"So?"

"So?" Ava raised her brow at Chris who was reading some Canadian novel whose cover page she squinted at, managing to get its title as 'English patient.'

"Someone is getting a Really special treatment from a hot Doctor?" He teased, wiggling his brows suggestively at the girl.

"What hot Doctor?" Ava tried to play dumb but the grin Chris gave to her spoke otherwise that he wasn't having any of it.

"Please, no need to act clueless. I can totally tell you she's completely enamored with you."

"What me? Pff! Of course Not! Why would you say that!" Ava immediately defended herself and shook her head.

"Oh, little princess the way you're rambling, must see yourself in the mirror!"

"What happened to my face?" Her hand instantly went to her face, dreading it she had gotten a scar on her face when she fell from the stairs and the man could only laugh.

"What?" Ava snapped irritated.

"Darling, you're blushing!"

"Curse you!" She cried in exasperation and looked around before reading for a vase of flowers on the table next to her bed, and lifted it to throw at Chris but then Dr. Katerina walked in the room and looked amusingly at Ava who had the flower vase in her hand. 

"I wouldn't recommend practising throw a ball here, Ava." The doctor teased and walked towards her bed with hands in her pocket. "You two could always play a baseball later. Am I right Mr. Chris?"

"Damn." Chris muttered under his breath as he closed down stupid "The Patient" novel he's reading and threw his right leg over his knee.

"What an honor for me that a beautiful doctor like you to remembered my name."

"I'd rather warn you not to take it as a compliment. I don't flatter people."

"It's sad then because here I thought I was flattered." Chris smiled but noticed Ava sending him a deathly glare asking him to shut his mouth. "I'd have asked you out otherwise, perhaps."

"Then, I am very to turn you down because a widow would rather spend a night in mourning than to go out with you."

"I'm sorry?" CHRIS was bewildered and Ava immediately looked up at the woman after hearing those words.

"Nothing. Just telling you not interested."

"Maybe your professional Interest lies elsewhere." And Chris stole a glance of Ava's face who was ready to murder him at any given moment.

"I'm going out for a fresh air. You two can have doctor -patient talk." He winked suggestively at Ava and left the room.

"Don't mind him." Ava cleared her throat and turned towards the doctor who seemed rather unfazed by the boy's antics.

"I don't take a child seriously."

"Child? Just what's your age?"

"You wouldn't want to know."

"Try me. You don't even look in your thirties."

"800 hundred and 25 years."

"Haha, you're twenty five."

"Yeah." She said looking unamused, but then something changed on her face and asked Ava, "Are you feeling fine? Will you get fresh air outside?"

"Yeah, but the nurse isn't here and Chris..."

"I'll take you outside."

"You don't have to!!" The girl raised her both hands in front of her to stop the doctor but

Katerina had already pulled out the wheelchair from the corner and looked at the girl expectantly.

"Is the chair really necessary? I can walk I'm perfectly okay."

"Believe me it's more fun this way. Besides, we wouldn't want you to add pressure to your heart again." The doctor advised and Ava nodded in understanding, before getting out of the bed and settled on the chair. Katerina wheeled her chair out of the room and steered her through the corridor to the park in the hospital's vicinity. She wheeled the chair on the small concrete path, and Ava watched elderly patients on wheelchair, a couple walking hand in hand with IV attached to the girl's arm and a young boy with his mother. She was too engrossed in her surroundings that Ava didn't noticed Katerina had stopped them near a bench under the tree.

"What are you thinking?"

"About you?"

"..."

"No I mean I was just thinking that do you miss them? The one you loved."

"I haven't forgotten about them. It was all I had." She spoke with a nostalgic tone and a distant look in her eye.

"Does it hurt?"

"There's no single moment in which I haven't felt the guilt of not going with them. I should have gone ...I should have fought harder instead of letting them die." Katerina's voice cracked and Ava noticed her fidgeting with a ring on her index finger. " And for that I cannot forgive myself."

