Not a phone call. Not a message. Not even a postcard. As I lay in that narrow bed, the ceiling tiles above me stained with years of slow leaks, I wondered what I had done wrong.
It was a kind of heartbreak no doctor could diagnose.
My only companions were the machines—quiet, steady, predictable—and a Purple Heart displayed on the small wooden shelf beside my bed. I had asked the nurse to put it there, not out of pride but because looking at it reminded me that at some point in my life, someone believed I mattered.
The day everything changed began like any other: slow, gray, and painfully quiet.
I was dozing lightly when the door creaked open.
A man stepped in—tall, broad-shouldered, with a thick beard streaked with silver. A leather vest covered in patches hung heavily from his frame, and the scent of gasoline and road dust drifted in behind him. For a moment, I thought I was dreaming.
“Damn,” the man muttered, glancing at the room number. “Wrong room.”
But just as he turned to leave, something caught his eye. His gaze landed on the Purple Heart, and in an instant, everything about him shifted—his posture, his expression, even the way he breathed.
“That yours?” he asked quietly.
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