The follow-up appointment was scheduled for Thursday morning.
Dr Howell insisted on a full cardiac review after the scandal-triggered spike, including rhythm mapping, stress-response analysis, and medication adjustment based on the previous seventy-two hours. The appointment itself was routine by medical standards, but nothing about hospitals felt routine to Seraphina anymore.
Too much had changed in those corridors and too much had once been lost there. By the time the car pulled into the private hospital entrance, the old tightness had already returned beneath her ribs. It wasn't panic, not yet, but something quieter and more dangerous. Memory.
The hospital had become more than a medical setting for her. It now carried layered emotional meaning. It was the place where this new timeline proved fate could bend. Every corridor held both histories at once, and walking into that overlap required more strength than anyone around her fully saw.
Lucien saw enough.
