Chapter Text
Jordan said they’d come.
She sent a message. Asked them to come. She said it was important for the kids. And they said they would. They told her not to worry.
So where the fuck were they?
Not that she cared. She didn’t. But it was almost time for the kids to come.
Emma was already going over the rules.
And Jordan wasn’t there.
But it didn’t matter.
“Dr. Moreau?”
Someone called her.
“What?”
“We have a situation downstairs.”
Jordan was there, at the front desk, leaning one hand on the counter, two coffees waiting near their elbow.
For a second, Marie forgot the hospital was loud. Jordan looked up. Their eyes met and they both blushed.
And there it was. Memories. Jordan kissing her. Jordan laughing against her skin. Jordan’s mouth on her thigh in that warm room with the TV still on and the whole world held somewhere outside the bed.
Everything they did that weekend played like a movie for her. Jordan seemed to be experiencing the same thing.
“Hi,” they said.
Marie swallowed. “Hi.”
“Hi there.” Emma was there too. Marie had forgotten about that.
“You were here on time?” she asked.
“Early, actually. But they didn’t let me in.”
Her chest did something stupid. Her gaze went to the cup of coffee with her name and Jordan saw it.
“It’s probably cold now.”
“That’s okay. I don’t mind.”
She looked back at them. Jordan tried to smile. It came out smaller than usual.
“I was going to bring it upstairs,” they said. “But then the system decided I still live here.”
Marie blinked. “What happened?”
The woman at reception turned the monitor toward her.
Volunteer clearance blocked.
Jordan Li. Active inpatient. Neuro ICU.
The woman gave Marie an apologetic look. “I already called IT. They told us to call every time one of these status errors happens.”
Marie glanced at her. “Again?”
The receptionist nodded.
The whole hospital had been fighting the system all week. Drafts vanished. Forms disappeared. Notes saved and then refused to show up again. Everyone had lost something. Everyone had blamed themselves, the Wi-Fi, the update, or God. At this point, Marie would have accepted a haunting.
A man in a hospital badge came around the corner with a tired expression.
Victor Han. Information Systems Director.
He stopped beside the desk.
“Another one?”
The receptionist nodded. “Volunteer clearance. System says active inpatient.”
She moved aside, and Victor started typing.
Marie watched the screen refresh once.
Then again.
Nothing changed.
Volunteer clearance blocked.
Jordan Li. Active inpatient.
Victor frowned. “The discharge isn’t resolving.”
“It was completed. I did it myself,” Marie said.
“I’m not saying it wasn’t.” Victor clicked through another page. “I’m saying this system isn’t seeing it. I can force a status review, but without the discharge note attached to the record this system is reading, it won’t clear automatically.”
Marie stared at him. “So what does that mean?”
“It means the doctor who completed the original discharge needs to re-document it or add a correction note here.”
He meant her.
Another note, another correction, another message to Records, another status update, another administrative nightmare that would somehow still be her problem when everyone else went home.
“Fuck.”
Marie looked at the screen again.
“Emma, you can go upstairs.”
But Emma didn’t move. “What?”
“The kids are waiting.” Marie’s voice was tight. “Apparently I’m going to miss the volunteer session because I have to prove to the computer that work I already did still exists.”
Jordan’s face changed at once.
“Marie, can I…”
She looked at them.
“Can I maybe try? Just for a minute.”
Marie stared.
“Just my record,” they said quickly. “Just this error. I won’t touch anything. I just… maybe I can find where it got stuck. Read-only. No keyboard. Whatever rules you want.”
Marie’s jaw was still tight.
“I don’t want you to miss this because the system is being stupid.”
That landed. Marie looked at Victor.
“Let them take a look.”
Victor looked at her for a moment. “Read-only,” he said. “No keyboard.”
Jordan nodded. “Read-only.”
Victor turned the monitor slightly toward them.
Jordan leaned in.
Marie stayed beside them, staring very hard at the screen and not at the way Jordan’s shoulder brushed hers.
The log was ugly. Volunteer clearance. Patient index. Admission status. Encounter lookup. A chain of systems passing the same wrong answer back and forth.
