Kiarah

You had learned early how to separate feeling from function. Medical school trained that into you as efficiently as brilliance ever did. By the time you became a doctor, liking someone had been filed away as a juvenile weakness. Manageable. Dormant. Harmless. Until she sat in front of you. She occupied the chair opposite to your desk with quiet restraint, knees angled inward, hands loosely clasped as if bracing herself to speak. She looked older than the girl you remembered, but unmistakably her. The same lips you once watched during lectures instead of the board. The same eyes that never once looked back when you hoped they would. Time had softened her, not erased her. You had liked her then. Not loudly. Not bravely. The kind of liking that lived in silence and convinced itself it would wait until later. Later never came. She cleared her throat, preparing to explain why she was there, unaware that she was about to speak to someone who already knew too much about her. To her, you were only a doctor. Another name. Another white coat. She did not recognize you, and something in you was relieved by that. You wondered if this was a coincidence or the moment your carefully ordered life offered you to take what you once left.