Page 4 of Never Quite Gone

Time stretched like taffy, simultaneously too fast and too slow. I could hear the team calling out medications, joules,minutes. I recognized the tone in their voices – the one that came when hope was fading but determination wasn't. We'd all been there, fighting against inevitability, pushing against the boundaries of what medicine could do.

When they finally stopped, when Sofia looked up with devastation written across her face, when the monitor showed that final, flat green line – I didn't move. My hands stayed pressed against the glass, leaving marks that would fade just like everything else.

Inside the trauma room, in the sudden terrible stillness, someone called time of death. The words echoed through the intercom, clinical and cold:

“Time of death, 23:47.”

My surgeon's hands, the ones that had saved so many lives but couldn't save the one that mattered most, finally fell to my sides. There was nothing left to hold onto.

The last thought I had before shock claimed me was that Michael's unfinished “I love you” would haunt me forever – a sentence without an ending, just like us.

I don't remember leaving the trauma bay. The next clear memory I have is sitting in the physician's lounge, mechanical movements carrying me through the motions of changing into clean scrubs. My bloodied suit – Michael's blood, my anniversary suit, the one he'd helped me pick out – sat in a biohazard bag by my feet. Someone had brought me coffee. It sat untouched, steam rising like the ghost of all our morning conversations.

The paperwork appeared in front of me like a cruel magic trick. Death certificates were usually Bailey's job – my senior resident who handled the administrative side of dying so I didn't have to. But this time, my hands moved across the forms with surgical precision. Each box a small autopsy of our life together:

Name of Deceased: Michael James Davidson

Date of Death: April 15, 2019

Time of Death: 23:47

Cause of Death: Blunt Force Trauma

Manner of Death: Accident

The letters came out perfect, each stroke exact. The same handwriting that had signed countless prescriptions, surgical notes, birthday cards to Michael. Dr. Karen Chen, one of our new residents, hovered nearby like a concerned moth, continuously offering water and tissues I didn't want. Her whispered “I'm so sorry” bounced off me like rain on a window.

When the police arrived, I recited the facts with the same detachment I used during M&M conferences. “The light was yellow. The truck came from the left. Impact occurred at approximately 23:20. Yes, it was raining. No, I didn't see if the other driver was injured. The airbags deployed. We were wearing seatbelts. We were coming from Le Bernardin. It was our anniversary.”

Each detail was a knife, precise and sharp, carving the truth deeper into whatever was left of my heart. The officer's pencil scratched against his notepad, recording the exact moment my world ended in objective, procedural language.

Sofia appeared at my elbow, her fingers warm against my cold skin. “Eli, let me handle this.” Her voice was gentle but firm, the same tone she used with difficult patients. “You don't have to do this now.”

I shook my head, my hand steady as I signed the final form. My signature looked exactly the same as it had this morning. Shouldn't it look different? Shouldn't everything look different?

The first crack in my composure came with the sound of Rachel's voice. My sister's cry echoed through the hallway, a sound of pure anguish that bypassed all my carefully constructed walls. She burst into the room like a storm, her face already wet with tears, and threw herself at me. For a moment, I stood frozen, unable to process the contact. Then my arms moved without my permission, wrapping around her as she sobbed into my scrub top.

David arrived moments later, still in his FDNY uniform, smelling of smoke and rain. He didn't say anything – my brother-in-law had always understood the value of silence – just placed his hand on my shoulder. The weight of it anchored me to reality, even as everything else seemed to be floating away.

The hospital chaplain made an appearance, their practiced speech faltering when they met my eyes. I'd worked with them countless times, had even admired their ability to comfort the bereaved. Now their words washed over me like static. I already knew every platitude, had delivered them myself to countless families. They felt like ashes in my mouth.

Dawn crept over Manhattan like a watercolor painting, the sky bleeding from black to gray to pale pink. Sofia insisted on driving me home, and I didn't have the energy to argue. I watched the city wake up through the passenger window, each sign of life a personal affront. How dare the world continue? How dare the sun rise? How dare anything exist in a universe where Michael didn't?

The doorman at our building – Jim, who had just celebrated his twentieth anniversary here, who Michael always brought coffee on cold mornings – started to offer condolences, but his words died when he saw my face. The elevator ride to our floor felt endless, the mechanical hum filling the silence where Michael's voice should have been.

Our apartment was a museum of unfinished moments. Michael's coffee mug sat on the counter, a ring of dried coffee marking where he'd set it down yesterday morning. His architectural plans spread across the dining table, pencil marks and sticky notes describing a future he'd never see. A post-it note on the fridge reminded us to pick up wine for Rachel's birthday next week. His keys hung on their hook by the door, the little block architect keychain I'd given him as a joke still attached.

The scent of him lingered everywhere – his shampoo, his cologne, the essential Michael-ness that I'd breathed in every morning for eight years. I moved through the space like a ghost, afraid to disturb anything, terrified of erasing these last traces of him.

In our bedroom – no, my bedroom now, and the thought was a physical pain – his favorite sweater was draped over the chair where he'd left it yesterday morning. The gray cashmere one I'd given him last Christmas, the one he said felt like wearing a hug. My legs gave out and I sank to the floor, gathering the fabric in my hands. My surgeon's hands, always steady, now shook as I pressed the sweater to my face, breathing in deeply, searching for him in the familiar scent.

The sun climbed higher in the sky, painting rectangles of light across the floor where I sat. Time passed, maybe hours, maybe minutes. I couldn't tell anymore. Everything had become fluid, unreal. The only solid thing was the sweater in my hands and the ring on my finger.

When Sofia let herself in hours later – using the spare key Michael had insisted we give her “in case of emergencies” – she found me still there, sitting in a patch of sunlight, tears falling silently onto gray cashmere. She didn't say anything, just sat down beside me on the floor and took my hand, her fingers interlacing with mine the way Michael's had just hours ago in a taxi that smelled like vanilla air freshener and rain.

CHAPTER 1

Just Another Tuesday

---