I didn't sleep.
Every time I closed my eyes ,I was back on those steps. His face. His lips . The exact second my phone rang and ruined everything.
I nearly throw it across the room.
I had Physiology class by eight.
Dr. Brennan moved through the slides without looking up.
I copied every single word on the slide, but couldn't retain anything.
Dr. Brennan stopped at a slide showing the conduction pathway of the heart.
"The heart doesn't decide," she said. "It responds. It receives a signal and it acts. The problem comes when the signal is disrupted."
I wrote that down. I wasn't sure I was writing it for physiology.
Zara found me after class. She didn't say anything at first , just walked beside me, which was weird , Zara was always lively and dramatic.
She looked like she had something serious to say but was hesitating.
"You look terrible," she said.
"Thank you."
"Did you sleep?"
"i'm fine ."
She looked at me like she didn't believe me.
"He just left," I said. "I turned around and he was just….gone."
"I know." Zara said.
"I don't know what that means, Zara."
She was quiet for a moment. "Maybe he doesn't either."
That made it worse, not better. We both knew it.
The campus was loud and cold around us, everyone moving with their bags and their coffees, and I felt separate from all of it. Like part of me was still standing on those steps in the rain, waiting.
"He'll reach out," Zara said.
"You don't know that."
She looked at me. "I know him better than you think."
Before i could ask her what that meant. She was already at the door, holding it open, heading to the skills lab like the conversation was over.
Clinical skills was in the afternoon. We were practicing patient communication.
James sat across from me in the skills lab, the same as always.
"Are you in any pain?" I asked.
"No."
"Any discomfort?"
"No."
I stopped mid-question. Just stopped.
He waited.
"Sorry," I said. "where was i?."
"It's fine," he said.
I picked up where i left off and kept going. I said the right things in the right order. Dr. Chen moved on without saying a word.
I looked out the window. The sky looked as lonely as I felt.
I got home at seven, made tea and sat at my desk.
The apartment was unusually quiet . Outside, i could hear horns and voices, but they felt distant
I tried to read, i made it through two pages
At nine fourteen my phone lit up, it was a text from Ethan.
"I'm sorry I left like that. Can we talk?"
I stared at it. Three days of silence and now this, like it was that simple, Like it didn't matter to him
I totally ignored his text and put my phone down. I picked up my notes and just stared at them
without reading.
Then a message came in from Zara.
"I saw him today. After your clinical session."
"He wasn't alone. Marcelin, I think you need to know who he was with."
I read it twice.
The thing was, I had no right to feel anything. We weren't together. We hadn't even finished a conversation. He owed me nothing, not really, not technically.
I knew all of that.
But i still wished whatever was saying Zara was saying wasn't true.
I picked up my phone and called her.
She answered on the first ring.
And didn't say anything.
Which told me everything i needed to know.