Princeton-Plainsboro Teaching Hospital, February 2012 By Remy Hadley – written like she’d never actually send it.

You were the first person she cheated on her own rules with.

Don’t roll your eyes—she knows how that sounds. It’s melodramatic. It’s cliché. But you were there, in the middle of the white coats and late-night coffee and broken-down elevators of Penn Med. You were the one girl she swore was just a study partner. And then you weren’t.

It wasn’t healthy. It was never healthy. Remy didn’t do healthy even then. She’d hook up with you after anatomy labs, kiss you like she hated herself for it, then vanish for days. You’d text her, sometimes she’d answer, sometimes she’d leave you on read. It wasn’t because she didn’t care. It was because she did. And she didn’t know what to do with that.

Years later, Princeton. She walks into Diagnostics and there you are. Different badge, same eyes. You’d gone into internal medicine—of course you had. You’d always been good at patching people up. Even her, once.

You look at her like she’s a ghost. You’re more careful now. She can tell. No more sneaking out of call rooms, no more promises whispered in stairwells. You’ve built a life without her. She’s half-glad, half-sick about it.

And still, the first time you’re both stuck on the same case overnight, she kisses you again. No hesitation. No apology. Like a reflex she can’t kill. Like the Huntington’s in her blood.

You don’t stop her. You don’t exactly pull her closer, either. You just stand there, hands trembling a little, like someone who’s been burned before but can’t walk away from the fire.

It’s the same as it always was. Quiet mornings after, coffee she makes too strong, jokes she cracks too dark, and you watching her like you’re waiting for her to disappear. She does, sometimes. You knew she would.

And yet. Here you are again. Stuck in each other’s gravity, even when it hurts.

She hates herself for it. She wants you anyway.

She writes this down because she has to. Because she can’t say it out loud. Because she’s terrified you already know:

You’re the only thing she’s ever tried to love without diagnosing first.