Chapter Text
Outside of Hospital Grounds
The first new patient arrived in room twelve only three days after Columbina left.
Sandrone learned this during morning rounds. The door stood open again, but now clean linens covered the bed and a pair of reading glasses rested beside a water cup. A grey-haired woman sat propped against the pillows while her son tried to persuade her that the hospital gown did not need ironing.
“It is wrinkled,” the woman said.
“It’s supposed to be.”
“Then it was badly designed.”
Sandrone looked away before anyone caught the expression on her face.
Baizhu introduced the students after receiving permission. Sandrone listened to the woman’s complaints, answered a question about the day’s schedule, and followed the group into the corridor when the visit ended.
She did not look back.
For the rest of the morning, room twelve was simply another room. It had an occupant, a medication chart, and a family member who kept getting in the nurses’ way while trying to be helpful. By afternoon, someone had written a new name on the whiteboard.
That was what hospitals did. They filled empty beds.
Sandrone had already asked every question she had the right to ask. She had demanded answers from Collei, entered Baizhu’s office without knocking, and stared at a secure hospital tablet long enough for Kuki to understand exactly what she wanted.
The answer had not changed.
No one could tell her whether the transplant had happened. No one could tell her whether the possible donor heart had been accepted. No one could tell her whether Columbina was alive.
Baizhu had drawn the boundary clearly. Sandrone respected boundaries once they were clear, even when she hated them.
She did not ask again.
That evening, she unfolded the drawing marked RESERVED on the desk in her room.
The paper had softened along the crease. Sandrone’s drawn expression remained severely irritated, while the empty place beside her waited beneath its arrow.
She placed the drawing in an unused envelope, added the reference card about the shouting prince, and tucked both into the back of a desk drawer. The torn leaf stayed inside her teaching notes. Moving it again would only damage it.
Then she opened the next week’s assignments and returned to work.
* * *
Sandrone completed the rest of her clerkship in increasingly unfamiliar wards.
She spent two weeks in emergency medicine, where every planned discussion was interrupted by someone with a more urgent problem. She moved through pediatrics, where Sandrone learned to dance to a nursery rhyme just to administer a child’s medicine, and surgery, where one consultant had a whole disco playlist saved for an appendectomy.
In obstetrics, a woman in labor grabbed Sandrone by the wrist and told her that if anyone said breathe one more time, she would commit a crime.
Sandrone stopped saying it, or stopped breathing altogether.
When the baby arrived, red-faced and furious, the woman began crying. Her husband cried. One of the nurses cried quietly while pretending to adjust a blanket.
Sandrone did not cry. She stood beside the bed with an aching wrist and thought that people were very strange about surviving things.
Her days filled with handovers, case reports, examinations, and clinical hours that seemed to multiply whenever she counted them. There were mornings when she left before sunrise and evenings when she returned too tired to remove her hair clip until she was already in bed.
The Bimarstan rotation ended among all the others.
On her final day under Baizhu, the four students stood in his office while he completed their evaluations. Sucrose looked as if she might apologize for requiring one. Noelle had brought a small box of pastries for the ward staff. Tighnari leaned against the bookcase, reading the titles while pretending not to be nervous.
Baizhu handed their forms over one at a time.
“You have all done well,” he said. “That does not mean you are finished learning.”
“No one thought it did,” Tighnari said.
Noelle held her evaluation against her chest. “Thank you for supervising us.”
“You are welcome. Now please convince Noelle that leaving on time is an acceptable professional habit.”
“I leave on time,” Noelle said.
The other three looked at her.
“I sometimes leave on time.”
“You once stayed two hours to reorganize a supply cupboard,” Sucrose said.
“The labels were confusing.”
“You were not assigned to the cupboard,” Sandrone reminded her.
Noelle looked genuinely troubled by this criticism. “It needed help.”
Baizhu’s mouth curved over the rim of his teacup. “Take care of one another until graduation. After that, I’m afraid the cupboards of Teyvat’s hospitals will have to defend themselves.”
Outside his office, they divided the pastries with Collei and Barbara.
“Where are all of you going next?” Barbara asked.
“Home for one full night of sleep,” Tighnari said.
“I meant after graduation.”
“I know. My answer remains the same.”
Sucrose had applied to several research programs but had not decided which one she wanted. Noelle was considering positions in Mondstadt so she could live nearer her family. Tighnari wanted further study and spoke about academic medicine with the false casualness of someone who had already prepared a five-year plan.
Sandrone had secured a supervised internship in Snezhnograd. It offered long hours, broad clinical experience, and no guarantee that any of those hours would be pleasant.
“You chose the most difficult one, didn’t you?” Barbara asked.
“I chose the program with the strongest training.”
“That means yes,” Tighnari said.
Sandrone ignored him.
Collei hugged Sucrose and Noelle goodbye. Tighnari escaped by stepping behind Sandrone, which left Sandrone standing directly in Collei’s path.
Collei stopped with her arms half raised. “Do you allow farewell hugs?”
“No.”
“Right. I should have expected that.”
Sandrone held out her hand instead.
Collei looked at it, smiled, and shook it. “You’ll make a good doctor.”
“I am still a student.”
“For a little longer.”
Sandrone thanked her because correcting the exact length of time would have made the exchange worse.
She left the ward carrying her evaluation, half a pastry Noelle had insisted she take, and nothing else.
* * *
Five months after the transfer, Sandrone graduated from medical school.