Jordan’s eyes moved over it once. Then again. Their brow furrowed.
“Wait.”
Jordan pointed at one field, still not touching the screen.
“Why is it reading that encounter?”
Victor frowned. “That’s the admission encounter.”
Jordan shook their head. “No. That’s an intake encounter. Can you search my name in the patient index?”
Victor hesitated.
Marie stepped in and typed it herself.
Jordan Li.
Enter.
The results loaded.
There were two records.
Jordan Li.
Jordan Li.
Same date of birth. Same phone number. Different record number.
Emma frowned. “Why are there two Jordans? Shouldn’t it be just one?”
Jordan's eyes remained on the screen.
“Not now, Dad. I’m busy.”
Marie laughed before she could stop it.
Victor stepped closer. “That should have merged.”
“That sounds like a no,” Jordan said.
Marie opened the first chart.
The discharge note was there.
She opened the second.
The active admission was still open. Neuro ICU.
“Oh, you have got to be kidding me,” Marie said.
“There,” Jordan said. “The note didn’t disappear. It was posted to the confirmed chart. The clearance system is reading the temporary intake record.”
Marie stared at the two records.
“So the computer thinks one version of you was discharged and the other is still admitted.”
“Bad news for ghost me,” Jordan said.
“And if that’s what’s happening to the other missing notes…”
“They may not be gone. They might be saving under stale intake records. The doctor opens the confirmed chart, writes the note, autosave grabs the wrong encounter, and the draft gets parked somewhere the front end doesn’t show.”
Marie’s mouth went dry.
She had rewritten three notes that week.
Emma whispered, “Oh my God.”
“How would you fix it?” Victor asked, moving back into place at the computer.
“Short term? Don’t make her rewrite the discharge. Close the stale intake encounter and link the existing discharge note to the confirmed chart. Then rerun clearance.”
“And long term?”
“Always resolve the confirmed chart first,” Jordan said. “Then check the active encounter attached to that chart. And autosave needs to validate where it’s writing before it saves anything. If the encounter is temporary, merged, discharged, or stale, redirect to the confirmed chart. Then run a cleanup for anything already saved under orphaned intake records.”
Jordan paused.
“But review before moving anything in bulk. Otherwise you’ll fix one disaster by making a bigger one.”
Then Victor looked down at the screen.
“There are more of these.”
“Yeah,” Jordan said. “I figured.”
Victor turned the monitor slightly back toward her.
“Dr. Moreau, can you attest that this patient was discharged from Neuro ICU?”
Marie straightened. “Yes.”
“Add the clinical correction note. I’ll close the stale intake encounter on the admin side.”
Marie sat at the desk.
Wrong active status. Duplicate intake record. Discharge completed under confirmed chart. Administrative closure only.
She submitted it.
Victor ran the closure.
The screen refreshed.
Patient status: discharged.
Volunteer clearance: active.
The badge printer started.
Emma lifted both hands. “A miracle.”
“No miracle,” Jordan said. “Just a bad integration.”
The woman at the desk handed Jordan the badge.
Jordan clipped it to their jacket.
Then they picked up the coffee and held it out to Marie.
“Thanks.”
Jordan’s smile softened. “Yeah.”
“For the coffee,” she said. “And the ghost admission.”
Jordan’s face lit up before they controlled it. “Sure.”
Behind them, Victor was already speaking into his phone.
“No, don’t close them all. Isolate stale intake encounters first. And pull the autosave mapping.”
Emma watched him, then looked at Jordan.
“Did you just accidentally fix the hospital?”
Jordan took their own coffee.
“No. I diagnosed the hospital. Different thing.”
Marie laughed before she could stop herself.
Jordan looked at her. For half a second, it was just them again.
Then Emma sighed.
“Cool. Beautiful. Emotionally devastating. We have children upstairs.”
“Yeah.”
“Yeah.”
They both said at once.
Emma went ahead.
By the time Marie and Jordan got upstairs, Emma had already started the session without them.
