Page 72 of Vital Signs

The scent of ginger and garlic still hung in the air from Mom's earlier cooking. She turned from the sink, taking in my bloodshot eyes and unsteady stance. Dad's voice came from the dining table, where family photos stood next to Mom's worn Bible, still open to Psalms.

"We didn't cross an ocean for this," Dad said. "You need help." Mom folded clothes into a duffel bag, tears streaming. They'd found a treatment place forty minutes away.

"You can't stay here like this," Dad added. His voice wasn't even angry. Just tired. Defeated. "We can't watch you kill yourself. You dishonor everything we sacrificed."

Two days. That's how long I lasted in rehab. Two fucking days of group therapy and affirmations and prayers. People told me to just "ride out" the withdrawal like it was a wave at the beach instead of my body eating itself alive.

I walked out when the night nurse stepped away. Forty-eight hours of hell and I was done. Feelings and hopes and prayers weren't enough to stop the withdrawal from hurting.

I dragged myself back to the house two days later, backpack hanging off one shoulder. Dad answered the door, with Mom standing behind him in the hallway. His expression stopped me cold. No anger in his features. Something worse. His eyes dulled with disappointment, shoulders slumped in defeat.

"You can't come back," he said, one hand gripping the doorframe. "Not until you're sober. Not until you mean it."

The backpack strap cut into my shoulder. One bag. Enough clothes for three days. My old nurse ID badge I couldn't bear to throw away, clipped to the side pocket. Nothing else.

The porch boards creaked under my feet. The cold night air stung against my wet cheeks. I stood there like an idiot, listening for footsteps that never came. The door never opened again.

Nobody stays. Nobody comes back. They just leave. Or they make you leave. Same fucking difference.

A sound jolted me back to the present. Quiet sniffling from across the room. Misha disappeared into the bathroom, shoulders hunched, hand covering his mouth.

The door closed behind him, but the walls were thin enough that I could hear him crying. Not dramatic sobbing. Something worse. Quiet, desperate weeping, like he was trying not to make noise.

Something twisted in my chest. Not forgiveness. Not yet. But the sound of his suffering cut through my rage in a way I hadn't expected.

I'd spent years watching people suffer, measuring pain on a scale of one to ten while offering meager comfort in the form of morphine and platitudes. Years of learning to compartmentalize, to build walls between my patients' agony and my own emotional stability.

But those walls had crumbled long ago, washed away by fentanyl and failure.

The bathroom door opened after several minutes. Misha emerged, face carefully composed, eyes red-rimmed but dry. He moved quietly to the far side of the room, keeping his distance.

"Stop crying," I growled.

He froze, back still to me. "I wasn't."

"Yes, you were."

His shoulders slumped. "I'm sorry."

"You keep saying that," I snapped. "Does it make you feel better? Does it fix anything?"

He turned slowly to face me, arms wrapped around himself. "No. It doesn't. But I don't know what else to say."

That caught me off guard. I'd expected defense, justification, some speech about how he'd saved my life. Not agreement.

"Why'd you do it, then?"

Misha crossed the room cautiously, stopping several feet from the bed. "Because I couldn't let you die thinking I'd left you alone."

My chest tightened. "But you did leave. You were gone for fucking hours."

"I got arrested." His voice cracked. "At Walmart. They caught me."

Arrested. The word circled in my brain, not quite connecting. "What?"

"The police were waiting for me at the checkout. The clinic break-in... they had camera footage, knew exactly who to look for." His hands twisted together. "They confiscated my phoneand refused to let me make a call. I spent hours in the interrogation room. I kept telling them someone was waiting for me, that you needed help. They didn't care. Then Nikita Volkov showed up and somehow made the charges disappear. I came straight back to you as soon as I could."

The anger drained away, replaced by shame. Then relief so powerful it made my eyes burn.