A week passed. Not quickly, not slowly. Just passed.
Each morning, Theophilus woke to the same beeping rhythms of hospital monitors and the thin light struggling through the window's blinds. He would hear the same routine knock at 8:00 AM sharp—Dr. Malik stepping in with his clipboard, tired eyes, and that clipped but professional smile. His health checks had become a rhythm of their own. Vitals, movement assessments, questions about sleep.
His arm—the one that throbbed like it was still stuck in time—was improving, if marginally. The doctor explained that healing bones could lie. Pain came and went, but recovery was linear, slow, and mostly a test of patience. The muscles were still inflamed, the ligaments stressed. He wasn't allowed full mobility, only slight movements to prevent atrophy, and even those came with warning. "Don't be a hero," Malik had muttered. "You're not Wolverine."
Theophilus hadn't laughed, but Old Man Ramus had from across the room.
Days blended.
Jeffrey still came by, usually wheeling himself in or being rolled in after a dialysis session. They played checkers with Old Man Ramus. Talked about everything and nothing. Ramus often spoke of philosophy, the kind that came from seeing the world fall apart and rebuild, and then fall again. Theophilus found himself listening. Really listening.
But that morning—Jeffrey wasn't quite the same.
He was visibly tired when he entered the room. His smile was there, but worn thin at the corners. They talked as always, about football, a movie he watched on his iPad, a nurse he was sure had a crush on Ramus, and something about Theophilus needing better taste in food. But by noon, something shifted.
Jeffrey went silent mid-sentence. Then winced. His hands trembled, and his breathing grew shallow. The machines beside his bed pulsed warnings, and in seconds, nurses were rushing in, doctors following, pushing Ramus and Theophilus's beds slightly apart and drawing the curtains shut around Jeffrey's bed.
Theophilus sat there, staring at the drawn curtain.
Ramus whispered, "He'll be alright. The kid's tougher than he looks."
But Theophilus didn't answer.
He didn't know how to hope properly anymore.
He pressed his hands together, his fingers lacing like prayer, though he hadn't truly prayed in years. He muttered something under his breath, not to a god, not to the stars, but just to the silence.
Jeffrey's breathing came and went in rasps and coughs.
And then, Theophilus remembered something.
A boy with a single eye.
---
It was third term, right after break. Nate had come back with a bandage over his right eye and a lopsided smile.
"Guess who's a pirate now?" he had joked, slapping Theophilus on the back.
He had laughed. Loudly. Too loudly. Then he explained it—how the doctors had removed his eye due to an infection linked to diabetes, how the diagnosis had come out of nowhere, how his parents had cried and he'd just told them to "chill."
From that day on, Nate was never the same.
He still said the same stupid things. Still gave awkward hugs. Still called everyone "brother" like he was born in the wrong part of the world. But behind that glass eye, something shifted. He'd begun to talk about his dreams like they were souvenirs from a place he'd never get to visit. His time became precious to him in a way that was… unsettling.
Theophilus feared it.
Not Nate, but what he represented.
Hope. Happiness. The desire to live, even when living hurt.
He hated it.
He hated the way Nate walked like the world didn't scare him, like his body wasn't a time bomb. He hated that Nate's smile had more gravity than some people's entire presence. He hated that Nate never broke under the knowledge of his short life—but more than anything, he hated himself for being afraid of that kind of strength.
So he never called him friend. Never allowed himself the indulgence.
Not because Nate wasn't worth it—but because if he accepted Nate as a friend, he'd have to mourn him when the time came. And he couldn't do that again.
He couldn't do that anymore.
---
Back in the present
The machines behind the curtain steadied again. A doctor emerged, adjusting his glasses and giving a half-nod. "He'll be alright. Just a reaction. We'll keep him monitored."
Theophilus let out a breath he hadn't realized he was holding. Ramus looked over but didn't say anything. Just gave a nod like he knew exactly what kind of storm passed through the younger man's mind.
The room fell back into a gentle rhythm. Beeping. Soft footsteps. Ramus's slow breathing.
Theophilus stared at his arm, the fingers he could barely move.
He realized, then, why he never liked good lives. Happy ones. Ideal ones. They always fell apart. Like his family had. Like his childhood had. Like the version of himself he once believed in.
And now, here he was in America, searching for a dying man he barely knew, holding a letter he hadn't opened, soaked and filtered by the drowning sea ,written by a sister he never got to acknowledge.
It was too much.
Too much hope.
Too much memory.
Too much guilt.
He closed his eyes.
Just for a moment.
And when he opened them again, he whispered into the silence, "…I'm sorry, Nate."
---
He stared blankly at the partition curtains.
