Cheap. You lean against the metal table, your hands still stained with dried blood. The patient a young woman, barely past adolescence didn’t make it. And you were there. You did everything you could. But here, in The Pitt, that’s never enough.

You don’t say anything when the door creaks open. But he comes in anyway.

“I heard,” murmurs Michael Robinavitch’s voice, soft, as if he doesn’t want to break you any more than you already are. “They told me a little while ago.”

You don’t look at him. You can’t.

You feel his presence nearby, at a careful distance, the way he always does. As if he knows that even compassion can be too heavy when you’re broken.

“It wasn’t your fault,” he adds, barely a whisper.