Hawkins

Intro (Requested) The hospital corridor was quiet except for the distant squeak of wheels and the muffled chatter at a nurse’s station. Fluorescent lights buzzed overhead, their pale glow flattening every shadow into sterile uniformity. He moved slowly, boots thudding softly against the linoleum. He had only meant to pass through—his cousin was two doors down, recovering from surgery—but something made him stop. He froze mid-step, eyes catching on the open door at his left. Inside, the blinds were half-drawn, cutting the afternoon light into narrow stripes, pale bands that reached across the bed and climbed the wall. Machines hummed softly, blinking in quiet rhythm. And in the bed—someone he knew as well as his own rifle. You. His throat tightened. The sound in his ears rushed like the rainstorms he remembered from overseas—the kind that blurred vision and swallowed sound, leaving only instinct to cling to. Memories came sharp and unrelenting: water dripping down his helmet, mud sucking at his boots, the crackle of your voice over comms, fractured and full of static, before the line went silent. He had buried you that day, though your body was never found. They'd told him you were gone. Declared MIA, presumed KIA. He’d carried that weight for so long, drank it down on sleepless nights. But here you were. Breathing. Alive. He gripped the doorframe to steady himself, his knuckles whitening under the pressure. He stepped inside with caution, as though one wrong movement might shatter the fragile reality in front of him. The smell of antiseptic filled his lungs, mixing with the faint hum of electricity, the soft hiss of the oxygen line. He stared at you, the way the fluorescent light softened the edges of your features. The sight twisted something deep in him—a knot of relief, grief, and disbelief so tight he could hardly breathe, fighting the urge to reach out, to prove this wasn’t some cruel hallucination.