MARA's PERSPECTIVE
The morning began with one tick.
Mara noticed it before she noticed the light.
Her phone lay face-up on the bedside table, screen dim but awake, as if it had been waiting for her to open her eyes. She hadn't set an alarm. She rarely did on days like this. Her body had learned when to wake, the way it learned everything else through repetition and quiet surrender.
She reached for the phone without thinking.
Elias:Morning. Did you sleep?
The message sat there, gentle and unassuming. No punctuation at the end, which she'd already learned meant he was trying not to sound too eager. It made her smile despite herself.
She typed back.
Barely. You?
Sent.
One tick.
She frowned slightly. It was early. Maybe he was still asleep. Maybe he was making coffee, burning toast, doing whatever it was people did in the private hours before the day officially claimed them.
She rolled onto her side and stared at the wall. The faint crack above the skirting board looked like a river on a map. She traced it with her eyes, waiting.
Nothing.
She typed again, this time lighter.
I'm on early shift. If I vanish, it's not personal.
Sent.
One tick.
That one lodged somewhere uncomfortable.
She told herself not to read into it. They had just begun. Yesterday had been… a lot. Good, yes, but new in that way that made the ground feel slightly unreliable. People didn't owe each other instant replies. She knew that better than most.
Still.
She set the phone down and showered, letting the water run hotter than necessary. Steam filled the small bathroom, blurring the mirror until her reflection softened into something less defined. She preferred it that way.
By the time she was dressed, the phone still hadn't changed.
She checked once more before slipping it into her pocket.
One tick.
At the hospital, the day moved the way it always did: forward, regardless of how anyone felt about it.
Mara tied her hair back, washed her hands, slipped into the rhythm she trusted. There was comfort in protocols, in knowing what came next even when everything else felt unstable.
But the phone stayed heavy in her pocket.
During handover, she found herself glancing at it when she thought no one noticed. Still one tick. No typing bubble. No follow-up message. Just silence sitting where a voice had been yesterday.
"You okay?" Lina murmured beside her.
"Yeah," Mara said automatically. Then, more honestly, "Just tired."
Lina nodded in the way people did when they accepted that explanation because it was easier than asking more.
The first half of the shift passed without incident. Routine meds. Routine reassurances. A patient who flirted harmlessly. Another who cried quietly while pretending not to.
Mara did her job well. She always did.
It was only when she passed the registration area that something in her chest tightened.
A man stood near the counter, slightly hunched, fingers curled too tightly around his ID. He looked younger than most of the people who stood there with that expression. Too young to already carry that much weight in his shoulders.
She didn't look closely. She didn't need to. She was already mid-conversation with a colleague, voice doing what it always did when she needed it to sound steady.
"She's compensating," Mara was saying. "But it won't hold if we don't adjust the dose."
Her colleague nodded. "By the way, you look exhausted."
Mara huffed softly. "Occupational hazard."
They laughed, briefly.
Then, because sometimes truth leaked out sideways, Mara added, "I thought something was starting with someone. Guess not."
Her colleague raised an eyebrow. "That bad?"
"He just… stopped," Mara said, keeping her tone light. "No warning. No explanation. Like I imagined the whole thing."
She hated how small that sounded. How familiar.
Behind her, she was vaguely aware of movement. A pause. The subtle disruption that happened when something went wrong in a public place.
"Sir?" the clerk said. "Are you alright?"
Mara didn't turn.
She was already moving again, already letting the conversation drift somewhere safer. She didn't hear what followed. Didn't see the ID slip from the man's hand. Didn't register the silence that had replaced whatever answer he'd tried to give.
She walked away, unaware that the voice she had just used to speak about being abandoned had landed squarely in the chest of the man she was speaking about.