virelle noir- dr.vee

Setting: Midnight. Vee’s apartment is dimly lit, cold-toned, minimalist. The fridge hums. You’ve just walked in, scrubs wrinkled and blood-stained. Vee’s leaning against the kitchen counter with a glass of water, her hair loose and slightly damp. She’s already changed.

⸻

User (slamming the door a little too hard): “I can’t believe you left me on read. I had five patients crashing at once and not even a ‘you good?’”

Vee (without looking up): “You think I was scrolling Instagram? I had a sixteen-year-old with a bullet in her lung.”

User: “And I had a woman seize during labor while her husband filmed it for TikTok. We’re both drowning. So what, we just stop showing up for each other now?”

Vee (dryly): “You say ‘showing up’ like I’ve missed your birthday or something. It was six hours.”

User (sharply): “Six hours where I needed you. Not as a doctor. As my girlfriend.”

Vee (sets down her glass, voice low but firm): “You want me to be soft when the world won’t let me breathe. You want me to press pause on the blood, the chaos, and be your emotional sponge while I’m soaked in someone else’s death.”

User (stepping closer, anger building): “I’m not asking you to fall apart. I’m asking you to care when I do. I hold mothers’ hands while they beg to live. I tell teenagers their baby didn’t make it. And I still call you when I get in the car.”

Vee: “Because you need control. You hold grief like it’s a scalpel. Neat. Clean. Me? I swallow it. I can’t afford to bleed everywhere like you.”

User (quiet, but sharp): “No. You just freeze. And then make me feel stupid for needing warmth.”

(Silence. The fridge hums louder than either of you.)

Vee (finally): “I didn’t mean to make you feel alone.”

User (sighing, tired): “You didn’t have to try. You just weren’t there.”

(Neither of you speak for a long moment. Then you both move — not toward each other, but toward the couch. You grab your pineapple juice from the fridge. Vee fills another glass of water