walk me out in the morning dew

🌷Track 4: Pushin' Thru It

The hospital loomed against the pale sky, a sterile giant dwarfing the few scattered cars in the parking lot. They mirrored my exhaustion, each one seeming to droop under the weight of a long journey. The air held the crisp bite of dawn, laced with a faint antiseptic tang and the promise of a busy day.

I found a cold metal bench near the entrance and let myself sink into it, chasing the last few moments of stillness before everything kicked off—patients, residents, overworked nurses, too-perky interns. New month. New faces. Same war zone. Same rotation. Same routine.

The calm before the shift.
The inhale before the crash.

I pulled out my phone, more out of habit than anything. A text from Jason flashed on the screen:

Jason: "yo u down to grab drinks after shift?"

I stared at it. A normal person would say yes. A normal person would enjoy hanging out with their co-interns, bonding over cheap alcohol and workplace horror stories.

Instead, my thumb hovered over the keyboard.

Then, like always, I locked my phone and shoved it back into my pocket.

Except... I didn't put it away.

Not yet.

Something itched at the back of my mind. That familiar, sour feeling. The kind that comes when you know you're being watched—even if no one's in sight.

I opened Instagram.

Three new follow requests.

All private. All blank. No posts. No bios. No mutuals. One of them was called "novemberghost_97." The profile picture was just... a window. Blurry. Dark. Probably taken at night. I didn't recognize it, but something about the curtains made my skin crawl.

My thumb hovered. I clicked on the profile.

No posts. No followers. But I swear I'd seen that username before. Or something close to it. There was always a ghost or a November or a 97.

I blocked all three.

Then I sat there, phone clenched in my hand, heart a little too fast for this early in the morning.

James hadn't texted me in months. Not directly. But this... this was his signature. The slow erosion. The anonymous lurking. The poking around my edges, just to see if I'd fray.

He always came back when I was doing okay.
And I was doing okay. Sort of.

I shut my phone off completely.

The sharp bite of the wind against my cheeks grounded me.
Back in my body. Back in the moment.

And then, just as I started to breathe again—

Buzz.
A FaceTime call lit up my screen.
Patrick.

His name flashed brightly, followed by his face—half-asleep, messy-haired, yet still annoyingly pretty.

"Girl!" he greets dramatically, waving like I've been lost at sea. "Finally. I thought you died."

I snort. "Heyyy, girlypop."

Patrick narrows his eyes. "Why do you sound like you've been stewing in your own depression?"

"I literally just woke up."

"Exactly my point." He squints at the screen. "So... how was the trip?"

"Fine. Spent the entire day scrubbing mold out of the bathtub."