The ceremony took place in an auditorium that had been designed for eight hundred people and ventilated for perhaps half that number. Families filled the seats with flowers, cameras, and increasingly desperate attempts to locate their graduates among identical robes.
Sandrone’s family had arrived early. They waved when she found them, making themselves much easier to see than necessary.
Noelle cried before the ceremony began.
“I’m not sad,” she explained while Sucrose offered her a tissue. “I’m just very happy, and everyone worked so hard, and we may not all be in the same place again.”
“You’re making Sucrose cry,” Tighnari said.
“I’m sorry.”
“That wasn’t criticism.”
“I’m still sorry,” Noelle’s eyes teared even more.
Sucrose removed her glasses and wiped beneath them. “I was already a little emotional.”
Sandrone stood beside them, holding her cap. “If either of you starts before the photographs, your faces will be swollen.”
Noelle laughed through her tears. “Are you comforting us?”
“I am protecting the photographs and your future regrets.”
“That was almost kind,” Tighnari said.
When Sandrone’s name was called, she crossed the stage, accepted the document she had worked toward for years, and shook the dean’s hand. The moment was shorter than expected. There was no sudden change in the air, no visible division between the person she had been before walking across the stage and the person who descended the steps.
Still, when she returned to her seat, the folder felt solid in her hands.
Afterward, they took photographs outside beneath a sky crowded with white clouds. Noelle’s family arranged flowers around everyone. Sucrose blinked in nearly every picture. Tighnari claimed the photographer was using the light badly and was punished by being made to stand in the center.
One cloud stretched across the blue in a shape that might have resembled an elephant if a person was willing to be careless about anatomy.
Sandrone looked at it for a moment, decided it was far too thin to support the comparison, and faced the camera when her family called her name.
By the end of the week, the four students had scattered.
Noelle returned to Mondstadt. Sucrose accepted a position with a research team studying new medicines. Tighnari entered an academic training program and immediately began complaining that several published papers should never have survived review.
Sandrone packed her books, folded her white coat, and left Sumeru for her internship.
The new hospital did not care where she had studied or how high she had placed in her class. On her first morning, a senior doctor handed her a list of patients and said, “You’re late.”
Sandrone checked the clock.
“I’m seven minutes early.”
“You should have been here ten minutes ago.”
“That would make the stated starting time incorrect.”
The doctor stared at her.
Sandrone learned two things from the exchange. The first was that being right did not improve every situation. The second was that she still preferred being right.
Her supervised internship lasted a year.
It reduced time to a collection of shifts rather than months. She measured days by whether she had eaten sitting down, whether the ward printer had worked, and whether she could remember where she had left her pen. She learned to deliver bad news without hiding behind technical language. She learned that frightened relatives sometimes repeated the same question because they needed the answer to remain true. She learned when to explain, when to wait, and when a patient wanted someone to listen rather than someone to solve them.
Her confidence arrived unevenly.
Some days, Sandrone completed a difficult task and felt the quiet certainty that she belonged there. On others, she stood in a supply room searching for an item she had held ten minutes earlier and wondered why anyone had allowed her near a hospital.
She began keeping spare pens in three separate pockets.
She also began making ridiculous mnemonics.
At first, it happened because a list refused to stay in the correct order. Sandrone stared at it for twenty minutes, then wrote a sentence involving an offended king, two disobedient birds, and a servant who had misplaced a shoe.
She remembered the list immediately.
The method was absurd. It was also effective.
Soon her review cards acquired vain queens, nervous foxes, impatient cooks, and one deeply unreliable horse. They stood in the wrong places, dropped important objects, and argued with one another whenever a sequence needed to be recalled.
A fellow intern borrowed one of the cards and frowned at it.
“Why is the kidney a landlord?”
“Because it decides what stays and what leaves.”
“And why is it angry?”
“So I remember it.”
“That explains nothing.”
“It does not need to explain anything to you. Give it back.”
He returned the card.
Sandrone continued using the system.
By the end of the internship, she could assess a patient while listening to a nurse, answer questions from a family member, and notice that someone had entered the wrong dosage in a draft order without losing track of any of them. She still checked everything twice. She had simply become faster at it.
Then came the licensure examination.
For six weeks, Sandrone’s rented room disappeared beneath review books. Notes occupied the desk, the table, and one end of the bed. She woke with facts already moving through her mind and fell asleep while arguing with poorly worded practice questions.
Tighnari sent her a message the night before the examination.
Tighnari: Have you eaten?
Sandrone: Yes.
Tighnari: Something that required a plate?
Sandrone: That was not part of your first question.
Tighnari: Eat dinner, Sandrone.
She blocked his messages for twenty minutes, ate dinner, then unblocked him.
The examination lasted long enough for the chairs to become instruments of punishment. Sandrone finished the first section with time to review it, finished the second with four minutes remaining, and spent most of the third silently objecting to the person who had written it.
One question described a series of symptoms followed by five possible answers, three of which could have been correct if the writer had provided a single additional sentence.
Sandrone selected the least irresponsible option and moved on.
The results were released thirteen days later.
She opened the page alone at her desk. Her candidate number appeared near the top of the list beside the word PASSED.
Sandrone checked it twice.
Then she checked the number printed on her examination receipt.
Then she returned to the results page and checked it a third time because accuracy did not become unnecessary merely because the answer was favorable.
Her phone began vibrating before she had closed the page.
Noelle sent a message with nine exclamation points.
Sucrose sent three paragraphs, deleted two of them, and replaced everything with I KNEW YOU WOULD PASS.
