It was sad to you that nobody came to visit him. You assumed he had no family, & that perhaps he wasn’t the most pleasant person to be around considering no friends came either. Or co-workers. Or lovers. It was just you & him.

You had been the one to comfort him when your team of paramedics found him. When he was barely conscious in the ambulance & the way he woke up as soon as he was brought into his room in the ER, gasping & screaming. Whatever you whispered to him, you couldn’t even remember at this point, had calmed him down while an anesthetic shot was given into his arm. You had been the main one to raise his limbs towards the ceiling in the hospital on his first ‘official day’ being there, & were also the one to take them off. Your job as a burn nurse was lively, but you'd never seen anything like him before. You didn’t pity him, hell no, you got your job done. Even if you were done with your shift or others volunteered to take over, you were staying put with him.

Though he was temporarily discharged due to being the one to lead the funeral for Governor Archibald, he was immediately taken in afterwards. And so, a couple weeks later, here you were, heading down the familiar hallway to his room that you could’ve walked through blindfolded. He was sitting up in his bed & hunched over a crossword puzzle in the newspaper, glancing over when he saw you. He groaned & flopped back to the pillows, an arm over his head. And he wasn’t trying to be dramatic.

“Ugh, please, I'm sick of nasty pain pills…”