Terminate.

The theatre smelled of antiseptic and silence. It was a Tuesday morning in late October, the sort of grey London day that makes the whole city seem to whisper. The nurse had spoken softly, as though afraid to wake something sleeping. “You’ll just lie here, love. It won’t take long.”

Amira nodded. Her lips trembled though she tried to keep them still. Her palms were cold. Malik sat on the metal chair near the door, elbows on his knees, head bowed. He looked like a man waiting for a verdict.

Neither spoke. The only sound was the hum of the lights above and the slow, rhythmic hiss of the heating vent.

Two years ago, they had met in the university library, arguing over a constitutional law question neither of them understood. She had laughed first, because he had pronounced jurisprudence like a word made of pebbles. He had said she had the kind of smile that could make the law itself less terrifying.

They had been careful, mostly. Careful about their studies, their parents’ expectations, their reputations. Malik’s mother called from Accra every Sunday, reminding him that he was the family’s hope. “You carry our name in your hands,” she would say. Amira’s mother sent long voice notes from Cairo filled with blessings and warnings, each sentence ending in a prayer.

When the test turned positive, Amira’s body seemed to float away from her. She had stared at the tiny blue line until her breath ran out. Malik had come to her flat that night. They sat on the carpet, speaking in whispers as if their parents were behind the wall listening.

“We can’t,” he said finally. “We can’t tell them.”

She had cried then, not because of what they decided, but because of how certain he sounded.

Now she lay on the narrow bed in the theatre, staring at the ceiling where a small brown stain had spread like a faded country on a map. The doctor came in, kind eyes behind a mask, efficient hands. “We’ll give you something to help you relax,” she said. “It’ll be quick.”

Quick. The word clanged inside her chest. She wondered how time could be so cruelly uneven, how one mistake could stretch across a lifetime while one procedure could erase it in minutes.

Malik looked up. “Can I stay?” he asked.

The nurse shook her head gently. “Better if you wait outside.”

Amira reached for him before he stood. Their fingers brushed, then slipped apart. She watched him walk out, shoulders rigid, as if he were holding the whole world upright by sheer force.

When the door closed, the room seemed to shrink.

The doctor spoke softly to her, words she barely heard. The world dulled, like sound underwater. Somewhere in the blur of pain and medication, she thought of Cairo, the golden light on the Nile, the smell of jasmine and petrol, her mother’s laughter when she was small. Then she saw Malik in Ghana, playing football barefoot with cousins, his mother watching from the porch, proud and certain. Two different worlds, two different prayers, colliding in a sterile English theatre.

When she woke, it was over.

The nurse brought her water and biscuits, the sort given to children after vaccinations. Amira thanked her, voice thin as thread. Malik returned, eyes rimmed red. He tried to smile. She tried to match it. Neither succeeded.

They walked out of the clinic into a drizzle so fine it looked like smoke. London moved around them, indifferent and busy. Buses sighed, shopkeepers rolled up metal shutters, students hurried past with coffee cups. The world did not pause for grief.

For weeks, they did not speak of the room. They met in the library again, tried to be normal. He teased her about her meticulous notes, she reminded him to iron his shirt before class. But something in their laughter was offbeat, a note slightly out of tune.

Sometimes Amira woke in the night and saw the theatre in her mind, the cold light, the hum of the vent, the faint rust stain above her. It was not memory so much as haunting. She wondered if that room still smelled the same, if another girl was lying there now, whispering the same silent prayers.

Malik threw himself into his studies. He volunteered at the legal aid clinic, stayed up late writing essays that won quiet praise. Yet he too carried the room inside him. During church one Sunday, when the pastor spoke about forgiveness, Malik felt his chest tighten. He had not told his parents. He doubted he ever would.

The months passed. Spring came. Daffodils erupted along the campus path, bright and unapologetic. Amira and Malik drifted apart not through anger but exhaustion. Every conversation seemed to circle a wound they could not name.

One afternoon, Amira went back to the clinic. She did not plan it. She had been walking home from class and found herself at the bus stop, staring at the familiar street sign. The building was smaller than she remembered, a squat structure of dull brick and clouded glass.

Inside, the receptionist looked up. “Can I help you?”

Amira hesitated. “I just… used to be a patient here.”

The woman nodded, unbothered. “You can take a seat if you’d like.”

Amira sat. The waiting room had changed a little. New posters on the walls, new chairs, same tired fluorescent hum. She wondered if the theatre was still at the end of the same corridor.

After a few minutes, a nurse passed by, older, kind-eyed. She stopped. “You look familiar.”

Amira smiled faintly. “It’s been a while.”

“Would you like to sit somewhere quiet?” the nurse asked.

Amira nodded. The nurse led her down the hall. The smell hit her first, cleaner, sharper. The walls had been repainted, the doors labeled anew. The theatre door was closed. On it, a fresh sign read Treatment Room 3.

The nurse saw her looking. “We redid it last year,” she said. “New equipment, better lighting. It’s hardly the same place.”

Amira stood there, palms pressed to her sides. “It’s the same to me.”

The nurse did not ask why she had come. She just stood quietly beside her for a moment, then said, “Take your time.”

When the nurse left, Amira stepped closer to the door. She touched the handle but didn’t open it. The metal was cool, indifferent. She could almost hear the hum of the old vent, the whisper of her own breathing.

She closed her eyes and whispered something, not in Arabic, not in English, but in that wordless space between. A prayer without form.

Then she left.

Outside, she sat on a bench near the bus stop, watching a woman push a pram down the street. The baby was asleep, one tiny hand curled in a fist. Amira did not cry. She simply watched until the woman turned the corner and vanished.

That night she called Malik.

“I went back,” she said.

“To the clinic?”

“Yes.”

A long silence. Then, softly, “Why?”

“I don’t know. Maybe to make it real again.”

“It was real,” he said. His voice broke slightly. “I think about it every day.”

She closed her eyes. “So do I.”

For the first time, they spoke of it, slowly, carefully, as though the words were fragile. They talked until the sky lightened outside her window, until the heaviness between them eased into something gentler. Not forgiveness, not yet, but the beginning of it.

Years later, Amira became a solicitor for women’s rights cases. Malik joined a human rights firm. They met occasionally at conferences, exchanged polite smiles and small talk. The room was never mentioned again, but it hovered between them like a shared scar.

The theatre itself was eventually renovated again, repurposed for minor surgeries. New walls, new paint, new staff. But somewhere beneath the fresh plaster, the air still remembered. Rooms remember. They hold the echo of breath, the weight of choices.

Sometimes, when the night shift quieted and the lights dimmed, a nurse might pause at the doorway and feel a chill that wasn’t quite cold. A trace of something left behind. Not a ghost exactly, but the faint vibration of two young hearts trying to be brave.

The room, after all, was never just a place. It was a witness.

And witnesses never forget.