Tighnari sent, Congratulations. Please become less unbearable about vague measurements now that you are licensed to complain about them professionally.
Sandrone replied, No.
She sat at the desk for several minutes after the messages stopped.
Doctor.
The word no longer belonged to a future version of herself.
There were forms to submit, registrations to complete, and applications awaiting decisions. None of that diminished it. She had finished medical school. She had completed the supervised year. She had passed.
She was a doctor.
The following morning, she began cleaning her room.
Her internship had ended, and she needed to leave within two weeks. Books went into boxes. Old schedules went into the recycling pile. Three pens were discovered beneath the bed, including one she had accused another intern of stealing.
At the bottom of a drawer, she found her teaching notes from the Bimarstan.
When she lifted them, something small slipped between the pages and landed beside her foot.
The leaf had faded to a dull brown-green. Its torn edge had curled inward, and the stem looked fragile enough to break if she picked it up carelessly.
Sandrone stood still.
For a moment, she saw sunlight moving beneath a tree and a pale hand offering her something ordinary.
Then it was only a dry leaf on the floor of a room she was packing.
She crouched and lifted it by the stem.
The old envelope remained in the back of the drawer. Inside were the drawing marked RESERVED and the reference card about the little prince. Sandrone placed the leaf between them, closed the envelope, and slid it into the box containing the books she intended to keep.
Afterward, she returned to cleaning.
By noon, the room was orderly again.
* * *
Sandrone considered four postgraduate positions. One offered better pay but unreliable supervision. Another promised access to excellent facilities while requiring junior doctors to accept a schedule written by someone who apparently regarded sleep as a personal failure. The third was respectable and close to her family.
The fourth was at Sumeru Bimarstan.
Its junior postgraduate program was strong. Sandrone already knew the hospital systems, understood the structure of its wards, and trusted Baizhu’s judgment. The position would offer broad experience while she decided which area of medicine she wanted to pursue.
She made a comparison table.
Tighnari called it the most Sandrone way imaginable to choose a job.
“You listed cafeteria quality,” he said over the phone.
“People working twelve-hour shifts need food.”
“You gave the Bimarstan two out of five.”
“That was generous.”
“And you still ranked it first.”
“The training matters more.”
“Then why include the cafeteria?”
“To record its failure.”
Tighnari sighed. “Are you going back?”
“Yes.”
“That’s good.”
Sandrone waited for the teasing that normally followed. None came.
“What?” she asked.
“Nothing. Baizhu’s an excellent mentor, and I remember you particularly liked working there.”
“I respected the program.”
“Same thing, in your language.”
“It is not.”
“All right. When do you start?”
Sandrone gave him the date.
* * *
Twenty-two months after Columbina’s transfer, Sandrone returned to Sumeru.
The city had changed in small, irritating ways. A shop she liked had become a clothing store. The bus route from her apartment to the hospital had added three stops without improving its timetable. Someone had installed decorative lighting near the Bimarstan entrance that looked expensive and provided almost no useful light.
The hospital itself remained familiar.
The same lift hesitated before the fourth floor. The same water dispenser produced water at an unacceptable temperature. The student workroom had been repainted, but the cupboard above the sink still refused to close unless someone lifted the left side first.
Sandrone arrived before sunrise for orientation.
Her new identification card read DR. SANDRONE GUILLOTIN beneath a photograph she had already requested they retake. The hospital had also used the photograph in a public announcement introducing the new junior doctors.
Noelle had shared the announcement in their old group chat.
Noelle: You look lovely!
Tighnari: She looks like the photographer insulted her
Sandrone: He did.
Sandrone: He told me to look friendlier.
Sucrose reacted to the message with a small flower and then removed it, presumably out of fear that Sandrone might object.
She put the phone away as Collei approached through the lobby.
For a second, Sandrone saw the younger nurse she remembered, carrying a clipboard and trying not to laugh at an envelope addressed to the beautiful blonde student. Then Collei came closer, and the differences became clear. Her hair was shorter. A new badge hung from her uniform. She carried herself with the comfortable speed of someone who knew exactly where she was needed.
“Sandrone?”
“Good morning.”
Collei broke into a smile. “I heard you were coming back, but I wasn’t sure when.”
“My orientation begins in eight minutes.”
“Then I’ll be quick. Congratulations, Doctor Sandrone.”
The title still felt slightly misplaced, like a coat altered for someone else and handed to her before she had grown into it.
I am not a doctor yet.
Not yet.
Sandrone adjusted her new identification card. “Thank you.”
Collei glanced behind her. “Are the others coming back too?”
“No. Tighnari stayed in the Akademiya. He is pursuing academic medicine and has already developed strong opinions about how everyone else conducts research.”
“That sounds like him.”
“Sucrose joined a pharmaceutical research team. She helps develop new medicines now.”
Collei’s eyes brightened. “That suits her.”
“Noelle went home to Mondstadt. She wanted to work near her family.”
“And probably adopted an entire ward within a week.”
“Only took days.”
Collei laughed. “Do you all still talk?”
“There is a group chat.”
“Do you use it?”
“When necessary.”
“So no.”
“I read it.”
“That’s something.”
A member of the orientation staff called Sandrone’s name from the far end of the lobby.
Collei stepped aside. “I should let you go. Barbara is still here too, though she changed departments. She’ll be happy to see you.”
“I’ll find her when I have time.”
“You’re already talking like you haven’t got any.”
“I begin work tomorrow.”
“That has never stopped you before.”
Sandrone looked at her.
