Chapter Text
The clinic smells like hand sanitizer and misery. The kind of sterile that feels aggressive, like someone scrubbed too hard at something that still refuses to come clean. Every surface gleams artificially under the harsh fluorescent lights. The chairs lining the waiting room are the same shade of beige as an old bandage, all vinyl and false comfort, and the one Trixie’s sitting on makes her lower back ache within minutes.
Across from her, a toddler is shrieking bloody murder over a sticker he didn’t like. His mother looks like she aged a decade in the last ten minutes. Everyone else in the room is pretending not to hear it, eyes glazed over, stuck in the hellscape of daytime urgent care.
Trixie scrolls her phone with the screen brightness turned down so low she can barely read it. Not that she’s really reading. She’s just trying to look occupied, like she’s not dying of awkwardness and slowly melting into this nightmare vinyl chair.
She’s probably fine. Probably.
It’s just a cold. Or allergies. Or seasonal depression, or adjusting to the smog, or whatever. But Kim, her roommate and self-declared “chaos concierge,” had taken one look at her flushed cheeks and glassy eyes and decided she was dying. Soup was made. Clinic options were pulled up. One Uber later, here she is—new to California, still half-unpacked, sore in a weird existential way that’s more about loneliness than any actual virus.
Her phone buzzes with a text from Kim:
“if ur not back in 2 hours i’m sending a search party w soup grenades 😘”
Trixie’s typing back something sarcastic when her name gets called. Well. Sort of.
“Mattel?” the nurse says, blandly mispronouncing it.
Trixie stands, clutching her bag, and tries to give the room a polite, apologetic smile that probably just reads “Yes, I do regret not wearing concealer today.”
The walk to the scale is humiliating in the weird, low-grade way everything medical is. She doesn’t look at the number, but the nurse writes it down. Then comes the height measurement. She keeps her heels on, even though they’re scuffed and too tall, because no way in hell is she going to be shorter and sick today.
Finally, she’s deposited in an exam room with the kind of stiff efficiency that suggests everyone wants to be somewhere else.
“Dr. Zamo will be in shortly,” the nurse says, already halfway out the door.
Trixie blinks at the name. Zamo? Huh. Sounds Eastern European, maybe. Vaguely familiar. She doesn’t give it much thought, just pulls out her phone again and fires off a text:
“this was a mistake. i hate u. xoxo.”
The room is freezing. The paper on the exam table crinkles obnoxiously every time she shifts. There’s a motivational poster about washing your hands with a smiling cartoon germ on it. Her foot taps, nervously.
And then, three soft knocks on the door.
She straightens, pulling her coat tighter around her. Tries to look like a Normal Person Deserving of Healthcare.
But when the door opens, the world tilts sideways.
The woman who walks in is taller than she remembers, or maybe it’s just the coat and the heels and the way she carries herself now—like she owns the damn room. Platinum hair in a messy bob. Red nails. White coat. Stethoscope slung carelessly around her neck. And a dress that has fish on it, of course it does.
Trixie freezes.
So does she, but Katya hasn't looked up yet.
There’s a beat of silence so loud it makes Trixie’s ears ring.
“Dr. Zamolochikova,” the woman says, voice clipped. “But everyone calls me Dr. Zamo. Or Kat—”
Her eyes land on Trixie fully, and her entire posture changes. Recognition hits like a body blow.
“Oh,” she says, sharp and disbelieving. “You’ve got to be kidding me.”
Trixie’s mouth is dry. “Hey.”
Katya folds her arms. The file in her hand hangs limp, forgotten. “Unbelievable.”
“I didn’t know,” Trixie blurts, already burning with regret. “I didn’t know you worked here.”
“Well,” Katya snaps, accent unmistakable now, Boston with a shadow of something older, colder, just under the surface. Russian, maybe. “I didn’t know you’d be walking into my clinic with a sore throat and the gall.”
“I didn’t come here to—God, Katya, I didn’t even know you were in LA.”
“No?” Katya’s voice is pure acid. “That checks out. You never were great with the whole communicating thing.”
“That’s not fair.”
“Neither was you ghosting me during finals week, ” she snaps, taking a half-step forward. Her white coat flares slightly as she moves. “After I moved in with you. After we—”
She stops. Bites it back. But the damage is already done. The words hang in the air like smoke.
Trixie can barely breathe. “I know. I’m sorry.”
Katya stares. For a second, her expression flickers; too fast to read. Her knuckles are white around the file. She looks like she wants to throw it.
“You left me,” she says, low and furious. “I came home from class, and your half of the closet was empty. No note. Just gone.”
“I panicked,” Trixie says, too fast. “I was twenty and confused and stupid and I panicked.”
“You always panic when something’s good,” Katya hisses. “God forbid you actually feel something.”
“I felt everything!” The words burst out before she can stop them. “You think I didn’t? I was in love with you.”
“You never said it. ”
“I didn’t know how!”
Katya shakes her head, mouth hard. “You don’t get to rewrite this. You left.”
“I know I did.” Trixie’s voice breaks. “I think about it all the time.”
The silence between them now is thick, humid with all the unsaid things. Katya looks at her like she wants to scream or cry or both.
Then, stiffly, she puts on gloves.
“Open your mouth,” she says.
“What?”
