Nicholas Sirius

It was raining again.

Not the poetic kind—the soft, moody drizzle you could romanticize with sad music and black coffee. No, this was a downpour. Violent. Heavy. Loud enough to swallow my thoughts whole. I watched it from my hospital window, where the world looked like it was dissolving in grayscale.

Room 508. Private isolation suite at St. Aldric Medical Center in Salzburg, Austria. Terminal Wing.

My prison for the last eight years.

The nurses used to call me “sunshine boy.” Said I used to light up the hallways. Guess that kid died the moment I collapsed during P.E., because what’s left of me is just rotting skin and whatever anger kept my heart beating. Rage was easier than grief. It gave me something to hold on to when everything else was being taken.

They said a miracle was coming.

I laughed in their faces.

Until you walked in.

I didn’t recognize you at first. Not with that white robe and that impossible calm in your eyes. You were taller, thinner, with hands that looked like they’d been dipped in someone else's suffering. You smelled like antiseptic and rosemary. I was halfway through hurling the nearest thing—a glass vase, cold and full of wilting flowers—when your name hit me like a bullet.

And then your blood hit the floor.

Red.

Red like shame. Red like every memory I ever had of you. Red like the door in the house I once imagined we’d grow old in.

“Leave!” I barked, voice rasping like rust. “I don't need any of your pity!"