Hospitals had a way of flattening time.
Day and night dissolved under fluorescent light; hours stretched into antiseptic sameness. Naliaka had been back in Nairobi for six days, yet it felt both longer and barely real — as if she were moving through a life that still belonged to someone else.
The corridors smelled of disinfectant and warmed plastic. Shoes whispered across polished floors. Monitors chimed in distant rooms like small, persistent questions.
She was reviewing a patient chart outside Ward C when she felt it.
Not sound.
Not sight.
Presence.
A shift in the air behind her — the quiet gravity of someone standing close enough to matter.
Her pen paused mid-note.
For a fraction of a second, her body reacted before memory: a tightening low in her ribs, a flicker of awareness she had not felt in five years and had never felt for anyone else.
No, she thought immediately.
It can't be.
She turned.
He stood three steps away.
Time did not stop. It fractured.
The boy she remembered — thin shoulders, oversized glasses, careful softness — was gone. In his place stood a man shaped by years she had not witnessed: taller than she recalled, posture straight, presence contained. His hair was shorter, neater. No glasses. A dark suit replaced school uniform, the fabric cut clean along his frame.
Daniel.
His name moved through her like shock.
Her mind tried to reconcile two images and failed: the boy who walked her home along dusty roads and the man who now stood in a hospital corridor looking at her with composed stillness.
For one suspended instant, neither spoke.
Recognition passed across his face — not surprise, not warmth, but something quieter and far more controlled. His eyes moved over her features as if confirming identity: the same, and not the same. The years between them hung visible in that examination.
She became acutely aware of herself: white coat, stethoscope, hair pulled back in a professional knot, the faint exhaustion beneath her eyes. She had imagined this meeting a hundred ways in restless nights abroad. None had prepared her for the calm distance in his gaze.
"Daniel," she said.
His name left her mouth before she could decide tone. It came out softer than intended — the old familiarity threaded through.
He inclined his head slightly.
"Dr. Naliaka," he said.
The formality landed with surgical precision.
Something inside her chest shifted off balance.
"Yes," she said, absurdly. "I— I'm working here now."
"I'm aware," he said.
A pause opened. It was not empty; it was dense with everything unsaid in five years.
Up close, she saw the changes more clearly. The angles of his face were sharper, maturity drawn along cheekbone and jaw. But the greatest alteration lay in his eyes. They were still the same deep brown she had known intimately — and yet guarded now, as if a door once open had long ago been closed and locked.
"You're… back," he said.
Not I'm glad you're back.
Not when did you return.
Simply fact.
"Yes," she said. "My aunt is unwell."
"I heard."
Of course he had. Nairobi was smaller than distance had allowed her to believe.
Another silence. The corridor sounds returned: a trolley rattling past, distant voices, the low hum of ventilation. Ordinary life continuing around an axis that had just shifted.
She searched his face for some remnant of the boy she had loved — a softness, a flicker — but composure held steady.
"You look well," he said politely.
The words were correct, empty of intimacy.
"So do you," she answered.
They regarded each other like acquaintances performing recognition after years apart — and the unreality of it struck her sharply. This was Daniel. The person who had once known her thoughts before she spoke them. The person whose presence had been as constant as breath.
Now there was nothing easy between them.
He gestured slightly toward the ward doors. "My mother is admitted here."
The sentence rearranged her attention.
"Oh," she said. "I didn't realize."
"Cardiac complications," he said. "Dr. Shah is overseeing."
Professional territory. Safe ground. She stepped into it instinctively.
"She's excellent," Naliaka said. "Your mother is in very good hands."
"Thank you."
Another measured pause.
Up close, she noticed something else: restraint not only in words but in the way he held himself — shoulders controlled, hands relaxed but still, as if any unguarded motion might reveal more than intended. He had learned containment. The realization ached unexpectedly.
"I didn't expect to see you here," she said quietly.
"I live here," he said.
The simplicity carried weight. Of course he did. This had always been his city, his world. She was the one who had left.
"Yes," she said. "I suppose you do."
Their eyes met fully then.
In that brief, unshielded alignment, something old flashed — recognition layered with memory — and for the first time she glimpsed it: hurt, deeply buried, still present beneath years of discipline.
It vanished almost immediately.
"I should return to my mother," he said.
Professional. Final.
"Of course," she said.
He inclined his head again — that same restrained courtesy — and stepped past her. As he moved by, the faint scent of his cologne brushed the air: unfamiliar, adult, yet carrying a trace of something she could not name that struck memory like light through water.
Her body reacted before thought — a small, involuntary turning after him.
"Daniel," she said.
He stopped.
Not turning immediately. A beat passed — choice visible — then he looked back over his shoulder.
"Yes, Doctor?"
The title again. Deliberate distance.
Words crowded her throat: I'm sorry. I didn't mean it. I loved you. I still—
None emerged.
"I'm glad your mother has you here," she said instead.
It was the safest truth available.
He held her gaze a moment longer, unreadable.
"So am I," he said.
Then he turned and walked down the corridor, measured steps carrying him away with quiet certainty.
She watched until he disappeared around the corner.
Only then did she realize her hands were trembling.
Five years had not erased him.
It had only changed the distance at which he stood.