Cordelia had gone through the motions of her shift a hundred times before—checking vitals, swapping IV bags, taking notes that blurred together like half-finished sketches on a page. But today, everything felt sluggish, her movements slower than her usual sharp rhythm. She caught herself staring too long at the blinking monitors, her thoughts pulled somewhere far away from the hospital’s sterile halls.
Max.
The image of her dog’s big brown eyes gnawed at her, the helpless whimper when the Vultures dragged him away echoing in her head like a wound that refused to heal. Every patient’s cough or moan became a background noise to that single thought: he’s out there, and she can’t do anything but play Reid’s game.
“Cordy,” a voice pulled her back. “You’re writing the same thing twice.”
She
