Night had its own rhythm at Westbridge Medical. The kind of rhythm you didn't hear with your ears but felt in your bones. Gone were the rushed footsteps, the clipped voices paging stat consults, the fluorescent brightness of activity. In its place, shadows stretched longer across the tile floors. Machines whispered with their blinking lights, and life inched forward on quiet beeps and breaths measured by machines.
Nora sat in Observation Room 2, elbows resting against her knees, a patient file lying open but untouched in her lap. The page blurred in her vision, not from exhaustion, but from disinterest. She had read these vitals three times already. Her eyes traced the numbers out of habit, but her mind hovered elsewhere, stuck on a name the hospital refused to acknowledge: Lily Keane.
She had searched it every way she knew how through authorized files, backdoors, and clearance loopholes. The system returned nothing. No case history. No ID tag. As if her sister had never existed. But Nora remembered. She remembered everything. The warm weight of Lily's hand in hers. The soft laugh echoing in a white room. The slow shift from reassurance to terror when no one listened. And now that memory was stitched into every step Nora took inside these halls.
A buzz broke through her thoughts sharp, mechanical, familiar. Her pager blinked once.
Room 414. Vitals unstable.
She stood instantly, all hesitation falling away. The hospital became a different place when vitals were at stake. Time condensed. Priorities sharpened. Grief stepped aside.
The patient was in his forties, post-op from abdominal surgery. His pulse spiked dangerously, monitors screaming a rhythm she recognized all too well distress. She adjusted the IV line, checked oxygen saturation, and recalibrated the fluids. Every movement was practiced, confident, nearly automatic. There was no panic in her. Just focus.
As she placed the last monitor patch, the door creaked behind her. Rowan Hayes entered, his steps quick but quiet.
"You're fast," he said, voice low, observing the scene with sharp eyes.
"I was closer," she replied without looking up.
They worked side by side, the situation stabilized within minutes. When the patient's breathing leveled out and the alarms calmed to a steady pulse, Nora stepped back. She peeled off her gloves, nodded once toward the chart, and exited the room without a word. Rowan followed, but it wasn't just routine that brought him after her.
In the hallway, under the dim glow of night-shift lights, the silence thickened.
"I'm getting coffee," Rowan said finally, stuffing his hands into his lab coat pockets. "And you're coming with me."
She didn't argue.
The break room was empty, lit by the dull hum of vending machine LEDs. Nora leaned against the counter while Rowan poured from the still-warm pot. He handed her a cup without asking how she took it. She accepted it, fingers curling around ceramic like she'd forgotten how warmth felt.
They sat across from each other, not speaking. The silence between them wasn't tense it was filled with weight. Understanding. Distance trying not to become connection.
"Do you ever sleep, Keane?" he asked eventually, breaking the quiet.
She lifted her gaze slowly. "You always this gentle with people you don't trust?"
He smirked faintly. "Only the ones I can't figure out."
Her shoulders lowered just slightly, but her eyes stayed guarded. "Sometimes I sleep. Lately… I don't."
He didn't push for more. Just nodded, like that answer was enough. And it was for now.
"Dreams?" he asked.
"Memories," she corrected. Her voice barely above a whisper.
She didn't describe them, but in her mind, Lily's face bloomed in pieces. The soft slope of her cheek, her hoodie sleeve tugged over thin wrists, her laugh light and brave despite the weight in her chest. That was the hardest part. How fearless she had looked while dying.
Nora blinked and brought herself back to the present.
Across the table, Rowan leaned back, stretching one long leg and tapping the side of his cup. "First time I did night shift, I passed out in a supply closet. Woke up three hours later with a cold pack stuck to my forehead and a post-it on my chest that said: 'You lived.'"
A small laugh escaped her unexpected, unguarded. It startled her more than him.
"You don't seem like the collapsing type," she said.
"I wasn't. Not until that shift."
They smiled, and for a second, the hospital didn't feel so cold.
But he didn't stop there.
"Why did you really come to Westbridge?" His tone shifted softer, but more pointed. "You don't belong here, and I think you know it."
Nora rose, walked to the trash, and discarded her empty cup. Her voice was quiet, but firm.
"You don't want to know who I really am."
Rowan leaned forward, elbows on the table, expression unreadable. "Maybe I already do."
She didn't respond. The door creaked softly as she walked out.
Back in the corridor, the hum of the hospital returned. It sounded different now. Heavier. Like someone or something was watching.
As she passed the nurses' station, her eyes slid toward Room 408. Dark. Empty. Clean. But she knew what used to be in there.
She stopped in front of the glass and stared. Not at the room. At the memory buried in its shape. She could almost see Lily again curled beneath too-thin blankets, pale but smiling. A fighter who had never been given a fair fight.
Nora's hand tightened around the pen in her coat pocket, her pulse steady, her breath slow.
Then the vision faded, and only the room remained.
She turned away, walking back toward the west wing. Her steps were soundless, but each one echoed louder in her mind.
Then came the noise.
A soft metallic click behind her. Sharp. Deliberate.
She stopped and turned.
No one.
A monitor blinked in the far patient bay. Red light on a wall camera rotated slightly, pausing just a second too long before returning to its neutral position.
Nora didn't move. She stood frozen, chest tight, spine straight. Because now she knew.
She wasn't alone in this search anymore.
And if someone else had accessed the file… someone else knew about Lily.
Sometimes silence wasn't protection.
Sometimes silence meant you were being watched.
And tonight, Westbridge was wide awake.