The Right Place

Hazel waited just outside the office door. The second Cleo emerged with the signed paperwork, Hazel’s face lit up brighter than the fluorescent lights overhead. She grabbed Cleo’s arm, beaming with uncontained excitement.

"Thank god you are staying," Hazel said, pulling Cleo down the quiet hospital corridor. "I finally have some real company. You have no idea what it has been like."

"That bad?" Cleo asked.

"Staring down Vaughn’s ice-queen act every single day was driving me insane. We needed someone to balance out that frosty demeanor." Hazel steered them toward the stairwell. "We are crashing at the hospital’s temporary intern housing. I managed to score a room to myself. Well, to ourselves now. It has a metal bunk bed, but the bedding is all set up. I stashed away some fresh sheets and a clean duvet cover. We can swap them out as soon as we drop our bags."

Hazel kept up a steady stream of chatter as they walked, mapping out the days ahead. "For the next two days, Professor Croft has a packed schedule of patient consultations. We are going to follow her around, observe, and gain some practical experience. If you don't have any immediate classes back on campus, you should stick around for a few more days."

Cleo nodded, absorbing the details. A profound wave of relief washed over her. She took a deep breath of the sterile hospital air. Changing her major wasn't just a spontaneous rebellion; it was a calculated pivot. This was her first successful step toward rewriting the tragic trajectory of her past life.

"By the way," Hazel asked, glancing sideways, "what was your major before this? Have you finished all your required courses? Why not just intern over there?"

The questions brought Arthur Kenrick and his elite team of researchers to mind, but the thought didn't drag Cleo down. Instead, a light, genuine smile touched her lips.

"I was majoring in cytology under Professor Arthur Kenrick," Cleo replied. "He has plenty of interns already."

Hazel’s eyes widened a fraction, recognizing the heavy-hitting name, but she didn’t press for gossip. She just nodded in understanding. "Honestly, you made the right call. It is way better to be a primary player in a tight-knit department like ours rather than some invisible, overworked drone on a massive team like Kenrick’s. With fewer students under Professor Croft, each of us gets actual attention. You came to the right place."

"Yeah," Cleo said, her chest feeling lighter with every step. "I think I did."

Hazel helped Cleo settle her minimal belongings into the dorm room before dragging her out again.

They headed straight for the campus cafeteria. As they navigated the winding walkways, Cleo pulled out her phone to send a quick text to her roommate, Felicity, letting her know she would be staying at the hospital for a couple of days.

Just as her thumb hovered over the send button, the screen switched gears. A name flashed across the glass.

*Declan Mercer.*

Cleo stared at the incoming call. Her pretty eyes remained steady, devoid of the frantic hope or anxiety that used to grip her whenever Declan reached out. With cold, practiced calm, she pressed the side button to mute the ringer. She didn't decline the call; she just silenced it and tossed the phone deep into her purse like a piece of worthless trash.

"Why aren't you answering?" Hazel asked, catching the movement out of the corner of her eye.

Cleo smiled, quickening her pace toward the cafeteria doors. "It is nobody important. Let's get some hot food."

Compared to eating a good meal, Declan was irrelevant.

*****

Miles away, standing beneath the looming shadow of the girls' dormitory building at Cresthaven Medical School, Declan watched his screen go dark. He lowered the phone, his brow creasing in disbelief.

"She is refusing to answer," Declan muttered, the frustration evident in his tight jaw.

Nolan leaned against a nearby pillar and let out a harsh sneer. "Cleo is getting more arrogant by the minute. She won't even pick up your calls now? What does she think she is pulling?"

Declan rubbed the back of his neck, annoyance simmering beneath his skin.

"Doesn't she realize we are trying to throw her a bone?" Nolan complained, his voice echoing in the quiet courtyard. "After the way she treated Maya, she should be begging us to smooth things over. Instead, I hauled myself to the archives this afternoon to help her out, and all I said was that she needed to apologize to you, Declan. You know what she did? She blew me off, stormed out, and left the archives in a total mess. And now she is screening calls. Unbelievable."

"Nolan, shut your mouth," Marcus snapped, stepping forward. "Cleo is not some backstabber. She owned up to Maya and took the hit. Stop dragging her name through the mud."

"My fault now?" Nolan shot back. "I wouldn't have dragged you all down here if I wasn't worried she would get penalized again for abandoning her post. The project data is a disaster right now."

A thick, sour silence fell over the group. The collective mood plummeted.

Caleb pulled out his own phone, breaking the tension. "I will call her roommate."

He dialed Felicity’s number. The brief conversation consisted of Caleb nodding a few times, his expression growing serious. He hung up and turned to the group.

"You said Cleo stormed out because she was mad at you," Caleb said, pinning Nolan with a hard stare. "Did it ever occur to you that she was sick?"

Declan’s dark expression fractured. "Sick? What happened?"

"Felicity said Cleo went straight to the hospital after coming back to the dorms this afternoon," Caleb explained, slipping his phone into his pocket. "She has allegedly been admitted and won't be coming back for a few days."

Nolan crossed his arms, scoffing. "You buy that? When I saw her in the archives, she looked fine. It has to be fake."

