Jeffrey's presence returned after what seemed like weeks in the minds of those confined to that room, though only days had passed in real time. For both Theophilus and old man Ramus—neither of whom were ever overtly sentimental—it meant more than they'd let on. They were not cold-hearted, after all; blood still coursed through their veins with each breath, each beat, each silent thought they dared not voice aloud. Even Theophilus, who despised the idea of straying from the strict path he had drawn for himself, found it difficult to ignore the instincts that came with being human.
It irritated him—this crack in his armor.
And yet, Jeffrey's voice, absent for days, had been like a vanishing note. Now, his return, even as quiet as it was, gave the room a different weight.
The shared space had grown bland, dulled by time. Without Jeffrey's errant jokes or unrelated commentary tossed into any conversation like a misfired dart, the days had settled into a sterile rhythm. His presence, unseen behind drawn curtains, changed that. Subtly. Naturally. Like oxygen slowly filling a stifled room.
Theophilus and Ramus played their usual game of checkers. Only the sharp scraping of wood against wood could be heard—pieces shifting squares with a clicking certainty. It wasn't loud, but it echoed like thunder in that quiet.
Theophilus led the game, as always. His tactics were silent, patient, surgical. Every move was a test, a lure, a fortress disguised as bait. Old man Ramus moved with the comfort of routine, unaware that each piece he shifted was being funneled into a calculated trap.
Piece by piece, Theophilus guided him. Diagonal exchanges, baited jumps, traps set three moves in advance. Ramus captured a piece—only to lose two. He blocked a corner—only to open a flank. And when the board was nearly bare, Theophilus claimed the win in a way that even Ramus couldn't have foreseen.
Fifteen victories to seven. That was the score.
Ramus didn't complain. He wasn't a sore loser. Instead, he grunted once, then gestured at the board.
"Show me where I went wrong."
Theophilus, without gloating, reset the board and traced back the sequence. He pointed out the third move in Ramus's sequence—where he should have defended the left column instead of pressing the center.
"That here," Theophilus said, "was the pivot. You left the left side too exposed. I forced your knight into a corner three turns later."
Like a seasoned teacher, he walked him through the alternate path. A better defense. A potential offense. Ramus nodded, brows furrowed in silent acceptance.
Then breakfast came.
Jeffrey didn't step out from behind the curtains, but his voice, faint as it was, murmured thanks to the nurses. It was the most they had heard from him in days. Somehow, that small interaction shifted the atmosphere again, like clouds parting if only slightly.
Theophilus ate, bowl in hand. Ramus did the same. But then—
A sound.
It wasn't loud, but it wasn't right.
A wet retch. Followed by a silence that made everything feel ten degrees colder.
Then came the second. Louder. Heavier. And the third—violent, choked, a splatter that could only be one thing.
Blood.
Theophilus didn't turn, not at first. He heard it, of course. But he didn't want to react.
Ramus, though, froze. That sound—it wasn't unfamiliar. He'd once been diagnosed with TB himself. He remembered the coughing, the blood, the helplessness. The way the body fought like hell but never quite won.
At first, he thought it was just that—a passing cough. A bad one. Until the curtains darkened.
A shadow. Splattered red.
The coughs grew worse—ripping, desperate. The curtain absorbed something thick. Something dark. It wasn't just blood anymore. There were chunks. Ramus saw it. Bits of what might've been internal tissue.
His eyes widened. And he knew.
"Oh no—Jeffrey—!"
He launched his chair backward and wheeled toward the hallway, shouting for help. His voice, once gravelly with age, thundered down the corridor.
But no one came.
Not because they didn't care. But because in this ward, help always came late.
By the time two nurses arrived and flung the curtains open, both Theophilus and Ramus froze. What they saw wasn't a boy.
It was a body still barely breathing.
Jeffrey sat slumped, skin pale like ash. His face was sunken, dry veins etched like branches across his neck and temples. His bandaged eyes were soaked through—fresh blood spreading through gauze. The rest of him was just as ruined.
A mess of vomit, blood, and something darker pooled around him.
He wasn't dead.
But he was closer to it than anyone should ever be while still breathing.
Old man Ramus cursed under his breath—a shallow, rasping whisper barely louder than the rattling breath that struggled within Jeffrey's frail body. The words weren't meant to be heard, but they hung in the air like smoke, stained with bitterness and helpless rage.
Everything around them had slowed.
Theophilus, sitting with his back half-straightened against the metal frame of his cot, felt something stir within him. But something lurching, like the slow creep of thunderclouds across a still, sunless sky. His bowl sat forgotten on his lap, half-full with a pale mash of breakfast that had grown lukewarm and stiff. But he didn't look into it. The strange cooled meal had been by far the most disgusting he's ever had, like the feeling when someone suddenly gave you a reason to lose appetite row when your tastbuds seemed not to function as much as they used to.
This silence was different. It was deep. Like a breath withheld.
