He had not expected her voice to remain the same.
Five years should have altered it — distance, England, time, loss, achievement. He had prepared himself for change in everything else: face, bearing, the subtle reshaping adulthood brings.
But her voice still carried the same quiet warmth beneath restraint, the same cadence that had once steadied him through exam seasons and impossible expectation.
He should not have noticed.
He noticed everything.
Daniel stood at the window of his mother's hospital room, Nairobi spread below in late-afternoon haze — traffic threading silver between buildings, jacaranda crowns violet against concrete. He watched without seeing, attention turned inward where it had not rested safely in years.
Naliaka was here.
Not memory. Not regret. Not the carefully sealed absence he had constructed and maintained across half a decade of relentless work.
Here.
Moving through the same corridors. Speaking his name. Standing within reach.
The architecture he had built inside himself was adjusting under strain.
He did not resent her for returning. The thought had surfaced once, reflexive, and he had dismissed it immediately. She owed him nothing — not then, not now. He had understood her refusal at eighteen with a clarity that had almost been mercy.
She had chosen her future.
He had always known she would.
He closed his eyes briefly, and memory rose unbidden — graduation night, warm Nairobi air, the school courtyard strung with lights. Her face before him, luminous with youth and impending departure. His own voice, steadier than he had felt: I love you.
And her answer — gentle, apologetic, irrevocable.
He had not blamed her.
He had simply removed hope and placed it where he placed all things that could not be changed: beneath discipline, beneath obligation, beneath forward motion so relentless that nothing past could keep pace.
It had worked.
Until now.
Behind him, his mother shifted slightly in sleep. He turned immediately, instinct overriding thought, and adjusted the blanket at her shoulder. The gesture was automatic — care expressed most easily in action. It always had been.
Even at seventeen, he had understood that love was proven through constancy, not declaration.
Perhaps that had been his first error.
A soft knock sounded. He knew before turning.
Naliaka stepped in, white coat removed now, evening softness replacing clinical authority. Her hair was pulled back loosely, a few strands escaping at her temples. Fatigue touched her eyes — the familiar exhaustion of medicine he recognised even without sharing the profession.
She paused just inside the door, as if recalibrating to the room's quiet.
"How is she?" she asked softly.
"Stable," he said. "She woke briefly."
Relief moved across her face — unguarded, genuine. It struck him with sudden force: she still cared instinctively for those he loved.
Dangerous thought.
She approached the bed, movements efficient yet gentle, checking monitors with practised ease. He watched without meaning to — the competence, the certainty she had earned far from him. Pride stirred before he could suppress it.
She had done exactly what he always knew she would: become exceptional.
"You were right about the fluids," she said, glancing at the chart. "Her output has improved."
He inclined his head. "Thank you."
She looked up then, and something in his expression must have shifted, because her gaze lingered — searching in the way she once had when sensing strain beneath his composure before examinations.
The instinct between them remained intact. Time had not erased it.
"You should rest," she said quietly. "You've been here constantly."
"I'm accustomed to limited sleep," he replied.
Her mouth curved faintly — recognition of the old answer. He had said the same before final exams, before competitions, before any threshold that mattered.
"You always were," she said.
Silence settled — not empty, but layered. Memory moved through it: library tables, shared notes, the nearness of shoulders over textbooks, the quiet alliance they had formed without naming.
He felt it again now — the alignment that had once been effortless and was now perilous.
"You did well," he said before intention formed. "In England."
The words were inadequate to what he meant: I followed your achievements from a distance I pretended not to keep.
Her eyes widened slightly. "You… knew?"
Of course he had. Scholarships announced, medical distinctions published, alumni reports circulated through networks his family inhabited. He had read each mention with precise detachment, confirming success while denying personal relevance.
"It was difficult not to hear," he said.
Truth shaped safely.
Something softened in her face — surprise, then a fragile warmth that unsettled him more than distance ever had.
"I wondered," she said. "If you… ever thought of school."
Of us, she meant. They both knew it.
He chose precision. "Frequently."
Her breath caught — slight, but audible in the quiet room.
Five years had not erased that effect. The knowledge struck him with equal parts ache and caution. There were structures inside him built for survival that could not endure reopening.
She stepped back slightly, as if aware of nearness again. "I should finish rounds," she said. "I'll check on her later."
"Yes."
She turned toward the door, then paused — the same hesitation he remembered from corridors long ago when words pressed but pride held.
"Daniel," she said.
He met her eyes.
"I'm… glad you're here," she said softly. "She needs you."
Not what she meant. Not entirely. But close enough to truth to tremble.
He held her gaze a moment — long enough to feel past and present overlap dangerously.
"I have always been here," he said.
It was the most honest thing he could offer without breaking what remained sealed.
Understanding moved through her expression — slow, painful, complete.
She nodded and left.
The door closed gently behind her.
Daniel stood motionless beside his mother's bed, the room settling back into monitored quiet. Within him, however, stillness had fractured.
He had spent five years mastering absence — converting love into discipline, memory into endurance, longing into achievement.
Now she walked his present corridors again, voice unchanged, instinct intact, proximity unavoidable.
He looked down at his mother's sleeping form, at the fragile life that bound him irrevocably to care, to constancy, to the version of himself he had chosen after loss.
Some feelings, once buried, did not die.
They endured — compressed into the deepest strata of self, waiting without expectation.
And the most dangerous truth of all had returned with her presence:
He still loved her.
He had never stopped.