YELENA
Nyra called in sick.
Just like that.
There was no drama, no long voice note, no teasing laugh in my ear. Just a short text that said she wasn’t feeling well and needed a few days off.
I stared at my phone longer than necessary, waiting for the next message. The one where she’d complain about hospital food, or joke about me surviving without her.
Nothing came.
I told her I could come home. She refused immediately. She said she was fine. She said she’d already gone to stay with my baby. That was Nyra. Always acting tough, always choosing to disappear when she was hurting.
And now it has been three days.
Three long, dull, and lifeless days.
Without Nyra, work felt wrong. The hospital still breathed, still buzzed with heartbeats and alarms and footsteps, but something was miss
