The morning began like most others since his admission into the hospital, with Theophilus waking not to the sound of machines or human chatter, but by a habit ingrained from his high school days—those early, anxious risings driven by the need to meet deadlines. Only today, he was running unusually late by his standards. The clock read 7:30 a.m.
As he blinked away the drowsiness, rubbing at eyes that still clung to sleep, he noticed the quiet clash of a checkers game unfolding at the corner of the room. Old man Ramus sat across from Jeffrey at a makeshift table between their beds. Ramus, calm and composed, was evidently winning. His every move was methodical, almost effortless. Jeffrey, by contrast, hunched over the board with furrowed brows and a childlike focus—utterly absorbed and yet, unmistakably on the losing end.
Theophilus shifted slightly, his arm flaring with pain. It had been put back in place recently and, paradoxically, now hurt worse than when it was twisted. Still, he understood this pain to be part of the healing. He gave a subtle nod when Jeffrey turned to wave mid-defeat, and returned old man Ramus's familiar salute—a casual two-finger gesture at the brow. Their game carried on, but Theophilus's attention lingered.
He didn't know how to play checkers. Chess had been his game back in high school—a battlefield of asymmetry and sacrifice. Checkers, in contrast, looked deceptively simple. Identical pieces. Uniform movement. He watched, trying to decode its appeal, remembering how often his "friends"—more accurately, former classmates he tolerated—had praised it. Their recommendations had never quite resonated. He wasn't fond of attachments, not after the betrayals he'd witnessed. Better to regard them as passing acquaintances.
Back then, those so-called friends would beat him at chess without mercy. He managed to win just enough to keep his pride intact, rarely allowing himself to fall more than a single match behind. He was good, and he knew it. But they swore by checkers—called it "more fun." So here he was, finally ready to test those waters. If they were deep enough, he'd swim. If not, the game itself would drown in its own shallows.
After Jeffrey's defeat, Theophilus asked old man Ramus to bring the table closer. He wanted to play. Ramus, ever accommodating, obliged, despite the drip tethered to his chair and the thick bandages wrapped around his arm. Though frail, he moved the pieces with surprising dexterity.
At first, Theophilus was utterly disoriented. The simplicity of the game was a different kind of complexity. No bishops. No queens. No long-range cavalry. Just forward motions and leaps. But then something shifted—halfway through the match, patterns began to emerge. He didn't calculate in the traditional sense, but his paranoia—his constant anticipation of betrayal—served him well. Within a few turns, he was two moves ahead, two counteractions ready.
Ramus raised an eyebrow, suspecting the young man had lied about being a beginner.
"You sure it's your first game?" he muttered.
And yet, Theophilus didn't win.
Ramus, with only two pieces left on the board, pulled off a masterstroke that overturned the whole field. It was the kind of play that stunned, not just because it was clever, but because it exposed how shallow Theophilus's understanding still was. He may have seen the future, but Ramus had lived through it.
After several games, Theophilus managed two wins out of six—no small feat, especially when compared to Jeffrey's record of zero. Then breakfast arrived, along with a stream of routine checkups. One particular doctor—a woman whose professional figure was impossible not to notice—drew Theophilus's attention not only for her looks but also because Jeffrey always seemed a bit more alert when she approached.
It was only later that Theophilus learned the truth.
Jeffrey, the boy with the ever-cheerful tone and the eye patch, was a cancer patient. The eye was lost during surgery. It may have been the final stage. Yet somehow, his mood never wavered. It was as though cancer was just another event in his life—a pitstop, not the destination. Positivity, it seemed, was his armor.
Theophilus had no way to prove if that armor was genuine or if it merely masked something darker. He didn't ask. He simply observed and then turned inward, entering a meditative state despite the pain in his arm and leg. He couldn't move them without agony, so he didn't. The painkillers helped, but even their effects felt temporary—like peace in a warzone.
Meanwhile, Ramus played old music from his radio. Through bits of conversation between him and his physician, Theophilus learned that Ramus was diabetic. His condition had advanced beyond repair. He had lost the use of his legs, and his treatment was more of a life extension than a cure. He was only fifty-nine, yet looked decades older—a result of years of smoking and drinking despite warnings.
Theophilus knew diabetes well.
His cousin, Nate Mooi, had suffered from it. A mixed-race boy with a white father and a smile too warm for the world he was born into. Nate had lost parts of himself—his ear, his finger, his leg. They used to play video games together until, one day, Nate collapsed mid-match. Theophilus hadn't noticed at first. He sometimes wondered if he could have saved him had he looked up sooner. Fate thought otherwise.