His gaze had locked on the curtain that divided them from Jeffrey's bed. There was something about the way the shadow moved on the pale blue fabric—jerky, spattered, too fast, then suddenly too slow. It felt unnatural. Theophilus felt his gut twist, as if his body already understood something his mind hadn't caught up to yet.
Jeffrey's breathing was erratic now. What had begun as coughing had become a mess of gasps, wet and thick, struggling for air that never seemed to make it past his throat. Chunks of something—maybe blood, maybe worse—splattered on the curtain. The sound wasn't just grotesque. It was heartbreaking. It was the sound of a body collapsing inward, piece by piece.
Theophilus's fingers twitched over the blanket. He wanted to rise. His mind screamed for movement, to reach for Jeffrey, to yell for help, to do something. But his body betrayed him. His left leg pulsed with a deep, knotted ache, muscles protesting even the thought of bearing weight. His arm—the one he'd nearly torn from its socket days before—was wrapped tightly in gauze and braced in slings and straps. Moving now would undo weeks of healing. It could cripple him for good.
But none of that mattered.
None of it.
He tried anyway. He lifted himself, teeth grinding as the pain returned like a rusted blade digging into bone. Sweat beaded across his brow. He couldn't get up. Not properly. But he shifted, twisted to the edge of the bed, his body screaming at the effort. He could hear old man Ramus cursing again—louder now—calling out toward the hallway, banging on the side table with the edge of his wheelchair.
"Somebody get in here, dammit! He's coughing up blood! He's going into collapse!"
No one came. Not immediately. There were too many patients. Too few nurses. Too many lost causes and too many silence-ridden wards filled with men waiting to die quietly.
Behind the curtain, the shadows became frantic. Hands reaching. Arms bracing. A figure leaning over. A stretcher's wheels creaked against the floor. A woman's voice muttering protocol. Another nurse asking for suction, for oxygen. For gloves.
"He's going septic—lung collapse. We need to clear the airway now!"
"He has no insurance clearance—he's not pre-authorized for trauma center redirection."
"Fuck the paperwork!" another snapped. "He's bleeding out!"
Theophilus heard it all. Every word. Every cold syllable. He could feel it in his chest, in his shoulders, in the way the air left the room with each failed breath Jeffrey took. His hands curled into fists in helplessness.
He heard someone ask Jeffrey to stay with them.
He heard someone else say, "His eye patches are soaked through. He's bleeding through the gauze."
Then another: "BP falling. He's crashing."
And then—
Silence.
Longer than it should've lasted.
The shadows behind the curtain stilled.
No more coughing. No more scrambling. No more clatter of trays or hiss of oxygen masks.
Only one voice remained, barely above a whisper:
"Call it."
The nurse's tone, from before resounded like a strange hiccup and then It was tired. Regretful. Like a quiet apology to the world for failing to keep someone else alive.
Another voice followed. "Time of death: 07:42 AM."
A long breath escaped Theophilus, he read into it way long before and had already come to understand that his mind should at all times remain at peace because of continued for long durations , he'd started thinking like them and behaving as though everything in this world was as sacred as God's word or his form or whatever promises he made to keep humans hopeful.
The tear in his mind scale barely reached anything significant as he propped himself up carefully and appeared to be deep in thought.
Old man Ramus was frozen. His hand, still gripping the wheel of his chair, had gone limp. His eyes, watery but unblinking, stared at the curtain like it had become a monument to the ready gateway to somewhere only people like 'him' knew or came to knowm
Jeffrey was dead.
And yet, there were no screams. No sobbing. No cinematic gasp.
Just the muted rustle of cloth as the curtain was finally pulled back.
Jeffrey's body lay still, his chest sunken in beneath the ribcage, his lips a pale shade of violet. The patches over his eyes were soaked a dark maroon, trailing faint veins of blood across his cheeks like tears. His skin—once always warm, even when pale—was now a waxen gray, a death tone that no one could ignore.
One nurse pulled the sheet over his face.
And just like that, Jeffrey was gone.
No one in the ward spoke. Not the man across the room who always watched TV too loudly. Not the younger boy who had just arrived the week before. Not old man Ramus. Not Theophilus.
Theophilus sat still, his muscles burning, his leg pulsing, his stomach tight. He hadn't eaten. Not truly. The bowl still sat on the table beside him, untouched, growing colder with each second.
His heart beat in his ears.
But all he could hear was the silence.
And in that silence, he remembered something. A boy's laughter. A dumb joke about pudding. The way Jeffrey had said his name once—"Theo, you're like, one tragic anime protagonist away from world domination."
He hadn't even smiled back then and now, he never would again.
The nurses began to clear the equipment. Quietly. Respectfully. Like they didn't want to disturb the air.
Theophilus's humanly instinct wanted him to lean into the view and see as the final decomposition of human life was wrapped, but he feinted and forced his back to his pillow and closed his eyes to maybe sleep.
Because it had to mean something.
It had to.