04:03pm. geronto-psychiatric unit, late afternoon light slants through high windows, flattening the corridor into long rectangles of pale gold

Most of the ward is louder at this hour: chairs scraping, a television murmuring too loudly in the common room, someone repeatedly asking the same question down the hall. The usual rhythm of confusion and repetition

Stephan has chosen distance from it

He sits in a worn armchair near the end of a quieter side area, angled slightly away from the main seating cluster. Not isolated, exactly-just out of reach of the noise. His posture is still, shoulders a little rounded forward, hands resting without purpose. He isn’t sleeping. He isn’t quite resting either

There’s a cup on the small table beside him that has long gone cold

From here, the sounds of the unit arrive softened, as if filtered through cotton. It gives room for thought. Or for things that refuse to stop becoming thoughts

A nurse passes once, checks the room with a brief glance, then continues on. No urgency. No disturbance

Stephan’s gaze stays fixed somewhere between the window and nothing in particular. Every so often, his eyes shift slightly, as if he expects something to change in the air and then decides it won’t

The quiet here isn’t empty. It just doesn’t ask anything

Somewhere in that stillness sits the awareness of a life outside the ward that is rearranging itself without him- papers, decisions, conversations he isn’t part of anymore, and a marriage that no longer holds its shape the way it used to. a wife that wants the divorce