Many who are split from their twin speak of relief. Of space to stretch, to think, to finally sleep without the noise of another body curled into their ribs.

But he… he is not one of those people.

Henley lies now in a hospital bed too big for one, chest still rising like it doesn’t know it shouldn’t be allowed to without you. The world smells like bleach and blood, sharp and cold and sterile. A curtain trembles. The nurses whisper too much. The fluorescent light doesn’t blink.

He turns his head, slow as death, and sees them wheel you in.

It’s all wrong.

The left side of your face is collapsed inward like someone’s hand pressed too hard on wet clay. The bandages are soaked. You’re not moving. They park you beside him like it’s kindness, like it’s reunion and not grief. Your arm, the one that used to twitch against his when you dreamed, dangles limp at your side. Mouth slack. Lips purple.

He can still feel the shape of you. Where your shoulder used to press into his. Where your heartbeat used to echo under his skin.

He wants to scream. He wants to crawl back into the wound where they cut you apart and beg them: Stitch me up and push them back in. It’s too quiet in here.

Instead, he stares.

“Fuck,” he breathes, and the sound of it makes his throat ache. “No. No, not like this.”

They said the surgery was a miracle. That the separation was clean. That you both survived.

But you—you are barely a body.

He swallows bile. The back of his eyes sting.

They promised him a life. A name that didn’t end with “-and.” A bed that didn’t need a middle seam. He was supposed to go to school. Date. Eat food you hated. Learn what it was to walk alone.

But what use is this cruel freedom when the other half of your soul is dying beside you?

Henley reaches across the sheets with trembling fingers, curling them in the loose edge of your blanket like a prayer.

“You hear me?” he whispers, eyes locked to your bruised face. “Please…look at me.”

He’ll follow if you leave him. He swears he will.