A Bridge too Far

It's been so very long since he remembered what She really looked like. Not just a vague feeling, or scent, or shape; a random activated synapse between adjacent neurons. Nor a half-remembered glimpse from yesteryear - but "real", tangible memories from Before. Actual freezeframes, real-life stills of Once Upon a Time. He wrote once, a long time ago about moments captured for all eternity in his mind.
Sitting in his underheated refrigerator-cabinet, eyes closed, not-quite listening to Dido meandering on, and on about her Life for Rent, he reaches for a pen and rediscovers, much to his surprise his ability to sketch. And discovers as well, that moments forever lost in the mists of time yet remain preserved in the chaos of not-quite purged memories after all. He remembers. He remembers the black and brown streaked hairclip. He remembers Her turning back in her mother's car. He remembers Her sitting beside him in some random bus. He remembers sitting opposite Her in a cafe somewhere with ? vines. And bad coffee. And cold water.
He never had a single alcoholic drink in Her presence, but was always somehow completely intoxicated.
He remembers the curve of Her smile and the shape of Her eyes. He remembers how he used to think (She's really not all that pretty. She's beautiful.)
He remembers Her flooding his mailbox, although his biro is at an utter loss to remember that along with him.
And when he is done remembering he is tempted to crumple up the memories and hurl them into the bin.
But he does not.

To Her, he writes : Trust. Trust, or the lack of, was the real reason. The rest were just cheap excuses, or weak rationalisations.

And if she who visits him daily from Warwickshire be Her, then he would like dearly to hear from her again. Unless she didn't want to, of course. He'd understand.

Alone

Just when it seems he needs an ear, or a shoulder the most, he is reminded how alone he truly is. Or perhaps the recent reminder of how alone he has been opens his eyes to the fact that he has no ears, no shoulders anywhere about him. None that he would care to speak to, or lean on anyhow. And those that he could do with, previously for some reason, he can't anymore.
Listless anhedonia. Staring out the window chewing on barely palatable cheese and potato. Standing by the forest's edge at daybreak contemplating a pre-work aimless wander. Watching the waterfowl motoring along the water's edge.
And, dammit, the theme for Final Fantasy X running ceaselessly through his head. (thanks to Stoneforest)

Letter to No-one

He cannot sleep.
So instead he writes, to nobody.

After the Holocaust
Framed as always by fate, he feebly protests his innocence. He knows She'll never believe him, but he writes in his defence anyway. He didn't track Her down, didn't arrange to just-so happen to do his elective at Her hospital. His friend organised it all, after their grand scheme to trek to South America, be kidnapped, and be rescued by Russel Crowe went tits up.
He didn't relentlessly trace her UK GMC registration. He'd just learnt from a colleague too lazy to check his own GMC number that the GMC website offered the feature, could you please check my number for me. So he did. Then, on a whim (and he still doesn't know why) he idly keyed in Her name. And his self-derisive laughter and cynicism - you're too old to act like this, you've never been this stup... died in his mind on the second click.

101 reasons why we do what we do
He made the most monumental mistake of his entire lifetime, because :
He wanted to remember her well, before it was too late in the day. It was too late for her to remember him well, already.
He didn't know what else to do, and if "these things always seem more important at the time" was to have a chance - this was his only way to find out. It didn't.
He would rather bear a lifetime of emptiness than be teased repeatedly by the cruel fate of uncanny coincidences, and near-misses bent on reminding him almost, almost - not quite. He would rather a lot of nothing than many small slices of almost, maybe, somethings. He would rather a lifetime of quiet, pastel solitude than an eternity of walking in the bright shadows of impossibility.
He couldn't bear the bittersweet, schizophrenic hypocrisy of well-wishes at her lifetime-attachments, when they occured - which would flood from his own numbed mouth one day.
He did it, because it made sense.

In retrospect, it was the wrong thing to do.
He knows that given a chance, he'd do it all over again.

Then why is it, given a chance he'd do anything to hear her mind again?

Depersonalisation

Today is different. Today, he is not. He feels himself walking into the waiting room. He hears himself for the umpteenth time calling out names, he watches himself shepard people into cubicles, he listens as he opens with his sombre Hello there, I'm so-and-so, what brings you here today. His hands explore and probe tender areas, his stethoscope finds areas of dissonance. His pen documents.
But he feels depersonalised. He watches himself, distractedly. His heart is not in it - where usually he never watches himself, and his moment is the here and now. Or rather, where usually has become the usually he has crafted, painstakingly retaught himself how to think.
He doesn't know what to think anymore today. He feels that hurling himself into his work would salve, instead it becomes a burden. His specatators notice his weariness and tell him they find it funny.
There's so much he doesn't know what to - do, to think, to feel. He doesn't know, where he stands.
Except that it is not here, and not now. And it must not be yesterday. (Yesterday, he remembers her discussing her plans to visit for her elective, to work at GOSH, and he remembers imagining the things he would want to show her, the places to go. The laughter he might bring her.)
Perhaps, just perhaps it is outside, in the cold by the lake, watching the ducks cavort.