Evelyn
Evelyn woke before the alarm.
She always did.
The light hadn't fully arrived yet, just a thin, gray wash slipping through the blinds and tracing the cracks in the ceiling. The house was quiet in the way only places on the edge of the city ever were: not peaceful, exactly, but settled. Holding.
Her one-bedroom sat at the far end of a cul-de-sac that had stopped pretending years ago. Paint peeled where it wasn't stolen. Lawns existed more in theory than practice. Sirens passed often enough that they blended into the background, like cicadas in summer.
It wasn't perfect.
But it was hers.
The place was small, uneven, patched together with secondhand furniture and quiet compromises, but it was warm in a way she had never known growing up. The couch sagged slightly in the middle. The throw blanket smelled faintly of detergent and home. There were shelves she'd filled herself, crooked frames on the walls, a kitchen that always seemed to hold the echo of someone else's presence.
This morning, the couch was empty.
Evelyn noticed that without thinking about it, the way you noticed a sound missing from a familiar pattern.
She swung her legs out of bed and sat for a moment, elbows on her knees, grounding herself in the familiar. The cold floor. The hum of the refrigerator. The faint smell of antiseptic that never quite left her skin, no matter how often she washed.
She checked her phone.
No missed calls.
That, she knew, meant nothing.
She moved through her morning on instinct. Shower quick and hot. Hair pulled back tight enough to stay out of the way. Scrubs folded neatly over the chair, clean, but worn thin at the seams. Shoes by the door, laces already loosened.
In the kitchen, she poured herself coffee from the cheap machine she'd bought secondhand. It tasted burned. She drank it anyway.
On the counter sat a small pill organizer.
Empty.
She stared at it longer than necessary before sliding it into a drawer and closing it with more force than required.
Evelyn grabbed her bag and stepped outside turning off the porch lights just as the sky began to pale, she then returned and turned the lights back on before leaving again. The air smelled faintly of damp concrete and old leaves. Somewhere down the street, a dog barked.
Her car complained when she started it. She murmured an apology out of habit and pulled onto the road, joining the slow migration toward the city center.
The free clinic sat between a boarded-up laundromat and a grocery store that had been robbed so many times the owner no longer bothered fixing the glass properly. The sign above the door flickered, Community Health Services , with half the bulbs burned out.
Inside, the lights were already on.
Evelyn nodded to the security guard as she came in. He gave her a tired smile.
"Morning, Doc."
"Morning," she said.
The waiting room was half full already. A woman with a toddler asleep against her shoulder. Two men who smelled like the street and cigarette smoke. An older man staring at the floor like it had personally disappointed him.
This was her world.
She checked charts. Took vitals. Cleaned wounds that had gone too long without attention. Prescribed what she could, knowing half the patients wouldn't be able to afford to fill it.
She listened.
That was the part most people underestimated. Listening cost nothing, and it saved more lives than any medication she had access to here.
By mid-morning, her shoulders ached and her coffee was cold. She was explaining wound care to a man who insisted he didn't need stitches when her phone vibrated in her pocket.
She knew before she looked.
She always knew.
Evelyn excused herself and stepped into the narrow hallway, pressing the phone to her ear.
"Hello."
The voice on the other end was calm in the way professionals learned to be when delivering bad news.
"Is this Evelyn Hart?"
"Yes."
"This is EMS. You're listed as the emergency contact for"
She closed her eyes.
"Where?" she asked, already reaching for her coat.
"Vale General. He's barely conscious but still unstable."
"Which entrance?" she asked.
There was a pause. "You're familiar with the facility?"
"Yes," she said. "I'll be there."
The call ended after they gave her the remaining instructions.
Evelyn stood still for exactly three seconds.
Then she moved.
She grabbed her bag, informed the nurse on duty she was stepping out, ignored the look of understanding that followed her down the hall. Outside, the sky had brightened, the city fully awake now.
Her hands shook as she unlocked the car.
Not fear.
Calculation.
She ran through the possibilities as she drove, dosage, timing, what he might have taken, whether he'd mixed it with alcohol or if he was facing another issue entirely. She told herself not to jump ahead.
She told herself a lot of things.
Traffic thickened as she neared the hospital district. Vale General rose in the distance, sleek and immaculate, a world away from the clinic she'd just left.
She hated this place.
Not because it was bad.
Because it represented everything that failed people like him quietly, politely, with paperwork and plausible deniability.
Evelyn parked and broke into a run the moment her feet hit the pavement.
Inside, the lobby gleamed, all marble and glass and curated calm. She didn't slow. She cut through the waiting area, past the security desk, past families who stared as she passed like urgency was contagious.
She reached the nurses' station and planted her hands on the counter.
"Where is he?"
Some faces shifted. Recognition flared.
"Room four," someone said. "They're stabilizing him."
Her jaw tightened as she asked for what happened and ran possibilities in her mind while listening to the answer.
She shut her eyes briefly, then nodded and moved, until a hand closed around her arm.
"Evelyn," Maris said gently. "You can't go in yet."
"I'm not leaving."
"I know. But you can't go in while they're working. Please."
Evelyn stayed.
She always stayed.
She stood there, breathing through her nose, watching the curtain that separated her from whatever condition he was in now. Her mind filled the silence with images she didn't want, him alone on cold concrete, his breathing shallow, his pulse erratic.
Guilt pressed down on her chest like a weight she'd never quite learned to set down.
If she hadn't left.
If she'd been closer.
If she'd answered her phone sooner.
She hated those thoughts, hated how easily they came, how convincing they sounded.
A monitor alarmed sharply from behind the curtain.
Her body reacted before she could stop it, a full-body flinch, heart leaping into her throat.
She felt the presence before she saw him.
Someone standing too still nearby. Watching.
Her gaze swept the staff out of habit, assessing who was where, who might need help.
And then her eyes quickly landed on him.
A man in a white coat, holding a chart too tightly.
For a split second, something tugged at the edge of her awareness. Not recognition. Not memory.
Just… familiarity.
She dismissed it immediately.
There was no room in her thoughts right now for distractions.
She looked away.
The alarm sounded again.
A voice cut through the noise, urgent. "We need Narcan, now!"
Her stomach dropped.
Before she could move, the man stepped forward.
"Room four," he said, already walking.
"Dr. " someone called, she did not hear the end of the sentence.
He didn't stop.
Evelyn's pulse hammered. Who did he think he was?
She turned sharply as he reached the curtain.
"Who are you?"
He paused.
Not startled. Not defensive.
He turned just enough to look back at her.
For the first time, he really looked.
Something flickered between them. A thread pulled tight.
"Rowan," he said.
The name landed somewhere deep in her chest, stirring something old and unshaped.
Before she could react to it, the monitor screamed louder, drowning out everything else.
And the curtain fell closed between them.