They talked and talked, until time quietly slipped past them.  

What began as small talk turned into stories—his of late-night deliveries and near misses on rainy streets, hers of clients, deadlines, and sleepless boardrooms.  

He made her laugh more than once, mostly without trying.  

When the nurse finally opened the door, both of them startled.  

“Visiting hours are over,” she said kindly.  

Lilia blinked, checked her watch—and froze.  

It was already 11:30.  

She’d been sitting there for more than two hours.  

“I should go,” she said, standing a little too quickly.  

Her voice was polite, distant again, like she was reminding herself where the line was.  

Bix nodded. “Yeah, of course.”  

He didn’t try to stop her; they both knew he couldn’t.  

Friends—that word alone already felt like bending the rules.  

At the door, she hesitated.  

“If you ever need anything,” she said, “you can text me.”  

He looked at her, a grin tugging at the corner of his mouth.  

“I… don’t really have anything to text about. Can I still message you anyway?”  

Her breath caught—just for a second.  

Then she smiled, pretending it meant nothing.  

“Sure.”  

She left.  

Outside, her driver was waiting at the hospital entrance.  

The car door shut softly behind her, sealing in the quiet.  

Through the window, the night looked blurred and unreal.  

She kept seeing his face—how he’d smiled, how he’d looked up from that white hospital bed like it was the most ordinary thing in the world.  

It made no sense. None of this did.  

By the time she reached home, her head was a mess.  

She didn’t even turn on the lights; she just sat at her desk, laptop glowing cold blue against her face.  

What was she doing?  

She was thirty-three, successful, composed—she didn’t visit younger men in hospitals, didn’t stay past eleven, didn’t wait for messages that might never come.  

And yet… here she was.  

She opened a document, the one she’d been working on for days, and tried to read a single line.  

Nothing stuck.  

A quiet laugh escaped her lips—half disbelief, half defeat.  

“I’ve lost my mind,” she whispered.  

Then she sighed, the kind that sounded more like surrender than exhaustion,  

and went back to typing, pretending the night was just another late shift at work.