Signal Loss

The iPhone lay face down on the nightstand, its silent accusations pressing into the dark. Elena had stopped checking it hours ago — somewhere around the third missed call from her mother, the second panicked text from Daniel. She knew what they'd say. They meant well. Their concern was a heavy blanket she couldn't breathe under.

She peeled an orange in the kitchen, the citrus spray sharp against her fingers, the scent violently bright in the stagnant air of her apartment. She hadn't eaten in two days. The fruit's segments burst between her teeth, too sour, too alive. She forced herself to swallow.

"You're running yourself into the ground," Daniel had said last night, his hand hovering over her shoulder like he wanted to touch her but couldn't find the courage. "This job, this hours — it's eating you alive."

She wanted to tell him about the patient who died on Tuesday. The sixteen-year-old girl who'd looked at Elena with such trust in those final moments, who'd squeezed her hand and said, "You'll save me, right?" The way the monitor had flatlined anyway. The way Elena had stood there feeling like a fraud, a failure in a white coat.

Instead she'd said, "I'm fine," and felt something inside her calcify.

Now she pulled on her running shoes at 3 AM, the laces biting into her fingers as she tied them. The city streets were empty, fluorescent streetlights painting everything in sickly yellow. She ran until her lungs burned, until her legs were leaden, until she was nothing but breath and motion and the thud of her heart against her ribs. Running was the only thing that quieted the voice that whispered she should have done something different, should have saved someone else.

The iPhone buzzed on the nightstand as she let herself back in, sweaty and trembling. Daniel again. She picked it up, thumb hovering over the screen, and for a moment she wanted to answer. To tell him everything. To let someone else hold the weight.

Instead she placed it back on the nightstand, face down, and lay in the dark listening to the refrigerator hum, remembering how the orange had tasted like something she used to recognize as life.