No thoughts, head empty. Winter stares at her wrist watch as she mindlessly waits for the digital clock to strike at 10PM. Just a minute more and her shift is ending.

Winter Kim, a young and promising Neurosurgeon at Synk General Hospital, currently and most evidently a tired individual. She received a call for an emergency surgery at 3 in the morning, it was an exhausting procedure that lasted for hours and with minutes to spare for a break she just waited in the hospital lounge for her regular shift to start.

And here she is now, letting out a sigh of relief as her shift finally ends. She changes out of her scrubs and into a simple jeans and jumper.

Winter bid her goodbyes to a few doctors and nurses she sees on her way out, she accidentally takes a whiff of coffee as she passes thru a vending machine, she stops her tracks and ponders for a bit. The smell is enticing but she decides not to, she plans to hit the sack the moment she gets home.

She’s off her duties for the next 2 days and Winter is adamant on getting back the few hours of sleep she missed for the past 2 weeks.

She’s ing tired and that’s the main point,  she fights off the urge to close her eyes by blinking constantly and taking a deep breath in. The road is getting darker as she gradually exits the city proper. Winter lives an our away from the city, although she dreads the drive, especially late at night, coming home to a cozy and peaceful home in an almost cabin in the woods situation, Winter thinks the long drive is worth it.

Don’t get her wrong, she a responsible driver. She drives at an appropriate speed, given her exhausted state and the lack of road visibility, Winter is cautious.

Primun non nocere, nonmaleficence, do no harm —an ethical principle that doctors carry.

She was practically driving at the speed of 30 kilometers per hour. So imagine her shock when she suddenly hits something—or someone, that came out of nowhere.

She immediately halts her car. Now, wide awake —no amount of caffeine could compete with the stress level and panic she feels right now.

She sees a shadowy blob of figure from her side mirror trying to get up. Adrenaline and general medic response kicks in and Winter immediately unbuckles her seatbelt and gets off her car.

She hurriedly inspects the unidentified figure and another dose of anxiety comes over her as she sees a person. She just hit a an actual person.

“” Winter curses out loud.

The person tries to get up again, however they struggle. Snapping out of her anxiety riddled trance, the doctor kneels down to the person and tries to lend an assistance. “Hey careful, you’re hurt” she says.

Upon further inspection, Winter sees clearly that she hit a woman, although she sees no evident injury such as blood are any scratch on her skin, the woman is definitely groggy.

The woman could’ve been drunk, deciphering from her grunts, incoherent mumbling and the incessant trembling of her closed eyes. Nevertheless her state of inhibition is the less of her concerns as of the moment, it’s getting the woman to urgent care is her priority.

She struggles to carry the woman to her car, she was heavy and Winter is a very skinny lady. She carefully tucks the woman in her backseat, grabs a flashlight from her glovebox and tries to shine a light in the unconscious woman’s eyes to check for concussions. The doctor sighs in relief, there seems to be no signs of head injury. But that relief wasn’t enough to wash away the anxiety she has right now, she needs to get this woman checked.

However Winter is miles away from the hospital right now, it’s in the middle of the night and she’s on the side of the road that’s surrounded by the woods, with no signs of civilization in near 3km radius.

So the doctor opts to bring the unconscious woman to her home, she has medical supplies there and it’s just 10 more minutes away from where the incident happened.

—

Despite the struggle, Winter finally managed to set the unconscious woman to a huge couch in her living room. Making it comfortable for her, she removed the throw pillows and rests one at the back of her head. She removes the woman’s cloak as she intends to inspect the woman further, and frankly it looked uncomfortable.

Now that Winter thinks about it, the cloak she was wearing is kinda odd. For one, in this day and age no one really wears a cloak —that almost resembles a grim reaper’s— not unless they’re in a renaissance faire. And two, it’s a thick black leather cloak with felt inner lining, it surely looked uncomfortable, Winter thinks even renn-faire nerds would modify the fabric to be at least comfortable (not that she knows, she just assumes). Even modern day ponchos have better fabric. And lastly, as the doctor successfully removes the cloak from the woman’s body, Winter almost trips as she sets the cloth down—it was heavy, ‘How the can she walk around in this?’ No wonder she was struggling earlier.

The doctor then began to check the unconscious woman’s body, and Winter could only scratch her head as she sees no visible injury from her at all. Aside from the the apparent drunk behavior, Winter sees nothing wrong at all, and cannot for the love of god figure out what’s going on.

She even tries to wake her up with gentle taps, gradually turning her voice up, even shaking her but the woman won’t wake up and just lets out a few mumbles and grumbles.

Frustrated, Winter sits on the floor, she rakes her blonde locks back and cups her face as her elbows rests on her knees. She stares at the woman as she continues to grunt.

She’s too tired to deal with all of this. She might have committed a crime, or she could be possibly so tired right now that this is all just a sleep paralysis experience.

It was her turn to grunt, she’s so tired she could almost whine in frustration. She just wants to curl up in her soft bed and sleep her off for the next 2 days.

Winter’s eyes slowly begins to flutter close, and her head bobs down as sleepiness envelops her system. She tries to fight it off but her vision begins to blur and the next thing she knows it fades to black.

—

Winter feels something unsettling as she slowly opens her eyes, it takes her a few seconds to adjust her sight.

Right in front her is a face that’s way too close to hers, with dark irises staring into her soul. Winter lets out a yelp and loses her balance and stumbles back to her cold marbled floor.

“Who are you?” The person asks, voice deep and low, almost of an accusatory tone.

Which Winter furrows her eyebrows to, now that her system is all back up, she could clearly see that that the person who’s face was so close to hers earlier is the unconscious woman she had hit last night.

“Y-you’re awake…” she stutters as she pushes herself to stand up.

The woman’s eyes follows her movements and stands up right too, she once again stares back at her and asks, “Who are you?”

Despite feeling conscious of the woman’s stare, the doctor tries to answer. “My name’s Winter, you’re in my house. I might’ve hit you with my car last night—i’m really sorry about that. Anyways are you okay? how are you feeling? is there anything that hurts” despite feeling uncertain around the woman, Winter still goes to professional mode.

The woman her head back, “So it was your vehicle that I fell into last night” she says.

Winter furrows her eyebrows even further, “What do you mean you fell?”

“I was on top of a tree talking to a gremlin when my nether abilities drained, hence my falling in to your vehicle” the woman said, as a matter of fact.

Winter fails to comprehend what the she said, instead it further raises her concerns. “I think you have a concussion, take a seat and let me check up on you”

The doctor grabs a her medical flashlight from the medicine and first aid kit situated in the center table that she had prepared last night—although it rendered useless as she there was nothing to patch out from the woman las