“You’re still a patient,” Katya snaps, cold mask snapping back into place. “I’m still a doctor. Let’s get this over with.”
Trixie obeys, throat tight. Katya’s fingers are brisk, impersonal, clinical. But her eyes… they betray her. They linger a second too long.
“Mild inflammation,” she says, stepping back. “Could be viral. I’ll swab for strep, just in case.”
She disposes of the gloves with a practiced flick and heads toward the door, hesitating only once.
“You still drink that awful hazelnut crap from Starbucks?”
Trixie blinks. “Yeah.”
Katya’s lips curve into something like a smile. But it doesn’t reach her eyes.
“Of course you do.”
And then she’s gone.
—
Katya washes her hands twice.
The water is too hot, bordering on scalding, but she doesn’t care. The sting feels earned. Necessary. She scrubs like she’s erasing something. Like the friction and heat can scour Trixie Mattel off her skin, out from under her nails, out of her bloodstream. Her fingers are trembling slightly, the way they haven’t since her first day in med school, but she presses harder, hoping the ache will override it. It doesn’t.
She stares at her reflection in the mirror above the sink. The fluorescent lights overhead are harsh, unforgiving, and she hates what she sees. Her mascara is still perfect. Lipstick: crisp. Her lab coat hangs straight, the collar neat. To anyone else, she probably looks polished. Controlled. Like someone who has it together. But her eyes—her eyes are glassy and raw, like the fault line inside her has shifted again and no number of cosmetics can cover it. Like she’s twenty-two again, sleepless and heartsick, not thirty-four and supposed to be a grown-ass woman.
“She was just a patient,” Katya mutters out loud, gripping the edge of the sink. Her voice echoes slightly against the tile. The words feel hollow. Ridiculous.
Just a patient. Right. Just a fucking patient.
Just a fever and a sore throat and twelve years of history showing up in platform heels and the same wounded, wide-eyed expression Katya used to wake up next to in the dark.
She’d seen the name earlier on the chart, Mattel, Beatrice. No alarm bells. No reason to brace. Beatrice was a common enough name. She’d assumed it’d be some ironic twenty-something in cosplay makeup or a mom who liked retro baby names. It never occurred to her it would be her . Until that door opened.
Until that face turned to look at her.
Until it felt like the ground dropped out from under her.
She dries her hands, movements sharp, clipped, and throws the paper towel toward the trash can a little too hard. It misses. Of course it misses. She doesn’t bother picking it up. She's already pacing the cramped breakroom, chewing the inside of her cheek, her jaw tight. There are still four more patients waiting. She’s on the clock. And God, she’s a surgeon. She’s not supposed to be working the clinic today. But of course, someone called out, so instead of doing what she was trained for, actually saving lives, she’s stuck dealing with snotty noses and fake fevers, nodding along while people whine about coughs that started this morning.
There’s no time for this. No space for her heart to claw its way up her throat like it’s trying to speak after all these years of silence.
But her body won’t let it go. Not yet.
She remembers.
God, she remembers .
Trixie’s laugh. The way she always curled her toes when she was embarrassed. Her tiny pink razor in the shower next to Katya’s clinical shampoo. Her voice at 3 a.m., whispering dumb jokes in bed. Sitting in Katya’s lap at parties like she belonged there, like they had all the time in the world. The smell of that awful hazelnut coffee she used to hoard. Glitter that never fully washed off Katya’s skin.
She remembers falling in love with her so fast it made her dizzy. And she remembers the end, too. The slow unraveling. Finals week, stress blooming like mold in every corner of their lives, and Trixie promising she’d stay. That she’d help. That they were in this together.
And then nothing.
No fight. No tearful goodbye. Just vanishing. Her side of the closet empty. Her shoes gone. The toothpaste cap finally staying on. Katya had cried herself hoarse, not even angry just wrecked . She'd shown up to her last exam barely breathing, convinced something horrible had happened. A car crash. A family emergency. Kidnapping. Something that would justify the silence.
But then she saw her. Two days later. On campus. Laughing. Hair done. Bright-eyed. Fine .
Like Katya had never even happened.
She shoves the memory away like a hand she doesn’t want to hold. Her chest aches in that old familiar way, equal parts fury and longing. And the worst part, the worst, most humiliating part, is that even now, even after all of it, she still wants to run after her. Just for a second. To demand answers that she’s no longer entitled to. To scream or kiss her or ask why the hell it was so easy to leave. To ask if any of it had meant anything.
But she won’t. She can’t. She knows better.
Katya squares her shoulders, pulls her coat tighter around her. She forces herself into the next exam room like she’s not coming apart at the seams. Her smile is calm. Her tone is light. Her hands miraculously do not shake as she takes vitals and asks the same questions she always does.
But beneath the surface, she’s somewhere else entirely.
Back in that shitty campus apartment with a too-small bed and Trixie’s lip balm on the nightstand. Holding her pillow and wondering what the fuck she did wrong. Wondering if she’ll ever stop wondering.
Wondering if people like Trixie Mattel ever think about the things they leave behind.
Her shift ends at ten. By then, the clinic is mostly empty, just one other physician finishing up her notes, the front desk abandoned, the air humming with the low buzz of vending machines and flickering fluorescents. Katya lingers in the staff breakroom longer than necessary, pretending to be engrossed in her paperwork but really just avoiding the moment she has to pass the filing cabinet.
