2:37 a.m.
The hospital moved differently at that hour.
Quieter. Slower. Like even the walls had surrendered to sleep. The overhead lights dimmed to a soft, moon-colored glow, casting long shadows down the corridors. Footsteps became whispers. Conversations dropped to murmurs. Even the machines beeped more gently, as if out of respect for the night.
Noelle Reyes walked that quiet like it was muscle memory.
Her sneakers made barely a sound against the linoleum, her hands tucked into the sleeves of her sweater. Her ID badge hung loosely around her neck, Elle Soriano, Volunteer Coordinator, a name that meant nothing and everything. It swung with each step like a reminder of the version of herself she had to be here.
She wasn't supposed to be on the third floor after midnight.
But Bea was covering the nurse's station tonight.
And Bea, had long stopped caring about protocol when it came to love.
Noelle rounded the corner, and her breath caught.
The door was cracked.
Room 308.
The faint glow of a monitor pulsed through the opening, steady and slow. She could hear it, the beeping of the heart monitor, the rhythmic hiss of the oxygen line, the faint rustle of sheets as someone shifted restlessly in sleep.
He was in there.
Her husband.
The man who once kissed her shoulder like it was sacred. The man who used to whisper her name like it was his own prayer. The man who now wouldn't even recognize her face.
She hesitated at the doorway.
Then stepped inside.
The room was hushed and dim, lit only by the soft wash of light from the machines and the faint, flickering shimmer of the city bleeding through the cracks in the blinds. Outside, headlights swept past windows in slow, distant rhythms.
Inside, he lay still.
Kairo's arm was draped across his chest, the other limp at his side. His head was turned slightly toward the window, his brows pinched even in sleep. His body was still, but not peaceful. His rest looked like a fight with dreams, with memory, with everything he couldn't name yet.
Noelle stood there, unmoving.
Her chest rose in a slow, uneven breath. The ache behind her ribs wasn't sharp but it was deep. That kind of ache that made breathing feel like work. That hollow weight that came when you were standing just outside a life that used to be yours.
She stepped closer.
Each footfall was soft, careful like walking across a floor made of glass.
Memory flooded her with every step.
She remembered watching him sleep in Tangier, sunlight warm on his cheek, a book forgotten in his lap, pigeons flapping noisily outside the window. He always insisted naps were a waste of time, "for the weak," he used to say with a smirk but with her, he'd let go. With her, he'd slept without fear.
Now, he looked like he hadn't truly rested in weeks.
There was something hollow in his face. His features were leaner. There was a scar near his brow that hadn't been there before. Even the shape of his mouth, so familiar to her once, had changed, softer in its stillness.
Noelle reached the bedside.
Her hand hovered in the space above his. Her fingers trembled as they stretched toward him, paused inches away.
Just one touch.
Her body ached for it. Her heart screamed for it.
What if he felt it? What if his skin remembered hers, even if his mind didn't? What if his body knew, without reason, without memory, just instinct?
But she didn't do it.
Because if he opened his eyes and looked at her with nothing behind them, not even a flicker, it would undo her.
It would break something that had held too long, too quietly, and too much.
So instead, she looked at him.
She memorized the new shadows on his face. The softened slope of his shoulders. The line of his jaw as it tensed and released in restless sleep. She let her eyes take in the parts of him that were still hers, even if he didn't know it.
She wanted to say his name.
To remind him.
To whisper: I'm here. I never left. Not once.
But the words were too fragile for a room full of machines.
Instead, she reached into her pocket and unfolded the small piece of paper she'd carried with her for days.
She placed it gently on the nightstand beside the water cup. A note, just a single line, written in her neatest handwriting.
"You told me once that love scared you. But you loved me anyway."
She reached again and pulled a wildflower from her coat pocket, a small, delicate stem she'd taken from a forgotten vase near the elevator. She laid it beside the note.
Something living.
Something real.
And then she turned to leave.
She had just reached the door when she heard it.
A sound.
Barely there.
A murmur, low and strained like the echo of a dream spoken aloud.
"...don't go…"
She froze.
Spun around.
He hadn't moved. His chest rose and fell in the same rhythm. His arms were still. His eyes were closed.
But his lips,
They moved again.
"...stay…"
Noelle's hand flew to her mouth.
Her throat clenched, and tears sprang to her eyes before she could stop them.
He didn't know her.
Not yet.
But something inside him did.
Something beneath the silence still reached.
She didn't touch him.
Didn't speak.
She just turned and slipped into the hallway, the door easing shut behind her.
And as she disappeared into the hush of the hospital's sleeping corridors, her heart thundered in her chest.
Too loud to be grief.
Too deep to be anything but love.