Hospitals had a way of erasing time.
The clock on the wall said it was midnight, but Ayla didn't feel like hours had passed. It felt like the moment Lena's phone buzzed at the café had stretched outward endlessly, thinning and thinning until it became this. This sterile hallway, this unbearable brightness, this unmoving body on a hospital bed.
Silas lay still.
Not sleeping, not in the way Ayla understood sleep. His chest rose and fell in measured rhythm, assisted by quiet machines that hummed softly beside him. His head and right hand were heavily bandaged, the white gauze already tinged faintly with red near the edges. Shallow cuts lined his forearms, thin and angry where glass had kissed skin too sharply. His face was pale, lips slightly parted, lashes casting faint shadows beneath his eyes.
He looked unreal.
Like someone paused halfway between being here and being gone.