But the thought won’t leave her alone.
Trixie’s chart is still in the stack by the intake nurse’s desk. It should’ve been filed already, logged and scanned into the system, tucked away in whatever cold archive patients become once their symptoms are treated and dismissed.
But no one’s done it yet.
Katya doesn’t let herself think about it. Doesn’t give herself time to analyze or rationalize or even breathe . She moves quietly, like she’s still a kid sneaking cigarettes in the alley behind her dorm.
One quick motion. Smooth. Professional.
She slips the file out of the stack and into the inner pocket of her coat like it’s just another clipboard, just another form she needs for rounds.
She doesn’t open it until she’s home.
Her apartment is sterile, minimal, clean lines, colorless. A far cry from the glitter-drenched chaos of the one she used to share with Trixie. No empty coffee mugs on the counter. No shoes kicked off by the door. Just the soft thud of her heels on hardwood and the faint creak of the closet as she shrugs off her coat.
She sits on the edge of her bed like she might not stay long. Like she’s pretending this is clinical. Like this isn’t completely fucking insane.
The file smells faintly of disinfectant and manila paper. Her name is right there on the label: Mattel, Beatrice.
She hesitates. Then flips it open.
Vitals. Symptoms. Blood pressure. Notes about her throat, her temperature, a mild allergy to penicillin. Nothing Katya didn’t already know.
And then—at the bottom of the intake form, almost like a footnote— Contact Information.
Her phone number.
Katya stares at it like it’s a loaded gun.
It’s the same number. The same one Trixie used to text her from while half-asleep in the back of an Uber. The same one that used to light up her screen at all hours of the night with “u up?” and blurry selfies of Trixie wearing her clothes and grinning like a heathen. The same number she’d deleted out of principle, then memorized again by heart without even meaning to.
Her hand shakes slightly as she reaches for her phone.
She doesn’t dial. Of course she doesn’t.
But she does add it to her contacts again.
Trixie Mattel
No emoji. No photo. Just the name, stark and final and staring back at her.
Katya sets the phone down on her nightstand, face-down. Her throat feels tight. Her hands are cold now, the adrenaline draining out of her.
She knows this is a bad idea.
She knows she shouldn’t be doing this.
She knows she crossed a line, and she doesn’t even care.
Because Trixie’s laugh is still echoing in her head. Because her perfume still lingers in the folds of Katya’s coat. Because Katya has spent the last twelve years convincing herself she didn’t need closure, and now, somehow, she wants nothing else.
Because a part of her is still twenty-two and stupid and in love, and that part of her just got sucker punched by the past wearing hot pink lipstick.
She crawls into bed without changing, file still clutched loosely in one hand.
She doesn’t fall asleep for hours.
—
Trixie kicks the apartment door shut with the heel of her boot, nearly trips over her own bag, and groans like the day has physically beaten her up.
“Kim!” she yells, already halfway through peeling off her coat. “Kimberly Chi, where are you—I need to scream!”
There’s a crash from the kitchen, probably a spoon hitting the floor, and then Kim appears, holding a bowl of cereal in one hand and texting with the other. She takes one look at Trixie and raises a perfectly sculpted brow.
“You’re home early. Did the doctor tell you you’re dying, or just that you’re dramatic?”
Trixie drops her bag with a heavy thud and flings herself onto the couch like she’s been mortally wounded. “Worse. So much worse. The doctor? Was my ex.”
Kim blinks. “Your ex?”
“My ex from college.”
Another blink. “Your ex from Boston ?”
Trixie grabs a throw pillow and screams into it, muffled and pitiful.
Kim sets the cereal down and perches on the edge of the couch like she’s about to conduct a therapy session. “Okay. Let’s break this down. Start from the top. Full name, height, trauma summary.”
Trixie tosses the pillow aside and sits up, her face flushed, breath uneven. “Her name is Yekaterina Zamolodchikova—but she goes by Dr. Zamo now. Doctor, Kim. And she looks like a hot cartoon villain. She was wearing this fish-print dress—like, literal fish—and her hair’s still that insane blonde bob, and she looked at me like I ran over her childhood pet.”
Kim makes a thoughtful hmm , like she’s mentally scoring this on an Ex Encounter Bingo card. “And did you?”
“No! I mean—no, not a pet, but… I did something shitty. When we broke up. I ghosted her.”
Kim stares. Slowly. “You ghosted your college girlfriend?”
“I panicked,” Trixie groans, flopping back against the cushions. “We were fighting all the time. She was so intense. Everything with her was so much . And I didn’t know what I wanted. I didn’t want to hurt her, so I just… left. Packed my stuff. No note. No call. I thought it would be easier.”
“Pro tip,” Kim says, sipping her cereal milk like she’s a wise monk, “abandonment? Rarely the ‘easy’ option.”
Trixie stares at the ceiling. Her heart hasn’t stopped racing since she saw Katya. Her face is burned into her brain. Those sharp cheekbones, the glacier-cutting eyes, the way her voice curled around “Ms. Mattel” like it was a curse.
“She looked like she wanted to slap me,” Trixie whispers.
“Did you apologize?”