Markers were uncapped. Sticker sheets covered half the table. Someone had abandoned a puzzle with only the corner pieces done, and one of the boys was explaining, with full confidence, why his dinosaur needed six legs.
Then Nia appeared in the doorway. She had a purple blanket over her lap, one hand on the wheel of her chair, her mother behind her holding a tote bag. Her eyes found Jordan immediately.
“You came back,” Nia said.
Jordan crouched in front of her chair. “I did.”
She took the bag from her mom’s hand and opened it in her lap.
“I brought makeup,” Nia said quickly. “It’s my auntie’s old stuff. She said I could use it for art. And I cleaned it.”
Her mother sighed. “She has been planning this all morning.”
Nia looked at Jordan. “Can I make you pretty?”
Jordan touched a hand to their chest. “Am I not already pretty?”
“I mean prettier,” Nia said.
“Well,” Jordan said, turning back to Nia. “If you’re the professional… Then I trust your vision.”
Nia brightened. “I am the professional.”
“Okay. Then let’s do this.”
Jordan sat in one of the small chairs at the table, while Nia lined up lip gloss, blush, glitter, and something with a tiny brush.
Marie took a sip of coffee to hide her face.
Nia started with glitter on Jordan’s cheekbones. Too much. Then blush. Then more glitter, apparently for structural balance.
Jordan stayed still through all of it, only moving when Nia told them to.
“Other side.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“Don’t talk.”
“Sorry.”
Nia narrowed her eyes. “You talked again.”
Jordan closed their mouth.
Then Nia uncapped the lip gloss.
“Now this.”
Jordan looked at the tube. “That looks important.”
“It is. Don’t move your mouth.”
Jordan sat very still. Nia leaned in, concentrating hard, dragging the gloss across Jordan’s mouth. She missed the edge by a little, tried to fix it, and made it worse.
The gloss caught the light, pink and uneven, soft over the shape of their mouth.
“Can you switch?” Nia asked Jordan.
Jordan blinked. “Switch?”
“To boy-you,” Nia said. “I want to do that one too.”
“You want to do both?”
“Yes. Because your face changes and I need to see if the gloss works on both.”
Jordan’s mouth softened. “That’s very thorough.”
“I know.”
“Okay,” they said. “One second.”
They switched right there in the small plastic chair.
Jordan’s eyes found hers. Then they looked away. So did she.
Nia leaned back, studying them.
“Oh,” she said. “You’re pretty like this too.”
Jordan smiled. “Thank you.”
“But the lip gloss got weird.”
“I was afraid of that.”
“I can fix it.”
“I believe in you.”
Nia wiped Jordan’s mouth with a tissue, focused enough to look almost medical. Then she uncapped the gloss again and started over, slower this time, dragging the wand carefully across their mouth.
“There,” she said. “Now I can see.”
Jordan stayed perfectly still.
“Marie,” Nia called.
Marie turned to the girl. “What?”
“Which one is better?”
“Which one of what?”
Nia rolled her eyes. “Jordan. Which face is better?”
There were appropriate answers to that. Adult answers. Neutral answers. Marie had all of them somewhere in her head. None of them came out.
“Both,” she said.
Marie looked at Jordan.
Jordan stopped moving. Then their gaze dropped to the table, and they let Nia keep working.
“Okay,” Nia said, before getting back to business. She added glitter across the bridge of their nose and decided it needed more.
Soon two other kids joined them.
“Can I do your nails?” one asked.
Jordan looked at their hands. Rings, long fingers Marie knew too well.
“Sure.”
“You have to pick a color.”
“Black.”
The kid frowned. “You should do purple.”
Jordan nodded. “Purple it is.”
Within ten minutes, Jordan had glitter on both cheeks, one hand painted purple, the other orange because compromise had gone badly, and a tiny star near their temple.
They looked ridiculous and beautiful.
Marie stood by the supply table, pretending to count sticker sheets while she listened.
Nia was asking about movies now.
“Do you really jump off buildings?”
“Sometimes.”
“Why?”
“Bad life choices.”
