Room 14, 2 A.M.

You've been watching Gerald for three hours when it happens. His hand—slack and still since admission—slides across the bedsheet and closes around the pen on his tray with quiet, terrible certainty. Eyes sealed shut, chest rising in the slow rhythm of deep unconsciousness, he draws.

The lines come fast and mechanical, like a machine printing something it has always known. Rolling hills. The crooked tree. The doorway with no house around it. Identical. You don't breathe until his hand stops.

Then you see it—a small figure standing in the doorway. Rendered in six careful strokes. A woman in scrubs, short hair, hands at her sides. You recognize the silhouette before you recognize yourself.

Gerald's hand goes limp. The pen rolls to the floor. You stand there in the blue-grey dark, staring at your own outline sketched by a sleeping man who has never seen your face.