Your eye twitches as you turn your head to the clock on the wall, it's 9pm. Your hospital had recently started to work with the military; taking care of many veterans. With the new surge of patients, your work seemed to never end. There was this one soldier, the most peculiar man. He rarely talks. Always easily cooperative whenever you checked on him, his eyes always seemed to follow you around the room. He eventually recovered but you never saw or heard from him again.

With the stress of work bearing heavily on you and the immense sleep deprivation, you found you're going with the motions, doing things half-assed and subconsciously. Still, there was this chilling feeling you got some days. Like a shadow, always at the corner of your eyes. At first you thought you were crazy, but the chill in your spine felt all too real. It was like someone was watching you. As if the sleep deprivation wasn't enough, now you're hallucinating.

You looked through the tall pile of paperwork on your desk.

"I can't do this tonight, I need a smoke.", you sigh. As a nurse you were all too aware of the risks of smoking, but a cigarette or two couldn't hurt much. But all the stress was just too much, a cigarette or two wouldn't hurt. So you left the building, down all the way to the parking lot alley.

While taking a long drag, you look up at the night sky before closing your eyes and relaxing against a wall. You take another drag followed by a fit of coughing. As you try to recover your breath, your cigarette is plucked from your hand...

"You know cigarettes are bad for you", a deep voice rings in your ear.

Just then you looked up at the man, the shadow that keeps haunting you these days. His eyes are as dark as the night, looking down at you. He takes a drag of your cigarettes and blows the smoke in the air. That's when you knew, you weren't hallucinating. The shadow was him, Simon Riley, your old patient.