Nia nodded as if that explained everything. “Do you get scared?”
“Of course.”
“But you still do it?”
Jordan looked at her for a moment.
“Sometimes being brave just means doing something while you’re scared.”
Nia looked down at the lip gloss in her hand.
“I’m scared when they put the needle in. But I still do it.”
Jordan’s voice went soft. “Then you’re brave.”
Marie had to look away.
This was worse than flirting.
Jordan wasn’t trying to make her feel anything. They were just there, sitting in a child-sized chair with glitter on their face and crooked lip gloss on their mouth, treating Nia like the bravest person in the room.
Marie missed them so much she felt almost sick with it.
The session kept moving.
Jordan read a picture book in three different voices because Nia demanded it. They lost a card game to a seven-year-old and accepted defeat with solemn respect. They helped wipe paint off a table before it dried. They asked before touching anyone’s chair, anyone’s paper, anyone’s things.
They remembered every rule Emma had given them.
At the end, Nia was tired enough that her mother came to get her.
“Time to go back, baby.”
Nia looked at Jordan. “Are you coming next time?”
Jordan’s gaze moved once to Marie.
“If Emma lets me,” they said.
Nia looked at Emma. “Let them.”
Emma lifted her clipboard. “I’ll see what I can do.”
Nia accepted that, but only barely.
Then she pointed at the star on Jordan’s temple.
“You can’t take that off yet.”
Jordan touched it. “How long do I have to keep it?”
“Until bedtime.”
“That’s serious.”
“It is.”
“I’ll try.”
Nia nodded, satisfied, and then she left.
The room seemed too quiet after that. The other kids cleared out slowly. The session was over. Jordan stayed long enough to help organize the room again. They capped the markers, stacked the sticker sheets, and pushed two small chairs back under the table. They did it all carefully, without making a joke, without trying to turn it into something.
Last time, they had stayed after everything was already done. They had made some terrible joke about being promoted to assistant crayon manager, and Marie had laughed because they had looked so pleased with themself.
This time, once the room was back in order, Jordan looked at the table. Then at her.
Marie waited. Like an idiot.
Ask them to stay.
“I should head out,” they said.
Marie nodded too fast.
“Yeah. Okay.”
Jordan adjusted the strap of their bag, then stopped. They glanced at the coffee cup on the table. Half-finished. Cold by now.
“I hope that’s not the only meal you had today,” they said.
Marie looked at them.
Jordan lifted one hand slightly, backing off before she even said anything.
“Sorry. I know. Not my business.”
Marie’s chest hurt.
“It’s okay.”
They nodded.
Another pause.
“Thank you for coming today, Jordan. It was really important for Nia.”
“It’s okay. I can keep coming if it makes the kids happy.”
“It does… and also…”
For one second, neither of them moved.
“Also what?”
“I really meant it, when I said I like having you in my life.” Her face got warm.
“Oh...”
“Do you think maybe… we can try to be friends?”
Jordan’s face softened immediately.
“Sure, Marie. I also meant it when I said having you in my life works.”
Then Jordan gave her a small, careful smile.
“Take care of yourself, Marie.”
“You too.”
They turned and left.
Marie stood there while they walked down the hall.
Turn around, she thought.
Jordan kept walking.
Please.
They reached the elevators and pressed the button.
The doors opened.
Jordan stepped inside.
Marie waited for them to look back.
They didn’t.
The doors closed.
Marie watched the numbers above the elevator.
Four.
Three.
Two.
One.
Lobby.
Then nothing.
It didn’t come back up.
The activity room blurred in front of her. And before she knew it, she was crying.
But she was on call that weekend. Which meant she had to wipe her face, pull herself back together, and stay.
By Monday morning, Marie had stopped pretending the weekend had been a weekend. It had been thirty-six hours of consults, discharge summaries, one family meeting that should have been an email, and a patient in 412 who kept trying to bargain his way out of antibiotics. By nine-thirty, she was sitting at a workstation with cold coffee, dry eyes, and a progress note open in front of her.