Collei lifted both hands. “I’m going. Welcome back.”
The first weeks gave Sandrone little time to revisit anything beyond the location of supplies.
She learned the names of new nurses, new consultants, and other junior doctors whose handwriting ranged from acceptable to openly hostile. She rediscovered the hospital’s habit of producing three emergencies at once after several hours of suspicious calm.
Baizhu supervised without treating her like the student who had once followed him around with a notebook. He expected her assessments to be clear, her decisions to be supported, and her questions to come before uncertainty became danger.
He also continued drinking tea after it went cold.
“You have access to a kettle,” Sandrone told him during their second week.
“I am aware.”
“Then why do you keep doing that?”
“I become busy.”
“The tea is beside your hand.”
“And yet.”
“This is preventable.”
Baizhu glanced at her over a patient list. “It is good to have you back, Doctor Guillotin.”
Sandrone suspected he had said it only to end the discussion.
She let him succeed.
* * *
Three weeks after her return, Sandrone completed a shift that had begun badly and then worked with determination to become worse.
A delayed laboratory result held up one patient’s discharge. Another patient’s family arrived with six questions, four bags, and a firm belief that every member should receive a separate medical update. A printer jammed while producing the only document Sandrone needed urgently.
Near the end of the shift, a patient developed worsening pain just as the evening team arrived. The situation was assessed, managed, and handed over safely, but it kept Sandrone on the ward forty minutes past the time she should have left.
When she finally entered Baizhu’s office, she was carrying a secure hospital tablet and an expression that made him set down his pen.
“The patient in room seven is stable,” she said. “The evening doctor has accepted the handover. The repeat results are due within the hour, and the family knows whom to contact.”
“Good.”
“The discharge summary for room nine is complete except for one result that should have been available this morning.”
“I heard.”
“The laboratory says the specimen label was damaged.”
“I heard that too.”
“The label was printed here. It was not damaged when it left the ward.”
Baizhu folded his hands. “Have you eaten?”
“That is unrelated.”
“So no.”
“I had lunch.”
“It is nearly seven.”
Sandrone looked at the clock and disliked what it told her.
Baizhu nodded toward the window. “Take ten minutes before you go home.”
“I do not need ten minutes.”
“You have just given me a detailed defense of a specimen label.”
“Because the laboratory implied the ward caused the delay.”
“And did the defense change the result?”
“No.”
“Then go outside.”
Sandrone narrowed her eyes. “Is this an instruction?”
“It is advice.”
“That means I can ignore it.”
“You can. But you would have to remain here while I drink this tea.”
He reached for the cup that had been sitting untouched for at least an hour.
Sandrone picked up the tablet. “Ten minutes.”
The garden doors opened onto a mild evening.
The day’s heat had softened, leaving the stone path warm beneath the shade. White flowers still filled the beds along the walkway, though someone had replaced the old garden tap and chosen a model that dripped at irregular intervals.
Sandrone noticed because the sound was annoying.
She followed the path toward the large tree with the tablet tucked against her side. The bench beneath it was partly occupied by a woman in a dark coat.
Sandrone registered long dark hair and the faint outline of a book beside her. A visitor, most likely. The woman sat at the far end, leaving enough room that sharing the bench would not require conversation.
Sandrone sat without looking closely.
She reopened the patient case on the secure tablet. The handover had been complete, but one section of the history remained badly arranged. Sandrone moved a sentence, corrected a date, and removed a phrase that said the patient appeared uncomfortable without explaining what that meant.
Above the garden, a broad white cloud crossed the evening sky.
The woman beside her said, “A cumulus cloud can weigh more than a million pounds.”
Sandrone’s hand stopped over the screen.
The voice reached her before the meaning did.
Soft. Calm. Amused before she had even earned the right to be.
She had once said she would recognize that voice somewhere else—outside a hospital room, without Serafina, hospital clothes, or the steady sounds of a monitor nearby.
She had been right.
Slowly, Sandrone turned.
Columbina sat beside her beneath the tree.
Her hair still fell past her shoulders, dark with soft pink threaded through it. She wore a pale blouse beneath the open coat and a ribbon near one temple. Her face was no longer hollowed by months in a hospital bed. There was more color beneath her skin, though she remained pale, and the line of her shoulders looked lean beneath the fabric.
She was not in a wheelchair.
There was no infusion pump beside her. No blanket over her knees. No white paper bow tied around a metal pole.
Columbina smiled.
“Hello, Doctor Princess.”
Sandrone stared at her.
The tablet shifted against her palm. She caught it before it slipped onto the ground, locked the screen, and placed it on the bench without looking away.
Columbina was still there.
A tear escaped Sandrone’s left eye.
It reached her cheek before she understood what had happened. She wiped it away at once, furious with the failure of her own face.
Columbina’s smile softened.
Sandrone struck her lightly on the shoulder.
“Ow.”
“I had to make sure you were not a ghost.”
“Why would I be a ghost?”
“You disappeared.”
“I missed you.”
The words were offered with no preparation and no apology.
Sandrone looked at the place where she had struck Columbina, then at her face again. Her mind had already begun assembling questions faster than she could arrange them.
“Did the surgery happen? The transplant—did it work? When did they operate? Were there any problems with rejection?”
Columbina waited for her to stop.
“I missed you,” she repeated.
“That does not answer anything.”
“No. But you asked four questions at once.”
“Then start with the first one.”
The transplant had happened early the following morning, Columbina explained. The donor heart had passed its final checks after the transfer, and the operation had gone ahead. She stayed in Fontaine for seven months, first in the specialist hospital and then nearby so she could return whenever the team needed her.
