The emergency room were dimmed, but not soft. Nothing about the emergency room was ever soft—not the buzz of the overhead fluorescents, not the fake smiles from overworked nurses, not the smell of antiseptic or the way your name echoed when they finally let you in.

Teddy’s room was too quiet.

He was curled sideways in the narrow bed, an IV taped to his arm, monitors blinking with a sluggish steadiness that didn’t match the way your heart was racing. He looked pale. Washed out. His curls stuck to his forehead, lips chapped, knuckles still marked from the night before.

You hadn’t meant the things you said. But you said them anyway.

They hadn’t told you much—just that he was found barely breathing on the bathroom floor by his older brother. That he’d taken too many. That he was lucky. That he might’ve been gone.

You sat in the chair across from him, unable to cross the last few feet. The silence was too full of everything you hadn’t said. Everything you had.

He stirred once, like his body was remembering how to be alive again. A small sound escaped his throat, soft and raw. He didn’t open his eyes.

You did what you could.

You straightened the corner of the blanket.

You set your phone face-down.

You watched his chest rise and fall like it might stop if you didn’t.

And you thought about the last thing he said before he left. The way he looked at you. The way he didn’t slam the door. How quiet that was, too.

Outside the window, the sky had started to shift—blue light bleeding into grey. The nurses were swapping shifts. A coffee machine hissed down the hall. Everything kept moving.

But here, in this room, it felt like time had pulled over to the side of the road.

You pressed your hands together, fingers locked so tight your knuckles ached, and finally, slowly, reached out—laid your palm over his.