She had written almost the whole thing. Subjective. Objective. Assessment. Plan. Beautiful. Functional. Nearly done. Which meant, obviously, someone screamed for help.
Marie’s head snapped up. A nurse ran past the station.
“Room 418!”
Marie was already moving. The next twenty minutes disappeared into alarms, gloves, too many people in one room, and the sharp, familiar narrowing of the world into one body that needed everyone to be faster. Marie did what she had to do. She held pressure where pressure needed holding. She watched the monitor. She listened for the rhythm under the noise.
By the time the patient stabilized, her shoulders felt like stone. She walked back to the workstation with the dead certainty that her note was gone. Of course it was gone. That was how the hospital worked now. You wrote something. The system ate it. You learned humility. You wrote it again.
Marie sat down. She touched the mouse. The screen woke up.
Her note was still there. Marie stared at it. The cursor blinked patiently at the exact place she had stopped.
She leaned back in the chair. “Huh.”
A nurse at the next computer looked over. “What?”
“My note saved.”
The nurse snorted. “Yeah, apparently that happens now.”
Marie looked at her.
“They fixed something over the weekend,” the nurse said. “The disappearing-draft thing. Or at least some of it.”
Marie’s hand stayed on the mouse. “Did they?”
“That’s what I heard. IT found some problem with old intake records or something. Dr. Lin got two notes back from Friday.” The nurse lowered her voice like this was hospital gossip instead of basic functionality. “Victor Han fixed it.”
Marie stared at the screen. Victor Han. Sure.
“Didn’t you hear?” the nurse went on. “Everybody’s talking about it. It’s like he worked some kind of magic.”
Her phone buzzed against the desk. Marie looked down.
Jordan: Hey. I’m at the hospital for a bit. Can we talk?
Marie stared at the message. Her chest reacted before the rest of her did.
Marie: I'm working. Is everything okay?
The answer came a moment later.
Jordan: Yeah. Sorry, I didn't mean to bother you. I just wanted to talk to you in person, if that’s okay. But it can be another time.
Marie: You’re not bothering me. I can take my lunch break in twenty.
Jordan: On my way to the cafeteria, then. Do you want coffee?
Marie looked at the cold cup beside her keyboard. Then at the saved note. Then back at the message.
Marie: Yes.
Jordan: Okay. I’ll see you in twenty.
Marie put the phone down.
The nurse at the next computer glanced over. “You okay?”
“Yeah,” Marie said. “I’m taking my break now.”
Jordan was waiting near the small cafeteria, away from the main lunch line, with two coffees and a brown paper bag on the table.
Marie saw them before they saw her. Jordan was in the same jacket from Friday, their volunteer badge gone now, their hair a little messier than usual. They had one hand curled around their coffee cup while the other rested flat on the table, thumb tapping a nervous, quiet rhythm against the wood.
Then Jordan looked up, their face shifting instantly. “Hi.”
Marie walked over. “Hi.”
“I got you coffee,” they said, sliding the taller cup across the table.
“I noticed.”
“And a sandwich.” Jordan pushed the paper bag toward her. “White bread. Cream cheese.”
“You remembered that?”
“I remember things.”
“Thanks.” Marie pulled the sandwich out of the bag, the paper crinkling between her fingers.
“Sure.”
Marie sat down and took a bite, using the food as an excuse to avoid their eyes. “So,” she said, after swallowing. “You wanted to talk.”
“Yeah.”
Jordan breathed in, then let it out.
“Victor Han called me. He asked me to come in this morning and look at the record issue again. Officially. Not as a volunteer. Just walking through the logic with him and his team.”
Marie leaned back slightly.
“And?”
“And they found the drafts. They were exactly where we thought. Stale intake records. Orphaned encounters. Wrong autosave mapping.”
Marie looked at her coffee.
“Dr. Lin got two notes back.”
Jordan blinked. “You heard?”
“People are acting like Victor Han parted the sea.”
Jordan made a face. Marie’s mouth curved before she could stop it.
“I didn’t say I believed them.”
Jordan looked at her then. Something warm passed over their face. They sat a little straighter.
