Page 92 of Stuck with Doctor Grump

I just felt… hollow.

The hallway smelled like too many different kinds of hope—some old, some fading, some desperate.

I stood outside Room 218 for a long moment before finally lifting my hand to knock.

The door opened before I even touched it.

A woman with tear-swollen eyes and a crumpled cardigan blinked up at me. “Dr. Cole?”

“Yes, ma’am.” My voice came out quiet. Steady. The way I’d trained it to be.

Her face collapsed with emotion as she stepped aside, giving me a clear view of her daughter—pale, hooked to machines, but breathing. Alive.

She turned to me and gripped my hands like they were life rafts. “She’s everything I have,” she choked out. “Everything. I lost her father to a stroke two years ago. And today—” Her voice broke. “I thought I was going to lose her too.”

I didn’t speak. There was nothing to say that could carry the weight of a mother’s fear or the fragile relief now stretched across her expression.

She squeezed harder. “You gave her back to me. Thank you. Thank you for not giving up.”

My throat tightened.

This moment—it should’ve lit me up inside. Years ago, it would’ve. This was the kind of moment I used to live for. Thereason I chased medicine down every endless corridor. The applause. The gratitude. The miracle.

But all I could feel was the echoing silence of someone else’s absence.

Ruby.

I gave the woman’s hand a small, reassuring squeeze, then stepped away. “She’s strong. And lucky to have you,” I said gently.

She nodded, then turned back to her daughter, brushing a strand of hair off the girl’s forehead with a tenderness that stung behind my eyes.

I left quietly, the soft beeping of monitors fading behind me.

By the time I pushed through the exit doors into the cool night, I couldn’t hold it in anymore.

The air hit me like a wall. Damp with drizzle and heavy with city noise.

I walked past the staff lot, down to the far corner where no one parks, and leaned against a light post, palms flat against my knees.

And then I broke.

No warning. No buildup. Just a sudden, uncontrollable flood.

I sank to the curb and let the tears come—hot, blinding, confusing.

Not because I failed.

But because saving a life didn’t feel like living mine.

I’d just pulled a girl back from the brink. A medical win most doctors wouldn’t even attempt. And still... all I could think about was a small shop in Cedar Springs. A woman who arranged blooms like they were pieces of her soul. A garden built by two mismatched hearts trying to grow something together.

And how I wasn’t there.

I scrubbed a hand over my face, the cold biting at my skin.

I used to believe purpose came with a scalpel and a title.

But standing here in a deserted parking lot, tears leaking down my cheeks, I realized something I hadn’t let myself admit until now.

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