Irina’s POV

The alarm went off at six-fifteen.

I was already awake.

I’d been lying there for twenty minutes, staring at the ceiling of the guest room, watching the light outside the window go from black to dark gray to something that almost counted as morning. My back still ached from the park bench. My nose was still running. My throat was still raw.

But I had somewhere to be.

That was new.

I sat up. Moved carefully, because the baby did not appreciate fast movements first thing in the morning, and I’d learned that the hard way twice already since leaving the palace. I pressed my feet to the floor — borrowed socks, thick and soft — and just sat there for a second.

Okay, I told myself. Okay. You can do this.

Mia’s mother — Dr. Elena Vasquez, though she’d told me twice already to just call her Elena and I still couldn’t quite make myself do it — was already in the kitchen when I came out. Coffee going. Something on the stove. She looked up when I appeared in the doorway.

"You’re early," she said.

"I know." I hovered. I didn’t know where to put my hands. "I can help—"

"Sit." She pointed at a stool. "Eat something first."

I sat.

She put a plate in front of me without asking what I wanted. Eggs, toast, half a small orange cut into sections. She did it the way people do things they’ve done a thousand times — no fuss, no production, just done.

I ate.

I ate the whole plate, which surprised me. My appetite had been strange since the pregnancy — sometimes completely absent, sometimes insistent and embarrassing. This morning it was insistent.

"Ready?" she asked, when I set the fork down.

I looked up.

"I think so," I said.

She picked up her bag. "Then let’s go."

The clinic was twelve minutes away on foot.

It was tucked into the ground floor of a narrow brick building on a street with a bakery on one side and a pharmacy on the other. The sign above the door was small. Clean. Vasquez Women’s Health & General Practice. A little bell rang when she pushed the door open.

Inside was not what I expected.

I’d expected something that looked like a medical facility. Sterile. Cold. The kind of place where the lights hummed and the chairs were plastic.

This was different. The waiting room had warm paint on the walls. Real plants in the corners. The chairs were cushioned. There was a small table with a coffee machine and a basket of individually wrapped crackers next to it, and a sign above that said Please help yourself.

A woman behind the front desk looked up when we walked in. Fifties, round face, reading glasses pushed up into silver hair.

"Morning, Doctor." Her eyes moved to me. Not unkind. Just curious. "This the new one?"

"This is Irina," Dr. Vasquez said. She didn’t break stride. "Irina, this is Patricia. She runs the front. Whatever she tells you to do, you do it."

Patricia smiled at me. A real one.

"Don’t worry," she said. "I’m not scary."

I wasn’t sure I believed her. But I smiled back.

The first thing they gave me to do was restock the waiting room.

Simple. Fine. I could do simple.

Patricia walked me through it. Where the supplies were kept, what went where, how many crackers to put out, how often to check the coffee machine. I followed her and listened and nodded and tried to hold everything in the correct order in my head.

The second thing was updating the patient intake folders.

That was where it got complicated.

Patricia handed me a stack and showed me the system — which forms went in which order, which ones needed dates checked, which ones got filed in the cabinet under the patient’s last name. I nodded again. I understood it. In my head it was very clear.

And then I sat down at the small desk in the corner and opened the first folder, and realized I’d already forgotten whether the insurance form went before or after the consent form.

I stared at it.

Okay.

I put the insurance form aside. I picked up the consent form. I put that aside too and went back to the beginning and just — started over. Slower this time. More careful.

Consent. Then insurance. Then the intake questionnaire. Then the copy of the ID.

I did three folders and then checked my work against the ones Patricia had already done, and found I’d put the ID copy in the wrong slot on two of them.

I fixed them.

Moved on.

By the time I’d done eight, I’d stopped second-guessing every form. By the time I’d done fifteen, my hand had found a rhythm.

Small victory.

I didn’t let myself feel too pleased about it.

The patients started arriving at nine.

This was the part I’d been dreading, if I was honest with myself.

The filing — fine. The restocking — fine. But actual people, actual patients, sitting in that waiting room with their own fear and pain and complicated situations — I didn’t know how I was supposed to help with that. I didn’t know what I was supposed to say.

Patricia showed me.

"You don’t say much," she told me, matter-of-factly, while we were setting up the check-in station. "You say hello. You tell them Dr. Vasquez will be with them soon. You offer them coffee and crackers. If someone’s really anxious — you’ll know, they’ll either talk too much or go completely silent — you just sit near them. Don’t push. Just be there."

I looked at her.

"That’s it?"

She shrugged. "That’s most of it."