Boxes everywhere. She gazed around the painfully familiar room, one last time. Ostensibly checking that everything was truly packed, but equally saying a quiet goodbye to this simple space that she had called home for the past three years.

Had it really been three years?

“Hey,” said a quiet voice behind her. She turned towards the door, where a tall, heavyset woman in pink scrubs and a white coat leaned casually against the frame, hands stuffed in her pockets.

“Hey, yourself,” she replied. “You’ve changed your hair again.”

The woman in the doorway reached up to stroke at the short, vibrantly purple, gelled spikes.

“Yeah, it was time.”

“It looks great.”

The women fell into a comfortable silence, borne of familiarity and friendship, which was punctuated, after a while, by the slightest of sniffling.

“Aw hell. I promised myself I wouldn’t do this.”

Stood amidst the few boxes that contained her life, she looked suddenly younger, as if uncertainty had peeled the years away.

“It’ll all be fine, you know.”