After Mateo left, the hospital felt louder.
Not because anything had changed—but because something had.
I caught myself glancing toward the door of his room more than once, half-expecting him to step back in with a sarcastic comment or a question he didn’t really need answered.
He didn’t.
Work filled the day as it always did. Patients. Rounds. Charts. Decisions that mattered.
Still, my thoughts kept drifting.
I wondered if he was resting.
If the headache had returned.
If he followed instructions or pretended he did.
“You’re distracted,” a nurse commented casually as I reviewed labs.
“I’m tired,” I replied.
She smiled knowingly. “Sure.”
That evening, I changed out of my scrubs slowly, unusually aware of my own body—how tense my shoulders felt, how my chest tightened when my phon
