The plaque read: Dr. T. Malik – Chief Internal Medicine. Oak-framed, lacquered to a shine, it sat like a quiet sentinel on the polished desk, presiding over the papers that rustled faintly as the fan hummed.
Dr. George Malik entered the room with the tired gait of a man who had walked too far inside his own thoughts. A grunt escaped him, deep and weighted, as he slumped into the chair opposite his elder brother and engaged in the reflective uttering of mood. Giving the solemn air between them, thick with something professionally bad.
Timothy Malik didn't look up immediately. His glasses glinted under the ceiling lights as he continued filing papers into two neat stacks—one for the living, and one for the dead. Each folder, another story concluded or clinging.
The silence outlasted a minute.
"Big Tim..." George's voice cracked just slightly, his head tilted back on the edge of the chair, staring at the ceiling. "How long did it take you to... comprehend the gravity of our duty?"
Dr. Malik chuckled softly without pausing his task. "You don't comprehend it, George. You endure it. You learn to move with it. Like walking with a limp."
George nodded faintly, eyes now drifting to the woodgrain of the desk.
"Any job has guilt," his brother continued. "But medicine... medicine turns regret into a roommate. You don't forget things in this field. You just live among their ghosts."
Dr. Malik stopped sorting momentarily. His fingers rested on a file marked Deceased: J. Ramos. He removed his glasses and rubbed his eyes, not from sleep, but from the ideas these individuals had had before the shape of their end made them their volume.
"The 'great genius Dr. Malik'—" he smirked without pride, "—has barely the makings of a strong mind, let alone a powerful one."
George exhaled, forearms folded on the table now, chin balanced atop knuckles. "If we'd used everything, tried everything—would it have changed anything for Jeffrey?"
Dr. Malik tapped his fingers on the desk, a quiet rhythm that felt like a clock counting breaths.
"You want an answer," he said. "But all I have is a question. Could we have made his days less painful? Maybe. Could we have bought time? Possibly. But was it in our hands?"
Silence. Then, with slow conviction, George shook his head.
Dr. Malik sighed. "This is a public hospital. Currency buys precision. Not truth, not guarantees. Not here. Not for Jeffrey."
George smiled bitterly. "Jacqueline didn't cry," he murmured. "She just stood there. Eyes like shattered glass. I've seen that look too many times."
He paused, gazing beyond the room.
"Jeffrey... was the kind of kid who would smile through a broken rib. As if pain should never have the last word."
Dr. Malik nodded. "Each death still feels like the first, doesn't it?"
George's eyes glistened but no tears fell. "Every time."
"Because the brain remembers being, not ceasing. It's not wired for absence. It catalogs the moment of loss, not the state after it. That's why we feel new grief every time—it resets us. Strips us bare."
Dr. Malik leaned back again.
"It's not your fault, George. It's never the fault of the hands trying to hold back the tide. The fault lies with the dam that was never built, with the system that sold buckets to stop the flood."
George stared.
Dr. Malik looked at him, eyes serious now.
"We blame ourselves so we can pretend we cared more. That we hurt enough to equal their hurt. But the truth?" He paused. "We pity what we couldn't save, not because we failed, but because we never understood it fully. And that ignorance, that helplessness, is what shatters us."
He rose, gathering the files into a final pile. "Come," he said, slipping on his white coat, "we need coffee."
They stepped into the hallway.
The hospital was a breathing machine—ventilators whispering in distant wards, nurses walking briskly past, voices calling softly through intercoms. In shared rooms, some patients slept. Others clung to beeping monitors, to prayers, to fate.
The corridors at Jamaica Hospital Medical Center told stories without speaking. A doctor with a clipboard smiled politely. An intern held back tears in a shadowed corner. A janitor nodded solemnly as they passed.
In the rest room, warm light spilled onto clean tables. The scent of coffee, antiseptic, and fatigue floated like incense. Some colleagues chatted softly. Others simply existed—staring into cups, gathering themselves.
By the coffee machine, stood Dr. Cindy Rupert. Blonde hair falling like silk over a face made thoughtful by something unseen. She stared down at her shoes, caught in the fog of her own mind.
"May I top it up?" Dr. Malik asked gently, indicating the pot.
She blinked, startled from her reverie. Her hand covered her face briefly, embarrassed. "Yes, sorry. Go ahead."
George sank into a chair nearby, distant.
"What's wrong?" Malik asked, tearing open a small packet of peanuts and raisins. He tossed one of each into his mouth, chewing slowly. "Peanuts help. Forces your brain to think about your mouth instead of your heart."
Cindy smiled, softly. "Still thinking."
"Good. Now chew something."
He extended the packet.
She hesitated, then plucked a few with delicate fingers and chewed, her face easing into a reluctant grin. "They don't help," she whispered. "I'm still thinking."
"Lie to me next time," Malik said, bumping her shoulder. "Helps my theory."
