The automatic doors hissed open, and Chloe stepped into the fluorescent chaos of the emergency wing like a storm dressed in stilettos. Her bag hit her hip with each stride, coat half on, one hand clutching her phone while the other swiped away a tear she refused to acknowledge.
"I'm looking for a patient—Sarah Alden," she said breathlessly at the front desk, voice too sharp to be ignored. "She was brought in. Stab wound. Tell me where she is."
The receptionist blinked. Calm. Detached. Too slow.
"I need a moment to check."
She scanned the monitor. And then.
"She's been taken into emergency surgery. Trauma bay two. Down the hall—left, past radiology."
Chloe was already moving before the last word left her lips.
She ran.
Heels clacking, bag thumping, breath coming shallow. The sterile white corridor blurred on either side, her reflection flashing off glass panels and stainless steel. The word surgery printed on a swinging set of doors made her slow only for a beat before pushing through.
There.
At the end of the hallway. A glowing red light above a closed door: TRAUMA OR-2.
She stopped.
Hands trembling, chest heaving. Her makeup — perfect this morning — was now smudged at the corners. She didn't notice. Her throat ached from running, but worse than that — from fear. Real fear. The kind that didn't scream, but whispered all the worst things in the back of your mind.
She pressed a hand to the wall to steady herself, lips parted, eyes fixed on that door like it might open and hand her the truth.
And then she sank slowly onto the bench opposite it, elbows on her knees, fingers woven together in a grip too tight.
Her voice cracked into the silence.
"I swear," she whispered, to the door, or the room beyond it, or herself, "if you even think about dying, I will kill you."
She meant it. And didn't.
Behind her — past the cold glass entry doors of the ER, near the emergency exit that barely anyone noticed — that man stood watching.
Dressed simply. A nondescript coat, collar up. Hands buried deep in his pockets as though he'd been standing there far longer than he should have.
His gaze wasn't on the hospital. It was on Chloe.
Or rather, through her — past her — like he was still looking for the glimpse of that girl they wheeled away minutes ago. The girl with blood on her dress and panic in her eyes. The girl he'd cradled in his arms, telling her to stay awake when her voice had already begun to fade.
Sarah.
The name he hadn't spoken aloud in years.
Not since the night he'd disappeared from her life.
Not since the day he chose to protect her by staying away.
He watched Chloe now, her panic, the way her coat trembled with every breath she took. He could tell she loved Sarah like a sister. That was good. That meant Sarah had people. People who loved her.
A faint scar crossed the man's temple — barely visible under the old wound. His hands curled tighter in his pockets.
He wouldn't step forward. Not yet.
But he would stay until the light above that door turned off.
Until he knew she'd made it.
The red light above the OR door blinked once—
then went dark.
Chloe stood. Frozen.
Her hands clenched around the sleeves of her coat, nails digging into fabric as her pulse surged in her ears. For a breathless second, the world tilted — sound dulled, fluorescent lights buzzed too loud, and the hallway narrowed like a tunnel.
Because she had seen this before.
That red light turning off. That silence.
She was fourteen when it happened last.
Different hospital. Different hallway.
But the moment had the same bone-deep echo.
One nurse walked out, quiet and composed—
said "We did everything we could."
That's all it took. Her world cracked in one syllable.
Now, standing outside Sarah's OR, the past slammed into her chest like it had never left.
Not again. Not again.
Then the door opened.
A nurse stepped out, mask pulled down, eyes soft but focused. "She's stable."
The two words hit like air after drowning.
Chloe stumbled back a step, exhaled too hard, and covered her mouth with both hands. Her knees almost buckled, but she didn't fall. She blinked away the stinging heat behind her eyes and nodded.
"Can I see her?" she asked, voice barely steady.
The nurse gave a small, kind smile. "In a few minutes. They're just finishing up."
Chloe nodded again, slower this time.
But outside — behind the tinted glass of the ER exit — the man watched the light go dark too. He didn't need the nurse's words. He read it in Chloe's body, in her relief, in the way her shoulders finally dropped.
He took one step back, into shadow.
It wasn't time. Not yet.
He turned, disappearing down the sidewalk like any other ghost the city refused to name.
But behind him, Sarah was breathing.
Still here.
Still his.
And somewhere, in the weightless blur between relief and silence, a father let go of the breath he'd been holding since the moment she fell.