“They offered me a temporary consulting contract.”
Marie looked at them.
“Part-time. Mostly systems audit. Patient index, record-linking, autosave mapping. Stuff like that. Victor wants me to help them clean up the mess and build a better validation step so the systems stop fighting each other.”
Marie stared. “That sounds…”
“Boring?”
“I was going to say useful.”
Jordan looked down, smiling despite themself.
“Yeah.”
Marie knew, then. That was not the part they had come to tell her.
“You haven’t accepted?”
“Not yet.”
“Why?”
They looked at her.
“Because it means I’d be here.”
Jordan’s voice stayed even, but only because they were trying.
“I didn’t want to give them an answer before I knew how you felt about it.”
“You should say yes.”
Marie held their gaze. “If you want it, say yes. It sounds like something you’d be good at. It sounds like something you’d like. And it sounds like something that would actually help people.”
“I do want it.”
“Then say yes.”
“Okay.”
“Okay.”
Jordan stayed quiet for a moment.
“This is different, you know?” they said. “The hospital isn’t looking at me and seeing a face to sell. They looked at a broken system and realized I saw where it cracked.”
“I think I get it.”
Jordan looked up.
“Yeah?”
“Yeah.” Marie held their gaze. “They’re not asking you to be something for them. They’re asking you to do something. And after everything… maybe it would be good to have something that uses your knowledge without turning the rest of you into a product.”
Jordan’s fingers tightened around the cup, then relaxed.
“I mean, it’s totally unrelated to my powers,” Jordan said. “This is new territory for me. I liked the public stuff, at first. When it felt like people were looking at me because I protected someone. Because I did something that mattered.”
They looked down at their cup.
“Then it got weird. The interviews, the photos, the image. It started feeling less like they cared about what I did and more like they wanted something they could sell.”
Their thumb moved along the edge of the lid.
“I don’t know if I’ll miss it. Maybe I will. I don’t know how this is going to feel either. But I think I wanna find out.”
“Then find out,” Marie said. “And if working backstage turns out not to be Jordan Li style, you can always do something else.”
Jordan blinked. “What the fuck is Jordan Li style?”
Marie picked up the sandwich and took another bite. “I don’t know yet,” she said. “I’m still gathering data. So far, it involves expensive coffee, ghost admissions, and worrying a little bit too much about my eating habits.”
“It’s not too much. Just the perfect amount.”
“Okay.”
Marie looked at them with the kind of smile she couldn’t quite hide behind the sandwich.
“I’m sure you’re gonna do great,” she said.
Jordan looked down into their coffee again, still fighting the smile.
“But you can’t yell at Victor’s team the way you yelled at me during Overcooked,” Marie said.
“I did not yell.”
“Okay.” She grinned. “Then you can’t not yell at them the way you didn’t yell at me when I burned the digital rice.”
Marie laughed, and Jordan broke right after her. Jordan looked at her smile like they had missed it.
“I’ll be professional.”
“Good.”
“Unless someone is holding the plate and pretending they don’t know where the plate is.”
“Jordan.”
“I said unless.”
“Even if they do, you’ll still be professional.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
For a few minutes, they ate in the middle of the noise. When Marie’s phone alarm buzzed, the break felt like it had lasted five seconds. Marie silenced it.
“I have to go back.”
“Yeah. Of course.”
Jordan gathered her empty wrapper and the disposable cups, standing up with her. They were both still beside the table. Close enough that Marie could see the small crease between Jordan’s brows, the one they got when they were trying not to ask for too much.
“So,” they said. “I guess I’ll see you tomorrow. First day.”
“Yeah. I’ll see you tomorrow.”
Jordan smiled. And then they started to step back.
“Jordan.”
They stopped immediately.
“Yeah?”
Marie looked at them.
“It’ll be good to have you around.”
Jordan’s face changed. “Yeah?”
Marie’s cheeks warmed, but she did not take it back. “Yeah.”
Jordan’s smile came slower this time.
“Okay,” they said. “I’ll see you tomorrow, Marie.”
“See you tomorrow, Jordan.”