Recovery had not been quick. There had been difficult weeks and several concerns her doctors watched closely, but nothing that cost her the new heart.
Sandrone listened without interrupting. Her hands had tightened around each other in her lap. She separated them as soon as she noticed.
“And now?” she asked. “Your transplant team is still in Fontaine?”
“They handle the important appointments. I go back when they tell me to. The Bimarstan does some of the regular blood tests and checkups so I don’t have to cross the border every time someone wants three tubes of blood.”
“You are still being monitored properly?”
“Yes.”
“Your medication?”
“Every day.”
“At the correct times?”
Columbina’s eyes narrowed with quiet amusement. “Would you like to inspect my schedule?”
“I would like a reliable answer.”
“That was a reliable answer.”
Sandrone studied her instead.
Columbina’s breathing remained even while she spoke. Her hands rested loosely in her lap, bare despite the cooling air. A thin pale line disappeared beneath the collar of her blouse. Her body had changed, not returned to whatever it had been before the illness, but there was strength where Sandrone remembered exhaustion.
The signs were not proof of perfect health. They were signs that she had lived long enough to heal.
“Are you better now?” Sandrone asked.
“I’m all better.”
“That is medically inaccurate.”
“I am no longer in a hospital bed.”
The garden seemed to draw in around them.
Perhaps when you are not in a hospital bed.
Sandrone had said it in room twelve while tired and frightened, then spent the remaining minutes trying to turn it back into something safer. Columbina had refused to let her pretend the words did not exist.
Now she sat beneath their tree in ordinary clothes, without a wheelchair or infusion pole, looking at Sandrone as though nearly two years had been an inconvenient delay in an ongoing conversation.
“You remembered,” Sandrone said.
“Of course I did.”
“That was not a promise.”
“It was almost one.”
“It was a condition.”
“I met it.”
Heat rose beneath Sandrone’s collar. She picked up the tablet again, although its locked screen offered her nothing to do.
“You cannot treat surviving a transplant as completing a courtship requirement.”
“I didn’t survive for you.”
“Good.”
“I came here for you.”
That was worse.
Sandrone stared at the dark screen until she could trust her face. “What are you really doing here?”
“Well, I came to see my girlfriend.”
For a moment, Sandrone thought she had misunderstood.
Then the meaning settled. Something inside Sandrone dropped.
Nearly two years had passed. Columbina had recovered in Fontaine, returned to Sumeru, and built a life Sandrone knew nothing about. Of course she might have met someone. She could have come to visit a nurse, a doctor, or another member of staff before an evening together.
There was nothing unreasonable about it.
Sandrone picked up the tablet, more carefully than necessary. “She works here?”
“I hope so. She has not agreed to be my girlfriend yet.”
Sandrone turned back.
Columbina was watching her with quiet delight.
Relief arrived so quickly that Sandrone resented it almost as much as the joke.
“That is a serious flaw in your sentence.”
“Then may I court her?”
Sandrone put the tablet down before she damaged hospital property.
“You crossed at least two national borders to make the same request I rejected in room twelve.”
“I crossed them for medical care first. This trip was much nicer.”
“How did you even know I was here?”
“The Bimarstan announced its new doctors.” Columbina leaned slightly toward her. “Your photograph looked very severe.”
“The photographer gave poor instructions.”
“He asked you to smile, didn’t he?”
“That was not relevant to the identification photograph.”
“I liked the photo.”
“You could barely see my face.”
“I would recognize you anywhere.”
The answer returned Sandrone’s own words to her without repeating them.
She had once told Columbina she would recognize her outside the hospital by her voice, the strange facts she offered like gifts, and the way she waited for Sandrone to become irritated before smiling.
Apparently the recognition had always been meant to work both ways.
“You came back before?” Sandrone asked.
“Months ago.”
Columbina told her she had returned to Sumeru as soon as she was well enough. The Bimarstan had arranged part of her local follow-up, and she had wanted to visit Barbara and Collei. She had also asked about the blonde medical student whose irritation had once entertained an entire ward.
By then, Sandrone’s clerkship had ended. The staff could say that much, but they would not provide her surname, number, internship placement, or any other personal information.
“They were right not to,” Sandrone said.
“They were very right. It was frustrating.”
“You described yourself as my rejected courtship applicant, didn’t you?”
Columbina’s expression became suspiciously peaceful. “I thought it would explain why I was asking.”
“It explained why they should give you nothing.”
“I realized that afterward.”
A laugh escaped Sandrone before she could stop it.
It sounded different from the laugh she remembered sharing beneath the same tree. Less startled. Less afraid of what might follow. Columbina watched her, and no cough interrupted the quiet that came after.
“You really looked for me?” Sandrone asked.
The surprise in her own voice embarrassed her. She reached for the tablet again, then stopped when she realized she had already moved it twice.
“I did,” Columbina said. “I came back more than once. Sometimes for checkups. Sometimes to visit. I would sit here for a while afterward.”
Her hand moved over the bench between them, fingertips following the grain of the weathered wood.
Sandrone pictured her beneath the tree with no Serafina beside her, watching the garden doors for someone who had already left Sumeru.
“What did you do while you waited?”
“I read. I watched the clouds.” Columbina’s smile returned slowly. “I tried the cafeteria coffee.”
“Why would you do that?”
“You talked about it so often.”
“I complained about it.”
“You made it sound important.”
“It is terrible.”
