Scars of The Past

Chapter three

SMITH



It had started as a rare sunny afternoon in New York City,the kind that made even the busiest hearts pause.



The clinic sat quietly at the edge of the city, sitting between a tinned laundromat and a crumbling bookstore. The afternoon sunlight burned off its glass windows as people slowly came in for appointment cards and hope.



Hospitals have always been the last place I hope to be.Their white washed walls always felt like they were trying to scrub away the truth that people broke here, how lives ends here.



But I stayed.



The waiting room buzzed with fluorescent lights and the restless shuffle sound of paper forms flipped over by the nurses. A child coughing in the mother's coat, an old man coming in for check-up hands on their back as if they might disappear. None of this mattered to me, my eyes kept on looking at the double doors, the one she had walked through.



Time continued to tick. Shadows began to gather, thunder rolled deeply like a warning.The first drop of the rain fell with a chill that cut through a humid day.



I frowned.



Within minutes, the hospital courtyard below was filled with a lot of umbrellas and fleeing feets. The downpour was heavy and it slapped against the windows,the street was flooded and the city’s noise was swallowed into a wet silence. 



A nurse passed beside me, muttering something about “how it felt like the end of the world.”



She wasn't entirely wrong. I soliloquized.



They didn't know me,not really. Not even the doctors that were rushing to attend to the patients,or the nurses passing instructions into the air. But her name had been called several times which was enough to tie me here,in the place I swore I wouldn't come back to.



Finally,the door finally swung open,that was when I saw her.



Bianca Iago. 



The woman who controlled the whole hospital without raising her voice or getting angry. She looked exhausted, shoulders heavy, but had a different charisma from everyone. I saw her figure moving beyond the glass,and my pulse forgot its rhythm.



For a second I thought she would pass me by. But her eyes landed on mine, unflinching.



“Who are you?” her voice was almost not welcoming and it felt deliberate.



I didn't say a word because the air between us was tight, sharp and electric. 



“Who are you?”she asked again, looking furious. “I told them to walk you out, yet you are here.” 



I didn't answer, I stepped forward and pulled a folded paper slip,slightly out from my pocket.



Bianca didn't take it right away. She scanned the page only and her eyes flickered back to me, sharply.



“This,” I said quietly,clearing my throat “concerns you.”



Impatience crossed her face. “Everything in this building concerns me.” 

“How?” she flinched. “This doesn't mean I have time for strangers with papers. You are just another one with…



“Do you always forget them this fast?”

I didn't let her finish.



The one you stitched back to life. I said.

“I wanted to meet the doctor who stitched destiny into my veins. The one who made living inevitable.”



She froze.



“Liam.” My throat tightened, but I continued, forcing it out. He didn't make it. He died of the same rare case you just fought in there.



I could see how uncomfortable she was. Her shoulder stiffened,the look on her face was the faintest which she tried to hide but betrayed her.



“She reminded you of someone you love just like your heart. I said, looking straight into her eyes.



For the first time, Bianca didn't have an answer ready. She did not know whether to step back,or step closer. I saw the word she wanted to bite back,but they caught tight in her throat.



“How do you know all of this?”she whispered almost more to herself than to me.



I opened my mouth to respond but the waiting room door c***k opened with a shout. 



“Dr Iago.”



A nurse burst through the double doors, her face was filled with urgency. “Critical trauma in the ER.” 



Bianca blinked hard pulling a mask of control back into place, but her gaze clung to mine for a second too long. She vanished into the tide of her footsteps, The doors slammed behind her.



And as she passed the desk, I saw that she noticed something.





BIANCA.



The smell of blood was enough to erase him.The life weight pressing against me should have buried the stranger's voice beneath the noise,but it didn't.



The name, “Liam…”hit me like a slap. Not because I knew who he was referring to.



Who is he?

How could he know? 

And why did my chest ache as if the past I had buried just walked through the waiting room?



“Vitals”

“Scaple?” I asked, trying to keep the pressure steady to save another human’s life.



Even as I worked,my mind went back to the woman that made my body snap back in as it always does in Crisis. The patient that her symptoms had hit me like a physical blow.



Her veins lay beneath her skin, the tremble in her Pulse. It was too familiar.



The same rare complications my mother had chased like a ghost.The same one that drove her mad of obsession.She would always call it “case II syndrome.”



I remembered the scent of different chemicals in her research room, filled with lots of crumpled diagrams, cups of coffee and how her hands trembled around a pen. She would always whisper to herself, “If I could just finish this, I would save someone's life one day.”



But she never did. 



And now the ghost of her unfinished 

research bled on my table.



That alone should have stayed between me,the patient and the sterile silence of the ward.



But the stranger's words had cut sharp, straight into it, as if he had been standing there, watching.



“She reminded you of someone you love…..” 



The words looped in my head, my hand faltered for half breath.



My heart became heavy like a stone sinking deeper with every breath It took.



But before I could gain my breath. A nurse hurried towards me, slipping a folded note into my hand.



“This was left at the desk,” she said quietly.



I unfolded it expecting a chart. Instead four words. My blood ran cold.



“He is watching you.”