She laughed—small, real.
Then the silence returned. But this time it was softer.
"It's the stories," she confessed. "The ones I invent to keep hope alive. Sometimes I feel like I'm lying to keep people from drowning."
She then abruptly changed the subject. "What's up with George?"
"Same storm, different room."
She nodded. "How do you do it?" she asked. "How do you move on like this?"
"I don't. I move with it. I let it move me, at its pace. I contain it. I let it echo without letting it hollow me out."
She stared at him, lips pressed.
"You're strong," she whispered.
He laughed. "You're mocking me again."
She burst into a short giggle. "Maybe."
"You okay now?"
She nodded. "Thanks to you."
Dr. Malik poured three cups.
Sugar already in. No need to stir grief.
George took his cup wordlessly. Dr. Cindy accepted hers with a smile that could warm a ward.
For now, they drank.
And for a moment longer, the hospital was still.
And by the first few sips, their mouths had forgotten the taste of caffeine and the energy behind it, the human mind against the heavy current of thoughts and by now thee coffee had long cooled in their hands, but no one seemed eager to trade warmth for urgency. The silence in the break room became a kind of quiet balm—delicate, fragile, necessary. There were no cries, no alarms, just the ambient hum of vending machines and the muffled rhythm of footsteps far down the corridor.
George Malik sat with his cup nestled between his palms, staring through the black reflection in the surface. It was less a drink and more a mirror now—one that never answered but always stared back.
Dr Malik leaned against the edge of the counter, arms crossed, lab coat slightly crumpled at the elbow. The fluorescent lights etched soft shadows across his face, accentuating the tired nobility that came from years of accumulating quiet grief and louder victories. He sipped slowly.
Cindy Rupert had wandered toward the window, her coffee untouched. The city outside was beginning to blur with the onset of early dusk. Queens, with all its rush and breath and noise, appeared as a painting behind condensation-specked glass. Her golden hair caught a spill of fading sun and lit like a lamp from the past.
George finally spoke—not loudly, but clear enough.
"You ever think the body's just a paper shell? All this science, all this training, and yet everything we do feels like trying to stop rain with parchment."
Dr Malik glanced at him, eyes unreadable behind his thoughts. Then, softly: "Not paper. Just… mortal. And mortality doesn't tear—it folds. Neatly, messily, suddenly."
A beat passed.
"You think I'm losing it," George murmured, half-smiling.
Cindy turned back toward them, arms folded across her chest. "If you are, you're not alone."
Dr Malik let out a dry chuckle. "There's no 'losing it' here. There's just adjusting the threshold of what still makes sense. Every doctor has their own version of a red line. We don't cross it. It just… moves."
George lifted his cup again, this time drinking. "Sometimes I think we're just elaborate clerks—filing lives between cardboard, watching them expire like documents."
"But we document them with our hands," Cindy said. "And sometimes we rewrite the ending, even if just by a day."
Dr Malik watched her closely. He didn't speak for a while. When he did, his voice was lower, a touch philosophical.
"Do you know what makes this job unbearable?" he asked. "It's not the loss. It's that we carry the illusion of control so well, we start to believe it. But the truth is, we're not sculptors of fate. We're just… cartographers of decline. We map the descent. We don't stop it."
George stared at him for a moment, blinking once. "You really shouldn't be allowed to speak when I'm emotionally compromised."
They all laughed, briefly.
The door creaked slightly as someone entered, then paused—seeing the trio quietly drinking coffee, laughing low and soft as if mourning was something too delicate to be spoken aloud.
It was Dr Layla Mbeki, the cardiologist. She gave them a brief nod, the kind that spoke volumes—recognition, solidarity, silence. She moved to pour tea and didn't interrupt. She didn't need to. This was sacred ground in a secular place.
Outside, the hospital shifted through its own rhythms—stretchers wheeling, patients muttering in half-sleep, babies crying, monitors beeping into empty rooms. Life didn't stop. It simply changed shape.
Dr Malik straightened his coat and stood up. "I have a debrief in ten. A code red follow-up."
Cindy looked at her watch. "Pediatric review."
George sighed. "General rounds."
They didn't need to say it, but it passed between them like breath: We go again.
As they exited the break room, they passed another nurse cradling a clipboard, and a young intern with eyes too bright for what lay ahead. A janitor whistled low as he cleaned the remnants of an afternoon emergency.
There was no music, yet every step carried a note.
And as Dr Malik walked beside his brother, he spoke—not loudly, not softly, just enough:
"George… You're not weak for feeling it. You'd be dangerous if you didn't."
And George, who had lost something fragile in Jeffrey's eyes, something raw and unfinished, simply nodded.
He understood now.
In this place, they did not wage war against death.
They merely stood still long enough for life to pass through them—hands open, hearts exposed, hoping each time that it might stay.