“It still is.”
“And you drank it anyway?”
“More than once. I thought the first cup might have been unusually bad.”
“That shows poor judgment.”
“I also got the vanilla pudding.”
Sandrone stared at her.
Columbina looked pleased with herself. “I still think it has value.”
“It comes sealed in plastic.”
“That protects the flavor.”
“From what?”
“The cafeteria.”
Sandrone pressed her lips together, which only made Columbina’s smile widen.
“You sat here drinking bad coffee and eating unwanted pudding because you thought I might appear?”
“When you say it that way, it sounds romantic.”
“It sounds unreasonable.”
“I wondered about you.”
The humor in Columbina’s voice softened.
She had wondered whether Sandrone passed her examinations, whether she became a doctor, and whether she ever decided on a specialty. She had wondered whether Sandrone had found somewhere outside the hospital that served coffee she actually liked.
The questions were ordinary. That made them harder to dismiss.
“I passed all three sections,” Sandrone said. “Your ridiculous prince mnemonic appeared during the third one.”
Columbina brightened. “It worked?”
“I knew the physiology.”
“But you remembered the prince.”
“He was difficult to avoid.”
“Did you keep the card?”
Sandrone looked toward the white flowers.
The pause answered for her.
“You did,” Columbina said.
“It was filed with the rest of my notes.”
“And the leaf?”
“That is irrelevant.”
“You kept that too.”
“It fell out while I was packing.”
“And you picked it up.”
“It would have made a mess.”
“One leaf?”
Sandrone declined to answer.
The warmth in her face had become impossible to ignore. She hoped the evening light concealed it. Based on Columbina’s expression, it did not.
“How about the drawing?” Columbina asked.
“Also filed.”
“With the leaf?”
Sandrone looked at her sharply.
Columbina placed a hand over her mouth, but not before Sandrone saw her smile.
“That is very sweet.”
“It is basic document storage.”
“You stored a leaf with a drawing of us.”
“It was not a drawing of us. You drew me beside an empty place.”
“The empty place was mine.”
“You labeled it.”
“I didn’t want anyone else to take it.”
Sandrone looked down at the stretch of bench between them.
Columbina had left enough room when Sandrone arrived. Not the exaggerated distance Sandrone had once insisted upon, but a clear space where another person could sit.
Reserved.
“You said you missed me,” Sandrone said.
“I did.”
“You barely knew me.”
“I knew enough.”
“That is not how time works.”
“Is there a minimum?”
“No, but you were recovering from major surgery. You had more important things to think about.”
“I did many things while I was recovering. Missing you did not take the whole day.”
The answer was so simple that Sandrone could not argue with it.
Her own life had not stopped either. She had completed her rotations, graduated, worked through an internship, passed her licensure examination, and begun a career. There had been entire weeks when the garden never crossed her mind.
The memory had remained without becoming her life.
Apparently Columbina had carried it the same way.
“I thought you might be dead,” Sandrone said.
Columbina’s smile disappeared.
“I know.”
“No, you don’t.”
“I knew you wouldn’t be told what happened.”
“You told them not to tell me.”
“I gave them permission to explain what they could. There was no outcome yet when I left.”
“You could have told me there was a possible donor.”
The last afternoon returned to Sandrone with an uncomfortable clarity. Columbina had sat beneath a flat grey sky with her hands hidden under the blanket, unusually quiet and without a book or paper animal in her lap. Sandrone had been too concerned with the next day’s examinations to wonder why.
She remembered packing away her reference cards and explaining that she needed to leave early to study. Columbina had asked whether she would come back, and Sandrone had promised to return once the examinations were over. Even the mention of her family’s rare visit had seemed ordinary enough at the time. Sandrone had left believing they would see each other again within days, while Columbina watched her go with a small smile and the familiar promise that she would see Doctor Princess soon.
Neither of them had known that soon would take twenty-two months.
Columbina lowered her gaze to her hands. Her family had arrived that afternoon because the transplant team called, she explained. The heart was only a possibility. It still needed to be checked, the transfer had to be arranged, and no one could promise that the operation would happen.
“I was scared it would fall through,” she said. “I didn’t want our last afternoon to become both of us waiting for a phone call. And I didn’t want you to miss your examination because of something neither of us could control.”
“That should have been my decision.”
“Yes.”
The agreement stopped Sandrone more effectively than an excuse.
She had prepared herself to reject whatever defense Columbina offered. Instead, Columbina sat with her hands folded and allowed Sandrone’s anger to remain.
“I would have stayed,” Sandrone said.
“I know.”
“You still should have told me.”
“I know that now.”
Sandrone looked at her.
No fact about flamingos followed. Columbina did not turn toward the clouds or hide behind a joke. The quiet between them felt different from the silences in room twelve. It did not contain a question Sandrone was forbidden to answer.
“I was angry with you,” she said.
“For leaving?”
“For making me find an empty room.”
“I’m sorry.”
“And for the drawing.”
Columbina glanced at the bench. “You didn’t like it?”
“That was not the problem.”
“What was?”
“You left a place for yourself and no way for me to know whether you would return to it.”
For several seconds, neither of them moved.
Then Columbina placed one hand on the bench, palm open in the space between them. She did not reach for Sandrone. She only left it there.
“I came back,” she said.
Sandrone stared at the offered hand.
“You did,” she admitted.
She put her own hand beside it. Not over it. Not quite touching.
Columbina shifted her little finger until it rested against Sandrone’s.
The contact was warm.
