks on my cheeks. I barely recognize myself, I used to be the kind of woman who believed in second chances, but now I’m just trying to survive my own.

I think of Adrian again, how he stood in front of those cameras, voice steady even when his world fell apart behind him. I told him not to, and begged him to protect himself. He did it anyway, not for me, but because he finally believed in something beyond optics, and I can’t even finish a goddamn letter without shaking.

I rest my hands flat on the keyboard, breathing through my nose. The cursor waits, patient, cruel and the only sound is the rain and my own uneven breathing.

I hope this transition will allow the clinic to maintain its standards of care…

My laugh slips out, then falters… standards of care. If I go, there won’t be any left, Asha will hold on for a while, but the festival season will swallow her whole. The interns will panic, the guests will still need someone when accidents happen, and Adrian.. God, Adrian.. he won’t have anyone watching his blind spots anymore.

My fingers hover over send and I picture him standing in that room alone, his mother’s board circling like sharks, and my pulse spikes so fast I nearly gag. I don’t hit it,  I just sit there, staring at the button, shaking, whispering, “I can’t.”

The clock on the wall blinks at 2:47 a.m and I don’t remember the last time I ate. My hands smell like sanitizer and ink, and outside, thunder rolls again, closer now, echoing off the bay. I open a patient file to distract myself, it’s from the near-drowning last month, the boy, Eli. His follow-up note says stable, cleared for full activity, I stare at that one line until my eyes blur. He lived because I stayed that day, because I didn’t wait for permission.

So what happens when I leave? Every reason I ever had for running feels thin now, the system, the politics, the exhaustion. All of it is real, but none of it is enough, because underneath the anger, the burnout, the fear, there’s still that same girl who held a stranger’s heart in her hands and swore never to let another one stop on her watch. I close the file, and my reflection stares back at me on the dark screen. Same eyes, same ghosts, same stubborn heartbeat.

“If I go, patients pay,” I whisper.

The words hang there, solid and true, heavier than the storm outside. I can’t tell if it’s duty or love or both, but it’s enough to make my hand move. I delete the resignation draft line by line, slow, deliberate, until the page is blank again, then I save it as unsent.

For a long time, I just sit there, staring at nothing, letting the night breathe around me. My pulse starts to settle, not calm exactly, just steady enough to keep going. I fold my hands in my lap, whisper once more to the empty clinic, “He gave up everything, and the least I can do is stay.”

The power flickers again around three, I think it’s gone for good this time, but a second later, the emergency lantern in the hallway kicks on, soft gold leaking through the frosted glass, painting the floor like a heartbeat. I’ve never liked that light, it’s too faint to be useful, too stubborn to die, but tonight, it’s the only thing keeping this place from feeling like a tomb.

I stand because sitting feels like surrender, the rain drums the windows, thick and relentless, and for a second I swear I can hear the ocean breathing with it, each wave a slow exhale, like the island itself is tired too.

I walk to the window, the lagoon is only a dark smear below, no boardwalk lights, no tourists, no flashbulbs. Just the ghostly outline of palm fronds bending under the wind, and  somewhere out there, Adrian is probably fighting the board, the same way he fought the storm in that cave, steady when everything else fell apart. He doesn’t know I almost left tonight, he’ll never know.

A lantern burns somewhere on the path outside, the kind left for late-night emergencies. It sways in the wind, its flame thin but alive. I watched it for a long time, every time the wind almost kills it, it flares back up, like defiance, and like a memory. I breathe with it, inhale when it flickers, exhale when it steadies and my reflection stares back: tired, damp-eyed, but still here.

By four, the rain starts to ease, the sea has that soft hiss it gets when it’s finished breaking things. I go back to the desk, the resignation draft sits open again, empty but waiting, like it knows I’ll keep coming back to it until something inside me decides.

I scroll to the bottom, to the place where my name used to be, the cursor blinks once, twice. I imagine Adrian sitting across some boardroom table right now, listening to people who never once cleaned blood off their own hands talk about reputation. I imagine Asha trying to calm a patient who doesn’t understand why there’s only one nurse tonight.

I can’t make any of it make sense, but I know what happens if I leave. Patients pay, not in hashtags, not in profits. In lives, in seconds lost before help arrives, in oxygen tanks that don’t get refilled because the only one who noticed they were empty walked away.

I close my eyes and rest my head on my folded arms. The rain smell drifts through the cracked window, salt and earth and a hint of lightning. I whisper into the silence, maybe to the storm, maybe to him, maybe to myself.

“I’m not leaving.”

The words are small, but they feel like the first real thing I’ve said in hours. Outside, the lantern on the path is still burning, weak, stubborn, and beautiful. I saved the file one last time and closed the laptop. No resignation, no running, just the promise I made the day I first stepped on this island: Not until it’s safe.

My voice is a whisper by the end, but it’s steady.
“If I leave, patients pay.”