One of the other nurses, a vampire, squeezed his shoulder in support.
“What happened?” River asked, her mouth a desert.
Arnan swallowed, and the vampire handed him a tissue.
River attempted to breathe deeply, trying to remain calm. She was a doctor, for the gods’ sake. A medical professional. She worked in a hospital where life and death regularly made their rounds, and she understood the ways of the world.
She’d seen firsthand that the most awful, black-hearted people often lived years past their prime, while death courted those who least deserved it first. It was a cruel trick of the world, a sick joke that seemed to have no punch line.
It was because River knew these things that even though icy dread was spreading through her stomach, even though she wanted to remain ignorant for a few minutes longer, she couldn’t. She forced herself to ask the question hovering on the tip of her tongue.
“It’s Lila, isn’t it?” The surgery was extensive, and it should still be underway. Unless… It felt like she’d swallowed cotton balls, and she gripped the counter, choking out, “Her tumor removal…”
A fist squeezed her lungs, and the words got stuck in her throat. Jammed, they piled up. She made a hoarse choking sound.
Arnan’s eyes shuttered. “I went to watch. And it… They… She…”
A keening moan rose in his throat, and he looked to the other nurses pleadingly.
“She didn’t make it,” an older, human nurse named Noelle said softly. Wrinkles lined her face, and she’d probably been working at the hospital as long as River had been alive. Her tone was equally caring and professional. “I’m sorry, Doctor Waterborn. I know you worked hard on her case.”
A long moment passed as River stared at Noelle, her brain desperately trying to make sense of what she was hearing.
Didn’t make it.
A crack appeared in the dam River used to keep her power at bay. With every word, the break in the wall grew. Waves of magic crashed against it, relentless in their pursuit of freedom.
The nurses kept speaking and comforting Arnan, but River couldn’t make out their words over the roaring in her ears.
She thought she understood that working in a hospital meant seeing death. She thought she’d prepared herself for it, that her professors had prepared her for it. After all, they’d spoken about it on their very first day of med school.
River would never forget sitting in the front row, watching Doctor Ophelia Darkwater, a witch from the Central Region, pace the front of the lecture hall. Hands folded in front of her, she’d surveyed the group of first-year students before uttering two sentences that River would never forget for as long as she lived.
“One day, someone will die under your care. Youwill notbe able to save them, no matter how hard you try.”
That day, River’s heart had pounded in her chest, and she’d clutched her pen so tightly, it had snapped in her palm.
Three other first-year students had left that same hour, but not River.
She was intimately familiar with death, and she’d known even then that this path was the only way she could hope to atone for her sins.
Doctor Darkwater had been right that day. River had seen death many times already, but none of those losses had ever affected her like this.
Her chest burned. Lila Howler had been jubilant and full of life. A brilliant flame in the midst of a room of candles.
Every time River had met with the Howlers, their positivity and inherent joy had blown her away. They’d always been smiling in spite of the awful circumstances that brought them to Lakewater General.
And now, Lila’s smile was gone. Her flame was extinguished, never to be seen again.
Bile rose in River’s throat, and she grabbed her water bottle. Leaving her tablet behind, she raced to the nearest washroom. She crashed to her knees, hugging the porcelain as she lost the meager contents of her stomach.
Everything came up, and acidic bile coated her tongue, but it wasn’t enough. The ringing remained in her ears, and those awful words kept cycling through her mind.
Didn’t make it.
River wasn’t sure how much time had passed before she stood on trembling legs. Her knees knocked together like a newborn horse as she made her way to the sink. She rinsed out her mouth and washed her hands.
Gripping the countertop so hard she was worried it would crack, she stared at her reflection. Her brown eyes were wide, her skin was paler than normal, and her mouth moved silently as she repeated Eliza’s mantra.