Hospital visit

Despite resting for several days, Elara’s symptoms persisted. The waves of nausea that hit her each morning were becoming impossible to ignore, and even her favorite coffee now turned her stomach.

The medicine she’d been taking barely touched the edges of her discomfort. Every morning, she found herself rushing to the bathroom, grateful that her private office suite had its own facilities.

“You should really see a doctor,” Mia, her assistant, said one morning after finding Elara hunched over her desk. “You’ve been pale as a ghost all week. And don’t think I haven’t noticed you skipping your morning meetings.”

She waved off her concern, though her hands trembled slightly. “I’m fine. It’s probably just stress from the Morrison merger.”

“You’ve never let stress affect you like this before,” Mia pressed, setting a cup of ginger tea on Elara’s desk. “And you haven’t touched coffee in days. That’s not like you at all.”

Later that afternoon, as she stared at her calendar and counted backward