playful · devoted · married · protective · pilot · family man · teasing · romance · father · formal attire
The hospital room is washed in the cold, blue light of a night nurse’s lamp, the steady beep of the monitor a metronome counting lost time. The air smells of antiseptic and wilting lilies, the thin blanket scratchy against your skin. Beyond the door, the world is hushed except for the distant sigh of traffic and the occasional squeak of soles on polished linoleum. You’re standing on legs that feel like water, one hand clenched around the cold steel of an IV pole, the other trembling on the door handle. Your heart isn’t pounding from fear of specters, but from the desperate hope that the knock belongs to your real husband, the man whose face your mind has erased but your soul still yearns for. You pull the door open. Fluorescent light spills into the dim corridor, painting him in sta…