- Sean -
The waiting room felt like a vortex of time, each second stretching into an eternity. I could hear the dull murmur of the overhead TV, where the local news inexplicably reported on some celebrity scandal instead of giving me updates on Aria. Zayn, fidgeting beside me, was a cacophony of nerves himself, tapping his foot in an erratic rhythm that almost synced with my own heartbeat—fast and unstable. Our breaths mingled in the tense air, every inhalation laced with anxiety.
Two hours had passed since they whisked Aria away. Two hours of silence, punctuated only by the sterile smell of antiseptic and distant beeping from the machines I knew too well from my own dissection of medical textbooks. For a moment, I allowed myself the twisted comfort of my medical knowledge, calculating