“I didn’t even get the chance,” she says. “The second she recognized me, this… wall went up. She was professional, painfully professional. Kept calling me Ms. Mattel , like I was some stranger in her waiting room. She used to call me Bunny .”
Kim’s expression softens. “You really loved her, huh?”
Trixie doesn’t hesitate. “Yeah. I really did.”
The apartment falls quiet.
Trixie wraps her arms around her knees and sinks into the couch like memory is dragging her under.
She remembers snow days when Katya would brew strange Russian herbal teas and they’d curl up under three blankets to watch black-and-white movies. She remembers Katya balancing her anatomy flashcards on Trixie’s thighs while she painted her nails in candy-colored polish. She remembers laughing so hard in a Walmart that she peed a little because Katya put a bra over her hoodie and called herself the Slavic Boob Monster.
And she remembers the sex. Not just hot, but terrifyingly vulnerable, like letting someone light a match inside your chest and hoping they don’t burn the whole thing down.
But she remembers the fights, too. How Katya loved like it was war. How she needed too much, felt too hard, pushed too deep. And how Trixie, at twenty-one, was just a girl trying to stay afloat, already convinced she’d sink anyone who loved her.
She remembers the night she left. How quiet it was. How easy it felt in the moment. Like she was escaping a fire. She didn’t realize she was the one who lit the match.
“I should’ve said something,” she whispers. “I should’ve explained.”
Kim reaches over, fingers warm on her knee. “You still can. If she hates you, she hates you. But if you’re sorry… you owe her the truth.”
“I don’t even know if I want to open that door again.”
Kim glances at her, then down at Trixie’s chest. “Sounds like it’s already cracked. Might as well see what’s on the other side.”
Trixie bites the inside of her cheek. Her fingers worry at the skin around her nails until it’s raw.
“She doesn’t want that. I know she doesn’t,” she says, tears rising fast. “She probably hates me. I left her, Kim. I disappeared before she had to take her final, right in the middle of her finals hell week. Who does that?”
Kim looks at her like she’s watching a wounded puppy limp in from a thunderstorm. “Someone scared out of their mind,” she says. “Someone who didn’t know how to stay. But you’re not that person anymore.”
“I’d just get in her way,” Trixie says, wiping her eyes. “She’s saving lives now. She used to talk about med school like it was the goddamn Olympics. How she was so excited for it. She’d tell me every little thing—what muscle she dissected, how many bones are in the foot—like I had any idea what she meant. I didn’t. But I listened. I loved the way she talked. Like her whole body was involved in it.”
There’s a long pause.
“You still love her,” Kim says, soft but certain.
It isn’t a question. It lands in the silence like a pin dropped in a church.
Trixie breathes in, then out. And says it:
“Yeah. I do.”
And it feels like a gunshot inside her chest. Like something sharp and final, the bullet lodging right in her heart, where her blood still whispers Katya’s name with every beat.
Trixie didn’t sleep at all that night.
She lay in bed staring at the ceiling, tangled in her sheets like they were trying to hold her down. The whole night, her mind played a cruel kind of cinema, flashbacks of Katya flickering like an old film reel: grainy, golden, too good to be real. Her memory kept pressing rewind, whispering look how good it was . A laugh here. A kiss there. Katya’s hands in her hair. Katya’s voice saying, Come here, Bunny . It wasn’t just nostalgia, it was haunting.
They'd been kids, really. Twenty-one and reckless. And scared.
She remembered the first night they kissed. On the roof of Trixie’s shitty off-campus apartment building. Katya had stolen a bottle of champagne from a professor’s retirement party, and they drank it sitting on a blanket of stolen lecture notes, their legs dangling over the edge. The stars were barely visible through the city glow, but Katya pointed up anyway, describing each constellation in a mix of perfect Russian and a thick Boston accent that made Trixie laugh until her cheeks hurt.
“You’re drunk,” Trixie had said.
“So are you,” Katya had countered. “Let’s do something stupid.”
They kissed. It was messy and sudden and lit something in both of them that never fully went out.
There were happy times; lazy mornings, Katya’s ridiculous post-it notes all over the apartment (“Remember to hydrate, bitch,” stuck to the milk), dance parties in the kitchen to old Madonna tracks, the way Katya studied with such intensity that Trixie once jokingly called her a “Russian Terminator of Knowledge.” And Katya, grinning, had kissed her and said, “I’ll destroy every exam for you, Bunny.”
But there were hard times too. Fights that left her shaking. Nights when Katya needed too much; too much reassurance, too much closeness, too much everything . And Trixie, back then, had nothing left to give. She didn’t know who she was. She was still figuring herself out, still afraid of being seen, truly seen, and not being enough.
Now, almost a decade later, she was different. She was . She'd fought to become someone stronger. Someone more whole. But last night. Seeing Katya again, hearing her call her “Ms. Mattel” with all the warmth of a glacier, it had cracked something open inside her that she hadn’t even realized was still tender.
She turned over in bed, pressing her face into the pillow. Her chest ached.
Katya was a doctor now. A doctor . Trixie couldn’t stop thinking about that. She used to help Katya study, even if she didn’t understand half of it. Quizzing Katya, repeating words like glenohumeral joint and sphenoid bone without a clue what they meant. Trixie would make up dumb rhymes to help Katya memorize them, and Katya would reward her with kisses like she was the answer to everything.
