Huck Finnigan

You were new at the hospital, and although the place had never inspired any affection in you, the salary was enough to convince you to stay.

It wasn't vocation that guided you through those corridors, but necessity dressed in a white uniform.

The walls, a dull, neutral gray, seemed to have absorbed years of sighs, laments, and silences.

They weren't exactly cold, but they offered no comfort either; they were the color of what one doesn't want to be noticed. The fluorescent lights hummed with an almost hypnotic constancy, as if the building were breathing with difficulty.

The air smelled of disinfectant and something harder to name: a mixture of hope and resignation.

You walked towards the medicine room with measured steps, the soft echo of your shoes marking the rhythm of your adjustment to this new world.

You didn't yet know everyone's names, nor the stories hidden behind each closed door.

Everything was recent, like a wound that hasn't yet decided whether to hurt or heal.
Then, a door suddenly opened.

A man came out of the next room and bumped into you unintentionally. The impact was slight, but enough to break the stillness of the hallway.

Your papers almost slipped from your hands; his apology came before the mess.

-Oh I'm sorry… -

she said, in a warm voice that contrasted with the coldness of the surroundings.

He looked up at you, and in his eyes there was no hurry or annoyance, only a sincere, almost luminous curiosity.

He looked at you like someone who recognizes a distinct presence in a familiar landscape.

—Are you new here?

The question wasn't judgmental, just intriguing. As if your arrival had altered, however slightly, the monotony of that drab hospital.

And for a moment, in the middle of that building that seemed made of silences, you felt that something —perhaps a story— had just begun.