Chapter 14: You Signed Them All I dropped the scalpel. It hit the floor with a small, dull clink. Not loud. Not dramatic. Just enough to break the silence I’d been standing in. The moment it touched the tile, every mirror around me shattered. Not glass. Not shards. Pages. Hundreds of them. Thousands. Falling like snow, but heavier. Slower. Each one fluttering down with the weight of ink and dates and signatures. Medical records. My name at the bottom of every one. Dr. Elias V. Scrawled in blue, in black, in red. Some neat. Some rushed. Some shaky. All mine. I didn’t move. The pages kept falling. They didn’t pile at my feet. They just kept coming. Like the corridor had turned into a printer spitting out every failure I’d ever signed off on. Every child. Every incision. Every mistake wrapped in sterile paper and legal language. I watched them drift past my face. Names I didn’t remember. Dates I didn’t recognize. Diagnoses I didn’t recall writing. But the signature—always mine. Lena stopped walking. She turned. Her scrubs were still clean. Her face still calm. Her eyes still watching me like she’d been waiting for this exact second. She didn’t look surprised. Didn’t look angry. Just present. Like she’d rehearsed this moment in her head a hundred times and now, finally, I was catching up. She said, “You signed them all.” I didn’t answer. I couldn’t. My throat felt tight. Not from the air. Not from the counter. From the weight of those pages. From the way they kept falling even though there was no ceiling above them to hold them. Like the walls themselves were vomiting up my history. Lena took one step toward me. Then another. She didn’t hurry. Didn’t rush. Just closed the distance like she knew I wouldn’t run. Like she knew I was done running. She stopped right in front of me. Close enough that I could see the faint lines under her eyes. Close enough that I could smell the antiseptic still clinging to her skin. Close enough that I could see the way her fingers curled slightly at her sides, like she was holding herself back from reaching out. She said, “Now sign the last one.” A clipboard appeared in my hands. I didn’t see it come. Didn’t feel it land. One second my hands were empty. The next, they were holding smooth plastic and stiff paper. The consent form sat on top. Standard hospital layout. Patient name. Procedure. Risks. Signature line. I looked at the patient name. Lena M. Varga. My sister. The procedure listed was a spinal decompression. Elective. High risk. Experimental. Scheduled for three days after the little girl died on my table. Three days after I walked out of the courtroom. Three days after I stopped being a surgeon. I never performed it. I never even scheduled it. I stared at the form. My name was already printed at the bottom under “Attending Surgeon.” All it needed was my signature. One line. One motion. One more time putting my name to something I couldn’t fix. The pen was clipped to the board. Black. Standard issue. The kind they give you at every hospital front desk. The kind you use to sign discharge papers. The kind you use to sign death certificates. I unclipped it. My fingers wrapped around it. Not tight. Not loose. Just enough to hold it steady. The cap was still on. I didn’t take it off. Not yet. Lena didn’t move. She didn’t speak. She just stood there. Watching. Waiting. Like she’d done in the white room. Like she’d done in every reflection. Like she’d done every time I made a cut I shouldn’t have made. The counter on my chest was still frozen at 206. I didn’t check it. I didn’t need to. The air didn’t thin. The walls didn’t shake. The floor didn’t open. Nothing changed except the clipboard in my hands and the pen in my grip and the names starting to rise from the floor. They didn’t shout. Didn’t scream. Didn’t cry. They just whispered. One after another. Soft. Steady. Like they were reading off a list. Like they were checking in. Like they were making sure I heard them this time. “Avery.” “Marcus.” “Sophie.” “Daniel.” “Emily.” “Jordan.” “Lena.” I gripped the pen tighter.