Chapter 4 - The Priceless Ink
Time seemed to freeze.
I dropped to my knees with a sharp gasp, my hands hovering desperately over the ruined leather bindings. But it was too late. The heavy fountain pen ink I had used for years began to instantly bleed across the pages, dissolving intricate anatomical sketches of brain tissue, blurring Dr. Harrison’s handwritten corrections in the margins, and turning a decade of professional devotion into an illegible, soggy gray sludge.
“No, no, no,” I choked out, my fingers frantically trying to separate the pages, but the wet paper tore apart in my hands like wet tissue.
Heavy footsteps thundered down the hallway, and Ethan burst into the guest room, panting as if he had run a marathon. He took one look at the shattered glass on the floor, the spreading puddle of water, and the ruined notebooks soaking in the middle of it.
Did he look at me? Did he look at my trembling hands covered in black ink?
No. Ethan immediately spun toward Chloe, his face twisted in frantic concern.
“Chloe! Are you okay? Did any glass cut your feet? Why were you holding a glass in here?”
Chloe whimpered, burying her face in her hands. “I’m so sorry, Ethan! I just wanted to talk to her, and I dropped it! Her stupid old books were in the way!”
Only after checking every single one of Chloe’s fingers for imaginary cuts did Ethan finally turn his gaze down toward me. He looked at the soaked black notebooks, let out an irritated, dismissive sigh, and crossed his arms.
“Anna, why do you have to be so dramatic?” Ethan snapped, shaking his head. “They’re just notebooks. Relax. I’ll buy you a brand-new pack of Moleskines tomorrow on Amazon, and you can just rewrite whatever was in there.”
I stared up at him from the floor, my hands stained black with the ghost of my career, my heart completely calcified.
“Rewrite them?” I asked, my voice dead and hollow. “Ethan, Dr. Harrison’s marginalia on page forty-two was his final surgical advice before he died of pancreatic cancer. I cannot download his brain from the cloud. Those notes documented unique vascular anomalies I assisted on during my residency. They are gone forever.”
Ethan rolled his eyes, his tone dripping with condescension. “Well, maybe if you didn't leave important things lying around on the floor where people could trip, this wouldn't have happened. Honestly, Anna, you should be digitizing your work anyway. This is just a failure of basic organization on your part.”
He didn't apologize. He didn't offer a tissue. He didn't even look at me like I was a human being who had just lost a piece of her soul. He turned back to Chloe, patting her shoulder gently. “Come on, sweetie. Let’s get you out of this room before you step on a stray shard of glass.”
They walked out together, closing the door behind them, leaving me kneeling in a puddle of water and ruined ink.
The last remaining thread holding my sanity to that apartment didn't snap—it dissolved.
I stood up slowly, walked over to my phone sitting on the nightstand, and dialed our leasing agent's direct cell phone number.
“Hi, Sarah,” I said, my voice completely steady. “It’s Dr. Anna Vance. Regarding the lease termination for unit 402... move forward with it immediately. Effective tonight.”
“Are you sure, Dr. Vance?” Sarah asked hesitantly. “Mr. Vance signed the renewal papers just yesterday—”
“I am the primary guarantor and my name is on the master title,” I interrupted sharply. “Execute the clause for immediate termination due to uninhabitable living conditions and lease violation. I am vacating tonight. Have the building security ready to oversee the property handover at 8:00 AM tomorrow.”
“Consider it done,” Sarah replied.
Before Ethan could walk back into the room to lecture me about household organization, my phone vibrated violently against the nightstand. A new email notification popped up on the lock screen.
It was an email from Chloe’s mother, Linda.
May you like
I swiped the notification, read the first line of the message, and a cold, breathtaking smile slowly spread across my face.
A fraction of a second later, Ethan’s phone buzzed loudly out in the living room.