Nate never attended school. The dismemberment left him too insecure. But he admired Theophilus, often asking about the world outside the windows—places he only saw on TV. Theophilus answered everything, sparing only the questions that would hurt Nate more than ignorance ever could.
Nate once asked if he could be a boyfriend to Thandi—a gorgeous Xhosa girl who occasionally glanced their way. Theophilus gave him the truth, cold and clean.
"Maybe, if you weren't so… dismembered."
It was harsh, but it was honest. Theophilus refused to offer false hope. He'd seen the cruelty of people, the way beauty was currency and disability a social debt no one wanted to pay. Nate had everything—wealth, comfort—but none of it would protect him from ridicule. This wasn't one of those sentimental American romance films where the underdog gets the girl and love conquers all.
This was reality.
And reality didn't have a soundtrack.
---
Theophilus sat quietly in the hospital bed, his bandaged hands resting limply on his lap. The soft hum of the machines and the faint beep of the heart monitor were the only sounds in the sterile white room. His gaze was fixed on the small window, where gray clouds hung low like a weight upon the sky.
In truth, Theophilus had barely spoken since the incident. Not to his doctors. Not to his father. Not to the endless stream of polite visitors offering apologies and concern, their voices tinny and distant. It wasn't that he couldn't speak—he simply didn't see the point.
He was alive. That was enough for everyone.
But was it?
He knew what they were thinking. They whispered it in corners and wrote it in their reports. "Survivor's guilt." "Depression." "Delayed trauma response." He could feel their eyes watching him, weighing his silence like it was a diagnosis yet unnamed.
He wasn't sure they were wrong.
The dreams had started again. Or perhaps they had never stopped.
---
In the shifting space between sleep and waking, he saw Nate. Not as a corpse. Not pale and cold in a casket. But alive—smiling, laughing, his voice warm like summer.
"Bro, you gotta stop being so serious all the time," Nate said, walking ahead of him across a tiled plaza beneath a sapphire sky. He turned and walked backward, arms stretched as if inviting Theophilus to a world only he could see. "Live a little, Theo. Come on."
Theophilus didn't answer. He just followed.
---
Back in the waking world, the weight pressed heavier on his chest.
He hadn't cried. Not when they told him Nate was gone. Not at the funeral. Not when his own father gripped his shoulder with a tremble in his jaw and said, "He was a good friend."
Because he wasn't.
Not to Theophilus.
He had never called Nate a friend. Not once.
---
Nate had dragged him to rooftops in the rain and fields in the sun. To underground parties with synthwave pulsing through the walls and to quiet bookstores where time seemed to still. Nate lived like every day was borrowed time. He chased dreams like they were butterflies.
"Ambition's a flame, Theo," Nate had once said, reclining on the hood of a stolen car they'd never admitted was stolen. "If you don't feed it, it dies. But feed it too much, and it burns you. So you gotta dance with it, y'know?"
Theophilus remembered blinking at him, silent. Wondering how someone so depraved of life could also carry so much hope and faith in his voice when no one else was listening.
He remembered the way Nate would look at the skyline and say, "One day, I'll own a building like that. I'll carve my name into the world."
Theophilus never said he believed him. Not because he didn't—but because he didn't understand why he should want to.
He never had ambitions. He was not built for dreams.
---
"You ever think maybe you're not real?" Nate asked one night, sipping root beer through a cracked straw. "Like... not fake, but not really here. Just drifting."
Theophilus had raised a brow. "You believe in solipsism now?"
"Nah," Nate said, chuckling. "Just think some people are ghosts before they die. And you, Theo—you're like... a ghost pretending to be a person."
They both laughed.
Only Nate had meant it.
---
Hospital Room — Present
A nurse came in to check on him. Her voice was kind, her movements practiced. She asked if he wanted to talk to someone.
Theophilus shook his head. Words were too small. Too fragile.
He stared at the ceiling for hours, remembering the sound of Nate's laugh. Remembering the argument they had just days before it all ended.
---
"You act like nothing matters," Nate had said. His voice was shaking. Not with rage. With desperation.
"Because it doesn't," Theophilus replied, coldly. Mechanically.
Nate had punched the wall. "You don't get to pretend you don't care. Not when people do care about you. Not when I do."
Silence followed. And Theophilus let it stretch.
He never apologized. Never explained.
The next day, Nate was gone.
---
Theophilus clenched his fists, the bandages tightening. He felt the sting of pain, but it wasn't enough. Nothing ever was.
Jeffrey had reminded him of Nate, but quieter. Gentler. Still chasing light in a world full of shadows.
Theophilus wondered, bitterly, if he was cursed to be surrounded by dreamers, doomed to outlive them all.
Because dreamers believed in the future.
And Theophilus...
He didn't even believe in tomorrow.