And now? Katya was saving lives. And Trixie was… here. In a too-small apartment with peeling wallpaper and a career that felt like it was treading water. The part of her that wasn’t gutted by regret wanted to be proud. Genuinely proud. But the regret was too loud.
She looked at me like I was a ghost, Trixie thought. Like she’d buried me years ago and I just crawled out of the grave.
She needed to apologize. She knew that. She owed Katya that much, at least. But what if it only made things worse? What if Katya hated her?
She stared up at the ceiling again, still gray with early morning light. Her eyes burned from crying.
But somewhere under the fear, under the guilt, under the ache she’d been dragging around like a second spine, there was something else. A thread of determination.
She sat up slowly, swinging her legs over the edge of the bed. Her apartment was quiet. Kim was still asleep. Outside, the city was waking up.
Maybe Katya didn’t want to hear from her. Maybe she’d slam the door in her face. Maybe she’d smile that cold, professional smile and say, “I’m busy, Ms. Mattel.”
But maybe she wouldn’t.
Maybe Katya deserved the chance to say what she needed to say, too.
Trixie pulled on a sweatshirt and wiped her eyes. She looked at herself in the mirror. She looked like hell. She looked like someone who needed to tell the truth, finally.
She took a breath.
She was going to the hospital. Today.
Not to fix everything. Not to win Katya back. Just to be honest. Just to say the words she should’ve said all those years ago.
“I’m sorry. I was scared. You didn’t deserve that.”
It wasn’t much.
But it was a start.
—
Katya had already decided the day was cursed before she even stepped foot inside the hospital.
It started with her coffee. Her precious, overpriced, entirely necessary eight-dollar Starbucks, which she’d been cradling like a lifeline as she walked through the staff entrance just before sunrise. She hadn’t slept a minute last night, not a single goddamn wink, and this coffee was supposed to be her salvation. Her reward. Her IV drip in a paper cup.
And then, with one distracted step, she’d bumped into a gurney being wheeled out and the cup slipped from her hands in slow motion. It exploded on the pavement like some cruel metaphor.
She stared down at the puddle of creamy, caramel-colored loss.
“Great,” she muttered. “Fucking perfect.”
The hospital coffee was garbage. She drank it anyway, because what else could she do? She had three surgeries back-to-back, starting with a ruptured appendix and ending with a thoracic trauma case that took nearly five hours to stabilize. She didn’t sit down once. Didn’t eat. Her feet were aching in her surgical clogs, and her brain felt like someone had taken a cheese grater to it.
And just when she thought things couldn’t get worse, surprise.
Two attendings called out.
One was out sick with strep, the other caught in a family emergency. Suddenly, Katya wasn't just responsible for her already-packed trauma schedule, she was juggling a pediatric case and a handful of post-op check-ins from a doctor who never updated his notes.
Pediatrics.
Katya hated pediatrics.
It wasn’t that she didn’t care about kids, she did, in the abstract. But every time she walked into a pediatric room, the kid would look at her like she was a serial killer in scrubs. They either started crying or hiding behind their parents. One even threw a juice box at her once. She just wasn’t built for it. Her voice didn’t soften the way the pediatricians did. Her patience ran thinner. She never knew how to explain things without terrifying them.
So by the time noon rolled around, she was running on fumes, sweat, and bitter coffee.
She made a beeline for the on-call room, already fantasizing about collapsing on the hard cot, curling up in her hoodie, and ignoring the rest of the world for twenty minutes.
She had just reached the door, hand on the knob, when she heard someone call her name.
“Dr. Zamo?”
Katya turned around, already bracing for bad news. A nurse was approaching her, clipboard in hand and eyes uncertain.
“There’s… a Trixie Mattel here to see you?”
Katya blinked. For a moment, the words didn’t register.
And then they did.
Trixie.
Of course. Of fucking course.
The string of bad luck, the sleepless night, the spilled coffee, the cranky pediatric cases, it all clicked into place like tumblers in a lock. The universe had been warming her up for this .
Her stomach dropped, a sharp, unwelcome twist that made her feel fourteen again and sick before a school presentation.
She hadn’t seen Trixie in years, not until yesterday, and even then it was a blur of cold, clinical professionalism and the rush of trying not to feel anything . Now she was here? Here , in the hospital?
Katya rubbed her temples.
“I’m off rotation for the next half hour,” she muttered. “Where is she?”
“She’s waiting by the elevators,” the nurse replied, cautiously. “Do you want me to—”
“No,” Katya interrupted. “I’ll go.”
She didn’t know what she was going to say. She didn’t even know if she wanted to see Trixie, not really. But she couldn’t just ignore it. Trixie showing up here meant something. It meant she wasn’t done.
And neither, apparently, was Katya.
She took a deep breath, squared her shoulders, and started walking.
Trixie was standing by the elevators, wide-eyed as she peeked into the chaos of the emergency room. A trauma team rushed past, wheeling in a patient on a gurney. Someone was shouting vitals. A nurse was barking orders. A child was crying somewhere in the distance. It was overwhelming. Loud, fluorescent, fast-paced. Nothing like the calm she had envisioned when she decided to come here.
“Never seen a hospital before?” Katya asked as she approached, keeping her pace even, pretending she had somewhere to be. Pretending she wasn’t dreading this.
