Coping With Clarity

Coping

A.N: This is the actual end, thanks for reading it guys.

She’s had the badge pinned to her breast pocket for longer than she was in high school. She’s rapidly becoming the leading expert despite how she struggled in medical school. Despite refusing to continue her studies anywhere except Dallas.

There’s been various offers. California, New York, international institutions as well. She’s not the best, but she’s working towards it. She’s got a best-selling book behind her and commands a loyal and hardworking medical staff.

She has her mother’s old office despite not having anything to do with the stroke unit.

She has everything, and yet still feels like she has nothing. Everyday she searches for something to fill the long standing hole in her heart and the emptiness by her side. But in reality she’s stopped actively seeking.

Patients pass her by too quickly and conditions that she longs to cure are faulted by slow-moving research.

And yet, she holds more hope than she used to.

Rosary beads fall off a picture on her desk as she checks the charts on her desk. Another little girl, another condition she wants to solve.

There’s a startling knock on the door than nudges her glasses down her nose. Hastily her heart jumps and her eyes glance to the picture as if it will smile back and tell her to calm down.

“Come in.” She patiently asks. The door opens with a click and a man steps in. His hair has the beginnings of a silver shine that she never ceases to remind him about and a clock pinned to his pocket that hasn’t worked in years. By his choice of course. But she can’t stop her ears listening out for the sound that never comes. 

It’s just like before.

“Henrie. What can I do for you?” She takes of her glasses and finds she can see the lines in his forehead and the darkness under his eyes more prominently. His expression is unnerving.

“We have a new arrival.” Henrie stammers like he’s out of breath. Her memory pumps full of every single time she’s seen the expression on his face. It’s never been good to her. 

“We have several new arrivals, I’m sure the nurses under your wing can settle them in.” She flat-lines and darts her fingers to the forgotten charts. She knows there’s something missing. There’s something she is yet to find.

“Doctor-”

“Henrie.” She cuts him off. He stops abruptly at her finality. “What can be so important?”

He watches the way her eyes return once again to the rosary beads and the frame. Then swallows a nervous breath.

“She’s asked for you.”

She sweeps around the desk with a fluidity that has taken years for her to pull off in the face of what the hospital throws at her. Her hands take hold of her lab coat and she blindly grabs at the file in Henrie’s hand. She doesn’t open it until they’ve stepped out.

He pauses at her like he’s expecting her to ask him to explain.

Her eyes, tired and distracted, narrow. She skims the words away.

“Lead the way.”

~

They dodge people in the hallways and she doesn’t mean to but her feet retrace steps once taken, once ran, as they march to the temporary ward. Their coats flourish behind them in the way of superheroes before them. They float on the breeze.