Sandrone had expected cold fingers. The absence of that familiar chill unsettled her almost as much as the voice had.
“You’re warm,” she said.
“That is usually considered healthy.”
“Your hands were always cold.”
“I had heart failure.”
“I am aware.”
“I have a better heart now.”
“A transplanted heart is not better in every measurable way. You require lifelong medication and monitoring. There are risks of rejection, infection, problems with the blood vessels—”
Columbina’s finger pressed more firmly against hers. “It lets me walk here.”
Sandrone stopped.
“That seems better to me,” Columbina said.
The garden doors opened behind them. Two nurses came outside carrying paper cups and continued toward the farther path without noticing the women beneath the tree.
A cloud moved across the late sunlight. Its edges turned gold before slipping behind the roof.
“I saw the sea at night,” Columbina said.
Sandrone turned to her. “You did?”
“After I was well enough to travel for something that wasn’t an appointment.”
“What did it look like?”
“Like the sea, but dark.”
Sandrone stared.
Columbina’s eyes opened slightly wider with amusement. “That is a terrible description, isn’t it?”
“It is useless.”
“The horizon disappeared. The water and sky looked like one thing until the moon came out. Then the tops of the waves turned silver.”
Sandrone recognized the shape of her own description inside it.
“Was it beautiful?”
“Yes.”
“Did you dislike the sand?”
“It got into my shoes, my bag, and somehow the food.”
“As I said.”
“You were right.”
“I usually am.”
“I missed that too.”
Sandrone looked down at their hands. Their little fingers remained touching on the bench.
“I missed you as well,” she said.
The admission was quieter than she intended, but it existed now.
Columbina did not tease her. Her finger only shifted against Sandrone’s once, a small movement that could not be mistaken for anything accidental.
After a while, she said, “I brought something.”
“If it is another application—”
“It is.”
Sandrone withdrew her hand. “How many pages?”
“Only four.”
“Four?”
“I had almost two years to revise it.”
“That does not justify making it longer.”
“I added a medical disclosure section.”
“Why?”
“To confirm that I am no longer your patient.”
“You were never my patient.”
“I know. I thought you might enjoy seeing it in writing.”
Sandrone’s attention returned to the bag beside Columbina. A familiar book rested partly beneath its open flap.
“The Little Prince,” she said.
“I brought that too.”
Columbina lifted it onto her lap. Three narrow slips of hospital stationery still marked the pages, faded at the exposed ends.
“You kept those?”
“They’re part of the book now.”
“They belong to the Bimarstan.”
“Then I’ve brought them back.”
“You stole hospital property for nearly two years.”
“I said I would return them when you agreed to courtship.”
“That was not a valid arrangement.”
“It might be soon.”
Sandrone took the book and opened the front cover.
Columbina’s name remained written there. Beneath the plus sign sat Sandrone’s first name, both of them trapped inside the same anatomically inaccurate heart.
Time had not improved the drawing.
“You still have not corrected this,” Sandrone said.
“The heart?”
“It bears no resemblance to the organ.”
“I know what one looks like now.”
Sandrone closed the book.
The words were delivered without drama, but her hand remained on the cover. Beneath it, a heart had failed, been removed, replaced, and carried Columbina through nearly two years Sandrone had not witnessed.
She returned the book more carefully than she had taken it.
“Real hearts are much less romantic,” Columbina said.
“They are not supposed to be romantic.”
“That seems unfair. They do all that work.”
Sandrone felt the corner of her mouth move.
Columbina noticed. She always noticed.
“Will you be my girlfriend?” she asked.
“Absolutely not.”
“Then may I court you?”
The first time, Sandrone had answered without hesitation.
Never.
The word had survived notes, drawings, books, afternoons beneath a tree, and one accidental condition spoken beside a hospital bed. It had survived an urgent transfer and almost two years of silence.
It no longer fit.
“You may ask me on one date,” Sandrone said.
Columbina went very still.
“That is not the same as agreeing to a relationship. It does not give you permission to call me your girlfriend. It does not make the applications legally meaningful, and it does not excuse poor grammar.”
“I understand.”
“You agreed too quickly.”
“I don’t want to interrupt while you’re saying yes.”
“I have not finished.”
Columbina pressed her lips together, though the smile remained in her eyes.
Sandrone set the rules plainly. Columbina was not her patient and could never become one. Her medication and follow-up care would continue whether Sandrone visited, called, argued with her, or refused another date. Nothing about their relationship could become a reward for taking care of herself.
“I am not something you earn by taking your medicine,” Sandrone said.
“Will you stay anyway?”
The old exchange settled between them.
This time there was no tray of untouched food, no medication waiting beside the bed, and no nurse standing outside the door. Columbina was not asking Sandrone to become part of her treatment. She was asking her to remain by choice.
Sandrone looked toward the hospital. Through the glass doors, staff moved along the corridor beneath the bright ward lights. Her shift had ended forty-seven minutes ago.
“One coffee,” she said. “Outside hospital grounds.”
“Is that a medical order?”
“No.” Sandrone met her eyes. “It is a date.”
Columbina smiled fully.
Memory had preserved that smile in pieces: near-closed eyes, the slight tilt of her face, the quiet satisfaction of having drawn Sandrone somewhere she had not meant to go. It had failed to preserve the effect.
The real thing was considerably worse.
“When?” Columbina asked.
“Not during my shift.”
“Is your shift over?”
“Yes.”
“Then now?”
“You cannot expect me to agree to a date and begin it within the same minute.”
“Why not?”