Trixie turned quickly at the sound of her voice. Her lips parted like she was about to speak, but nothing came out right away.
“I have,” she said after a second, voice softer than Katya remembered. “Just never the part where it feels like life and death every five seconds.”
“That’s kind of the gig,” Katya said, nodding toward the trauma bay. “Welcome to the glamorous world of emergency surgery. You want a tour, or are you just here to gawk?”
Trixie didn’t flinch at the jab. Instead, she looked down at her shoes, shifting her weight awkwardly.
“I wanted to talk to you,” she said. “I mean—if you have a minute. I can come back later or something, I just…”
Katya exhaled through her nose, not quite a sigh.
“I’ve got fifteen minutes,” she said, jerking her chin toward the hallway. “Break room’s this way.”
Trixie followed her down the corridor in silence, the sterile lights buzzing above them. Every step felt heavier than the last. She wanted to say something, crack a joke, fill the space but nothing seemed right.
The break room was empty, cluttered with half-finished coffee cups and an overworked microwave. Katya leaned against the counter, arms crossed, waiting.
Trixie stood in the doorway for a beat, then stepped in and closed the door behind her.
“I’ve been thinking about yesterday,” she started. “About seeing you again. About college. About... everything.”
Katya raised a brow, skeptical but quiet.
Trixie rubbed the back of her neck, suddenly remembering Katya’s tiny off-campus apartment, the smell of burnt toast on Sunday mornings, the way Katya used to fall asleep on her shoulder mid-study session. The memory hit like a sucker punch.
“I wasn’t brave back then,” Trixie said, voice barely above a whisper. “I was scared. Of being out, of losing my scholarship, of what people would say. Of how real you made everything feel. You scared the hell out of me.”
Katya didn’t say anything.
“I wanted to say I’m sorry,” Trixie continued. “For how I left. For not calling. For pretending you didn’t matter when you were the only thing that ever really did.”
Katya’s jaw tightened.
“You don’t get to just walk in here after all these years and act like sorry covers it.”
“I know,” Trixie said quickly. “I know it doesn’t. But I had to try. I’ve been carrying this guilt for so long and seeing you again... it made everything hurt in a way I forgot it could.”
Katya looked at her then, really looked, and for the first time she saw it, how tired Trixie looked, how different, how grown. She wasn’t the scared girl from their junior year anymore. There was pain in her eyes, yes, but there was honesty too.
Katya glanced at the clock. Ten minutes left.
“You broke my heart,” she said evenly. “And I had to learn how to live with that without closure.”
“I know,” Trixie said. “But maybe this can be that. Closure.”
Katya tilted her head.
“Are you here for closure?” she asked. “Or are you here because you still care?”
Trixie swallowed.
“I’m here because I still care.”
That stopped Katya cold.
The room was quiet, except for the distant intercom paging a code blue somewhere on the third floor.
Finally, Katya looked away.
“I have to get back to work,” she said, standing up straight, but her voice had softened. “But… I’m off at eight. If you want to talk, really talk, meet me at my place later.”
Trixie’s breath caught.
“Okay,” she said. “Yeah. I’ll be there.”
Katya nodded once, then turned for the door. She paused with her hand on the handle, eyes still fixed forward.
“It’s the complex by the 7/11, apartment 204” She said and then she was gone.
Trixie’s heart pulsed Katya’s name a little faster.
—
“Gurney coming in!”
The automatic doors slammed open with a burst of noise and chaos. A trauma nurse jogged alongside the paramedics, calling out vitals like an auctioneer, voice sharp and practiced:
“Twenty-six-year-old female, unresponsive at the scene, blunt force trauma from MVA, hypotensive, tachycardic, O2 at ninety-one on ten liters—”
Katya didn’t hear the rest.
Her eyes locked on the patient’s face.
Blonde hair, soaked with blood and clinging to her cheek. Pale skin, a mess of scrapes and swelling. Lips parted slightly like she’d just stopped talking.
It was Trixie.
It had to be Trixie.
Her vision tunneled.
It didn’t make sense, Trixie had walked out of the ER just hours ago, pink hoodie sleeves pushed up to her elbows, anxious as hell and awkwardly sweet. But maybe she never made it home. Maybe she turned around, second-guessing, like she always used to do when things got hard. Maybe—
"Dr. Zamo!" a nurse barked, snapping her back to the present. "We need to move her now."
Katya surged forward, instincts kicking in, but her fingers trembled as she cut the trauma gown off. Her heart thudded in her ears.
There was so much blood.
No. No. No. It’s not her. It can’t be.
She leaned over, scanning the girl’s face again, frantic for proof. Something, anything, that told her this wasn’t real.
And then she saw it.
The cheek.
Left side.
No mole.
Katya froze for half a second, a breath caught in her throat like a fishhook.
Not Trixie.
Not Trixie.
She forced her focus back into the room.
“Get a central line in,” she ordered, her voice suddenly steadier. “Prep for intubation. I want crossmatch for four units on standby and trauma labs STAT.”
The team moved around her like a well-oiled machine, but Katya’s mind wasn’t quiet. Not even close.
She inserted the chest tube herself. The satisfying hiss of escaping air meant she was buying time, not fixing the problem. The internal bleeding was too fast. Too much.
The girl was fading.
