Late January, 20xx
The rain had not stopped.
For three days, it fell with unrelenting persistence, sheeting across the sloped hills of the vineyard like a curse spoken too clearly. The soil had turned to soup, tracks of old tractors sinking and filling with muddy water.
Every morning brought darker clouds—and with them, the sensation that time had fractured. I no longer knew what hour it was, or even what day. The storm had stolen all logic from the sun.
Inside the house, silence ruled—but it was a different kind than the one I'd built in Paris. This was the silence of wet stone, of wind pressing against the shutters, of loneliness growing moss.
No clocks ticked, no voices called, and no phones rang. And for the first time in years, there were no patients to tend to, no names on a schedule.
Just mine.
I tried to occupy myself, I opened cupboards. Counted wine bottles, read half of a novel in the kitchen before forgetting the protagonist's name. Walked the perimeter of the house twice a day, avoided mirrors.
But Failed.
---
Grief, I'd always told my clients, was not linear. It coils, unwinds, recoils—like something alive. What I hadn't admitted aloud, perhaps even to myself, is that guilt is its venom. And now it was in my blood.
I'd left Elodie's file in Paris, locked away with the others. But her name followed me here. It repeated behind my eyes when I blinked. I saw her in the steam rising off my tea. I heard her voice in the sound the rain made, dripping from the eaves.
Tell him I danced.
The words didn't let me go.
By the third morning, I returned to the journal. It had sat untouched on the side table near the fire, leather cover stiff with disuse. I stared at it for nearly an hour before picking it up. There was something almost accusatory in the way it waited—too patient, too understanding.
I opened to the first blank page.
---
PATIENT ECHOES – Entry 1
"They say that every doctor eventually loses someone. That the first death carves a hollow in you. That you fill it, over the years, with others.
If that's true, what does it mean when the hollow becomes your entire self?
I'm not sleeping, not really. The rain keeps me half-awake, the house groans. I keep expecting her to appear in the window—soaked but smiling, telling me it was all a mistake.
I think about her spine—what it used to allow, what it refused. I think about the way her hands trembled when she said the word stage. I think about the way she smiled, fragile and defiant, the last time she spoke of dancing.
I think, above all, about the fact that I did not stop her.
I called her progress, I called her stable, and I let her go.
And now I have no words left."
—S.N.
---
I sat back after writing it, my hand ached. My body felt heavier. The room was dim with the gloom of the storm, and I watched the fireplace without lighting it, letting the gray consume the corners of the space. Writing didn't ease the guilt—but it gave it shape. Contour, edges I could feel.
In Paris, I had been the listener. The quiet voice in the storm, now there was only the storm.
That evening, I poured a glass of wine and returned to the page.
---
PATIENT ECHOES – Entry 2
" Thevineyard is drowning. I walked between the rows this afternoon and found the soil slumped like bruised skin. A few dead roots have surfaced. I don't know what to make of them.
My father would have said it's just weather.
My mother would have closed the shutters and lit a candle.
I do neither.
I pace.... I reread Elodie's file from memory. I imagine what I would say to her now, I imagine what she would say back.
I imagine a thousand alternate endings."
—S.N.
---
I placed the pen down gently. The room was quiet except for the sound of the rain, and I realized I'd forgotten to eat, again.
I stood and went to the window. Mist clung to the vineyard like mourning clothes. Every tree seemed bowed under the weight of grief. Or perhaps I only saw them that way because it matched the bend in my own posture.
The past didn't want to stay buried. The storm was not just outside.
Upstairs, the guest rooms remained untouched. My childhood room had been stripped long ago, the furniture too small, the colors faded. But the hallway still smelled faintly of rosemary and paper.
My mother's scent. She used to tuck lavender satchels into the corners of drawers. She believed smells kept memories from rotting.
I opened one drawer and found a cracked photo of my parents standing near the east slope, arms around one another, both smiling into the wind. The storm had not yet come. The vines were still green.
I placed the photo face down.
That night, I dreamt of footsteps. Not mine, not Elodie's. A shuffle—hesitant, wet. Someone walking through mud. I tried to wake, but the dream held fast. The sound grew louder, closer.
Then the dream shifted—I stood in the vineyard, surrounded by fog. Something moved at the edge of vision.
When I finally woke, my heart was pounding. The window had blown open sometime in the night. Curtains danced like ghosts in the dark.
I shut it, and locked it.
But something had entered anyway,
And it wasn't leaving.