Residency wasn't glamorous.
It wasn't the montage of perfectly timed sutures and teary patient thank-yous Talia had once imagined during sleepless study nights. It was exhausting, relentless, and soaked in fluorescent lighting and coffee that tasted like regret.
Still, there was a strange beauty to it — a rhythm, like the steady beep of a monitor, that she was starting to find comfort in.
Every morning began the same way.
5:00 a.m. — Alarm.
5:10 a.m. — Ignore the alarm.
5:12 a.m. — Ezra poking her in the side with his toothbrush. "You're going to be late."
6:00 a.m. — Rounds.
12-hour shifts blurred into 16. Sleep became a luxury. Meals were stolen between chart notes and elevator rides. But somehow, through the haze of codes, charts, and collapsing veins, Talia and Ezra found moments.
Sometimes it was a knowing glance across the nurse's station. Other times it was a hand brush when passing one another in the corridor.
And once, when both had back-to-back night shifts, they'd met in the on-call room, curled up like parentheses inside a sentence neither of them had time to write.
But the rhythm cracked two weeks into their residency.
It started with Patient 212 — an 8-year-old girl with leukemia, admitted for a fever that wouldn't go down. Talia had taken point on her case, heart already too involved. She was smart, feisty, and loved mango lollipops.
Talia had promised her she'd be home in time for her little brother's birthday.
But the cultures came back. Resistant strain. Complications. One thing after another.
Talia didn't sleep that night. And when Ezra found her on the floor of the stairwell, back pressed to the cool tile, she looked like someone carrying the weight of too many promises.
"I messed up," she whispered. "I got too close. I promised her she'd be okay."
Ezra sat down beside her, quiet for a moment. "Being close doesn't make you weak, Talia. It makes you human."
She looked at him, eyes rimmed red. "What if I'm not built for this kind of heartbreak?"
Ezra gave her hand a gentle squeeze. "Then we'll break together. And heal together, too."
They didn't speak again until their shift ended at 6:00 a.m.
Ezra walked her to her locker. She peeled off her badge and sighed. "I don't even know who I am outside these walls anymore."
He reached out, brushing her hair behind her ear. "You're still you. Even under all the exhaustion. Even when you doubt yourself."
"And you?"
"I'm just a nerd in love with a girl who fights like hell for her patients."
That got the tiniest smile from her.
Later that night, they lay in bed — their tiny apartment filled with leftover takeout and the sound of silence that only came when the world outside was finally still.
Talia rested her head on Ezra's chest, listening to the steady beat of his heart.
"I don't want to lose us," she murmured. "In this chaos. In this schedule."
"You won't," he said softly. "We'll make space. Even in the mess."
"How?"
"By doing exactly this. Reminding ourselves we're more than doctors. We're still Talia and Ezra."
She looked up. "Even if we forget sometimes?"
He kissed her forehead. "Especially then."
Residency would be hard.
But love, real love, didn't need a perfect schedule.
It only needed two people choosing each other — again and again — in between shifts, inside elevators, across hospital halls, and beneath quiet bedsheets when the world finally slowed.
And in that rhythm, they found something stronger than routine.
They found home.