Daniel's Doubt
Chapter 10 - Daniel's Doubt
The following weeks moved with a specific, exhausting weight, Daniel navigating divorce proceedings alongside an active criminal investigation, Lily settled at her grandmother's house under careful, deliberate supervision, her nightmares, according to Joan's careful reports, gradually growing less frequent as the immediate danger receded from her daily life.
Daniel found himself, during this period, leaning increasingly on Nora, their conversations extending beyond the investigation itself into something considerably more personal, the specific comfort of talking with someone who understood, professionally and personally, exactly what kind of danger his family had survived.
"I keep replaying every moment of the past two years," he told her, during one such conversation at the diner after her shift had ended, the two of them sharing coffee at a corner table considerably quieter than the booth where everything had started. "Every small illness I dismissed, every strange comment from Joan I brushed aside. I keep wondering how I missed something this significant, for this long."
"You missed it," Nora said gently, "because Caroline was very good at making sure you would. That's not a failure of attention on your part. That's the specific, calculated skill of someone who's done this before and learned exactly how to avoid detection."
"You keep saying that," Daniel said, "and I believe you intellectually. I still can't fully forgive myself for not seeing it sooner."
Nora considered him carefully, the specific weight of her own unresolved guilt from the case she'd left medicine over clearly informing her response.
"I spent three years unable to forgive myself for missing a pattern in a patient I wasn't even related to," she said. "I understand, considerably more than most people could, exactly how heavy that particular guilt sits. I don't think either of us fully resolves it quickly. I think we just learn to carry it while still moving forward, the way I'm trying to learn to do myself, working in this diner instead of an ER, still helping people, just differently now."
Daniel looked at her, something shifting in his understanding of the past several weeks, the specific comfort he'd found in her presence extending beyond simple gratitude for her intervention at the diner.
"Do you ever think about going back," he asked. "To medicine."
Nora was quiet a long moment, considering the question with the same careful weight she gave everything.
"Sometimes," she admitted. "Watching this case unfold, being useful in exactly the way my training prepared me to be, has made me consider it more seriously than I have in three years. I don't know yet if I'm ready. I think I might be getting closer."
"I hope you go back," Daniel said. "Not because I need you to. Because I think you'd save considerably more people doing what you were actually trained for, rather than pouring coffee for strangers who'll never know what you're actually capable of."
Nora smiled, something warm and slightly uncertain crossing her expression.
May you like
"That's a generous thing to say," she said, "from a man currently navigating a divorce and a criminal investigation into his own household. I'm not sure either of us is in the best position to be making significant life declarations to each other quite yet."
"Maybe not," Daniel agreed. "I still meant it."
