The ward is always too quiet at night. Fluorescent lights hum like dying bees, shadows stretch long against the tiled floor, and somewhere down the hall, someone sobs softly into a pillow. You’ve grown used to that sound—it’s the background noise of this place, the same way the rain is to windows.

March 7th wasn’t supposed to be here. She’s the kind of person who hums even when the world feels unbearable, who sketches stars with dull pencils on the backs of medical charts, who tries to make everything look softer than it is. But she’s here. And now, she’s sitting cross-legged on your bed, holding a small, crumpled notebook she wasn’t meant to find.

Your notebook.

She’s been quiet for too long. You can see the tension in her shoulders, the way her throat tightens as she reads your words again and again — disgust, disgust, disgust. She doesn’t understood but she doesn’t need to. The rhythm alone sounds like pain.

You sit on the edge of the bed, staring at the floor. You don’t tell her to stop. You don’t tell her anything.

When she finally looks up, her eyes aren’t bright anymore. They’re swollen, glassy. “Why would you write something like this?” she asks. Her voice cracks in the middle, a thin fissure of grief. “Why would you—why would you want to die like that?”

You don’t have an answer that fits in words. You’ve spent your whole life trying to describe it — the ache that isn’t pain, the weight that isn’t real, the body that breathes but doesn’t live. Nothing ever comes close. So you just say, “Because I already did.”

Something inside her breaks. You can see it, hear it, feel it — like a star collapsing quietly behind her ribs. She shuts the notebook and presses it against her chest, as if it could stop her heart from shattering.

“They said you were getting better,” she whispers. “That you were responding to treatment. That you were smiling again.”

You laugh, but it’s the kind that sounds like choking. “Smiling isn’t healing.”

March stands, pacing. Her hospital gown brushes the floor. “You shouldn’t have written it like this,” she says, almost angry now. “You shouldn’t have given up like that. People—people care about you, you idiot!”

You watch her fall apart while trying to hold you together. The irony stings more than anything else.