I simply closed my eyes, letting silence wrap around me like a suffocating shroud.
My ankle was shattered, the pain sharp and relentless, and a stubborn respiratory infection clung to me like a shadow.
In the week I spent in the sterile embrace of the hospital, I had already undergone five surgeries, each one leaving me more hollow than the last.
Mathias came to see me once, just once.
He left me with nothing more than a cold, distant sentence. “Irene, please take care of yourself.”
And just like that, he disappeared from my life.
Every time I woke from the fog of anesthesia, the doctors mentioned how I cried, my tears spilling uncontrollably as if my heart couldn’t bear the weight of its own agony.
But now, there were no more tears left to shed.
I wondered, was this how it felt when the heart died, a long, torturous ache that made every breath a struggle?
Somehow, though, I survived it.
For a month, I lay in that sterile room, the hours crawling by.
When the day finally came for me to leave, I had hoped to find Mathias, to speak to him, to have the conversation we should have had all along.
But when I reached his room, the nurse told me he had already left, without a trace, seven days ago.