(Sloane)
Mara was talking about a patient from her morning shift when I stopped hearing her properly.
Not because she was boring. She never was. But because she had said something a few seconds before that I had not fully caught and it was still sitting in my head while the rest of her words moved past me.
She had said I looked different.
Not better exactly. Just different. Like something had settled.
I picked up my coffee and looked at the cafeteria around us. The usual lunchtime movement. Trays going past. People finding tables. The low noise of a building full of people doing their jobs.
Mara was still talking. I nodded at the right times.
But I was thinking about what she meant.
I tried to remember what I looked like six months ago. Before the night I walked into Vaughn's offic