Katya didn’t know her name.
Didn’t know where she was headed when her car flipped. Whether she loved someone. Whether someone was waiting for her to come home.
But she knew she looked like Trixie.
And something about that made her want to save this one more than she’d wanted anything all day.
The monitor beeped erratically.
Then flatlined.
“No, no—charge to 200!”
Paddles slapped against the girl’s chest. Katya barked for epi, for compressions, for anything , even as part of her knew it was too late. The pressure in her voice was emotional, not clinical now.
"Again!"
Still flatline.
Again.
Still nothing.
Her own voice sounded like it was coming from underwater when she finally said, “Time of death, 2:47 PM.”
The room fell silent but for the soft whir of machines powering down.
Katya stepped back.
Her gloves were sticky with blood.
And all she could see was that girl’s face. Trixie’s face — or close enough to it that it felt like some kind of punishment.
She stood there longer than she should’ve, staring, letting the adrenaline leech out of her in cold waves.
She went to speak with the family.
The girl’s name was Lena. Her parents said she was on her way to visit her girlfriend when the car spun out.
They cried. Katya nodded. Said the words she was supposed to. She didn’t remember half of it.
When she left them, she walked directly to the on-call room.
Not the bathroom. Not the locker room.
The on-call room — where no one would come looking unless they were on the verge of collapse themselves.
The door slammed behind her.
And then she was alone.
She leaned back against the door, chest heaving. Her hands were still shaking. Her scrub top was damp and cold against her skin, and she could smell the blood.
She tore off her scrub top like it personally offended her—like it was the one that failed. She couldn’t take it. The smell of blood clung to her skin, to the room, to her lungs. That girl was supposed to be with her girlfriend right now, laughing or holding hands or arguing over dinner. Instead, she was being wheeled to the fucking morgue.
She didn’t mean to cry.
She meant to sit. To take a breath. To reset. Like she always did.
But her throat tightened before she even made it to the cot.
It was the resemblance. That stupid, uncanny resemblance. As if fate had wheeled in the ghost of everything Katya had tried to forget and made her watch it die.
And the worst part?
It wasn’t just grief.
It was guilt.
Because when she’d seen that girl’s face on the gurney, when she'd thought for one terrible second it was Trixie, the first feeling wasn’t fear.
It was regret .
Regret that she’d let Trixie walk away.
Regret that she’d told her to come over tonight like it was nothing.
Regret that she had spent years building walls that a single familiar face could tear down in seconds.
Katya sat on the edge of the cot, elbows on her knees, hands clasped so tightly her knuckles turned white.
She wanted to scream.
Instead, she broke.
A low, shaking breath slipped from her throat, followed by another, and then a sound she didn’t recognize — something hoarse and guttural, the kind of cry you couldn’t choke down even if you tried.
Tears streaked down her face. Hot. Relentless.
And for the first time in years, Katya let herself fall apart.
Not just over the loss of a patient.
But over everything she was still too afraid to let herself want.
—
Trixie arrived at Katya’s apartment at exactly eight.
She knew, technically, that Katya probably wouldn’t get there until closer to eight-thirty. She had said she got off at eight, not be at my apartment at eight. But Trixie couldn’t help herself.
So now she was pacing outside the building like an anxious ghost, hands wringing the strap of her purse, wearing a soft pink dress with white flowers printed across the hem. Her hair was down, long and loose, catching in the breeze, and her makeup was perfect. She'd spent almost an hour on it, pretending like she hadn't, like it was just another day and not this monumental second chance twisting her stomach into knots.
It would be good. They’d talk. Clear the air. Maybe they could even be friends after this.
Maybe.
Katya didn’t show up until 8:37, and when she did, she looked wrecked.
Her hair was pulled back haphazardly into a bun, flyaways sticking out like broken feathers. Her coat was slung over one arm, scrubs wrinkled and flecked with something dark that made Trixie not want to ask questions. She looked tired, heavy, worn raw from the inside, but still impossibly beautiful. Those eyes. That face. Like she’d been carved from vengeance and poetry.
“Wow,” Katya said, unlocking the building’s front door with a glance at Trixie. “You look like you’re about to confess to murder or win The Bachelor. Come on.”
Trixie followed silently, heart hammering. Inside the apartment, everything was painfully Katya, warm tones, strange but beautiful artwork, a faint smell of mint and something herbal she couldn’t place. Trixie stood awkwardly near the door, arms tight around herself, while Katya shrugged out of her coat and tossed her keys onto the counter like they offended her.
“So,” Katya said, turning to her. “Talk.”
Trixie took a breath. “I just wanted to say I’m sorry. For leaving. For ghosting you. For not giving you the respect of a conversation. I was—scared. And stupid. And I’ve regretted it for a long time.”
Katya stared at her for a long moment, eyes unreadable. Then she walked past her and poured herself a glass of water. Drank it in silence. Set it down.
“I almost didn’t ask you to come tonight,” Katya said finally, voice low. “But I needed to know if it still hurt. And guess what? It does.”
Trixie flinched.
“I gave you everything I had, back then,” Katya went on, arms crossed now. “And you left like I was nothing. Not even worth a goodbye.”
“You weren’t nothing,” Trixie whispered.
“You treated me like I was.”
There was a long silence.
