DASHIELL
Leo left a chocolate bar between two patient files on my desk without mentioning it.
I found it after returning from Daniel's room and carried it to the nurses' station.
"This isn't mine."
"It is now," Leo said.
"I don't eat this kind."
Sari held out her hand. "Then give it to me."
I looked at the chocolate, then at her. "No. It belongs to me now."
That made her laugh, but neither of them explained why Leo had left it there, and I appreciated that enough to put it in my coat pocket and return to work.
The morning filled quickly after Daniel's review. Pediatrics and the emergency department both had consults waiting, and two residents brought me an EEG they had disagreed over long enough to require another opinion.
I enlarged the tracing. "Left temporal onset. Show Dr. Patel before you change his medication."
"Yes, Dr. Harper-Astor."
Before I could close the chart, a small hand wrapped around two of my fingers.
Sophia stood beside me with a pale pink headband positioned carefully behind her healing incision while her mother spoke to the receptionist several feet away.
"You're supposed to be in an examination room."
"I wanted Dr. Dash."
Her mother joined us with an apologetic smile. "She saw you through the doorway and refused to keep walking."
I crouched in front of Sophia. Her incision looked clean, there was no obvious swelling and she had enough energy to bounce on her toes while I asked her mother about the past several days.
"She's been better every day," her mother said. "Still tired sometimes, but no seizures."
"Headaches?"
"A couple. Mild."
Sophia tugged my fingers before I could stand. "You have to come see my brain."
"You did not bring your brain."
Her eyes widened while her mother covered her mouth to hide a laugh.
I pointed toward Sophia's head. "It is still there."
"I mean the picture!"
Laughing, Sophia pulled me toward the examination rooms, where her postoperative visit proved reassuring. Her neurological examination had improved, the incision was healing well and there had been no further seizures, although she spent most of the appointment insisting one of her postoperative images looked like a dinosaur. I rotated it twice to demonstrate that it did not, but she remained unconvinced.
Before leaving, Sophia hugged me around the waist without warning. My body stiffened automatically at the sudden contact, then eased once I realized it was her.
"Bye, Dr. Dash."
"Goodbye, Sophia."
She hurried after her mother, and I returned to work until sometime in the afternoon, when focusing on the letters across my screen began taking more effort than it should have and the fluorescent lights above me seemed louder with every passing hour.
Sari eventually appeared in my doorway carrying the bag I had left in the staff room before rounds.
"Why do you have that?"
"Because you're done for today."
"I haven't finished."
She adjusted the strap over her shoulder. "Take it up with your husband."
Alexander was standing behind her, which explained far too much.
Sari handed him my bag and left before I could argue with either of them. He came into the office, set it beside my chair and glanced at the unfinished note on my screen.
"You're tired."
"I can still work."
"You can. You're not going to."
Before I could object, he removed my glasses and folded them into their case.
"I was using those."
"You were rubbing your eyes through them."
He was correct, and continuing to argue when the evidence supported him would accomplish nothing.
Alexander picked up my bag. "Come home."
I looked once more at the unfinished note before saving it, closing the chart and standing.
---
I remembered very little of the drive home. By the time we arrived, my head hurt enough that the lights downstairs felt too bright and every voice reached me before I was ready for it. Selene was speaking somewhere beyond the foyer, my father answered from the sitting room and Bianca was coming down the stairs when my mother appeared from the kitchen.
"Dash, sweetheart—"
"Not now."
She stopped, and guilt came immediately even though I had not meant the words harshly.
"I need upstairs."
Alexander placed a hand against my lower back. "I've got him."
Nobody followed as he guided me upstairs, and the moment our bedroom door closed, the darkness eased some of the pressure behind my eyes. I sat on the edge of the bed while Alexander crouched to remove my shoes, then let him pull me back to my feet.
"Shower?"
"I don't want one."
He paused because I always showered after the hospital, and when his hand came to my forehead, I shook my head.
"I don't have a fever. I just don't want to stand that long."
"All right."
Alexander ran a bath instead, and a few minutes later I was sitting in the warm water with my knees bent while he washed my hair without asking how I felt or whether I wanted to talk. That was one of the things I loved most about him. Other people often treated silence as something that needed to be repaired, but Alexander understood that sometimes it needed to be protected.
His fingers worked shampoo carefully over my scalp before he rinsed it away, shielding my eyes with one hand so no water ran into them. When he finished, he dried me and helped me into one of my soft shirts and sleep shorts, then pulled socks onto my feet.
"I don't sleep in socks."
"You said your feet were cold."
I looked down at them for a moment before deciding that was reasonable.
Alexander pulled back the blankets, and once I climbed beneath them, he joined me instead of reaching for his laptop or returning downstairs.
"Don't you have work?"
"It can wait."
I turned onto my side, and he settled behind me with his chest against my back, one arm beneath my head and the other wrapped around my waist. I held his wrist where his hand rested over my stomach while thoughts continued moving through my head without any useful order: Daniel's fever, Sophia's dinosaur, the fluorescent lights above my desk, my mother's voice downstairs and dozens of smaller things that refused to settle.
"Still thinking?" Alexander murmured.
"I can't stop."
"You don't have to."
His thumb moved slowly across my stomach in the same repeated path while I stared at the wall.
"Let it be noise."
I stopped trying to separate one thought from another and followed the movement of his thumb instead until I stopped counting that too.
When I woke, the room was dark and his arm was no longer around me.
I reached behind me and found cold sheets.
"Alexander?"
The bathroom stood open and unlit, and my phone showed that it was after midnight. There was nothing from him explaining where he had gone.
I checked his office before heading downstairs, but the house was silent and his car was no longer in the drive, driving the last of the sleep from me.
Upstairs, I knocked on my parents' door until my father opened it.
"Dash?"
"Did Alexander tell either of you he was leaving?"
Dad rubbed a hand over his face. "No. I thought he was with you."
"He was."
My mother pushed herself upright behind him. "He brought you upstairs earlier, but I haven't seen him since."
I turned toward the hallway, but she called after me.
"Dash, do you want me to make you something? You haven't eaten since you came home."
"I don't want food. I want Alexander."
Neither of them could help me with that, so I went downstairs and called him twice. Both calls ended in voicemail, leaving an uncomfortable pressure beneath my ribs because there were very few circumstances in which I could not reach my husband.
I tried once more while stepping outside, cool night air striking my bare legs as I crossed the driveway. Only when I reached the gates did I notice that I was still wearing the socks Alexander had put on me earlier.
I checked along the side of the house despite knowing perfectly well he was not there.
"Alexander?"
Calling his name made no sense, but I remained in the driveway listening until the silence forced me back inside.
The next call went directly to voicemail.
I locked the door, checked it again and sat on the couch facing the front windows with both feet firmly against the floor. The pressure in my chest had become difficult to ignore, so I concentrated on the things around me instead: the lamp beside the couch, the edge of the rug, my mother's cardigan draped over a chair and the reflection of the lamp against the dark glass.
I fixed my eyes on the reflection until my breathing steadied.
Alexander had spent the evening taking care of me, stayed beside me when he had work waiting and held me until I fell asleep. Whatever made him leave afterward had mattered enough that he had chosen not to wake me, despite knowing exactly how I would react when I discovered he was gone.
I called him once more and listened until voicemail answered, then ended the call without trying again.
Curling my legs beneath me, I settled into the corner of the couch with my phone clenched in my hand while the house remained silent around me.
Alexander had not gone somewhere he wanted me to follow.
And suddenly I was no longer certain whether I should be worried about my husband—
or whoever he had gone to find.