Marcus glared at him. "Right, because she would just bribe a doctor to admit her to a hospital for two days just to avoid you?"

"Who knows if she is even in a hospital?" Nolan argued. "If she is just lying in a bed, why wouldn't she answer her phone?"

"Enough," Declan ordered, his voice cutting through the bickering. He surveyed the group. "Cleo has always been thrifty, and she doesn't have a wide circle of friends at Cresthaven to hide out with. If she weren't actually hospitalized, she would be back in her room by now. Caleb, find out which hospital she is at. I am going to visit her. We need to know how she suddenly got this sick."

Caleb nodded and turned to make another call, but Trenton reached out and grabbed his shoulder, stopping him in his tracks.

"Wait," Trenton said, looking directly at Declan. "Remember what we promised tonight? We are supposed to have dinner with Maya. She just got back to campus, and you all know she is in a fragile emotional state right now."

Declan paused, the urgency in his chest stalling.

"The professor warned us that Maya cannot handle any more stress," Trenton continued, pressing his point. "If we all bail on her to go visit Cleo right now, it is going to crush her."

Declan exhaled a long breath, weighing the two sides. The decision settled over him quickly. "You are right. We cannot break our promise to Maya tonight." He looked back at his darkened phone screen. "We will put Cleo on hold. She knows how to look after herself. She probably doesn't need us crowding her room anyway."

Marcus shifted his weight, his expression darkening. "Okay, but what about the archives? With Cleo hospitalized, who knows when those files will be sorted? Professor Kenrick is going to be furious if we fall behind."

Declan pressed two fingers against his temple, feeling a headache brewing. "She already upset Professor Kenrick once this week. If this delay impacts the project timeline, he will kick her off the team for good."

The thought of Cleo losing her spot didn't sit right with Declan. Despite his frustration with her recent attitude, he felt a lingering sense of responsibility.

"We have built up too much trust over the years working together," Declan said, his tone resolute. "I don't want her kicked out. After dinner, we will all head to the lab. We are going to finish sorting that massive pile of research data ourselves."

The other senior boys exchanged glances, silently recognizing the mountain of grueling work awaiting them, but none of them argued. They nodded in agreement, intending to protect her position on the team.

*****

Miles away in the quiet comfort of the hospital dorm room, Cleo sat cross-legged on her lower bunk. She remained blissfully unaware that the grueling, stomach-ruining archive work—the very labor that had destroyed her health and caused her chronic pain in her past life—was currently being handled by the same boys who had once exploited her dedication.

She had just finished a warm, filling dinner with Hazel. Now, the room was silent save for the rapid clicking of keys. Hazel sat at the small desk in the corner, already buried in the heavy reading assignments Beatrix had handed down during their meal.

Cleo pulled her laptop from her bag and rested it on her thighs. The screen illuminated her face in the dim room. Instead of opening the assigned homework files, she opened a blank email draft.

She typed in Arthur Kenrick’s official faculty address.

For a long moment, Cleo just stared at the blinking cursor. Memories of her past life bled into the sterile white background of the screen. She remembered how she had scrambled, bled, and exhausted herself to win back the trust of the senior boys and secure Arthur’s approval. She had performed all the lab’s dirtiest, most grueling labor without a single word of complaint. When the team hit major research bottlenecks, it was Cleo who stayed up for nights on end, burning the candle at both ends to crack the data and find the solutions.

And what had it gotten her?

When graduation loomed and her official internship file landed on Arthur Kenrick’s desk, he had weaponized it against her. She vividly remembered the scathing, hypocritical evaluation he had penned: *Quiet and not professional; suitable for administrative tasks and basic lab maintenance; lacks the required intuition for academic research.*

When she had gathered the courage to confront him, begging for an explanation, Arthur had adjusted his glasses and looked down at her with cold indifference. *I cannot allow someone with such poor moral character into a prestigious academic lab. I have a duty to be responsible for the integrity of the medical field.*

Those high-minded, sanctimonious words had haunted her for years. Back then, she had been naive enough to believe she could change his mind. She had accepted thankless task after thankless task, desperate to prove her worth, right up until they orchestrated her final downfall and sent her to prison.

A bitter smile curved Cleo's lips.

Never again.

She placed her fingers on the keys and began to type. She didn't write an emotional plea or an angry rant. She crafted a formal, sterile notice of resignation, officially removing herself from his research team and withdrawing her name from his internship roster.

She refused to give Arthur Kenrick another opportunity to dictate her future. She knew, with unwavering certainty, that her upcoming internship evaluation under Professor Beatrix Croft would be fair, true, and based solely on her actual merit.

Cleo finished the final sentence. Without a shred of hesitation, she pressed the Enter key.

The email vanished from her outbox, flying through the campus servers, severing her ties once and for all.

As the screen refreshed, Cleo let out a long, shaky breath. She leaned back against the cool metal frame of the bunk bed, closing her eyes. A massive, suffocating weight—one she had carried across two lifetimes—lifted off her chest, leaving her feeling lighter, liberated, and quietly triumphant.