The hospital light above was dimmed, but the white beams from the hallway filtered in through the open edge of the door, catching the faint outline of his arm—still in the bandage, though the pain had slowly dulled into a steady, throbbing echo. The drugs had eased the edge off, but not the memory.
"I'm sorry, Nate," he had said again in his mind, quieter this time. Not for the last time, either. He'd probably keep repeating it until he forgot what it meant.
He blinked. Slowly. The kind of blink you made when your eyes burned but no tears came. Maybe he was supposed to cry. Maybe the scene demanded it. But he couldn't. His body felt hollowed out, like a carved husk that simply lay there, mimicking the shape of a boy who had been through too much and still thought too little of it.
The silence returned, folding gently around the room like a cold sheet. The monitor next to Jeffrey's bed still beeped softly, rhythm steady now, but earlier—earlier it had screamed like a warning. Nurses had rushed in, a doctor too. Theophilus had seen the panic in their faces. It wasn't just a scare. It was a reminder.
Jeffrey had smiled too much. Laughed too often. Tried too hard to convince everyone, and maybe himself, that it would be okay.
He looked over again at the curtain. It was drawn neatly, hanging perfectly between their beds like a boundary line drawn by fate. Even now, when everything was quiet again, Theophilus kept glancing at it—as if it would suddenly be pulled back, revealing something far worse.
It didn't move.
Behind it, he imagined Jeffrey asleep. Or awake and staring at the ceiling. Or fighting something invisible in his lungs. That was the thing about illness—it made no promises and gave no warnings. It simply was.
Theophilus rested his head back against the pillow and stared up. The ceiling tiles were the same shape they always were. They hadn't changed. Maybe they never would.
"Positive people," he whispered under his breath, "scare the hell out of me."
The old man in the corner stirred. Ramus sat by the window like he always did after morning routines, his frame like stone under the sun's dying rays. The window overlooked nothing remarkable, just the parking lot, some trees, a line of buildings far beyond. But Ramus sat there as if watching the end of the world, calmly, as if it would politely announce itself and wait to be let in.
Theophilus wondered what he was thinking.
Was he looking for the same thing he was—signs that something could be normal again?
He closed his eyes and remembered Nate's voice.
It had always been loud. Not obnoxious, just... assertive. It filled a room whether you asked for it or not. And it had made you want to believe things could work out. That you could survive. That maybe, you could even live.
But Nate was born with the odds stacked like concrete slabs on his shoulders.
Theophilus remembered the day his eye was damaged. It had been awful, the kind of thing you wanted to unsee the moment you saw it. The accident had scared everyone, but it hadn't scared Nate.
No, what scared Theophilus wasn't the damage. It was what came after—the diagnosis.
That word. Diabetes. The slow killer. The thief of years.
Nate had smiled through it. He'd cracked jokes at the doctor's office, made faces at Theophilus behind the nurse's back, and still held onto that ridiculous phrase: "Buddy, we're gonna grow up famous."
Grow up.
Theophilus subconsciously clenched the sheets slightly. His hand trembled under the bandages.
He never considered Nate a friend—not really. Not because Nate wasn't deserving. He was. He was, more than anyone he'd ever met. But because... friendship had always ended badly for Theophilus. Every time he had let someone in, they had either left, been forgotten by him, or simply faded away like dust when the wind changed.
He couldn't bear to attach hope to someone else's face again. That's what frightened him about people like Nate. And people like Jeffrey.
They looked life in the eyes and dared it to break them.
But Theophilus had been broken already. He had seen what joy did to families. How love soured. How ambition became a sickness. His father—where was he now? Still bedridden, waiting. And the message? Still unread.
He hadn't even told the hospital yet. He hadn't handed over the note. Why? Maybe he was still scared. Maybe, deep down, he thought the words might end things rather than begin something.
A low voice interrupted the silence. Ramus.
"Boy. You still up?"
Theophilus turned his head slightly. "Yeah."
Ramus didn't ask anything else. He didn't need to. The old man had the kind of silence that meant more than words. He hadn't moved from the window. His shadow, long and still, lay stretched across the floor, nearly reaching Theophilus's bed.
"I think," Theophilus began, "I'm afraid of people like you."
Ramus chuckled softly. "People like me?"
"You and Jeffrey. And Nate."
Silence.
Ramus let the words settle. "Because we don't give up?"
Theophilus nodded. "Because you still believe in things. And I... don't."
Ramus didn't turn around. "That's alright. Not believing keeps you safe. But sometimes, it keeps you lonely, too."
Theophilus looked back at the curtain.
The monitor beeped again. Gentle. Regular.
He didn't know if Jeffrey had heard them talking. Maybe he had. Maybe that's why he kept fighting.
Or maybe he was like Nate—too stubborn to let death tell him how to live.