NICK

The shift was over. I sat in my office, the last of the paperwork finally filed, the digital paper trail of the day’s misery tucked into a hard drive.

I’d done the handover. I’d told the night staff exactly who was stable and who was likely to fall apart, and I’d done it with the flat, even tone that made them look at their clipboards instead of my eyes.

I pulled my phone out. Lila had left seven missed calls. Two texts. I stared at the screen for a second, watching the little red notification bubble like it was an interesting stain on a lab coat.

I didn’t open them. I didn’t need to. I could hear her voice through the glass... demanding, hovering, asking for things I had no intention of giving.

I slid the phone into my pocket and walked out.

The parking structure was a concrete tomb. I climbed into my car and just sat there. The silence was heavy.

After twelve hours of beeping monitors, squeaking shoes, and the wet sound of people breathing through tubes, the quiet should have been a relief.

Instead, it felt like a vacuum. I sat in the driver’s seat for a long minute, hands resting on the wheel, before I actually turned the key. I never do that. Usually, I’m out of the lot before the engine temperature needle even moves.

The phone buzzed in the cup holder before I could even pull out. My mother.

I answered. Not because I wanted to talk, but because fighting with her about why I wasn’t answering required more energy than I currently possessed. 𝒇𝒓𝙚𝒆𝔀𝓮𝓫𝒏𝓸𝙫𝓮𝓵.𝓬𝙤𝙢

"Nick?" Her voice was warm. It was that efficient, kind warmth that usually made me want to hang up immediately. "How are you, dear?"

"Fine," I said. It was a lie, smooth and practiced.

"Are you eating well? You sound tired."

"I’m eating, Mother." Another lie. My last meal had been a stale biscuit and a cup of battery-acid coffee.

"Good. Your father’s friend from Italy is in town. He’s been asking after you. Your father is apparently still telling everyone that knows him about your promotion."

"Soon," I said. I used the tone that meant soon was a lie we both agreed to tell so we could move on.

She didn’t push it. Or maybe she just didn’t care to. There was a pause, a shift in her breathing that I recognized. The real reason for the call was coming.

"Have you heard from your brother?"

I tightened my grip on the wheel. "Noah?"

"Yes, Nick."

"He’s fine," I said, my voice going flat. "I’ve seen him around."

She said something else... something about family, something about reaching out... but I tuned it out.

I gave her the minimal syllables required to close a conversation, the verbal equivalent of a door locking. When I hung up, I drove.

My hands knew the turns, the lights, the lane changes. My mind was somewhere else entirely, a place I hadn’t given it permission to go.

I stopped at the store because I had to. My body was a machine, and the fuel light was blinking.

Coffee. Paracetamol. Protein. It was a functional list, the kind a man buys when he treats his physical self like a vehicle that needs regular maintenance.

The store was too bright. The fluorescent lights hummed with a headache-inducing frequency that rattled around inside my skull. I grabbed a basket and moved with a purpose that felt fake even to me.

Coffee. Added.

Paracetamol. Added.

I stood in front of the meat counter, looking at two different chicken breast options.

I picked one because it was lean and required the least amount of effort to cook. Correct. Efficient. Clean.

I turned the corner into the next aisle without thinking. My feet took me there before my brain could object.

The chocolate was there. The same brand... the one I’d grown fond of. The one I had found missing from my cupboard exactly twenty-four hours after Cyan had moved into my space.

The one I had then gone out and bought thirteen bars of, only to return to an apartment that was suddenly, violently empty.

The memory arrived all at once. It wasn’t a slow build; it was a flood. I remembered the way the silence had felt when I walked through my door that night... like the air had been sucked out of the room with a pump.

I remembered standing over the counter with thirteen bars of chocolate in a plastic bag, feeling like I had just done the stupidest, most pathetic thing in my entire life.

I didn’t move. I just stood there in the middle of the aisle while the lights buzzed overhead. An emotion I didn’t have a name for washed through me. It felt like a cold draft in a room where you thought the windows were shut tight.

My hand reached out. I didn’t decide to do it. It just happened. I took a bar. Then another.

I wasn’t fully there. I was somewhere else, back in that kitchen at 3 AM, watching someone eat in the dark. My hand kept moving.

I looked down into my basket.

Ten. I had put ten bars of chocolate into the basket without realizing it. I stared at them, the bright wrappers mocking me.

"Have I finally lost it?" I whispered. The words were barely audible. It wasn’t a question; it was a diagnosis. I was looking at a symptom of a mental break I couldn’t explain.

I put them back. One by one. My movements were stiff. I kept one, though. I told myself it was because I liked them before any of this started. That was true. That remained true.

Then, I started grabbing things. Soup stock. Fresh vegetables... carrots, celery, onions. A cut of fish I didn’t even particularly like. I grabbed them without reading the labels, my movements frantic.

Extraordinary, I thought, my inner voice sneering at me.

I was now using groceries as a psychological defense mechanism. The vegetables were a coping strategy. The soup stock was avoidance.

I was mortified. But I kept walking. I was shopping for two. I knew I was doing it. I was buying portions that made no sense for a single man with a fever.

I was buying food that required someone else to be there to make the effort worth it. It made it worse, not better, but I couldn’t stop my hands from reaching for the larger bag of potatoes.

I reached my apartment and got to the door. I pressed the code and it unlocked instantly.

There is always a half-second before your eyes adjust to the dark, a tiny window where your brain tries to predict what you’re about to see.

In that half-second, my nervous system sent me a lie. It told me the TV should be on. It told me there should be a blue glow coming from the living room.

The apartment was dark. It was exactly as I had left it. The silence was perfect. It was correct.

The wrongness was in me, not the room.

I set the bags down on the kitchen counter. I arranged them in a neat row, my hands moving with a precision that felt like a performance for an empty room.

My eyes kept darting to the couch. It was like the way a tongue constantly finds the gap where a tooth used to be. You can’t help it.