A/N : Thanks for the encouragement. You may have noticed the chapters of this story are much shorter than how I used to write. But it's because, by writing short installments, I can do them in one go. I don't have as much spare time as I used to, save a couple of hours every few days to rest, between my job to put food on the table and doing researches for a thesis on neurodiversity. Then you won't have to wait for weeks in between!

II

No patients. Not even for the minor ailments her esteemed colleagues had little patience and time for.

Not a single knock.

Dejectedly, Michaela picked up a copy of the Globe she had not had the heart to read the previous evening, David being in a terrible mood again, the kind that left her stunned with shock, numbed as she was already from her own grief.

While her father was still alive, he had taught her that emotional detachment was one of the hardest things to master in a doctor's life, and that too many physicians never found the quite precarious balance between true compassion and the capacity of detaching oneself from the many tragedies they came across.

"Doctors are humans, they can't be perfect, Mike," he had warned her several times, when she had complained of what she considered indifference bordering on negligence from other doctors. She also found out the hard way why it was so ill-advised for a doctor to treat family, with David still so dependent and yet rebuking all her attempts to have an active part in his care.

Michaela shook herself out of her dismal reminiscences as she shook open the paper, and tried hard to concentrate on the content, looking for something, anything that might be an excuse to engage her husband in harmless conversation.

She did not find exactly a safe topic. She found much better.

Hope. If just a glimmer. Still better than nothing at all.

"Michaela, have you gone out of your mind?"

"David… please hear me out," Michaela demanded in her calmest and most determined voice. It wasn't just for showing him she was getting tired of treading on eggshells around her own husband, but also because her assertiveness was one of her traits he loved the most. Or at least, he used to.

"… Fine. I'm listening."

Unwilling to let his dismissive tone deter her, she forged ahead: "I'm not suggesting a permanent move, David. We'd be gone for a couple of years, more or less depending on your recovery. I just believe that a complete change of scenery, fresh mountain air and sunshine would be beneficial to both your health and your mood."

"True enough, but why Colorado.. something?"

"Colorado Springs," Michaela provided patiently.

"What do you know of that place, save that's It's halfway across the country, in the middle of nowhere? What makes you want to go there so badly and suddenly, when there are plenty of places much closer to Boston we could go?"

Michaela didn't miss the suspicious, almost accusatory edge in his tone. But she had nothing to hide: Colorado Springs was in need of a physician, and she happened to be one! She knew that many of her fellow students from Medical School hah had to move to small pioneer settlements to avoid male competition and being reduced to midwifery or nursing.

"We're going there because they are looking for a doctor, and I'm going to apply."