Page 10 of Never Quite Gone

“You've always had a weird knack for finding things,” Will pressed, his tone dancing between curiosity and threat. “But this feels personal. The way you pushed for Presbyterian, the timing... it's like you knew exactly what you'd find there.”

The journal pages seemed to pulse in my hands like a second heartbeat. More than just historical records - they were breadcrumbs dropped by whatever cosmic force kept throwing us together across centuries. Every lifetime, the signs appeared: a painting with familiar eyes, a melody that sparked recognition, or now, these yellowed pages tracking a healer's work.

“Strange is relative,” I said, flashing a smile loaded with centuries of secrets. “And timing, dear brother, is everything.”

Will's eyes narrowed like a snake sizing up prey. In another life, he'd understood too well. That understanding had led to betrayal that still echoed through time like a gunshot in an empty church. But here, now, he was just my younger brother playing corporate chess with pieces he couldn't quite recognize.

“Father expects a full presentation on Presbyterian,” he said, rising with that liquid grace that always made my combat instincts twitch. “Make sure the numbers justify your... personal interest.”

I watched him leave, noting how the other suits shifted around him like planets around a sun. Will had always been magnetic as gravity, pulling people into his orbit. Back in the day, that charisma had made him a natural leader, until ambition turned his loyalty toxic. Now he wielded corporate power instead of military might, but the pattern stayed the same as fucking always.

The journal pages burned against my fingers like evidence at a crime scene, another piece of proof that some souls were cosmic magnets, destined to find each other across time's wasteland. Eli's precise medical notes from the 1890s carried the same dedicationI'd seen yesterday in the ER. Different lifetime, same essential truth about who he was at his core.

Marcus materialized like a ghost at my shoulder, his presence screaming about all the corporate bullshit waiting to be handled. “Construction permits need your signature,” he murmured. “Board's expecting detailed projections on the medical office complex.”

I nodded, tucking the journal pages into my inner pocket, close to my heart where they belonged. The corporate dance would go on - presentations, numbers, strategies, all that surface-level shit. But beneath it ran currents older than stock options or profit margins.

Somewhere across the city, Eli was probably already knuckle-deep in saving lives. Soon I'd see him again. The journal pages were just another sign, another thread in fate's tapestry.

Will finding them wasn't coincidence - nothing in our twisted destiny ever was. But this time, armed with centuries of knowledge and the bone-deep determination that had carried me through countless lives, I wouldn't let ancient patterns repeat. This time, I'd protect what we'd lost too many times before.

Even if it meant burning everything else to the ground.

CHAPTER 3

Boardroom Ghosts

The fluorescent lights cast their usual sickly glow across empty hallways, night shift's exhaustion bleeding into that dead zone before dawn. Usually these quiet hours felt like home, but today everything seemed off-kilter, like a heart beating with an extra thump where it shouldn't be.

I stared at my tablet, trying to lose myself in overnight reports. Mrs. Chen's vitals holding steady. Yesterday's construction victims scattered across various states of almost-dead: Jenkins finally stabilizing in ICU, his chest tube not trying to drown him anymore. Rodriguez hanging on after that brutal thoracotomy. Thompson's brain deciding not to herniate after all. Patterson's infection numbers crawling down. Data. Facts. The kind of certainty I could trust when everything else felt like quicksand.

But my eyes kept drifting to those fucking architectural renderings saved in another folder. The courtyard design caught me again - light and shadow playing across glass and stone in patterns that made my head hurt with their familiarity. Michael would've been all over this shit. “Light's its own kind of medicine,” he used to say, going on about transforming spaces from sterile to healing.

Three seconds for that memory. Except... it felt wrong somehow.Layered. Like Michael's voice carried echoes of other voices, other times, saying the same damn things about light and healing and-

No. Focus on what's real.

Room 204. Mrs. Rodriguez post emergency lap chole. Pain scores climbing higher than I liked. I adjusted her meds with mechanical precision, bumping up the scheduled Tylenol and adding some dilaudid for breakthrough pain. The familiar dance of numbers and dosages should've felt like solid ground.

Instead, Alex's face ambushed me again. Those blue eyes cutting through my bullshit across the boardroom table like they knew every secret I'd ever tried to bury. My hand clenched around the stylus until it creaked in protest.

Three seconds. That was the fucking rule. But how do you time-box something you can't even name? This... recognition that made zero sense. The dreams that had chased me all night, full of stone hallways and oil paint smell and-

“Dr. Monroe?” An intern's voice yanked me back. Katie Chen, one of our promising first-years, clutching her tablet like a security blanket. “Got a post-op in 216 showing DVT signs.”

Work. Thank fuck. This I could handle.

“Show me the ultrasound,” I ordered, voice steady as a surgeon's hands.

I lost myself in morning rounds, drowning in the rhythm of patient checks and treatment tweaks. Each note detailed to death, every order triple-checked like OCD was my religion. The sun had crawled its way up by the time I hit the doctor's lounge, hiding behind a mountain of charts that needed reviewing.

Coffee materialized at my elbow, expensive shit that Sofia insisted on. She claimed her chair with that careful casualness I knew too well - same way she'd approached me those first weeks after Michael died, when grief had hollowed me out like a corpse.

“You're not gonna talk about it, are you?” Her voice mixed exasperation with worry.

I kept staring at my chart like the words weren't dancing. “Talk about what?”

“Rothschild.” His name sent electricity down my spine. “Yesterday. I saw how he looked at you. Like he-“ She paused, fishing for words. “Like he knew you from somewhere.”

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