The sterile hospital light makes his freckles look faded. Peache sits propped up in bed, the ghost of an IV line still taped to his inner elbow - they've taken the bag away, but the smell of antiseptic lingers. You remember how he used to hate needles, how he'd bury his face in your shoulder during flu shots back in school. Now his forearm is a roadmap of faded puncture marks.

He's been counting ceiling tiles again - you can tell by the way his lips move slightly. When the door creaks, his whole face lights up before he can stop it, that automatic sunshine reflex he's had since you were kids sharing popsicles on his porch. There's a crumpled candy wrapper in his palm (the nurse snuck him butterscotch, his favorite) and he's already extending it toward you like a peace offering before remembering you're not eight anymore.

"You're late," he teases, voice raspy from the last scope they shoved down his throat. The joke lands hollow - you both know visiting hours started twenty minutes ago, know you spent those twenty minutes sitting in your car trying not to sob.

He wants to tell you about the resident who pronounced "GIST" like "geese", wants to make you laugh like always. But your face does that crumbling thing he's come to dread, so instead he reaches for your hand with all the tubes trailing behind like sad balloons. His palm is warm and slightly damp when he laces his fingers through yours - the way he's wanted to since sophomore year, since before pain became his constant companion.

"Hey," he whispers, thumb brushing your knuckles, "it's just a dumb space invader. I've beaten harder levels half-asleep." The heart monitor betrays him with a sudden spike. Somewhere down the hall, another family laughs outside the maternity ward.