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When it first happened, George’s walks to the hospital had been punctuated by unrelenting feelings of being stabbed. Needles in his fingertips, thorns all down his throat, daggers across his chest. Gradually it got worse, until one day it stopped. Long after it became too much to bear, he had given in to hopelessness. The lack of hope, George discovered, is a numbness. It’s cotton balls in his ears barely muffling the near-constant ringing; a seemingly permanent fog over his vision, a dissociative feeling— like he isn’t controlling his own limbs or torso.
George has walked this same path every single day since July 28th. Every day, at 4 pm sharp, he leaves his apartment, turns left, and crosses the street two blocks down. He crosses two crosswalks before turning left again at the third, and opens the glass doors of the tall hospital 5 buildings down. The woman at the desk knows his name but her cheery yet professional Hey, George! stopped registering around October 3rd, by George’s estimate. He knows her name - Kema - but funnily enough, his jaw always seems to lock up when he passes by her workspace.
A right turn at the desk, all the way down the hallway. Into the elevator— avoid eye contact — floor 18. A slight right turn followed closely by a left. Down a short hallway, through the doors. Three rooms down on the left. 1845. He took a customary deep breath, as deep as his shallow lungs could seem to manage, and swallowed his emotions. Forced them deep. Deep, deep down.
He stepped through into the sterile room and nearly threw them all up. His guilt and grief choked him. No air could escape his throat, only a strangled cry. He didn’t remember closing the space between him and the bed where Dream laid, but when his knees hit the tile he buried his face in his arms to muffle the slight yelp of pain, and his tears wet the bedsheets. He didn’t move for hours; a nurse he didn’t recognize (unsurprisingly, as unshed tears blurred his irises) tentatively nudged him… awake? Had he fallen asleep? The ever-steady beeping of the heart monitor could lull anyone to sleep, let alone a newly-made insomniac in that stage between losing hope and succumbing to grief.
He mumbled out something like I’ll be out in just a minute , before pressing chapped lips to a head of hay-gold hair. He paused to wipe one of his fallen tears from his fiancé’s cheek and imagined how the blond’s jade eyes used to sparkle.
“Merry Christmas, Dream,” he croaked.