The classroom was silent except for the soft ticking of the wall clock and the occasional scratch of pens on paper.
Miss Clara stood by the board, her posture straight, her voice calm.
"Now, if a patient's life is at risk and the doctor chooses to wait—who, then, is guilty?"
No one answered.
A faint smile flickered across her lips. She liked the silence. It meant they were thinking.
She turned toward the whiteboard, writing in crisp black ink:
Intent vs. Consequence.
The air smelled faintly of formalin from the adjacent anatomy lab. Outside, grey clouds loomed, smearing the sky like bruises.
Just then, a knock broke the stillness.
A uniformed guard stood at the door.
"Miss Clara Meher?"
His voice carried something tight — urgency wrapped in forced calm.
She turned slowly, eyes narrowing only slightly. "Yes?"
"You're being summoned to court. Immediately."
A pause.
A few students exchanged confused glances. Someone gasped softly.
Clara didn't blink. She put down the marker, smoothed the crease in her coat, and said simply:
"Class dismissed."
The students were confused and worried. One of them, a soft-spoken boy near the window, raised his hand hesitantly.
"Ma'am… did something happen?"
Clara turned to face them, her expression composed — not cold, not warm, but steady, like she had already weighed the moment and accepted it.
"There's been a misunderstanding," she said, her voice calm as ever. "I've been called in as a witness."
A few shoulders relaxed. Someone murmured, "Oh…"
She looked at them all, her gaze firm but not harsh. "Your assignment remains the same. Consider the question I asked you today — but now, apply it outside the boundaries of theory."
Another pause.
Her eyes scanned the room — intelligent, trusting faces, some still clinging to childhood, some already hardened by ambition.
She added, "Medicine. Law. Ethics. They intersect more often than you'd like — and not always in ways that make sense."
Then she gave a faint smile. Not the kind that reassured. The kind that left you thinking long after she left.
"I'll see you next class."
And with that, she walked out — heels quiet, spine straight, coat untouched by the shadows growing outside the window. Raiya stared at the closed door long after Miss Clara had gone. The echo of her heels still seemed to linger in the silence, like a ghost refusing to leave the room.
No one spoke right away. It felt wrong — like clapping in a church.
"She said it's a misunderstanding," someone finally whispered.
Probably Aniq. He always spoke first, even when he had nothing to say.
Raiya didn't respond. Her pen was still in her hand, frozen mid-note, the words Intent vs. Consequence underlined twice on her page. She traced them absently, eyes distant.
"Do you think something serious happened?" a girl near her asked.
"She said she's just a witness," another replied.
Raiya closed her notebook. "She doesn't lie," she said quietly, but the sentence came out sounding more like a question.