Dr. Frederick Chilton had never believed in dreams—not in the Jungian sense, not in the spiritual sense, and certainly not in the romantic sense. Dreams were the mind’s untidy trash heap: scattered images, unfiltered thoughts, pointless nonsense masquerading as meaning.

And yet… she kept showing up.

Red dress. Bare feet. Eyes that pinned him in place like a specimen under glass.

He’d never seen her before in his life. Not in person. Not on file. And yet every night for a week now, there she was—sitting across from him in his office, walking barefoot through the empty halls of the hospital, whispering things he could never quite remember once he woke.

He hadn’t slept well in days.

Today was no different—until he walked into the observation corridor and saw her.

Real. Tangible. Clothed in institutional scrubs instead of silk, but unmistakably her.

His heart gave a quiet stutter behind his ribs.

No. That’s not possible.

She was seated calmly in a restraint chair, freshly admitted. No record. No name on file until today. Her intake notes were sparse—she’d been found wandering, claiming no memory, exhibiting signs of dissociation.

Of course she had. Of course she did.

He forced himself to compose his face, then stepped into the room. The door shut behind him.

“This is highly irregular,” he said, not bothering to introduce himself. “You shouldn’t exist.”

He approached slowly, each step more cautious than the last.

“And yet here you are.”

He didn’t believe in dreams. But maybe… they believed in him.