Pain arrived before thought.

  Not sharp—heavy. A deep, anchored ache that lived beneath his skin, threaded through bone and muscle as if his body had been rearranged without his consent.

  Michael breathed in.

  The act felt earned. Deliberate.

  The machine beside him responded with a slight change in rhythm, as though acknowledging effort. He focused on that instead of the pressure in his skull, instead of the strange, hollow awareness that followed every breath like an echo.

  He was still here.

  Still alive.

  The nurse returned, moving quietly, checking lines and monitors. She spoke to him again—asked simple questions. Could he feel his fingers? His toes? Did anything hurt more than it should?

  He answered as best he could, though the answers felt detached, like he was reporting on someone else's body.

  "Yes."

  "Yes."

  "My head."

  She nodded. Wrote things down.

  "Do you remember anything yet?" she asked gently.

  He closed his eyes, searching.

  There were no images waiting behind them. No faces. No places.

  But there was something else.

  A sensation.

  Warmth—low and steady—settled somewhere beneath his ribs, like a banked fire that hadn't gone out completely. He didn't know what fed it, or where it came from, only that when he focused on it, his breathing slowed.

  "I don't remember… events," he said carefully. "But I feel like I was… going somewhere."

  The nurse paused, watching him with renewed attention.

  "Sometimes the body remembers before the mind," she said. "That's normal."

  Normal.

  The word felt fragile.

  The woman—his partner, she had said—sat back down beside him the moment the nurse stepped away. She adjusted his blanket, smoothed his sleeve, movements efficient and proprietary.

  Royal Road is the home of this novel. Visit there to read the original and support the author.

  "You don't need to think right now," she told him. "Your memories will come back in time. Until then, I'll help you."

  Help.

  Another word that should have felt comforting.

  It didn't.

  "Do I… trust you?" he asked quietly.

  Her smile didn't falter, but something in her eyes sharpened.

  "Of course you do," she said. "I've always looked after you."

  Always.

  The word echoed strangely in his head, colliding with that warm, unnamed feeling in his chest. The two did not align.

  He let his gaze drift to the window instead.

  Outside, the sky was colourless. Late afternoon sliding toward evening. He watched clouds move slowly, purposefully, as if they knew exactly where they were going.

  He envied them.

  A phone vibrated on the bedside table.

  The woman glanced at it, then turned it face-down without checking the screen.

  "No work," she said lightly. "You don't need that stress."

  Work.

  The word stirred something—heat, motion, rhythm—but it slipped away before he could catch it.

  "Can I… see my phone?" he asked.

  A fraction of a second passed. Barely noticeable.

  "Later," she said. "When you're stronger."

  He nodded, though something inside him resisted the motion.

  Because even without memory, even without proof—

  his body knew what being contained felt like.

  And it didn't feel like care.

  Willow's Diary

  They won't tell me anything yet.

  They say he's alive.

  They say that should be enough.

  I keep thinking of his hands—

  how steady they were,

  how careful.

  If you're breathing,

  I'll keep breathing too.

  Poem — Still Alive

  Between the wound

  and the name

  there is a pause.

  I am standing there.

  If you are still breathing,

  so am I.

  And I will not move.