“Preparation.”
“You are already dressed.”
“I am wearing hospital clothes.”
“I like your hospital clothes. Makes you look prettier.”
“That is not—,” Sandrone couldn’t help but blush, “at all. . . relevant.”
“I’ve been waiting under this tree for almost two hours.”
Sandrone turned toward her. “Two hours?”
“I wasn’t sure when you would take a break.”
“You could have asked the front desk to contact me.”
“I thought surprising you would be more romantic.”
“You could have left before I came.”
“I brought a book.”
“That does not make waiting two hours sensible.”
“It made it less boring. Besides, what are two more hours after twenty-two months?”
Sandrone considered pointing out that Columbina had once spent months inside room twelve with fewer options. The thought felt too close to pity, and she discarded it.
Instead, she picked up the secure tablet. “I need to return this and collect my bag.”
“I can wait.”
“You have done enough of that.”
The answer left before Sandrone could soften it.
Columbina looked at her for a moment, then stood.
She did it without help, but not carelessly. One hand remained on the bench until she found her balance. Her movements carried none of the old struggle Sandrone remembered from the visitor’s chair, though she rose more slowly than someone who had never needed to think about standing.
Sandrone noticed because noticing remained automatic.
Columbina caught her looking. “I can walk.”
“I can see that.”
“For quite a long time now.”
“How far?”
“Far enough to get coffee with you.”
“That is not a distance.”
“You can measure it on the way.”
They followed the path toward the garden doors. Columbina reached them first and opened one before Sandrone could take the handle.
During the hospital stay, Sandrone had always held those doors while Barbara or Collei guided Columbina’s wheelchair through. She had walked beside her back to room twelve, carrying their books while Serafina’s white bow moved ahead of them.
Now Columbina held the door for her.
Sandrone stepped into the corridor.
Barbara found them near the nurses’ station.
She was carrying a stack of files and speaking to another nurse when she looked up. The files nearly slipped from her arms.
“Columbina?”
“Hello, Barbara.”
Barbara set the files on the nearest counter and crossed the corridor. She stopped just short of embracing her, glanced at Sandrone, and apparently decided professional restraint had already lost.
Columbina laughed as Barbara hugged her carefully.
“You should have told us you were coming.”
“I wanted to surprise someone.”
Barbara looked over Columbina’s shoulder at Sandrone.
Sandrone held up the secure tablet. “I have to return this.”
“Right,” Barbara said, smiling much too widely. “Of course.”
“There is nothing to smile about.”
“I didn’t say anything.”
“Your face did.”
Barbara’s smile only worsened. “Collei is upstairs. Do you want me to call her?”
“I’ll visit her after,” Columbina said. “Doctor Princess and I are going for coffee.”
Barbara stared at Sandrone.
“One coffee,” Sandrone said. “Do not make that expression.”
“What expression?”
“That one.”
“I’m happy to see an old patient doing well.”
“You were not looking at her.”
Barbara picked up the files. “Enjoy your coffee date.”
“It is not—” Sandrone stopped.
Columbina waited. Barbara did too.
Sandrone adjusted her grip on the tablet. “Thank you.”
Barbara made a delighted sound and escaped down the corridor before Sandrone could reconsider.
At the nurses’ station, Sandrone returned the tablet, signed out, and collected her bag. She removed her white coat and folded it over one arm. When she turned, Columbina was watching her from a chair beside the desk.
“What?”
“You became a doctor.”
“I told you I passed.”
“I know. I like seeing it.”
“Seeing me put away a coat?”
“Seeing you here.”
Sandrone looked down at her identification card.
DR. SANDRONE GUILLOTIN.
“You know my full name now.”
“It was in the announcement.”
“You could use it.”
“I could.”
“But you won’t.”
“No, Doctor Princess.”
“I am definitely not a princess.”
“You are as pretty as one.”
The words had not changed.
Sandrone had.
She turned toward the main corridor before Columbina could inspect her face too closely. “We are getting coffee. Not reviewing old titles.”
“Can I call you Doctor Pretty?”
“No.”
“Baby?”
“Was your heart donor a huge flirt?”
“Sandrone?”
“That is my name.”
“I know.” Columbina rose from the chair. “I like knowing it.”
They crossed the hospital together.
The evening lobby was quieter than it had been during Sandrone’s morning arrival. The information desk had switched on its lamps, and the new-staff announcement remained displayed on a screen beside the lifts.
Sandrone’s photograph appeared between two other doctors.
Columbina slowed to look at it.
“It is worse at that size,” Sandrone said.
“You look so beautiful.”
“I look irritated.”
“You look so beautiful when you’re irritated.”
The screen changed to a notice about visiting hours.
Columbina continued toward the main doors.
She walked at an ordinary pace, though not a hurried one. Near the exit, she paused to adjust the strap of her bag and drew a deeper breath before moving again. The signs were small. They did not make her look ill so much as they made survival visible—not a clean return to some untouched version of herself, but a life carried forward with care.
The automatic doors opened, letting in the cool evening air, the noise of passing traffic, and the smell of food from the cafés across the street.
Columbina stepped outside first. Beneath the entrance lights, she turned and held out her hand.
“Are you coming?”
For weeks, Sandrone had been the one who led her back to the ward whenever their time outside ended. Now Columbina stood beyond the hospital doors, healthy enough to leave and asking Sandrone to come with her.
Sandrone crossed the threshold and took her hand.
Columbina’s fingers closed around hers, warm and steady. Neither of them let go as they walked away from the hospital.