Familiar Absence: A Familiar Gravity Spin Off

At PetER, everyone trusts me with the worst five minutes of their lives.

I answer before the second ring. I remember every name. I know how to make panic sound manageable and anger feel heard.

Carrie, the omega behind reception.

Warm. Reliable. Fine.

No one ever notices how carefully I disappear when my shift ends.

That is the point.

Then one routine appointment becomes another test. Another phone call. A voicemail I should have answered sooner.

And somehow, I wake beneath the lights of County General with a stranger looking at me as though finding me has solved a problem I did not know existed.

Dr. Callum Ward has copper-red hair, a deceptively kind face, and absolutely no respect for the distance I have spent years perfecting.

He says my body knows him.

I tell him it is wrong.

Callum does not believe me.

He begins appearing everywhere-outside PetER after my shifts, inside the quiet spaces of my life, and far too close to the secrets I have survived by never naming.

I know better than to trust certainty.

I know promises can become wounds.

Most of all, I know how to survive being left.

But Callum Ward does not seem interested in leaving.

And I am beginning to realize the most dangerous thing about him is not that he found me.

It is that some part of me wants to stop hiding.

Contains spoilers for Familiar Gravity & Familiar Resistance