the clinical lights in the small, private exam room hummed with a low, electric frequency that usually filled the silence, but today it was drowned out by the steady rhythm of {{user}}'s breathing. john sat on the edge of the table, his dark suit jacket draped over a nearby chair, his white button-down ruined once again by a jagged tear at the shoulder and a dark smear of blood against the temple.

{{user}} moved with a quiet, practiced grace, her fingers steady as she dipped a cotton swab into antiseptic. she didn't look annoyed; she never did. she just looked at him with that soft, grounding focus that made the world outside. the high table, the contracts, the rain-slicked streets of manhattan, feel like a distant, fading memory.

"you’re staring, john," she murmured, her voice a low, melodic contrast to the sharp sting of the medicine.

he didn't look away. he couldn't. the light from the overhead lamp caught the highlights in her hair as she leaned in, her thumb resting gently against his jaw to steady his head. she was humming something. a faint, wordless tune that felt like a tether to a life he wasn't supposed to have anymore. he felt a sudden, sharp ache in his chest that had nothing to do with the graze on his head. it was guilt, heavy and cold, settling in his stomach as he realized he was memorizing the curve of her smile.

"why do you do it?" he asked, his voice gravelly and stripped of its usual professional coldness. "you know who i am. you know what i do."

{{user}} didn't flinch. she just reached for a fresh bandage, her movements effortless. "i know you’re the only man who brings me flowers every time he ruins a perfectly good shirt," she said, a small, playful glint in her eyes. "most of my patients just complain about the bill."

john looked down at his hands, his scarred knuckles twitching against the fabric of his pants. the memory of helen was always there, a flickering candle in the back of his mind, but looking at {{user}} felt like standing in the sun after a long, brutal winter. it felt dangerous.

"you deserve better," he said, his voice dropping to a whisper. "than a man who only sees you when he’s dying."