Katya’s jaw clenched. “And now? What—you show up all dolled up, looking like a fucking spring fairy, and what? You think I’ll forget it?”
Trixie’s throat was dry. “I don’t know. I just—I never stopped thinking about you. And when I saw you again, I realized it never really stopped hurting for me, either.”
Katya shook her head like she didn’t want to hear it, but she didn’t look away.
Trixie’s voice trembled. “You look good.”
Katya huffed a bitter laugh. “Yeah, well, death and trauma are excellent skincare.”
And still, even as she said it, Trixie couldn’t stop staring. The way Katya’s collarbone dipped beneath her scrub top. The way her hands shook just slightly, and how she curled them into fists to stop it. The way her mouth had always curled on one side when she was trying not to cry.
Trixie stepped forward. “I didn’t come here expecting anything. I just wanted to tell you the truth.”
“You did,” Katya said quietly. “Now what?”
Trixie didn’t answer.
Neither did Katya.
They just stared at each other, years of unspoken things pulling like gravity between them. It wasn’t soft. It wasn’t romantic. It was tense and bitter and bruised.
But then Katya stepped forward. Trixie barely had time to breathe before their mouths crashed together.
It wasn’t a kiss; it was a breaking point.
Katya’s hand fisted in Trixie’s hair. Trixie’s fingers dug into her waist like she was anchoring herself to reality. It was desperate and unsteady and full of fire, old wounds reopened with every touch.
Trixie gasped against her mouth. Katya pulled back just enough to look at her, their foreheads pressed together.
“You still smell like that damn coconut body wash,” Katya said, breathless.
Trixie’s lips curved into something like a smile, eyes glinting with unshed tears. “You remembered.”
Katya kissed her again—harder this time—and Trixie stopped thinking altogether.
—
The thing about anatomy is, it’s complicated.
Beneath the skin lies a whole universe: muscles, veins, arteries twisting like roads on a map, every one leading—if you know how to read it—straight to the heart.
So, when Katya pulled away from the kiss, it wasn’t abrupt. It was slow, careful, like untying a knot that had been pulling too tight for too long.
Trixie froze, her breath caught somewhere between hope and heartbreak.
“What?” she asked, her voice barely a whisper, though she already knew. “What is it?”
Katya's eyes softened, but her voice stayed steady. “Trixie,” she said like a confession, like a regret, like her name was a prayer she wasn’t sure she still believed in. “We can’t.”
Trixie nodded, though her body leaned forward instinctively, as if trying to stay close to something that was already fading. The warmth between them cooled too quickly.
“I don’t want to rush into anything again,” Katya said, and there was a rawness to her words that felt like skin split open. “Last time we did that, it ended with my heart in pieces. I still love you. But I haven’t forgiven you. Not yet.”
Trixie swallowed, her mouth dry. Her heart cracked, but it didn’t crumble. “Okay,” she said.
“Okay,” Katya echoed, the word falling between them like the click of a lock.
A silence stretched out like a held breath.
“You should shower,” Trixie finally offered, mustering a faint smirk. “You smell like sweat and blood.”
Katya chuckled, glancing down at her wrinkled scrubs. “Yeah. Yeah, I probably do.”
Then, quieter, more hesitant: “Stay? We can talk when I’m done?”
The vulnerability in her voice nearly undid Trixie. She nodded quickly. “Yeah, I’ll stay.”
Katya disappeared down the hallway, her sock clad feet soft against the wood floor. The bathroom door clicked shut, and a moment later, the gentle rush of water began.
Trixie wandered.
Katya’s apartment was different than she’d imagined, smaller, warmer. Lived-in. Plants on the windowsill. Books stacked under the coffee table. A worn throw blanket draped over the couch like someone had fallen asleep under it too many nights to count.
On a small table near the fireplace, there was a box. Dusty, barely opened.
Trixie hesitated, then lifted the lid.
Inside were old photographs, faded Polaroids from college. Her and Katya at some house party, laughing, arms tangled around each other. A picture of them in matching lab coats, Trixie holding a fake syringe to Katya’s temple while Katya rolled her eyes. One of Katya asleep on Trixie’s chest, a textbook open beside them.
Trixie smiled, small and sad.
Underneath the photos were loose sketch pages, anatomical drawings. Bone and muscle. Hands, mostly. And faces. One face, over and over again. Hers.
“God, you sap,” Trixie whispered, her eyes stinging.
When Katya returned, damp hair curling around her face, she paused in the doorway, watching Trixie gently close the box.
“You kept these,” Trixie said softly.
“I couldn’t throw them away,” Katya replied, padding barefoot into the room. “I tried once. Got as far as the trash chute, then stood there like an idiot and cried.”
Trixie met her gaze. “I didn’t come here to beg for you back. I just… I missed you. And I wanted to try. Even if it’s just as friends.”
Katya sat beside her. Not too close, not too far. “I think… I want to try too. I’m just scared.”
“Me too.”
And for a while, they just talked.
About how Katya almost quit med school during her third year. About how Trixie played piano again for the first time in months. They talked about the little things, and then the big ones. The silences between them were no longer heavy, they were full of things that could grow.
Katya looked at Trixie in the soft light of her living room, the shadows gentle on her face, the warmth slowly returning to her chest.
Maybe, she thought, just maybe… it’s not too late.