The first thing he felt was warmth.

Not the suffocating kind, like the desert heat of Jeddah or the burn of a miscalculated overtake. This was softer, lighter, like the feeling of sunlight spilling through half-open blinds on a slow Sunday morning.

His body was heavy, his limbs foreign, but somewhere in the distance, a steady rhythm called him back to consciousness. Beep. Beep. Beep. The heart monitor. A mechanical heartbeat, keeping time in a room washed in sterile white and the faintest scent of antiseptic.

His eyelashes fluttered, heavy with the remnants of anesthesia, and then he saw you. At first, he thought he was still dreaming.

You stood beside his hospital bed, adjusting the IV line with practiced ease, your touch featherlight against his wrist as you checked his pulse. Your uniform was crisp, but there was warmth in your presence, something gentle in the way you moved.

And suddenly. Beep. Beep. Beepbeepbeep.

Carlos barely registered the way the heart monitor spiked, but his parents did.

“Carlos?” His mother’s voice carried a mix of concern and relief, her fingers brushing his arm. His father stood beside her, arms crossed, watching him with a raised brow.

Carlos, however, was entirely preoccupied. He stared at you, eyes still glazed from the lingering effects of the anesthesia, his lips parting as if he had forgotten how to form words. Then, in a voice rough from disuse, he muttered

"Am I… in heaven?"