"But you have to they wouldn't want you to live in pain."

"You think so?" Katerina looked back at the girl with glassy eyes whose heart squeezed in her chest the sight and Ava took her hand in hers, squeezing it in reassurance.

"Yes."

At night, Katerina snuck inside Ava's room to check on the sleeping girl, brushing stray hair out of her face tenderly caressing her warm cheek with the back of her knuckles and then left the room closing the door behind her, careful not to awake the girl's father who was dozing off on the chair. She entered the elevator, and pressed the button to the fifth floor. She walked out of the elevator towards the end of the corridor, taking a turn to left before reaching a patient's room. Her hand stopped on the handle but she pressed it down and opened the door walking inside the room to find the man sleeping in his hospital gown in the darkness of his room. The woman stood quietly in the shadows near his bedside, watching the man who fluttered his eyes open and sat upright in his bed panicking when his eyes landed on the woman's face who stepped out of the shadows.

"How are you doing?" The doctor questioned and the man looked around the room frantically.

"Y-You...Stay away from me!" He pulled out IV from his arm and jumped out of the bed, running past the doctor out of the room and ran through the corridor and looked at the sleeping patients through the window glass. The doctor snarled, and barged out of the room running after the man who was calling for help but there's no soul on the floor. He looked back over his shoulder at empty corridor and took the flight of stairs running downstairs, but the doctor stood at the end of the stairs and the man panicked turning to ran back. The woman went to power room for the switch board on the same floor, and cut half of the power supply making upper storeys of the building go into pitch blackness. The man stopped at the elevator but after the power went out he took another flight of stairs, running to the upper floor. The woman was on his tail, trying to catch up to the man who was running towards the roof exit. He burst through the unlocked door, and running on the roof top of the hospital and stopped in his tracks when he saw the woman already standing there near the edge of the rooftop. The man turned back to leave but the exit door was slammed shut, and he's stranded on the building's roof with her.

"I know why everyone in the hospital is asleep. You have done something to them."

"Have I?" The doctor asked smiling walking towards him and the man ran to the opposite side of the roof near the edge.

"You don't have to be scared of me. All I want to help you. It's for your own benefit." She could remove his memories and it would work fine for both of them.

"I know who you are!" He shouted sliding back on his feet and looked down at the road.

"And what I am?"

"You at the party...to me..." His hand instantly went to cover his neck.

"I thought I have erased your memory perfectly back there when I dropped you at the hospital but it seems like even now you're not willing to cooperate."

"Don't come closer to me!" The man shouted stepping back, not realizing he had reached the edge before slipping and falling down from the top of the building with a shout. Katerina walked calmly to the edge of the building and looked down at the man's dead body on the road where the security men and an ambulance boy was gathered around him.

"Humans are the stupidest creature." The woman sighed and walked away from the edge.

-

Next morning, she walked towards the Ava's room but her face fell when she walked into the empty room. She went back and grabbed a nurse asking about the patient of the room.

"She's discharged from the hospital. They have just left now."

 Katerina turned on her heels and ran through the corridor, rushing through the automated doors of the hospital building and saw a car leaving the hospital ground. She cursed in rage hurrying down the front steps of the hospital to the parking lot and started running on the road after the car. There was heavy traffic because of the morning rush hours, and she ran after the vehicle on the sidewalk of the road along the buildings. The heel of her black pumps broke, and the woman bent down in muted anger to remove her shoes urgently before she could leave a sight of the car. Ava was sitting in the backseat, and she could make her reflection in the sideview mirror. The car turned to right before the traffic light turned green for the coming vehicles on that road, and the doctor took a turn around the corner almost getting to the car before a trailer came from other opposite cross side which made her pull back from stepping on the road, and cut the view of the car from her sight and when the trailer had passed, the car was already gone.

Katerina stood on the sidewalk outside a bakery shop, breathing heavily. She blinked up twice, frozen in her feet in realization as a single tear fell from her eye down her cheek.

She lost her again.